Pundit Country

For the week ending March 7, 2010

• Ken Hutcherson wants you to know that he is free of prejudice.

• Finally, did you hear the rumor going around yesterday that Chief Justice John Roberts was going to step down?  The story of how it got started is pretty hilarious.

• I had no idea that incompetence could be so lucrative.

• This just might be one of the most poorly written ads I have ever seen.

• This Is What It Looks Like When Right-Wing Activists Run For Public Office.

• This Is What Happens When The Religious Right Takes Over Your State.

• Think Progress: Indiana’s ‘sovereign citizens’ renounce their U.S. citizenship, claim to secede from the Union.<——My personal favorite this week.

• TPM: Louisiana sheriff forming a citizen militia to defend the parish in the event of a terrorist attack.

• Media Matters: Glenn Beck repeatedly likens himself to historical figures of note, including Socrates, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Benjamin Franklin.

• The Arizona Republic looks at the behind-the-scenes influence the right-wing Center for Arizona Policy has in shaping public policy in the state.

• Dammit Victoria, when did you go completely insane? If this was satire, it would be absolutely brilliant.  It is not satire.

• Andy Birkey: Twenty of Bachmann’s 47 missed votes coincide with media appearances.

• Amarillo’s Army of God takes on the biggest threat to Texas: Swingers.

• SPLC report finds that right-wing extremist groups have grown 244% in the past year.

• Sarah Posner: Religious Activism Behind Anti-Abortion Movement Outreach to Blacks.

As always, most of these items came from Right Wing Watch and Hatewatch.

From the Phoenix New Times:

It’s widely known that the self-righteous voice of conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh is enough to irritate the pants off of liberals and hippies from Burlington to Berkley, but two scientists at Northern Arizona University are using Limbaugh’s squawk to annoy a different type of nuisance: beetles.

We would have suggested a sobbing Glenn Beck, but that’s just us.

Bark beetles are destroying forests all over the western United States, and in a method they’re calling “beetle-mania,” NAU Professor Richard Hofstetter and truck-driver-turned-research assistant Reagan McGuire began using Limbaugh’s voice, as well as music, to try and get the beetles to relocate.

McGuire was a truck driver until hearing reports that bark beetles had killed about 74 million trees in Arizona and New Mexico and wondered if there was a way to “fight back using acoustic stress.”

McGuire took his suggestion to Hofstetter, who liked the idea and set him up in his lab, compelling McGuire to put his truck-driving days behind him.

The two began collecting infested tree stumps last fall and started using Guns ‘N’ Roses and Queen songs to see if the beetles would respond and leave the area they were destroying.

As if the nasally drone of Axl Rose or the shrieking fury of Freddy Mercury weren’t enough, the two started playing the beetles some of Rush Limbaugh’s radio show, too.

“I thought, ‘What would be the nastiest, most offensive sound?’ To me, that would be Rush Limbaugh or heavy metal,” McGuire says in a statement provided to New Times by NAU.

There seems to be some confusion in all the rants you’ve been giving since your dad left public office. Please allow me to explain things in a way in which I hope you will understand.

This man:

is not this man:

We have been assuming that you would have figured this out by now. I mean it’s been almost 10 years, but sadly, with all your pronouncements in TV that terrorists are some sort of super criminal that normal courts and jails were unable to contain, I thought some clarification was in order.

Your welcome,

mardod