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.

for the week ending February 28, 2010

• The New York Times finally notices the right-wing effort to turn abortion into a racial issue.

• The conservative effort to purge itself of “extremist elements” is going to be led by… Erick Erickson?

• Baptist Press glowingly reports on the church’s efforts to convent Mormons in Utah and free them from their “spiritual darkness” so that they can “get real with God.”

• Microchip Implantation Feared as Sign of End Times

• Is Ralph Reed considering a run for office…again?

• Just when you start to think the Right can’t get any more ridiculous, they prove you wrong.

• The city of Beverly Hills wants to make it abundantly clear that anti-gay beauty queen Lauren Ashley has no ties to the city and “does not represent Beverly Hills in any capacity.”

• Marco Rubio seems to have a history of charging personal expenses to the Florida GOP.

• Also, if you missed the right-wing anti-DADT repeal press conference at CPAC, Good As You has all the video.

• Speaking of DADT, Media Matters examines all the myths and falsehoods conservative media figures have pushed in their efforts to prevent repeal.

• Allow me to quote Steve Benen: ”So, let me get this straight. Prominent conservative voices don’t mind [Glenn] Beck’s deranged conspiracy theories, his humiliating ignorance, and his hatred for those who don’t think as he does. But these conservative voices mind a great deal if Beck notes that Republicans have an embarrassing record when it comes to deficit reduction, the national debt, government spending, and increasing the size and scope of the federal government’s powers — an observation that happens to be true. What an odd movement.”

• Mike Huckabee pleads for civility after right-wing bloggers savage him for interviewing First Lady Michelle Obama, saying “it seemed [they] wanted me to bring her on my show only if I yelled at her. Or it seemed they wanted me to hit her.”

• Apparently, Ken Blackwell got a book deal.  The title of his tome? ”THE BLUEPRINT: Barack Obama’s Secret Plan for an Imperial Presidency and a Permanent Liberal Government.”

• Prosecutors are worried they will be unable to find jurors who don’t have an opinion about murdered anti-abortion activist James Pouillon as they make their case against Harlan Drake because Pouillon’s protests and antics had made him notoriously unpopular.

• Kincaid: Gay Conservatives Will Use The Military To Overthrow “Homophobic Regimes”

• Predictably, VA state Rep. Bob Marshall says he was taken out of context for his statement that disabled children are punishment for women who’ve had an abortion.  You can listen to the statement here and judge for yourself.

• Ron Paul won the CPAC Straw Poll? Eh, No Big Deal.

• Utah state Sen. Mark Madsen wants to combine Martin Luther King Day with “John M. Browning State Holiday” to honor the gun manufacturer.

• The insanity of Orly Taitz knows no bounds.

• Quote of the Day from Gary Bauer: “Here is the dirty secret the Left doesn’t want you to know. Joseph Stack’s ‘philosophy,’ to the extent he had one, was closer to the left-wing drivel at Daily Kos and moveon.org than it is to the patriots who are in the Tea Party movement. Joseph Stack printed his manifesto on his business web page yesterday as he took off to try to kill IRS employees. In it he rails at the wealthy, GM executives, drug companies and insurance companies. His rhetoric sounded like Obama style populism – heavy on class warfare … No, Joe Stack wasn’t any conservative – he was a left-wing populist!

as always, the majority of these items originated from Right Wing Watch and Hatewatch

for the week ending February 21, 2010

• Media Matters: CPAC has always been a welcoming venue for the far-right fringe.

• Think Progress: CPAC audience boos former GOP Rep. Bob Barr for saying waterboarding is torture.

• Steve Benen says “[Scott] Brown is quickly proving himself to a dim-witted clown.”

• Hey, guess who else has signed on the The Mount Vernon Statement? The Traditional Values Coalition.

• Austin Killer Becoming a Hero to the Radical Right.

• Jeffrey Rosen: Just how radical is the chief justice?

• David Neiwert: Tea Party speaker wants Sen. Patty Murray to ‘get hung.’

• Gary Bauer calls The Mount Vernon Statement “a seminal document reflecting both the past and the future of intellectual conservatism.”

• LifeNews.com, National Clergy Council, National Pro-life Religious Council, Operation Outcry, Priests for Life, Susan B. Anthony List, Wallbuilders and others are joining forces to launch a series of “Voter Registration Sundays.”

• Quote of the Day from the AFA’s Bryan Fischer: “Our first order of business is to identify candidates who will be guided by the moral law of God in forming public policy, whose worldviews align with the value system found in the Judeo-Christian tradition, and help them become our ‘ministers of God,’ secular priests exercising sacred authority in the public square.”

• IRS Long a Target of Antigovernment Extremists

• Liz Cheney at CPAC: Obama’s Incompetence Is Getting People Killed

• Dick Armey at CPAC: Obama is an Arrogant, Incompetent Ideologue

• TPM: Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell Rolls Back Non-Discrimination Protections For Gay State Workers.

• TFN: How the Far Right ‘Guides’ Voters with Lies.

• A Truth Wins Out (TWO) and South Florida Gay News (SFGN) investigation revealed that a Wall Street criminal mastermind who was convicted in 1987 of “fraud of spectacular scope” has secretly reinvented himself as a moral leader who “cures” gay and lesbian people.

• Only Orly Taitz could find a way to turn a $20,000 fine levied against her for frivolous legal filings into an opportunity to prove that President Obama was not born in the U.S.

as always, these items come predominantly from Right Wing Watch and Hatewatch

Wow, that’s one hell of a scoops guys, showing ads that many of these stars made at least 10 years ago (and in the case of the Schwarzenegger ad, closer to 20). These ads have been bouncing around on the Internet for years. So, why bother putting them on your site at all. There is no news value in them whatsoever. Or, for that matter, the piece you ran just a few days ago (that has since been removed) about topless models selling tacos ,T&T&A. There was a reason I, as a progressive needed to know that?

No, what’s going on is linkbaiting, a way to keep your traffic numbers high. Now, I don’t have an issue with linkbaiting, a great deal of bloggers do it (which is why everyone and their brother has composed a Top 10 list of something at one point or another in their blogging lives), but then again, I don’t say I’m a news aggregate site and then post things again and again that have NOTHING to do with my stated mission and goals. Just something to keep in minds guys, because now I’m going to start keeping a regular eye on you.