When I grow up to be a man

CNN's latest-hire Erick Erickson has said some stupid things for ever lately, but John Cole offers an explanation:

A lot of chatter about this latest outburst from CNN’s newest hire:

ERICKSON: This is crazy. What gives the Commerce Department the right to ask me how often I flush my toilet? Or about going to work? I’m not filling out this form. I dare them to try and come throw me in jail. I dare them to. Pull out my wife’s shotgun and see how that little ACS twerp likes being scared at the door. They’re not going on my property. They can’t do that. They don’t have the legal right, and yet they’re trying.

Anyone who is surprised by this needs their head examined. Seriously. I know Erick, chatted with him for years while I wrote at Red State, and he knows that 90% of what he spews is utter nonsense. James Joyner got at this (kind of) the other day. You can say a lot of things about Erick, but he isn’t this stupid, he knows what he is doing. You at home can do your own math on the stupid to evil ratio.

Regardless, I’m sure there are people who are surprised that Erick would continue to say explosive things after his hire, including probably some of the clowns at CNN, but they shouldn’t. At this point, he has every single incentive to keep saying explosive and incendiary things. CNN hired him in spite of everything he had already said, so that was a de facto green light to continue in that vein. It will drive the ratings, and is clearly what he wants.

In re: the linked post from James Joyner, the (kind of) from Cole is because Joyner's an right-wing hack and apologist who still gives Erickson cover while basically saying the same thing Cole did: that Erickson isn't stupid enough to actually believe what he says.

But an interesting tid-bit slipped through the cracks. In the discussion between Howie Kurtz & Erickson, in which Kurtz got as rough as Barney Fife questioning Aunt Bee, there was this exchange:

KURTZ: Yes. And She never said that, and she assures me that she never said that.

The first lady, you wrote the following — the headline was, “Is Obama shagging hookers behind the media’s back?” And you write, “I assume not. I assume that Obama’s Marxist harpy wife would go Lorena Bobbit on him should he even think about it.”

Why would you describe Michelle Obama in those terms?

ERICKSON: Well, you know, back during the campaign trail in 2008, a lifetime ago, frankly, in blogging, I was very passionate, very aggressive in defending my side. And at the time that I wrote that, the Eliot Spitzer story was breaking, and the point was — distracted by the language, obviously — that Barack Obama was as much a creature of the media as Eliot Spitzer was. Neither have been investigated. And, you know, since that time, I’ve really learned, headed into, frankly, the David Souter comment, that I don’t have to get personal in blogging to make my point. I’ve definitely evolved over time.

He's evolved?

evolve (ē välv′, -vôlv′; i-)

transitive verb evolved evolved′, evolving evolv′·ing

1. to develop by gradual changes; unfold
2. to set free or give off (gas, heat, etc.)
3. to produce or change by evolution

Etymology: L evolvere, to roll out or forth < e-, out + volvere, to roll: see walk

intransitive verb

1. to develop gradually by a process of growth and change
2. ☆ to become disclosed; unfold

For a guy who doesn't believe in evolution, except for himself, that's rich. And the context is rich. Unpacking the statement:

I used to be a juvenile foul-mouthed prick who would say outrageous stuff to get attention with no regard to the truthfulness of said statements.

But now I've . . . grown? Or grown up? or evolved?

So he's now better than before because he evolved from a fire-breathing wingnut blogger into a better-spoken Republican spokeperson?

Either way, his evolution doesn't speak well of his previous condition, which required evolution. Which he still doesn't believe in. Or something.

Bastard.

And we'll drive all the way to reno on the wrong side of the road

(Tom Waits-Wrong Side of the Road, + more)

Thoughtful, reasonable Rick Moran at RightWingNutHouse steps in shit, and thinks it smells fine. He lists parts of the Stimulus Bill that will, you know, create jobs, and market spending, and has this to offer:

Again, for dimwitted lefties who may be lurking out there, some of this spending is no doubt needed – but has absolutely no business being attached to this bill. Why can’t some of these programs be funded through normal legislative channels? Because the whole Congress knows they would never be able to spend the amounts earmarked in this stimulus package or even pass some of these spending provisions at all unless we had a president out there deliberately and cynically ginning up fear in order to scare people and thus justifying its passage as a result of a national emergency.

Let's examine this quote:

unless we had a president out there deliberately and cynically ginning up fear in order to scare people and thus justifying its passage as a result of a national emergency

Um, yeah. See, your guy did that with Iraq, when no sane person, upon examining empirical evidence, would have felt that it was a threat to the US, and its security.

But now, with Wall St. crashing and burning, with massive lay-offs and loss of health care for many Americans, does he fret that the stimulus bill is a great big wank.

I'm not going to waste my time linking to the economists, to the WSJ articles listing the EPIC FAIL of the US economy. If Rick wants to politicize the Bailout, so be it.

But let me explain something really simple:

Dude, it was your team that got us here. They were traded off to Triple-A ball. Outsourced. Let go. Layed off. The American people, sheep though they often are, became, at long last, tired of being pissed on while told it was raining.

Idiot.

Hey, hey, hey Joe, you better run on down!

(No video, just pic. Bastards at PJTV won't let me download the video.
But I had to sign-up for a PJTV account to even get this screen capture. Eww.)

There are certain characters on the Right-wing that I've chosen not to give bandwidth to. Coultergeist, for example. (Note: no such restrictions are in place for any of the other contributors here, they are all free to express their own full-throated disdain for any winger fools. Or their disdain for Winger. Whatever.)

But someone I can't seem to leave alone is Sam Joe the douchebag Plumber, who continues on his triumphal tour of The War Zone™:

Continuing his reporting from Israel, Joe “the Plumber” Wurzelbacher tried to clarify his remarks criticizing media coverage of war, in a new Pajamas TV segment. He said that citizens “don’t need to see what’s happening every day” in war and said that it should be up to the military to decide what the media learns about war:

WURZELBACHER: you don’t need to see what’s happening every day, that’s my personal opinion, you don’t have to share it. But, you know, okay, you don’t have to see, you know, 800 dead, 801 dead. It’s like they drill that in your head. … They want you to sit there saying there are so many people dying. You know these are large, these are numbers, you know I don’t want to take away from that. Let me, uh, think about how to say that again. Just essentially, they keep drilling it into your head, newscast after newscast after newscast.

I think the military should decide what information to give the media and then the media can release it to the public. I don’t believe they need to be in the front lines with soldiers, I don’t believe they need to, uh, you know, be bothering the military for information or for access to certain areas.

As might be expected, Pajamas Media TV is so fucking stupid that they proudly put the video of this itinerant fool up on the intertoobz for all to see.

And mock. So start mocking.

This video, from Roach Radio, while not entirely applicable to the above quote, still explains the lunacy well:

I started a joke, which started the whole world laughing,

Remember recently when a conservative organization, straining desperately to gain some relevancy and credibility, attempted to raise up a woefully under-qualified clown to some national prominence?

Psych! I'm not talking about the Republican Party/Palin debacle. I'm actually talking about Pajamas Media & Joe the Wurzelbacher going to the Middle East as a war correspondent:

By now many of you have heard that Joe “the Plumber” Wurzelbacher is leaving for Israel tomorrow to be a war correspondent for Pajamas TV. This has created quite a brouhaha in the media - cable television, newspapers, wire services, etc. Everyone from CNN to gawker.com has something to say about Joe heading for the Middle East. He will appear on Fox and Friends tomorrow morning before his departure.

To be honest, some (maybe much) of this reportage is pretty snotty. Nora O’Donnell of MSNBC - herself a MA in international relations, lahdeedah - fairly frothed at the mouth at the prospect of the unqualified Joe having the temerity to report news in a foreign land. Those hipoisie over at Gawker weren’t too charitable either.

Evidently, a lot of people are annoyed that Joe’s fifteen Warhol minutes aren’t quite over yet. Or perhaps they’re threatened that a common man can be a reporter simply by asking common sense questions - no Columbia J-school degree required. (Hemingway didn’t have one. He didn’t even go to college, as I recall.) But the larger question is the role of expertise in general. Of course, experts are valuable, but so are those who ask the seemingly too obvious questions of the supposedly uninformed - dumb questions that can end up having more value for the public than all the experts combined. Sometimes, anyway.

Hemingway? Heming-fucking-way? Are you breathing air, or has your brain expired? And 'dumb questions'?

The comedy, it writes itself. But Roger Simon outdoes himself:

I must say I find amusing the idea of Joe lined up with all the telephoto cameras at that Gaza media overlook with Cooper, Amanpour, et al. It’s certainly the stuff of Frank Capra.

Frank Capra? Maybe when he directed Porky's. Wurzelbacher is no Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. For starters, he's not going to Washington. For 2nds, he . . .

He's nothing. Yet PJ Media has hitched onto his star . . .

Yep, they're also nothing.

Bastards.

Hey you, get offa my cloud

This anonymous letter has been floating on the internets for around a year, I think, and good friend Jess reminded me of it, emailed it to me today.

It's particularly witty now, since so many formerly Red states voted Blue:

Dear Red States:

We've decided we're leaving. We intend to form our own country, and we're taking the other Blue States with us. In case you aren't aware, that includes California, Hawaii, Oregon, Washington, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois and the entire Northeast. We believe this split will be beneficial to the nation, and especially to the people of the new country of New California.

To sum up briefly: You get Texas, Oklahoma and all the slave states. We get stem cell research and the best beaches. We get the Statue of Liberty. You get Dollywood. We get Intel and Microsoft. You get WorldCom. We get Harvard.

You get Ole' Miss. We get 85 percent of America's venture capital and entrepreneurs. You get Alabama. We get two-thirds of the tax revenue, you get to make the red states pay their fair share.

Since our aggregate divorce rate is 22 percent lower than the Christian Coalition's, we get a bunch of happy families. Please be aware that Nuevo California will be pro-choice and anti-war, and we're going to want all our citizens back from Iraq at once. If you need people to fight, ask your evangelicals.

With the Blue States in hand, we will have firm control of 80 percent of the country's fresh water, more than 90 percent of the pineapple and lettuce, 92 percent of the nation's fresh fruit, 95 percent of America's quality wines (you can serve French wines at state dinners) 90 percent of all cheese, 90 percent of the high tech industry, most of the U.S. low-sulphur coal, all living redwoods, sequoias and condors, all the Ivy and Seven Sister schools plus Stanford, Cal Tech and MIT.

With the Red States, on the other hand, you will have to cope with 88 percent of all obese Americans (and their projected health care costs), 92 percent of all U.S. mosquitoes, nearly 100 percent of the tornadoes, 90 percent of the hurricanes, 99 percent of all Southern Baptists, virtually 100 percent of all televangelists, Rush Limbaugh, Bob Jones University, Clemson and the University of Georgia. We get Hollywood and Yosemite, thank you.

Additionally, 38 percent of those in the Red states believe Jonah was actually swallowed by a whale, 62 percent believe life is sacred unless we're discussing the death penalty or gun laws, 44 percent say that evolution is only a theory, 53 percent that Saddam was involved in 9/11 and 61 percent of you crazy bastards believe you are people with higher morals then we lefties.

Finally, we're taking the good pot, too. You can have that dirt weed they grow in Mexico

Peace out, Blue States.

While I was trying to track the provenance of the piece, I found it posted at some really vile Right-wing blogs, with some of the following comments:

Sounds like Obonga. Egotistical Snobbery.
All of you libs should move to the "new country" of California because the state motto fits. California, the land of fruits and nuts. Pray to Hollywood while your at it.
We in the South will just sit under a shade tree and collect your government provided socialst dollars while you vacation.

~~

If this ever happened, all of the companies in the Demoncunt states would leave and move to the Republican states. Demoncunt states would be left with nothing but a bunch of illegals and other assorted dumb motherfuckers. Whoever wrote this scenario is an idiot. Maybe then we could start a war with the demoncunt country and kill them all.

~~

The retard that wrote this piece of bullshit must be completely unaware that California's agricultural areas are "red counties", populated by "bitter people clinging to guns and religion".

And they hate the libs in San Francisco and Los Angeles more than any Southerner could ever imagine.

No, you idiot wingers. It's not serious. It's almost like it's already two countries, one rec, one blue.

Idiots. And who is going to be fanning this outrage, cheerleading for the Republican Party? Howard Fineman, on Hardball today:

Howard Fineman: It won't be out of the Hill at all. It's going to be Rush Limbaugh, and what's left of the conservative commentariat. They are going to be in charge of this party until the Republicans begin to get their act together.

Matthews: So the ticked-off voices.

Fineman: The ticked-off voices, and Rush will be the guy.

Let them eat Limbaugh.

Note: Updated for clarity.

C'mon people now, smile on your brother

The kerning and typeface warriors are at it again, and nothing short of reality will stop them. In fact, reality won't stop them.

Jesus' General tries to help:

Pamela
Atlas Shrugs

Dear Mrs. Shrugs,

Your Sunday post was an excellent example of what patrio-blogging is all about. With nothing more than a few graphics and a lot of very technical-sounding jargon, you and techdude persuaded a lot of people that Barak Obama forged his own birth certificate. That's impressive.

But why stop there? Shouldn't we take the next step and use the same technique to create a reason why Obama would fake such a document?

I certainly think so. That's why I'm submitting the following highly technical evidence suggesting that Barak Obama is actually an Amish man named Erik Gruber.

Before we begin, let's take a look at actual photographs of both Obama and Erik Gruber's twin brother, Henry.

Notice how amazingly similar they appear. Other than a few minor differences in skin coloring, hair texture, eye color, and body fat, they are spitting images of each other.

Now let's examine the photos using a number of fairly basic forensic techniques. We'll start by applying the McMahon-McMillan Inverted Refractory Process.

Notice the cyantic response of the temporal, nasal, and lip areas. The refractive similarity is striking.

We get a similar result when we apply the Whitfield Thermal Reciprocity Sampling Technique.

Really, this is too funny. Shooting fish in a barrel wouldn't even begin to describe how easy it is to lampoon the Right-wing attacks based on this.

Thanks, General.