Dumbfuckery du Jour

Most weeks, I try to avoid pollyticks on the weekends.  But there are times, like now, when I'm presented with a target-rich environment, and I have poor impulse control, sooooo....

First, let's catch up with Louie Gohmert and his terror babies:

Anderson Cooper gave Gohmert a chance to make his case on CNN last night, presenting any substance he has to bolster the theory. You'll just have to watch the clip to believe it.

To sum it up, Cooper asked for some evidence to support the assertions Gohmert has been making -- in the media, on the House floor, etc. Gohmert responded by shouting a lot, and having something of a breakdown.

I give Cooper a lot of credit for handling this like a pro. He kept his cool, tried to conduct a serious interview, and wasn't rattled when Gohmert lost his mind. But there just wasn't much he could do with the right-wing Texan. You'll just have to watch to see what I mean.

Postscript: Just as an aside, I can't help but wonder what kind of influential position the House Republican leadership will give Gohmert if they take back the House majority.

I'm beginning to wonder if I should be beating up on ol' Louie.  It's not nice to make fun of the mentally ill.  Then again, when the batshit insane jackass has been elected to public office, I suppose the normal rules of etiquette don't apply.  But this video is dramatic evidence that this man belongs in a mental institution, not the halls of Congress.  My uncle sounded saner than this when he went off his meds and tried to hold up a bank so he could buy a yacht and become a pirate in the Florida Keys (true story).  He was foaming at the mouth so badly I had to watch this with the transcript handy - it was hard to hear through all the flying spittle.

And just think: a whole slate of Teabagger-beloved candidates have won their primaries, all just as frothing insane as ol' Louie.  Apparently, the idea is to turn the Capitol into Bedlam. Yeesh.


Anyway.  Moving on.  Right wing meme watch: it appears they've mostly weaned themselves from death panels and are hot on false gods:

Last week, U.S. District Court Judge Vaughn Walker struck down California’s Proposition 8, which prohibited same-sex couples from marrying in the state. Today, Walker lifted the stay on his decision, announcing that it will go into effect next week unless the appeals court issues a stay. Though the Republican response has been muted, some GOP lawmakers and a number of right-wing activists have been condemning both last week’s ruling and Judge Walker himself. Today, nationally-syndicated conservative Washington Examiner columnist Cal Thomas took the attacks to an entirely new level:

The decision by a single, openly gay federal judge to strike down the will of 7 million Californians, tradition dating back millennia (not to mention biblical commands, which the judge decided, in his capacity as a false god, to also invalidate) is judicial vigilantism equal to Roe v. Wade. [...]

Either the Right Wing Meme Committee met recently without us knowing, this dumbfuck looks to Sharron Angle for inspiration, or insane minds just think alike.  I'm not sure which it is.  I just hope we can all take a turn at being false gods before the meme dies, because it sounds like fun.

And, finally, Steve Benen attempts to school the Teabagging fools on what net neutrality actually means:

Apparently, Tea Party groups and leaders have been giving net neutrality a look, and they've decided they don't like it.

[snip]

Let's put this in a way Tea Partiers can understand. Let's say Mr. and Mrs. Tea Party Zealot love to use the Internet for political activism -- they frequent right-wing websites, send around clips of Hannity and Limbaugh, organize right-wing events, post sycophantic praise on Sarah Palin's website, the works.

But let's say their service provider is a (cue scary music) liberal company, which contributes heavily to Democrats. The media giant that this family pays for Internet access wants to make it easy for customers to access socialist content, send around pictures of Karl Marx, coordinate with the New Black Panther Party, and send money to gay illegal immigrants, but would make it exceedingly difficult to access RedState.com, visit Glenn Beck's activist sites, access Palin's Facebook age, etc.

At that point, Mr. and Mrs. Tea Party Zealot would probably be pretty unhappy. It's not fair, they'd conclude, that some Internet content (which they don't want) is easily accessible, while other content (stuff they do want) is slow and difficult. What they'd prefer is a level playing field, where all content is equally easy to reach.

What they want, in other words, is net neutrality.

That's clear and succinct and should be easy enough for any idiot to understand.  Unfortunately, it's desperately hard to talk sense into the senseless.