So You Know Exactly How God Did It, Then?

You know, sometimes it seems like USA has come to stand for "United States of Appalling Ignorance."  A lot of people in this country need to read an improving book.  And I'm not talking about the Bible.  That one only seems to improve people's ability to be smug about their appalling ignorance.


MTHellfire found this bit of outstanding fuckwittery spouted by Bill O'Reilly and took him to the woodshed over it (h/t):

"Tide goes in and tide goes out...you can't explain that." Bill O'Reilly recently told Dave Silverman of American Atheists, during a recent airing on Fox News as they debated the integrity of religion.

After her head hit her desk, she went on to advise that, yes, actually, Billo, we can explain how the tide goes in and out.  I'd just like to add that Billo needs to avail himself of a book I recently read, Beyond the Moon.  We are so able to explain tides that entire pop sci books can be written on the subject.

MTHellfire went on to quote, in its full misspelled glory, a screed she'd been subjected to on Facebook, wherein the correspondent (and I use this term loosely) advised that the reason people don't trust scientists is that they can't explain where the first speck of dirt came from, but they can tell you how life was created.

Wrong wrong wrong, and not just because the original had enough grammatical errors to make an English teacher contemplate a home lobotomy in an effort to escape the pain.  Scientists can explain how life evolved.  They're not yet sure how it originated, but they've got some promising ideas.  They're pretty certain it did not include a large bearded deity poofing the whole thing into existence.

As far as the speck of dirt goes, any decent book on cosmology can clue you in.  Dirt is formed of elements.  Elements are forged in stars.  And so on, all the way back to the Big Bang.  So yes, Facebook babbler, scientists can explain where the first speck of dirt came from.  At length, and with equations, if you like.

But it's not like the "God did it" crowd is likely to listen to the evidence.  If they do, their eyes will all too likely glaze over, and they will take this as a sign: they cannot understand it, therefore scientists don't really understand it, ergo Jesus!  So let me just turn this around a bit.  I like turning tables.  It adds interest to a room.

Here's my reply to the "Scientists can't explain every single detail exactly, so God, so there!" crowd:

Do you know every last detail of how, precisely, God created the universe?  I mean, precisely how he spoke the whole thing into existence?  The complete and excruciating details of how, exactly, God did it, from the first photon to the last squidgy bit on Eve?

No?

Deary me.  Guess I'll have to just stick with science, then.

I Smell Abject Ignorance

I was going to do up a little post on the United Methodist Church's ridiculous little "Rethink Church" campaign, but that merely reeks of desperation, and while it warms my heart to see churches begging, bribing and beseeching people to attend, it's just not funny enough to poke fun at.  Besides, the Methodists aren't as odious as some.  I'd like to see low attendance force, say, the leaders of the Southern Baptists or the Catholic Church to start desperate little ad campaigns trying to prove they're hip, with it, and have an actual conscience.

So no, that wasn't spit-take worthy idiocy.  This, on the other hand, is:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Moment of Zen - Iceland Is Too Cold for Volcanoes
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Tea Party

That's a remarkable amount of ignorance to pack into 15 seconds, and it takes a truly shameless ignoramus to proudly spew it all over a television audience not made up solely of Faux News viewers.

Rick, allow me to attempt a bit of education.  Not sure I have the strength to pound it into a skull this thick, but I shall try.

One, volcanoes are places where molten fucking rock from the earth's interior comes to the surface.  You see, the interior of the earth is very, very hot.  Observe:

And where do volcanoes come from?  Why, the inside of the earth, where it's thousands of degrees Fahrenheit!

Wow, that's hot!

Volcanoes erupt something called magma, which is, in fact, molten fucking rock.  It is about 1,300 to 2400 degrees Fahrenheit.  Shall we compare it to a summer's day?  At the lower end of the scale, it's at least 1,200 degrees hotter.  And the melting temperature of ice is (drumroll please) 33 degrees Fahrenheit.  Ergo, volcanoes can melt ice. 

Additionally, the lowest temperature ever recorded on Iceland was -39 degrees Fahrenheit.  Ergo, volcanoes can melt Iceland.  For a demonstration of principles, Rick, why don't you take a blowtorch to an ice cube.  On second thought, have someone else take a blowtorch to an ice cube.  I don't think you should be personally handling anything more dangerous than a safety pin.

But my second point, and the most important one, is this: Iceland is famous for being the only place on earth where you can see the Mid-Atlantic Ridge at the surface, you stupid shit.  You know, the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, where all the fucking volcanic activity happens?  And the reason we can see the fucking Mid-Atlantic Ridge splitting an island apart is because Iceland's also on a hot spot, just like Hawaii.  The island was built by volcanoes, is still in the process of being built by volcanoes, and is fucking known for volcanoes, you dumbfuck.  Iceland's among the first to have harnessed volcanoes for geothermal energy production.  Haven't you ever seen images like these?

And what, did you sleep through Surtsey?

Look, I know ignorance is supposed to be bliss, and if that's the case you must be fucking ecstatic, but please, indulge in the privacy of your own home, all right? 

Dick Babbles, Politico Plays Stenographer, and Ackerman Attacks

So, Dick Cheney babbled to a couple of Politico "reporters," who dutifully wrote down his dictation, encased it in an article, and published it without a single attempt at actual journalism.

Spencer Ackerman said all that needs to be said:

Politico reporters transcribe, you decide:

Cheney was asked if he thinks the Bush administration bears any responsibility for the disintegration of Afghanistan because of the attention and resources that were diverted to Iraq. “I basically don’t,” he replied without elaborating.

Right, and why follow that one up? It’s not like a high-profile Senate report demonstrated over the weekend that the Bush administration allowed Osama bin Laden to escape the battle of Tora Bora in December 2001, a crucial mistake that allowed al-Qaeda to regroup in Pakistan.

There's more.  Lots more.  With links.  Many links.  And no mercy at all.

Spencer.  I love you, man.

Greg Sargent takes on Cheney's further blabbering about Obama's bow.  And he reports that Cons aren't at all pleased with Dick's media popularity:

They won’t dare say this publicly. But Republicans in key messaging roles are privately voicing serious frustration with Dick Cheney’s ability to win media attention for his national security attacks on President Obama, claiming the attention is making it easier for the White House and Dems to mock GOP views as “cartoonish” and the stuff of “caricature.”

Damn skippy.  But you know what, fellas?  Truth sure as shit hurts.

I wonder if Cheney's one fan is now having second thoughts.

But Really, They're Not Racists: The I've Lost Count Edition

Well, it might be xenophobia combined with racism in this case, but it's despicable either way:

On Sunday, U.S. media outlets reported that for the first time in 27 years, an American had won the New York City Marathon. Meb Keflezighi was born in Eritrea, “growing up in a hut with no electricity.” He and his family moved to Italy when he was 10 years old, and came to the United States two years later. Keflezighi “began running in junior high in San Diego, then went on to star at UCLA.” He said he it was with “big honor and pride” that he wore the USA jersey while running in the marathon.

[snip]

However, CNBC Sports Business Reporter Darren Rovell doesn’t think Keflezighi deserves all this praise because when his mother gave birth to him, she wasn’t in the U.S. Rovell wrote a column yesterday saying that Keflezighi’s victory wasn’t “as good as it sounds” because Keflezighi is an immigrant, and this fact “takes away from the magnitude of the achievement the headline implies”:

Given our disappointing results, embracing Keflezighi is understandable. But Keflezighi’s country of origin is Eritrea, a small country in Africa. He is an American citizen thanks to taking a test and living in our country.

Nothing against Keflezighi, but he’s like a ringer who you hire to work a couple hours at your office so that you can win the executive softball league.

Around noon today, Rovell posted a “convoluted sort-of apology” clarifying yesterday’s piece, writing, “Let me be clear: Meb Keflezighi is an American and any suggestion otherwise is wrong.” He now granted Keflezighi’s win legitimacy only because the runner was “brought up through the American system”:

I said that Keflezighi’s win, the first by an American since 1982, wasn’t as big as it was being made out to be because there was a difference between being an American-born product and being an American citizen. Frankly I didn’t account for the fact that virtually all of Keflezighi’s running experience came as a US citizen. I never said he didn’t deserve to be called American. [...]

It turns out, Keflezighi moved to the United States in time to develop at every level in America. So Meb is in fact an American trained athlete and an American citizen and he should be celebrated as the American winner of the NYC Marathon. That makes a difference and makes him different from the “ringer” I accused him of being. Meb didn’t deserve that comparison and I apologize for that.

How long does someone have to be in the U.S. and go through the American “system” to be counted as legitimate?

Long enough that fucktard xenophobic racist assclowns count you as legitimate after they get their asses beaten for their dumbfuckery, it would appear.

The cantina believes that if you're an American citizen for five minutes or five hundred years, you're an American, and free drinks are available for any American who manages to end a long dry spell.  USA!  USA!

As for the aforementioned assclown, your prize is in the back.  When you're done scrubbing the bathrooms, there's some rather disgusting drains that require your attention.

You can bring Bruce "Brown People" Ash with you.

Our George Takes Maher to the Woodshed

Nice technique with the Smack-o-Matic, there, my dear!

OK Bill Maher, it’s nice you won a prestigious award for your movie, but stop calling yourself a rationalist.  Your stance seems to be not that we don’t know anything about God, but that we don’t know anything, period.  The fact is, we do know some things.  We know exactly how safe vaccines are (which is to say; not perfectly, but a hell of a lot safer than the thing vaccinated against), for example.  You can’t use science to speak against religion, and then ignore the science that supports vaccination.

Far be it from me to hope any individual gets swine flu, but Bill Maher is rich enough that he can keep himself far away from dense crowds if he wants to.  Not so the school children and people on the street and factories and offices who can wind up terribly sick and maybe even dying from H1N1.  And that’s the problem with anti-vaccination talk: it literally ends up with people dying from preventable diseases.  If Maher has scientific evidence that vaccines are dangerous and ineffective, he should present it.  Otherwise, he should admit he is wrong about it and get the vaccine on live TV to try and undo some of the damage he’s done.

Not only to public health, but to the public reputation of rationalism as well.

Pour that man a drink.  He's earned it.

Piss-Poor Judgement

Who here thinks it's a good idea for a racist fucktard to own a football team?  Definitely not the players:

I woke up this morning and turned on ESPN's First and Ten to listen to as I made my coffee. The first thing I heard was that several football players came out slamming Rush Limbaugh over his bid to buy the St.Louis Rams after all his years of racial politics. I hope more black players rally around these two players and throw up a road block to this group that wants to buy the team.

NY Daily News:

Mathias Kiwanuka loves his former defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo, but the Giants' defensive end says he will never play for Spagnuolo's Rams if Rush Limbaugh purchases the team.

Kiwanuka and the Jets' Bart Scott made it clear Thursday that they would never play for the Rams or any team owned by the controversial conservative radio host.

"All I know is from the last comment I heard, he said in (President) Obama's America, white kids are getting beat up on the bus while black kids are chanting 'right on,'" Kiwanuka told The Daily News. "I mean, I don't want anything to do with a team that he has any part of. He can do whatever he wants, it is a free country. But if it goes through, I can tell you where I am not going to play."

Good on them.

So, it looks like even if Rush gets to buy hisself a football team, he won't have many players on the team.  What's a racist to do?  Why, take his he-man woman-hating skillz to the Miss America Pageant!

Fox News’ Greta Van Susteren reported on her blog last night that the Miss America Organization (MAO) announced that hate radio host Rush Limbaugh will be named as one of the seven judges for the 2010 Miss America Pageant in Las Vegas...

[snip]

It’s odd that Limbaugh will take part in choosing someone who will ultimately help the MAO “Go Green,” considering that he is a staunch anti-environmentalist. But the MAO’s choice is most shocking because of his fairly solid history of making sexist remarks. He has once said that women love Hillary Clinton because they’ve “had two or three abortions,” that women “live longer than men because their lives are easier,” and that all women want is to be hired as “eye candy.” Limbaugh also regularly rails against feminism, the “feminization of this culture,” “feminazis,” and the “chickification” of America. Unsurprisingly, women don’t like Rush Limbaugh. One wonders what MAO President Art McCaster is so “thrilled” about.

I don't even want to speculate...

Beck Gets Dose of Own Medicine, Runs Crying to International Court

ZOMG, this is quite possibly the most beautiful thing I've seen all year.  It's perfect in every particular: the assclown, the pwning of the assclown, the hypocrisy of the assclown, and an attorney with a cutting wit turning said assclown's own hypocrisy against him.  The whole situation's made of win.  It's perfect.  Thank you, Ed Brayton, for finding this.

Parte the first:

I don't know if you've ever seen the Did Glenn Beck Rape and Murder a Young Girl in 1990 website, but it's fairly amusing. It's a political satire of the style of argument Glenn Beck likes to engage in, which involves requiring that someone prove a negative ("prove you didn't do X") and making claims in the form of an interrogative ("Hey, I'm just asking questions here. I'm not saying he did this. What's wrong with asking questions?").

Well now Beck is trying to kill the site by making a formal complaint (PDF) to an international internet governing body, the World Intellectual Property Organization. He wants the domain name taken away from the person who registered it.

Why would he do that rather than file, say, a libel suit? Because he knows he would lose a libel suit. He is a public figure and the site is clearly satirical. Under precedents like Falwell v Flynt, it is virtually impossible to win such a suit. The attorney for the site owner, Marc Randazza, has filed a response brief (PDF) that is hilarious in its attack on Beck's thin-skinned and legally dubious argument. For instance, on the notion that someone might think the site was serious or that it was affiliated with Beck himself, he responds:

There is no indication that the Respondent has intentionally attempted to confuse anyone searching for Mr. Beck's own website, nor that anyone was unintentionally confused - even initially. Only an abject imbecile could believe that the domain name would have any connection to the Complainant. 

We are not here because the domain name could cause confusion. We do not have a declaration from the president of the international association of imbeciles that his members are blankly staring at the Respondent's website wondering "where did all the race baiting content go?" We are here because Mr. Beck wants Respondent's website shut down. He wants it shut down because Respondent's website makes a poignant and accurate satirical critique of Mr. Beck by parodying Beck's very rhetorical style. Beck's skin is too thin to take the criticism, so he wants the site down. Beck is represented by a learned and respected legal team. Accordingly, it is beyond doubt that his counsel advised him that under the First Amendment to the United States' Constitution, no action in a U.S. Court would be successful. Accordingly, Beck is attempting to use this transnational body to circumvent and subvert the Respondent's constitutional rights.

Parte the second:

I thought Mark Randazza, the attorney for the owner of the "Did Glenn Beck rape and murder a girl in 1990?" website, made a great argument with his initial response to Beck's attempts to censor the website through an international tribunal. But he emailed me today with a link to another filing (PDF) he made that is pure genius. He begins by quoting Beck criticizing liberals for trying to have legal issues removed from American jurisdiction and taken to the international level:

Let me tell you something. When you can't win with the people, you bump it up to the courts. When you can't win with the courts, you bump it up to the international level.

And by golly, that's exactly what Beck did. Randazza then notes that the UDRP, the process by which such complaints are resolved, does sometimes "render decisions that make First Amendment champions cringe" but that are in line with the laws of other nations. He then quotes Beck criticizing Harold Koh by arguing that he "wants to subordinate the American Constitution to foreign and international rules. We see that in his attack on First Amendment free speech principles, which he finds opprobrious."

And quotes Beck declaring, "Once we sign our rights over to international law, the Constitution is officially dead." So in light of this, Randazza has come up with a brilliant stipulation that will, he's certain, be agreeable to Beck: Both sides should agree that the standard for judgment in the case under the UDRP should be the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

I love this attorney.  Love him, love him, love him! 

Gorgeous.  I hope there'll be plenty more like this.  I'll keep you all posted.

Your Daily Dose of Health Care Reform Stupidity

Christ on a crutch. Whoda thunk one little speech would lead to such a flood of general idiocy?

Let's start with Rep. Paul Boustany, who gave the Con's rebuttal. Last night, he demanded everybody scrap all the progress and start from scratch. Today, he's burbling about how Cons agree 80% with Obama. Steve Benen asks, WTF?

We know Boustany's happy with that malpractice "reform" bone thrown the Cons' way. That's probably because of the multiple malpractice suits lodged against him. I think I see now why he gave up surgery for politics: he sucked leper donkey dick as a surgeon. But what else can you expect of someone stupid enough to fall for the "We can make you a British Lord!" line?

Lame talking points and weak rebuttals abound on the GOP side. Michael Steele's upset that Obama read Ted Kennedy's letter, while the usual parade of fucktards tries to spin the speech (which included a plethora of shout-outs to the Cons) as too partisan.

But the big story, o' course, is Rep. Joe Wilson, who called the Prez a liar. Turns out he's the lying piece of shit. Try to contain your shock. Also try not to be too surprised that covering undocumented immigrants would save money, yet the "party of fiscal responsibility" is still dead-set against providing health care to brown people. Enough so that they feel the need to howl "You lie!" at the POTUS.

Cons are trying to pass his little outburst off as a heat-of-the-moment thing. It seems Rep. Wilson has lots of those. So who can they blame Joe's lack of self-control on? Why, Dems, of course! And also, Wilson will not be muzzled! I'm sure his opponent's banking on it. He's already banked $500,000* off of one small outburst, after all.

Keith Olbermann takes on Wilson's stoopid and ends up exhausting the Smack-o-Matic. Beauty. Sheer beauty.

NBC calls the public option a "fetish." Rep. Maxine Waters is apparently indulging said fetish when she says no other options are as good as the public option. Lynn Woolsey's getting her fetish on when she sez the public option's still very much on the table. And House Progressives are indulging in a fetish fest when they demand a meeting with Obama in order to hold his feet to the fire. Whoever knew they were all such pervies, right?

On the bipartisan front, Eric Cantor can't think of any compromises the Cons would make in order to reach a bipartisan solution, but he's got all sorts of ideas on the compromises he wants Dems to make. Um, Eric? You fuckers lost the last election. This is why there are only 40 of you rattling round the Senate. Maybe you should talk to Barney Frank about how that works - he'll be more than happy to explain.

Orrin Hatch sez that not even famed "moderates" Snowe and Collins will go along with health care reform. So how do Dems get to 60? Why, talk to the man who has nothing left to lose. Teabaggers can't teabag a retiring Con, now, can they?

September should be a very interesting month indeed.

*Went a little overboard on the zeroes. Corrected thanks to dNorrisM.

But Really, They're Not Racists: Cheap Accusation Edition

An excellent pwn by Phoenix Woman:

The people who pushed to censor President Obama's speech, and who habitually call him a Communist or Socialist (and who call the public option "communism") are not only the same ones who approve of Bush and Reagan speaking to our kids, they (or their parents) were running around in the 1960s calling Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. a Commie, and holding up signs at anti-civil-rights protests that read "RACE MIXING IS COMMUNISM".

Oh, you say, that was forty-plus years ago! Surely nobody exists today who believes that?!

Why, yes they do, and as Lean Left points out, they write for "respectable" conservative magazines like the National Review, and emit (as Lisa Schiffren did back in 2008) things like this concerning President Obama's white mother and black father:

… Political correctness was invented precisely to prevent the mainstream liberal media from persuing the questions which might arise about how Senator Obama’s mother, from Kansas, came to marry an African graduate student. Love? Sure, why not? But what else was going on around them that made it feasible? Before readers level cheap accusations of racism — let’s recall that the very question of interracial marriage only became a big issue later in the 1960s. The notion of a large group of mixed race Americans became an issue during and after the Vietnam War. Even the civil-rights movement kept this culturally explosive matter at arm’s distance.

It was, of course, an explicit tactic of the Communist party to stir up discontent among American blacks, with an eye toward using them as the leading edge of the revolution.

Lisa Schiffren, you're a racist and an asshat. That accusation wasn't cheap, but believe me, you earned every penny.

AP Hits A New Low

Really, AP? Seriously? This is news?


"Many wept during Jackson's funeral" is a headline? Worthy of sandwiching between two war stories, no less?

Amazing.

Hey, I've got a hot tip about a dog biting a man. You'd better get on it before somebody scoops you. And don't forget that big "Water determined to be wet" exposé, either.

All You Need To Know About Rush Limbaugh's Judgement

I know, I know: most of my cantina regulars don't need to be reminded that Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot. But some refreshers are too funny to pass up:

"But I would suggest that anybody who doubts [Sarah Palin's] intellectual heft or her ability to learn and study," said Limbaugh, "go to her Facebook page, look at the notes that she's taken -- it's right there -- the study that she has done and engaged in, in order to learn about Section 1233."

This is his evidence for her "intellectual heft:"

In a new Facebook post entitled "Concerning the 'Death Panels,'" Palin further explores her insistence that the health care bill's provisions for voluntary counseling on end-of-life decisions constitutes a government plan to get rid of undesirable patients.

"With all due respect, it's misleading for the President to describe this section as an entirely voluntary provision that simply increases the information offered to Medicare recipients," Palin says. "The issue is the context in which that information is provided and the coercive effect these consultations will have in that context."

She later adds: "Is it any wonder that senior citizens might view such consultations as attempts to convince them to help reduce health care costs by accepting minimal end-of-life care?"

Note, however, that many of Palin's footnotes are to other people's statements of opinion, which in turn don't create anything that approximated Palin's original statement: "The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama's 'death panel' so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their 'level of productivity in society,' whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil." [emphasis added]

Ladies and gentlemen, I think we have all the proof we need that Rush is even dumber than Palin.

A German Speaks Out About the Shitbags Invoking Hitler

Citisven at Daily Kos has a must-read diary regarding the rabid right's Hitler-fest. A sampling:

A lot of great diaries have been written about the new meme by Limbaugh, Beck, Hannity and the corporate anti health care enablers to call President Obama a racist and compare him to Adolf Hitler. The assessment of the situation ranges from the last wails of a dying breed to fascism on the rise.

As a German, I'm not only part of my people's long collective struggle to come to grips with our past, but I have personally grappled with my own family history and how to approach a subject so fraught with emotion and almost mythical proportions. I am so reluctant and utterly shocked to even write in response to such a patently absurd comparison that borders on the mental fringes between frightfully deluded and clinically insane. However, as painful as it is, there are times when we are asked to fearlessly descend into the darkest corners of our consciousness in order to evolve and transcend, and this is one of those times.

[snip]

I've often thought about why I get so annoyed when people here in the US sling around the Hitler label. And just to be fair, I never liked seeing signs with Hitler mustaches painted on George W. Bush's face either. I would usually just kind of shrug it off as kind of a juvenile expression of people's frustration with a truly horrible warmongering president. But these recent deliberate and preposterous insertions of Hitlerisms into the mainstream of American society are going way too far and need to be exposed as the dangerous and ignorant appeals to our lowest sense they are.

What the people who draw these comparisons are doing is invoke the archetype of Hitler that we have collectively formed in our head, the archetype of something so evil and inhuman that it is beyond our capacity to shake off or transcend. By linking President Obama to the archetype of Hitler they are not trying to make any points about health care or energy or any other policy, but they are attempting to put him into a box out of which nobody could ever escape and from which any kind of soul growth or evolution is impossible. In short, they are trying to make a man who is about as human and compassionate as any man who has ever graced the American political landscape, inhuman. Just like Hitler did with those he didn't like...

Not that I expect Limbaugh, Beck et al to understand any of this, or modify their behavior. But Citisven's perspective, and the family history he(?) relates, is something we sorely need.

(Incidentally, in looking over Citisven's blog, I do believe I've discovered our next press-ganging victim... you Elitist Bastards should let me know what you think.)

Stabenow PWNS Faux News Badly

How badly? This badly:

Fox host Trace Gallagher seeks a lifeline — in the form of a made up "breaking news" story about shark week on Discovery Channel — after Debbie Stabenow rips apart his arguments against the popular "Cash for Clunkers" program... [emphasis added]

You've really got to watch the clip at Daily Kos. It's fucking hilarious.

Reports of Their Resurgence Have Been Greatly Exaggerated

If you listen to the more mainstream news outlets, you might get the impression that Obama's on the ropes and the Cons are coming back for a knockout punch. This is why it always pays to check the sources:

The Politico is at it again. It now proclaims that the Democrats are in trouble and the Republicans are on the offensive like it's 2004.

Bolstered by historical trends that work in the GOP’s favor -- midterm elections are typically hostile to the party in power -- and the prospect of the first election in a decade without former President George W. Bush either on the ballot or in office, Republicans find themselves on the offensive for the first time since 2004.

They actually said that. They haven't been attacking like maniacs since then? I guess calling Dems traitors and terrorist sympathizers is a compliment. As Glenn Greenwald takes their analysis apart, guess who their sources are that they use as proof that it's 2004 again.

Who are the sources for Politico's exciting announcement of a GOP resurgence? A grand total of three: "GOP pollster Whit Ayres," "GOP pollster John McLaughlin," and "Republican pollster Neil Newhouse," all of whom assure us that the signs point to imminent Republican triumph and Democratic doom.

Just read Glenn's piece because he thoroughly debunks them.

We don't call him "Glennzilla" for nothing, y'know.

Let's take a look at the political landscape and see how Cons are actually doing, shall we? Over to you, Kos:

Republicans started the year with 41 senators. Eight of them -- or 20 percent -- are ditching (or have already ditched) their caucus:

Kit Bond of Missouri, Sam Brownback of Kansas, Jim Bunning of Kentucky, Judd Gregg of New Hampshire, Mel Martinez of Florida, George Voinovich of Ohio, and as of today, Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas have announced their retirements. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania switched parties. What's left is heavily concentrated in the South and Mormon Corridor:

After two consecutive electoral routs, the surviving Republicans generally represent the safest base turf. Republicans represent 17 of the 24 Southern seats, 10 of the 26 Western seats, 10 of the 26 Midwestern seats and just three of the 24 Northeastern seats. Republicans dominate just the South and the Mormon Corridor in the Rockies. The entire GOP Senate leadership hailed from those two regions until Sen. John Ensign (Nev.) resigned his leadership post because of scandal.

For a party that has become too South-heavy, potentially losing seats in Missouri, New Hampshire and Ohio (among other places) won't help their ability to play better to a national mainstream audience.

The 2010 map isn't a friendly one for Republicans. The usual political prognosticators (Charlie Cook, Stu Rothenberg, CQ Politics, Swing State Project, and Larry Sabato) all give Democrats the edge, with just the ethically challenged Dodd in Connecticut generally making the list of endangered Democrats, while Republicans are facing serious pressure in Kentucky, Missouri, New Hampshire, and Ohio. Louisiana and North Carolina aren't far behind. The May 2010 special election in Texas won't be a GOP cakewalk.

In the House?

As they gear up for the 2010 midterm elections, Democrats appear secure in their House majority they won with a big gain in 2006 and reinforced with another advance in 2008 [...]

The only three contests in which CQ Politics rates an advantage to the challenging party are all for seats now held by the Republicans and targeted by the Democrats:

The consensus is clear. Democrats are headed toward modest pickups in both chambers in 2010.

Viva la differance! Amazing what happens when you check in with regular prognosticators rather than GOP hacks, innit?

As long as Dems don't completely fuck up on health care reform by trying to please the Grand Old Psychotics, 2010 should see yet another session of voters handing the GOP their collective asses. This will be fun.

NRCC Puts Its Money Where The Insanity Is

I think this means they're desperate:

The National Republican Congressional Committee, which runs the GOP effort to recapture the House, has now expanded its list of vulnerable Republican incumbents the NRCC is committed to protecting, and one new name jumped out at me: Rep. Bill Posey of Florida.

Rep. Posey, as it happens, is the lead sponsor and creator of the so-called “birther” bill, which would require future presidential candidates to prove their citizenship.

That means the national Republican Party is prepared to invest resources in propping up a de facto leader of the whacked out fringe movement that’s been raising crackpot questions about President Obama’s citizenship and legitimacy for office.

How sane Americans are supposed to take them seriously is anybody's guess.

Meanwhile, CNN admits Birther claims are patently ridiculous:

Adam Serwer noted yesterday that the whole Birther movement "is probably hurting CNN more than it's hurting the GOP." That's a very persuasive point. The fact that the Republican base has more than its share of nuts is well established, but CNN wants to be taken seriously, and Lou Dobbs' strange obsession with nonsense makes that difficult.

According to a Media Bistro report today, CNN President Jon Klein contacted some "Lou Dobbs Tonight" staffers yesterday to explain that the Birther story is baseless. Klein reminded the staffers that he asked CNN researchers to investigate the matter, and found that the allegations are baseless. "It seems this story is dead," Klein said in his email, "because anyone who still is not convinced doesn't really have a legitimate beef."

Yet sees no problem with allowing Dobbs to continue pursuing said non-story:

Asked if CNN is concerned that Dobbs’ repeated granting of airtime to theories the network has conclusively debunked amounts to overkill and could harm CNN’s credibility, Klein brushed off the possibility. “We respect our viewers enough to present them the facts and let them make up their own minds,” he said, adding that what Dobbs does is “his editorial decision to make.”

[snip]

Asked if CNN would take any action if Dobbs continued airing the birther theories, Klein said No: “I think no good journalist would ever say that a particular story will never be covered again. Every day brings new facts, new pegs.”

Something tells me that the "most trusted name in news" doesn't understand jack diddly shit about news.

Yet More Birther Bullshit

Credit where it's due: Rep. Dave Reichert has to do a tapdance for the crazies in his base, but at least he admits the President is a natural-born citizen and wishes him success:



Meanwhile, G. Gordon Liddy's on Hardball bleating insanity:

G. Gordon Liddy, the man behind the first Watergate break-in and founding father of the “whacko wing” of the Republican party is now claiming that President Obama is an “undocumented illegal alien.” This afternoon, an oddly “catatonoic” Liddy told Chris Matthews that he has a written deposition from President Obama’s step-grandmother where she says that Obama was born in a hospital in Mombasa:

MATTHEWS: He [Obama] wasn’t born here and he’s never gone through a naturalization that you know of, right?

LIDDY: Not that I know of.

MATTHEWS: Therefore he’s here illegally. You’re saying he’s an undocumented alien.

LIDDY: Illegal alien.

His "proof" is a "deposition" from Obama's step-grandmother. Only one wee problem with that:

Alex Koppelman looks more into Liddy's claim:

What Liddy was referring to is actually an affidavit filed by a street preacher named Ron McRae, who conducted an interview with Sarah Obama, the second wife of President Obama's grandfather, through a translator. (Sarah Obama is not the president's biological grandmother, but he calls her "Granny Sarah.")

In that interview, Sarah Obama does in fact say at one point that she was there for her grandson's birth. But that was a mistake, a confusion in translation. As soon as a jubilant McRae began to press her for further details about her grandson being born in Kenya, the family realized the mistake and corrected him. And corrected him. And corrected him. (The audio is available for download here.)

Poor Granny Sarah and family. They don't realize that once Cons misunderstand you, they'll go on gleefully repeating what they thought you said no matter how many times you attempt to disabuse them of their notions.

I mean, hell, even the whole of CNN can't rein Lou Dobbs in:

CNN's Lou Dobbs has, by all appearances, gone mad. He now questions the citizenship status of the president on a daily basis, and tells his audience that he's a victim of a "liberal media" conspiracy.

CNN has taken to debunking its own host over and over again.

In the wake of Lou Dobbs' repeated claims on the July 15 edition of his radio show that President Obama needs to "produce a birth certificate" and that Obama's birth certificate posted online has "some issues," several of Dobbs' CNN colleagues as well as other members of the media have debunked Obama birth certificate theories, often ridiculing those who embrace such theories as "nut jobs" who advance "ludicrous" claims that are "more conspiratorial than factual." Indeed, according to the Los Angeles Times, CNN distanced itself from Dobbs' comments. Reporter James Rainey wrote: "[O]ne CNN employee reminded me several times that Dobbs' most pointed assertions were made on his radio program, which is unconnected to CNN."

Nonetheless, Dobbs has continued to repeat the "birther" claims on both CNN and his radio show, stating on the July 20 edition of his CNN program that the birth certificate questions offered by "passionate supporters" "won't go away because they haven't been dealt with, it seems possible to, straightforwardly and quickly," and saying on the July 21 edition of his CNN show, "We had people, including reporters from the LA Times, calling up because I referred to this. ... Instead of calling the White House to ask why they didn't do it, they're calling me to ask why I said I don't know what the reality is. No one does." Additionally, on the July 21 edition of his radio show, Dobbs criticized "certain quarters of the national liberal media that are just absolutely trying to knock down the issue of President Obama's birth certificate," stating that they are "focused on being subservient and servile to this presidency rather than being inquisitive and doing their jobs with, you know, the White House."

CNN, there's an easy solution to this embarrassing problem of yours: ship his ass off to Faux News where he belongs.

That, however, is the least of our worries (h/t):

But there's more to this story than Dobbs. And the phenomenon in play isn't just about a birth certificate. And it's also not isolated or accidental.

Because, yes, viewed in a vacuum, the movement seems like the nutty fringe. But viewed in a larger historical context, birthers share obvious ties to traditional right-wing assaults on previous Democrats, and birthers have all the marks of a GOP Noise Machine creation. The movement is about a larger, more sinister attempt to paint Obama as illegitimate, foreign, and suspect (i.e. not like you and me). To portray him as "a gratuitous interloper," as radio host G. Gordon Liddy put it. As someone who isn't who he says he is. As -- let's face it -- the Manchurian Candidate, with all the evil connotations that come with it. ("WHO SENT YOU???" von Brunn demanded to know of Obama.)

And it's about the disturbing role media figures like Dobbs play when they act as the bridge -- as the transmitter -- between the radical and the mainstream. When they legitimize the craziness, if only in the eyes of the crazies themselves. As MSNBC's Rachel Maddow noted this week, "The home run for conspiracists of any stripe is when their ideas can leave the lunatic fringe and enter the mainstream."

If our media and the Republican party weren't so fucked in the head, none of this inane bullshit would've ever gained traction. It's a sad indictment of both that the voices of reason within them are so few and far between, while so many enjoy playing right along with the conspiracy theorists.

Kudos to those sane enough to call bullshit when they see it.

Reading Comprehension FAIL and Other "Cons Desperate for an Obama Scandal" Stories

The Cons and their slobbering media lapdogs are absolutely, bowel-clenchingly, pants-pissingly terrified of Barack Obama.

A bold claim, you say? Evidence to back it up, you ask? Why, certainly, on both counts.

If they weren't terrified of the man, they wouldn't have to work so damned hard to destroy him.

They know he's a force to be reckoned with. What they need is a good, explosive scandal to knock him down with, but since he's not giving them one, they're reduced to whining about his pants:

This is big news, according to Greg Gutfeld and the immaculately bleached and botoxed Laura Ingaham on Fox’s O’Reilly Factor as the first ‘dork’ President of the United States has appeared in public wearing Mom Jeans, bought with a gift certificate, apparently, from the now bankrupted Mervyn’s. Americans should be scared – scared, I tell ya – that the POTUS has lost his cool and dresses like a band teacher. Greg Gutfeld barely cracks a smile as he warns us ‘this isn’t going to intimidate Putin’ and ‘our adversaries in Iran will not take [him] seriously,’ especially since he also throws a baseball ‘like a little girl’… all symbols of something ‘deeper and more sinister’…

I kid you not. I wish I did.

That's desperation, that is. They couldn't get him with Arugulagate, Condimentgate, or any of the other gates they've been frantically waving around, so now they're trying out Jeansgate. It's utterly pathetic.

The Cons in Congress tried out Hamgate today, but unfortunately for them, most of us have the reading comprehension skills of a common chimpanzee and the numeracy skills of your basic beaver, which are all you need to shut this gate:

Far-right blogs and Republican staffers thought they'd found a delicious new anecdote to attack the stimulus package. As is usually the case, they neglected to think it through before making themselves appear silly.

Drudge, running with contracts from the government's stimulus website, claimed that the Obama administration had spent, among other things, $1.19 million on two pounds of ham. Some conservative bloggers, following Drudge's lead, ran with the story. House Minority Leader John Boehner's (R-Ohio) office complained about the "pork" in the stimulus. Republicans sent "blast e-mails of screenshots from the Drudge Report, highlighting the contracts as wasteful spending."

By yesterday afternoon, the Department of Agriculture felt compelled to issue a statement, explaining how terribly wrong conservatives are about this.

[snip]

The references to "2 pound frozen ham sliced" are to the sizes of the packaging. Press reports suggesting that the Recovery Act spent $1.191 million to buy "2 pounds of ham" are wrong. In fact, the contract in question purchased 760,000 pounds of ham for $1.191 million, at a cost of approximately $1.50 per pound. In terms of the dairy purchase referenced, USDA's Farm Service Agency (FSA) purchased 837,936 pounds of mozzarella cheese and 4,039,200 pounds of processed cheese. The canned pork purchase was 8,424,000 pounds at a cost of $16,784,000, or approximately $1.99 per pound.

While the principal purpose of these expenditures is to provide food to those hardest hit by these tough times, the purchases also provide a modest economic benefit of benefiting Americans working at food retailers, manufacturers and transportation companies as well as the farmers and ranchers who produce our food supply.

In other words, the conservative activists who pounced on this were thoroughly confused about every relevant detail, including the underlying claim.

What happened next really makes me wonder if every Con in Congress is just part of some massive practical joke, because slipping on banana peels (or in this case, sliced ham) and then immediately walking face-first into a door usually don't happen in real life:

Also yesterday, Drudge said $1.4 million in recovery funds went to "repair a door" at Dyess Air Force Base's "bldg 5112." Fox News' Glenn Beck was outraged, and said this is proof that "they're just peeing your money away."

"Wow, what happened to that door?" Beck asked. "That's a lot of repairing, you know. Can we buy a new one, and cheaper?"

Wouldn't you know it, that's completely wrong.

[U]nder the "View all project descriptions" link on the page to which the Drudge Report linked, Recovery.gov actually states that the government awarded AFCO Technologies nearly $1.2 million to replace gas mains on the base, and $246,100 to repair doors in Building 5112. A Department of Defense document listing American Recovery and Reinvestment Act projects in Texas states that the doors that were repaired in Building 5112 are "hangar doors."

Moreover, a May 5 press release from the Dyess Air Force Base stated that the money awarded for the gas main project "may have saved eight jobs" and that the base could "now possibly hire two more employees."

So, once again, all of the relevant details of the claim are either demonstrably false or wildly misleading.

Better conservatives, please.

Oh, dear glods, yes, please. At least get us ones that don't get so insanely terrified at the least little sign of a competent Democrat in office that they panic like this. It's embarrassing.

Way to Support the Troops

Faux News favorite Ralph Peters, showing just how much the right loves the troops:

Pfc. Bowe Bergdahl, the U.S. soldier who has been captured by the Taliban and appears in a video released this weekend by his captors, “went missing from his base in eastern Afghanistan on June 30.” The circumstances of his capture are still unknown. ABC News reports, “Defense officials said it appeared he somehow left his base in Paktika Province at night, likely accompanied by several Afghan soldiers.” On July 6, the Taliban claimed that “a drunken American soldier had come out of his garrison” and was captured by them.

On Fox News yesterday, guest Ralph Peters, a retired Army Lt. Col., urged against leaping to conclusions. “I was to stress first of all that we must wait until all of the facts are in until we make a final judgment,” Peters said, but quickly added, “He is an apparent deserter,” “he is collaborating with the enemy,” and “we know that this private is a liar.” Peters then suggested that if Bergdahl is a deserter, the Taliban should kill him:

I want to be clear. If, when the facts are in, we find out that through some convoluted chain of events, he really was captured by the Taliban, I’m with him. But, if he walked away from his post and his buddies in wartime, I don’t care how hard it sounds, as far as I’m concerned, the Taliban can save us a lot of legal hassles and legal bills.

[snip]

Michelle Malkin applauds Peters’ “tough words.”

I know these fucktards had lost all sense of decency a long time ago, but this is obscene even for them.

Walter Cronkite was So Right

Walter Cronkite was one of the last of a dying breed - a teevee journalist who was a journalist in truth rather than just name:

Americans of all ages and the journalist community are remembering the life and career of Walter Cronkite, famously revered as “the most trusted man in America.”

Salon’s Glenn Greenwald notes that the media is largely glossing over Cronkite’s “most celebrated and significant moment” — “when he stood up and announced that Americans shouldn’t trust the statements being made about the war by the U.S. Government and military, and that the specific claims they were making were almost certainly false.”

Of course they're glossing it over. They hate admitting their abject failings. And you probably won't see too many of them highlighting his all-too-true assessment of their pathetic state:

The Nation's John Nichols reports that as the war in Iraq went horribly awry, he asked Cronkite whether a network anchorman would speak out in the same way that he had. "I think it could happen, yes. I don't think it's likely to happen," he said with an audible sigh. "I think the three networks are still hewing pretty much to that theory. They don't even do analysis anymore, which I think is a shame. They don't even do background. They just seem to do headlines, and the less important it seems the more likely they are to get on the air."

David Gregory, he could've been looking at you:

I can only echo what Vernie Gay said about the new Meet The Press:

But he also seems more intent on covering the waterfront than digging for news, or in pushing the talking heads off their talking points. Recent interviews with Sens. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) felt like a waterfront that went on for miles - an endless vista of chatter and spin.

BOTTOM LINE "Meet the Press" is now the de facto safe show on Sunday morning - "safe," that is, for those being interviewed.

And here we have good ol' David assuring Mark Sanford that MTP would be very safe indeed:

When the stories about South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford's love of hiking and the ensuing revelations about line crossing and soul mates were first revealed, I think it's safe to say that most people never saw it coming. But what hasn't been a surprise is the resulting confirmation of how many in the media are willing to sell their journalistic souls for political access.

And leading that list has to be David Gregory, who went out of his way to continue the proud tradition of Meet the Press kissing the ass of shamed elected officials.

From his emails to Sanford's office, where he begs for an interview:

Left you a message. Wanted you to hear directly from me that I want to have the Gov on Sunday on Meet The Press. I think it's exactly the right forum to answer the questions about his trip as well as giving him a platform to discuss the economy/stimulus and the future of the party. You know he will get a fair shake from me and coming on MTP puts all of this to rest.

... So coming on Meet The Press allows you to frame the conversation how you really want to...and then move on. You can see (sic) you have done your interview and then move on. Consider it.

In the middle of the breaking scandal, Gregory not only offered to let Sanford guide the story, he was willing to give him a platform to change the subject. And then Gregory would "move on."

Just like everybody else. David Gregory had plenty of company in his Buy My Show Bazaar:

CNN's John King told Sawyer he had always appreciated Sanford's "kindness, candor, and hospitality," and added, in a transparent attempt to bond, "I'm all for anonymous escapes myself." George Stephanopoulos offered his show, ABC's This Week, as a "civil forum to address this week's events." And producers for CBS's Face the Nation, ABC's Good Morning America, several Fox shows, and many others gave Sanford's office the hard sell too.

And that's not all!

• Ann Edelberg, a producer at MSNBC, wrote to Sanford press secretary Joel Sawyer to say: "Of course the Gov has an open invite to a friendly place here at MJ, if he would like to speak out." MJ refers to Morning Joe, the MSNBC show hosted by former GOP congressman Joe Scarborough, and also frequently featuring hardcore right-winger Pat Buchanan.

• Politico's Jonathan Martin, after making a few inquiries to Sawyer, wrote sycophantically: "Jakie causing you guys problem?" That's a reference to state Sen. Jake Knotts, who had first raised questions about the governor's whereabouts.

• A woman named Jessica Gibadlo -- this seems like her -- wrote in an email to Sawyer that MSNBC anchor Contessa Brewer was suggesting Sanford could come on her network to spin the story favorably. Wrote Gibadlo:

As you know I'm close to Contessa who has been in my ear on this. She said that the tone in the news room is that Mark could spin this favorably if he talks it up as the outdoors man in the woods etc. For all we know he's contemplating the last year of his term and thinking through his priorities before he goes on his family vacation.

As you know, she's close to Contessa.

• A barely literate Fox News producer and Sanford fan wrote: "Where is he...we LOVE to governor he is okay right?" Hey, who doesn't love to governor?

• The Wall Street Journal's Brendan Miniter -- who we already told you had dissed his own paper's reporting on the saga in an effort to suck up to the governor's office -- doubled down on that effort, writing to Sawyer that that he "wanted verification that the WSJ story was BS." Now there's some team spirit!

• Stewart Moore, the anchor for local South Carolina news station WIS-TV, showed great news judgment, writing:

Off the record, I think this whole thing is ridiculous. Sounds like slow news day stuff.

On the record; for the sake of good journalism, is there any way we can get the governor on for a phoner @ 6:30am? I think that will end the crazy situation we both find ourselves, more so you, in.

Thanks dude.

But wait! There's more!

The State has written up a few more of the emails, and look what they found:

ABC News White House reporter Jake Tapper e-mailed Sawyer twice on June 23, both to note coverage of competitor NBC.

With a subject line of "NBC spot was slimy," Tapper e-mailed Sawyer a "Today" show transcript of Sanford coverage, calling it "insulting." Later, Tapper forwarded Sawyer a Twitter post [this one -- TPMmuckraker] by "Meet The Press" host David Gregory.

Jeff Schneider, a vice president at ABC News, said Tapper was "carrying some water for producers who knew he had a relationship with the governor's office."

Oh, just carrying some water for producers, you say? Well, never mind then.

[snip]

One prominent conservative blogger also offered his help. Erick Erickson of Red State emailed to say:

If he wants something more personal for the blog to push back, I'm happy to help.

That turned out well, of course.

And all of that's disgusting enough, but rather pales in comparison to Chuck Todd's little Q & A with Glenn Greenwald:

Audio from Salon Radio, where the full transcript is also available.

Glenn Greenwald: So what do you think happens - I think what has destroyed our reputation is announcing to the world that we tolerate torture, and telling the world we don't --

Chuck Todd: We have elections, we also had an election where this was an issue. A new president, who came in there, and has said, we're not going to torture, we're going to do this, and we're going to do this--

GG: What do you think should happen when presidents--

CT: Is that not enough? Isn't that enough?

GG: When, generally, if I go out and rob a bank tomorrow, what happens to me is not that I lose an election. What happens is to me is that I go to prison. So, what do you think should happen when presidents get caught committing crimes in office? What do you think ought to happen?

CT: You see, this is where, this is not - you cannot sit here and say this is as legally black and white as a bank robbery because this was an ideological, legal --

GG: A hundred people died in detention. A hundred people. The United States Government admits that there are homicides that took place during interrogations. Waterboarding and these other techniques are things that the United States has always prosecuted as torture.

Until John Yoo wrote that memo, where was the lack of clarity about whether or not these things were illegal? Where did that lack of clarity or debate exist? They found some right-wing ideologues in the Justice Department to say that this was okay, that's what you're endorsing. As long the president can do that, he's above the law. And I don't see how you can say that you're doing anything other than endorsing a system of lawlessness where the president is free to break the law?

CT: Well, look, I don't believe I'm endorsing a system of lawlessness; I'm trying to put in the reality that as much that there is a legal black and white here, there is a political reality that clouds this, and you know it does too.

Hilzoy, in one of her last posts, absolutely destroyed him (well, the bits Glenn left intact, anyway), and then pointed out something absolutely terrifying:

We should expect more of our journalists. They need to get the facts right. They need to figure out the legal issues at stake in a case like this, not just listen to flacks from both sides, throw up their hands, and say "it's not black and white!" If he did a better job, he wouldn't have to worry so much about politicizing the justice system, and he might take pride in the fact that he helped shed light on complicated issues, when he might have just gotten lazy.

Of course, it's not just Chuck Todd, who is, alas, one of the better TV journalists out there. He's just the one who cited the incompetence of his profession as a reason to abandon the rule of law.

That's absolutely fucking appalling.

I could go on - after all, we have teevee "journalists" fucking up the facts on health care reform, and the supposedly "liberal" MSNBC giving a platform to a lying white supremacist fucktard like Pat Buchanan, among a thousand other examples of their endless idiocy - but we'd be here for the next century. I just want to close this Smack-o-Matic marathon with what BarbinMD said:

In the hours following the death of Walter Cronkite, the accolades began pouring in; "legendary," "iconic," "set the standard," a "voice of certainty in an uncertain world," reminders that he was once known as "the most trusted man in America," and perhaps the most telling, a lament that "we'll never see his like again."

And with that in mind, perhaps members of the media could pause and consider why a journalist who instilled trust in his viewers by simply reporting the news is "someone whose like we will never see again." And maybe they'll even take a moment to think about what it says about them.

If they were worth anything, they would. But we all know they're too shallow for such deep thoughts.

I just hope they go to bed tonight knowing that Walter Cronkite was ashamed of them.

Faux News Host Thinks Americans Marry "Other Species"

You know, the Con's ignorance about basic science is just getting abjectly pathetic:

"Fox & Friends" host Brian Kilmeade probably isn't quite sharp enough to realize why his comments this morning were a little crazy even for Fox News. It's a shame, because if he thought about it, he might be embarrassed.

Kilmeade was reflecting on a study that found married people fare better when it comes to Alzheimer's than divorcees. Fox News is "pro-family," so it might seem like the kind of study Kilmeade would approve of.

Alas, no. The Fox News personality took issue with where the study was done, which he said discredited the results. Alex Koppelman, who posted the video, explains:

Kilmeade and two colleagues were discussing a study that, based on research done in Finland and Sweden, showed people who stay married are less likely to suffer from Alzheimer's. Kilmeade questioned the results, though, saying, "We are -- we keep marrying other species and other ethnics and other ..."

At this point, his co-host tried to -- in that jokey morning show way -- tell Kilmeade he needed to shut up, and quick, for his own sake. But he didn't get the message, adding, "See, the problem is the Swedes have pure genes. Because they marry other Swedes.... Finns marry other Finns, so they have a pure society."

We'll just skip right over the fact that people who advocate that sort of purity generally belong to white supremacist organizations, and get to the science. First off, how "pure" are their societies? Lessee:

Sweden: Of the 2007 population 13.4% (1.23 million) were born abroad.^[96] This reflects the inter-Nordic migrations, earlier periods of labour immigration, and later decades of refugee and family immigration. Sweden has been transformed from a nation of emigration ending after World War I to a nation of immigration from World War II onwards. In 2008, immigration reached its highest level since records began with 101,171 people moving to Sweden.^[97]

The largest immigrant groups living in Sweden as of 2008 consists of people born in Finland (175 113), Iraq (109 446), Former Yugoslavia (72 285), Poland (63 822), Iran (57 663), Bosnia and Herzegovina (55 960), Denmark (44 310), Norway (44310), Chile (28 118), Thailand (25 858), Somalia (25 159) and Lebanon (23 291). In the last decade most immigrants have come from Iraq, Poland, Thailand, Somalia and China.^[98]

Finland: The share of foreign citizens in Finland is 2.5 percent^[29] being among the lowest of the European Union countries. Most of them are from Russia, Estonia and Sweden.^[29]

Well, Swedes seem to be mutts, and while Finland looks "pure" on the surface, let's keep in mind their history, which seems to include a lot of people who weren't from Finland moving in and becoming Fins. Europeans have been sloshing around interbreeding for a damned long time. I didn't even bother to look at the genetic studies yet, but I doubt there's any sort of genetic markers that differentiate "pure" Swedes and Fins from all of those icky mixed breeds. Thus we dispense with the "purity" argument.

Moving on. Kilmeade says Americans keep marrying "other species." I do not think he knows what the word "species" means:

1. Biology.
   1. A fundamental category of taxonomic classification, ranking below a genus or subgenus and consisting of related organisms capable of interbreeding.
   2. An organism belonging to such a category, represented in binomial nomenclature by an uncapitalized Latin adjective or noun following a capitalized genus name, as in Ananas comosus, the pineapple, and Equus caballus, the horse.

Now, we could be generous and say he was using the term in a rather vulgar sense, but from the context he seems to believe that humans are really divided into biologically distinct species, which is utter and complete ignorant bullshit. Y'see, all humans are Homo sapiens, which are:

The modern species of humans, the only extant species of the primate family Hominidae.

Emphasis added specifically for Brian Kilmeade, who apparently never took high school biology.

And, finally, let us have a look at another statement Kilmeade made in that same segment:

"In America, we marry everybody. Some will marry Italians, the Irish...."

Yes, we do indeed marry the Irish, don't we, Brian? In fact, we may even marry people from the Irish parish of.... Kilmeade.

I do believe if you took a "purity" test, you'd flunk it. Imagine that.