Certifiable

I'm sure you've all heard by now how Fox "News's" Neil Cavuto responded to criticism about the network's sponsorship of the heavily funded and think-tank coordinated tea parties -- featuring that new Republican pastime, teabagging -- by pointing to how strongly Fox covered Louis Farrakhan's Million Man March in October 1995.

We are are going to be in the middle of these protests because at Fox, we do not pick and choose these rallies and protests. We were there for the Million Man March, even though, as I pointed out, it turned out to be well shy of a million men. We were there for the Iraq war protest, and the protest against the Iraq war protest. So you see, we really don't decide what populist causes matter -- just that when a whole lot of people gather in a whole lot of towns and cities across America, it is indeed worth checking out not just shutting down,

Neil said. He didn't, of course, air any clips from Fox's stellar coverage of that event, probably because Fox didn't go on the air until October 1996, a year later.

And, bless their hearts, they're promoting this "whole lot of people gather(ing) in a whole lot of towns and cities across America" as some kind of populist outpouring, even though its being put together by Tim Phillips' Americans for Prosperity and Dick Armey's Freedom Works. Both groups have quite a history of this sort of thing -- and by this sort of thing I mean promoting a false idea of mass support for their anti-American and conservative tricks -- and Think Progress has reported on its usual tactics:

– Freedom Works staffers coordinate conference calls among protesters,contacting conservative activists to give them “sign ideas, sample press releases, and a map of events around the country.”

– Freedom Works staffers apparently moved to “take over” the planning of local events in Florida.

– Freedom Works provides how-to guides for delivering a “clear message” to the public and media.

– Freedom Works has several domain addresses — some of them made to look like they were set up by amateurs — to promote the protests.

– Americans for Prosperity is writing press releases and planning the events in New Jersey, Arizona, New Hampshire, Missouri, Kansas, and several other states.

Further, Think Progress reminds us that Freedom Works was last seen planting a "single mom" in the audience to ask questions at a GW town hall and setting up fake "amateur" Web sites to promote Armey's lobbying interests. And Americans for Prosperity runs the fake grassroots "Drill baby drill" events around the country.

In other words, big business, conservative-backing lobbyists are organizing the teabaggers, with their promotion handled by Fox "News." Which may actually explain the inexplicable use of the term "teabaggers" by these lions of intellect. For shits and giggles, check out the Urban Dictionary if you don't know what that really is.

And then, after that, Rachel Maddow and Ana Marie Cox can explain it all you. Well, maybe not actually explain. But there's enough innuendo there that you should get the picture, right down to the fiscal teabagging.

And honestly, don't you think it's really rude to urge citizens to teabag the president of the United States?

Fox, meanwhile, really is going all a-Twitter over critics' complaining that the network isn't just "reporting" (as if they ever actually do that) on the teabaggers' parties, but are actually promoting them.

I, for one cannot possibly understand where anyone would get an idea like that. It simply boggles the mind.

But I bring all this up to you, and in considerable detail, because it seems to glaringly illustrate the the modern conservative and Republican movement's complete departure from anything approaching reality.

These lying scumbags are convincing the gullible that they should protest a tax cut. They don't like the president's plan to give a tax cut to 95 percent of the taxpaying public. The five percent that will see a tax increase? The richest people in America. And their taxes will only go up to what they were during the Clinton years -- about 4 percentage points -- which was, in fact, lower than during the Reagan years. Of course, that's the real reason for the conservative/Republicans' outrage. But they have to frame it differently so the gullible will buy into it.

But there is more evidence of the movement's rapid decline. There's the zombie "storm clouds are moving in" ad created by the National Organization for Marriage to warn us about the horrors that await if same sex couples are allowed to partake in that most holy of all rituals that should be reserved only for pure and unpolluted heterosexuals.

As Blanca Debree says in her letter to NOM leader and truly horrible writer Maggie Gallagher,

And speaking of storms, if you had just gone to one gay bar or hung out in one gay ghetto for five minutes, you would have known the mere mention of 'storm clouds moving in' will cause the entirety of gaydom to erupt into a chorus of 'It's Raining Men' by The Weather Girls. Now I know you keep away from the homos and all, but don't you at least go to a hair salon once in a while? Maybe you could run some of this crap by a couple of the 'girls' and see what works.

Not quite as horrifying as teabagging, but still quite a blunder.And NOM is really going after this "rainbow coalition" idea by putting people of all colors in their fearmongering ad. And then posting, on their Web site, the audition tapes of said people, which means you can see all those actors saying "I'm a teacher" in one video and then "I'm a doctor" in another, along with whatever one they ended up as on the ad. Kinda blows that credibility thing a little bit, not to mention the "rainbow" thing. Surely, they are not that stupid.

Then there's NOM's idea, "2 Million for Marriage." Now, never mind that I'm quite in favor of marriage, just for everybody and not the chosen few -- so I could be part of the 2 million -- but when you break that down, as NOM as done, to 2M4M, you get yet another sexually charged reference from the right. We've know for some time that they are abnormally obsessed with what other people do in bed, but this is getting a little ridiculous. Allow me to refer to Blanca again for the unitiated:

Also, while we are at it, if you feel the urge to use acronyms, take a deep breath and don't. Your latest push called '2 Million 4 Marriage' ended up being gay code for a gay orgy. 2M4M means 2 Men for Men. If you had picked up one issue of the Washington Blade, the Philadelphia Gay News, the Village Voice, or anything printed in San Francisco, you would know this. I know it's gay, but research wouldn't kill you.

And then, of course, there is NOM itself. I can't even look at that acronym without getting a smirk and an uncontrollable urge to rush to I Can Has Cheezburger, where no doubt I'd be wholly welcomed and not alienated by a movement that claims to be some sort of "big tent" while doing its damndest to push out everything but the elephants.

Now, while these examples of modern conservative/Republican disconnect are hysterically funny, there's one that truly isn't. A group called Morality in Media has new fundraising idea: Connect all the recent shootings to same-sex marriage.

Because we know that Fox "News" and others promoting lies and conspiracy theories about the end of the world as we know it could not possible have anything to do with it, nor could the absolute desperation that many people are feeling these days because of what the Republicans and Blue Dawg Democrats have done to our economy.

No, for MIM (which appears to have no more nefarious meaning that "metal injection molding" and "Masonry Institute of Michigan") the

underlying problem is that increasingly we live in a 'post-Christian' society, where Judeo-Christian faith and values have less and less influence (and this) secular value system is also reflected in the 'sexual revolution,' which is the driving force behind the push for 'gay marriage.'

followed by

It most certainly is not my intention to blame the epidemic of mass murders on the gay rights movement! It is my intention to point out that the success of the sexual revolution is inversely proportional to the decline in morality; and it is the decline of morality (and the faith that so often under girds it) that is the underlying cause of our modern day epidemic of mass murders.

Because we all know that seeking to legitimize healthy, loving relationships and bring to those couples the benefits received by all other such relationships (even if they're not in the least healthy or loving) certainly contributes to the decline in morality, and probably much more than pedophile priests.

>And for the final proof that these folks are absolutely off their collective rockers, they all keep going on about how "scared" we liberal, progressive, sane types are of their nuttiness. Really. I know I'm quaking in my ankle length socks.

Now, I admit to being a little nervous at the nutcases the well-paid nutcases are stirring up with their bullshit -- those folks have lots of firepower and clearly are not afraid to use it. But afraid of these folks' childish antics? Oh please. I'm more afraid for the safety of my toes when I go to sleep and the kitten is still awake.

Thers at firedoglake notes that the Dont Go movement, whatever the hell that is, has adopted "Silent Majority No More" as the slogan for their teabagging parties and says

Oddly enough, this is true. The majority has spoken. It is not silent. And hard-right 'conservatives' do not belong to it.

Thers also gets a big laugh, and so did I, about a conservative blog's contention that the eVille librul media is out to get Sarah Palin, who, may I point out, cannot seem to shut up and stop making even more of fool of herself than she already has. Said blog wrote:

So their media efforts to put down this extraordinary woman continue today, and perhaps ad infinitum, based on an irrational fear that someday Sarah Palin might just be President of the United States.

to which Thers replies

And I agree! Worrying that Sarah Palin will ever become President of the United States would indeed be extraordinarily irrational.

So, who's really scared? I'd say these modern conservicans are completely terrified, so much so that they can't even think straight, as evidenced by their "rainbow" coalition, teabagging and 2M4M.

What they're doing is all just a distraction anyway -- anything to keep Americans from looking at the truth, and that is that their polices have put us in a prolonged period of economic crisis that isn't going to end any time soon. And they're trying to fix it all up so we notice that they're still the same old conservatives they always were -- tax breaks for the rich, cut social programs and sink billions into wars that we don't need.

Now that is scary.

News Writer
AWOP Political Contributing Editor
Author of Stop the Press!

Cross-posted at Stop the Press!

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Peace Y'all