There seems to be a race between right wing pundits to see who can say the dumbest thing in the wake of the shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. Not to be outdone by Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh, Erick Erickson says the thing we should all really be talking about is the fact that the Jewish Giffords has the wrong religion:

Through it all though, well meaning people on both sides of the ideological and partisan divide are not talking about the one thing that should be talked about — a saving faith in Jesus Christ.

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From Glenn Beck, writing a letter to Sarah Palin in the wake of the Giffords shooting:

“Sarah, as you know, peace is always the answer. I know you’re feeling the same heat — if not much more — on this.

I want you to know you have my support. But please look into protection for your family. An attempt on you could bring the republic down.

I certainly don’t want anyone to make any kind of attempt on Sarah Palin’s life (she’s far too amusing and entertaining), but the notion that she’s the linchpin of the republic is too ludicrous for words.

From Will Wilkinson, commenting on this article in the Boston Globe about retired generals becoming well-paid pitchmen for defense contractors:

America’s drawn-out wars abroad are stupendously expensive. The stupendous expense of course attracts profit-seeking firms rather like sharks to blood. And the wars are so drawn out in part because, as Mr Fallows and Robert Gates suggest, there’s nothing concrete at stake for most Americans. Like the hum of an air conditioner, after a while, one simply stops noticing the wars are there, much less that many billions of taxpayer dollars are thereby making some private citizens immensely rich.

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Try to parse this one, which Palin offered to the crowd at her 9/11 rally with Glenn Beck in Alaska:

“This Statue of Liberty was gifted to us by foreign leaders, really as a warning to us, it was a warning to us to stay unique and to stay exceptional from other countries. Certainly not to go down the path of other countries that adopted socialist policies,” Palin said to cheers from the crowd.

She does realize it was a gift from France, right? You know, the nation they keep telling us is exactly the kind of Euro-socialist system we have to avoid? Quick Sarah, tell us what it says on the Statue of Liberty. You might have read it in all the newspapers you told Katie Couric you read.

My favorite wingnut lawyer, Larry Klayman, has filed suit against the Islamic center in Manhattan on behalf of one of the first responders from 9/11. Why he thinks that gives him standing on this suit is beyond me, and I’m guessing it will be equally mystifying to the court it was filed in. The Worldnutdaily salivates over the lawsuit:

The action, not the first filed over the proposal, alleges the project would be a “nuisance” and would result in “intentional infliction of emotional distress.”

Yeah, good luck with that. “I don’t like those people putting up that mean building” is not exactly a compelling legal argument.
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The more clear it becomes that the bigots are going to lose in their attempts to stop equality for gays (just as they lost in previous eras over equality for blacks, women and others), the more ridiculous their rhetoric becomes. This column at the Worldnutdaily by Don Feder is a classic example, made all the more amusing by the fact that he’s trying to convince his fellow wingnuts on the issue.

Memo to conservative defeatists: Surrender on gay marriage is surrender on marriage – which is surrender on the family and, ultimately, surrender on civilization.

Drinking milk leads to smoking pot which leads to doing crack which leads to nuclear war! (Kinda reminds me of some old high school debate arguments)
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From Glenn Beck, at his Lincoln Memorial rally (spoken, naturally, with patriotic music playing in the background for maximum emotional effect):

From the very beginning of this great country, our faith has driven us to become the greatest people the world has ever known.

Not the greatest country, mind you, the greatest people.
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The premise of Glenn Beck’s rally was “restoring America’s honor.” So these folks went around asking those who attended when exactly America lost its honor.

Here’s my answer: America hasn’t lost anything. We are today what we have always been, a nation of people that proclaims a set of very audacious ideals to the rest of the world and only sometimes lives up to them. It isn’t any worse today than it was in years past; in fact, it’s better — but only because the forces of progress won previous battles for liberty and equality.
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From the Daily Show’s John Oliver:

There is a difference between what you can do and what you should do. For instance, you can build a Catholic church next to a playground. Should you? Or am I alone in thinking it’s a little too soon for that?

Video below the fold. The best part is catching Glenn Beck criticizing Imam Rauf for saying the exact same thing that Beck himself said just a few months earlier.

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I’m beginning to think that people who say Glenn Beck is really just a living parody of right wing thinkers may be right. Just look at this clip from his show where he does a really interesting impression of Dana Carvey’s Church Lady. Except he appears to be completely serious in arguing that comparisons to Karl Marx don’t go far enough because Obama is really Lucifer himself. Seriously.

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I’m beginning to think that people who say Glenn Beck is really just a living parody of right wing thinkers may be right. Just look at this clip from his show where he does a really interesting impression of Dana Carvey’s Church Lady. Except he appears to be completely serious in arguing that comparisons to Karl Marx don’t go far enough because Obama is really Lucifer himself. Seriously.

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How bad is the traveling crazy festival that is the conservative media getting when David Klinghoffer is the voice in the wilderness crying out for sanity? Klinghoffer, a Discovery Institute flack and peddler of nonsense in his own right, has an op-ed in the LA Times bemoaning the fact that conservatism’s most prominent spokespeople are liars and lunatics. He begins:

Once, the iconic figures on the political right were urbane visionaries and builders of institutions — like William F. Buckley Jr., Irving Kristol and Father Richard John Neuhaus, all dead now. Today, far more representative is potty-mouthed Internet entrepreneur Andrew Breitbart, whose news and opinion website, Breitbart.com, is read by millions. In his most recent triumph, Breitbart got a U.S. Department of Agriculture official pushed out of her job after he released a deceptively edited video clip of her supposedly endorsing racism against white people.

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