Dum Pendebat Filius

I don’t understand the recent conservative backlash against McCain, readers. John McCain is an out-and-out wingnut, and I think his record speaks for itself.

He’s consistently anti-choice, he wants to make the Bush tax cuts permanent, he’s all in favor of continuing a foreign policy of unilateral truculence, death, and destruction.

Let’s put it this way, readers: John McCain is wingnutty enough for David Horowitz.

What’s the main objection to McCain from the right wing? He’s basically a smarter version of George W. Bush. Why would phony-baloney Mitt Romney be better?

Okapi likes to play with his toy egg…

But Mystery seems to think dog toys are beneath her dignity.

When a wingnut works himself into a state of sufficiently high dudgeon, readers, it won’t be long before talk turns to the subject of civil war. Think of it as a sort of corollary to Godwin’s Law.

Blue and Gray, eternally at odds, honor and glory set to the shrill cry of bugles and the smell of woodsmoke

Mark Noonan of Blogs For Victory (formerly known as Blogs For Bush) is the king of Internet civil-war declarations: you may recall his infamous “lake of gasoline” diatribe of 2005/09/29, or his warning from last September that Democratic “white-hot hatred… is the stuff with which civil wars are made.”

Our friend Hank Dagny of Liberal Quicksand has joined in with this shrill warning of tyranny and subsequent civil (and/or Revolutionary) war or wars to come, thanks to Hillary Clinton:

[The next President will be] Hillary – and it will be tyranny, and there will be a civil war. A bang or a whimper is hard to say, but I predict only a whimper. This nation has gone soft.

[...]

When Hillary gets in – it’s over. We will need another 1776 to survive and I doubt China will give us the time to get on our feet as France and Spain did after Britain surrendered.

America under Hitlery KKKlint00n — “A Republic, if you can keep it”

Chris Matthews spent the better part of two years during Campaign 2000 attacking Al Gore as a liar, a fool who was “uncomfortable in his own skin,” “Clinton’s bathtub ring” who “would lick the bathroom floor to be President,” etc, etc.

This, mind you, was after he brought the execrable Gennifer Flowers on his show, where she spent half an hour accusing President Clinton of multiple murders.

He has now spent months and months making nasty remarks about Sen. Hillary Clinton.

In the meantime, he openly gushes over Saint John Straight-Talk McCain:

During MSNBC’s January 28 coverage of President Bush’s final State of the Union address, Chris Matthews — host of MSNBC’s Hardball — began an interview with Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain (AZ) by saying, “Senator McCain, you know you’re in my heart!” At the end of the interview, Matthews said: “Well, you show a lot of courage out there, Senator.”

But readers, there is no amount of evidence that could change the mind of a wingnut who thinks he sees “Liberal Bias in the MSM.” Our friend Hank Dagny of Liberal Quicksand seems to be getting his cable-TV service from Bizarro World, because he looks at Chris Matthews and sees “an unpaid prostitute for the Clintons.”

Chris Matthews is a Democrat. He is a pure Democrat. He is the standard sheep liberal Democrat who would vote for Osama bin Laden himself, if he was the DNC nominee for president. But the liberals are still after him. Why?

Because Chris Matthews is not on the Hillary train – that’s why. Chris Matthews is tired of being an unpaid prostitute for the Clintons. He wants a liberal-socialist-communist in the White House, but he does not want to have to cover up for the Clintons again. Once for eight years, is enough.

(Not surprisingly, Hank Dagny was unable to explain exactly how Matthews had served as an “unpaid prostitute for the Clintons,” nor did he even attempt to explain Matthews’ two-year War on Gore. He also seems to think MSNBC, the home of not only Chris Matthews, but also Joe Scarborough and Tucker Carlson, is the epitome of Liberal TV, but that’s another story.)

Let’s face it, readers — Chris Matthews is a shill for the Republican Party. I can’t put it plainer than that. He’s been in the pocket of the GOP for over a decade. Yet the concept of “Liberal Bias in the MSM” is so deeply ingrained in the wingnut psyche that many people still somehow think Chris Matthews is a “liberal Democrat.” I guess that’s the only way for them to avoid cognitive dissonance.

As you are all aware, Jonah Goldberg just published a book claiming that liberals are fascists.

At the same time, wingnuts on cable TV are claiming that liberals are “explicitly socialist” and “communist.”

Fox News host John Gibson made fun of Heath Ledger’s death yesterday on his execrable radio show:

Opening his radio show with funeral music yesterday, Fox News host John Gibson callously mocked the death of actor Heath Ledger, calling him a “weirdo” with a “serious drug problem.”

Playing an audio clip of the iconic quote, “I wish I knew how to quit you” from Ledger’s gay romance movie Brokeback Mountain, Gibson disdainfully quipped, “Well, he found out how to quit you.” Laughing, Gibson then played another clip from Brokeback Mountain in which Ledger said, “We’re dead,” followed by his own, mocking “We’re dead” before playing the clip again.

Readers, what the fuck? What did Heath Ledger ever do to John Gibson that his death should be a subject for mockery and jeering? Was it because he played a gay guy in a movie? Did that offend poor little John Gibson?

John Gibson is such a pious Christian that he went to the trouble of writing a book describing the nefarious “War on Christmas,” and he shows up on every cable channel that’ll book him to decry the efforts of Godless Liberals to ban Christmas. (Speaking of which, check out a transcript of a typical John Gibson War-on-Christmas “debate” and then you tell me who is a “weirdo”.) He’s an unctuous Public Christian (when it suits his purpose, anyway).

Apparently it’s A-OK for Public Christians to mock the recently deceased, as long as the recently deceased ever did something John Gibson didn’t like.

What an asshole.

Asshole
(via TPRS)

It’s official, readers: Fred “Hounddog” Thompson has dropped out of Campaign 2008.

The most cringeworthy video of the year thus far: Mitt Romney saying “Who let the dogs out?” as he poses with a group of African-American paradegoers at a Martin Luther King Day parade in Jacksonville.

As he posed for a picture with a group of young people, the typically old-fashioned Romney was relaxed enough to quote from a popular hit single from a few years back.

“Who let the dogs out?” he called out, as he stood there beaming in his shirt and tie. “Who! Who!”

(via Dday at Hullabaloo)

UPDATE, 2008/01/21, 23:23 EST

It gets even better, readers:

And Mr. Romney campaigned on Monday at a Martin Luther King’s Birthday parade in Jacksonville, where he posed with a group of young African-Americans and, in an apparent reference to a 2000 hit song, jokingly said, “Who let the dogs out?” Later, shaking hands in the crowd, he said, “Oh, you’ve got some bling-bling here.”

Are you aware of the MESSENGER space probe that just flew by the planet Mercury? You should check out the images being sent back to Earth of Mercury’s surface. Very cool, readers.

Mercury’s horizon, 14 January 2008, from MESSENGER probe

Both dogs are in Cleveland this weekend, readers. I am missing Mystery.

Mystery