I Need A Peak Wingnut Prediction Market

I would always short peak wingnut markets, for there is no such thing as peak wingnut.

“With his Iran deal, Barack Obama is for the 300 million souls of the United States what Andreas Lubitz was for the 150 souls on the German Wings flight — a deranged pilot flying his entire nation into the rocks.”— Former Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) 

Rick Wiles Warns Obama about a Potential Infestation of Biblical (not just Ayn Randian) Parasites

Rick Wiles, Grifter

Right Wing Watch catches all the wingnut chatter that matters, like End Times Radio Grifter Rick Wiles' prolonged chat with Marvin Rosenthal of Zion’s Voice Ministry, who thinks President Obama is an unqualified, demon infested, Nimrod-like madman soon to be infested with parasites like King Herod.

First things first. Rosenthal has a problem with the qualifications of the Harvard educated constitutional lawyer, first black President of the Harvard Law review, Illinois State and US Senator who worked his way up to becoming the first black President of the US.

Wiles: Do you think that the current president, Mr. Barack Obama, is a pro-Islamic president? 

Rosenthal: Unfortunately I do. I guess I would take it farther than that. I am convinced from his childhood, where he was born, the family he was raised in, the mentors that he has had all the way on from childhood to the present have been preparing him for this day. If you want to talk about a man who was totally unqualified to become President of the United States, it is our present president. He had no credentials. It’s almost like having a guy perform heart surgery who never fixed a Band-Aid to a finger. He had no qualifications to be president and then to be re-elected.

I can't find a single case of Mr. Rosenthal suggesting that Sarah Palin had qualification problems, so I guess he figures her Witch Doctor could take care of any problems that arose from her inexperience. Rosenthal gets a bonus for sneaking in the little known probability that anyone born in Hawaii is automatically pro-Islam and unqualified to be President. But maybe he means Kenya.

Next, Mr. Rosenthal thinks the One World Government is possibly right around the corner (who knows, you'd better send him money so he can fight against it anyway!)...

I will tell you without fear of being found wrong, he is clearly under spiritual influence, not in the demise of this country but to diminish this country because he is pushing toward a one world government and a one world religion, which is exactly what Nimrod was doing back in the early chapters of Genesis. To establish a one world government and a one world religion he has to bring America down or we would never cooperate in a one world government, that is what his agenda really is and he’s moving it rapidly.

Nimrod! It's not every day you get to hear the name of that great grandson of an arc builder! Note the careful wording with "not in the demise of this country." Right. Obama is going to force a one world government and single religion (Satanism? Islam? Mormonism?) on us all, but that will only diminish us, not lead to our demise... Of course, Rosenthal can tell us this "without fear of being found wrong" because he can simply define "demise" as something as simple as, well, Obama probably thought about a One World Government once, and having a President who even thought such a thing for a split second demises our country. A little. Kinda.

Marvin Rosenthal, nut job

Way to go out on a limb with your prediction, there, Marvin. Guess I won't see you betting against me at the next incarnation of the Intrade prediction markets.

Wiles: I think he’s demon-possessed. 

Rosenthal: I would not find fault with that. I said he’s being influenced, under the control of—so if you say demon-possession I’m not saying I disagree.

Rosenthal's not saying he agrees Obama is possessed by demons, but he's not saying he disagrees. Maybe he thinks it's just Obama's clothes that are possessed.

Of course, this Nimrod keeps talking, but Rick Wiles manages to get his two cents in (it is his show, after all):

Wiles: He’s very frightening to me. I see him potentially as potentially the next in line after the long line of madmen from Stalin to Hitler, Mao Zedong; I think that is in him, that capacity to become a madman. He’s being restrained, I don’t know if he’ll ever be totally cut loose to do what is in his heart but I really believe he has the potential to be a madman who could bring great havoc in the world if he is allowed to carry out everything that he wants to do.

No, Godwin's Law has not been invoked, technically, because Obama is only double "potentially" (talk about hedging your bets!) a Hitler, Stalin, or Mao. Obama's inner madman is being restrained, which allows Wiles a convenient "out" to explain, 4 years from now, why Obama didn't become the totally horrible thing that he had the potential potential to be. I'm sure if you asked Mr. Wiles (who thinks God guided the hand of the make up artists on the History Channel's The Bible to reveal that Obama is really Satan) who was restraining History's Greatest Potential Monster, he'd tell you it's the Tea Party House of Representatives who God put there as a check on that pesky Satan.

The Wiles-Rosenthal bull session finally gets around to a full proof of Godwin's Law, which starts, as Godwin Law breakers almost always do, by making it clear that they are not saying Obama is Hitler, but...

Rosenthal: While I’m not saying, I want to make sure I’m clear, that he’s another Hitler, one of the things I would say is Adolf Hitler had the capacity to speak to multitudes of people and almost mesmerize them. I am seeing the same ability with our present president, he speaks to large portions of America and sometimes quite frankly I think when God was giving our brains some of them will say they thought it was trains and said I don’t want any because he mesmerizes great multitudes of America.

It’s almost to me, because he’s not that profound, he is not in my opinion that great a communicator although many people think it is, I think there is some kind of spiritual capability that is involved when he speaks to the multitudes and they listen spellbound. What amazes me is men from Harvard and Yale and Princeton, some of the leaders in the secular news media who are brilliant men and I know they are liberal and leftists but he goes way beyond that and they’re enamored by this guy, it’s almost like there are blindfolds over they eyes as to where he’s leading us, far beyond what most of them would like. 

Wiles: And they openly deify him. 

Rosenthal: Yes they do. It’s amazing and I think it is Satanic. 

Wiles: I do too. Mr. Obama never rebukes them for it. I’ve tried to warn him, Mr. Obama, letting your people deify you is going to get you in a lot of trouble. The last person that did that in the Bible got filled up with worms when he would not stop the people from deifying him. I think the guy is headed for a bad infestation of parasites.

Satan, image via The Political Cat

I'm not sure what the equivalent of Godwin's law is for the inevitable comparison to Satan (Church Lady's Law?), but these two manage to get there as fast as AM radio waves can bounce off the ionosphere. I could find no such terrible haste to label Dick "Deficits Don't Matter" Cheney, who's responsible for the $6 trillion Iraq war that killed and maimed millions, Satanic. But, you know, I'm such a nit picker.

The really interesting thing here is that this argument could be used to justify another nimrod dumbass President who's speaking abilities are a little less Reaganesque, and a lot more GW Bushian. So far, though, I can find no evidence that they support Palin for President. Maybe if they keep talking they'll convince Mike Huckabee to take on the Devil and his Golden Fiddle.

So Many Wingnuts, So Little Time

At least anti-christ ranks at the bottom.

The results of Public Policy Polling's national conspiracy theory poll were posted yesterday, and never have the wingnuts said so much by answering yes, no, or maybe. While plenty of Democrats believed some crazy stuff, the trophy for believing the unbelievable goes to the Republicans in the poll.

At the top of the list, we have yet another point of reference that makes me miss Intrade.

37% of voters believe global warming is a hoax, 51% do not. Republicans say global warming is a hoax by a 58-25 margin, Democrats disagree 11-77, and Independents are more split at  41-51. 61% of Romney voters believe global warming is a hoax.

Fifty-eight percent of Republicans believe global warming is a hoax. This is astounding. They're not saying, oh, it's happening but it's natural, or it's the sun, or whatever. They're saying that a world-wide consensus of top scientists are conspiring to tell us something that is obviously happening is not, just so they can have the black helicopters come take their SUVs. Or something.

Intrade had a whole host of climate markets, from monthly, annual, and multi-annual global temperature anomalies, to last named storm of the Atlantic hurricane season, to minimum arctic sea ice extent, and much more. The volume was pretty low in those markets, and it was often hard to find people to bet the conspiracy side of things, but a bet's a bet, and I was surprised at how few takers there are.

I was trying to round up more of these hoaxters to put their money where their conspiracy minded mouths are. Maybe if Intrade does manage to recover from their recent problems and return, I'll be able to coax some of these ignorant fools into putting a few bucks on their theory.

Keep talking, wingnut! Image credit. 

The wingnuttery continues!

13% of voters think Barack Obama is the anti-Christ, including 22% of Romney voters.

This is more proof of ThomasD's theory that fundamentalists have a problem with parables. That is, if you think there is any allegory in Revelations at all. Frankly, I think it's the ravings of a nut case who was just trying to scare ignorant people into becoming Christians. Pretty impressive ravings, though, considering that even in this modern age, 13% of Americans not only believe it, but think the President is one of the main characters in this never ending fairy tale.

And, finally, proof that although they tend to deny they supported the war now, or that the war was a good idea, or whatever, we find that, if asked in a poll where no one will know who they are, the Republican love for W hasn't really diminished at all. I'm guessing that a great many of the people who supported the $6.2 trillion Iraq war will go to their graves thinking they were right.

Voters are split 44%-45% on whether Bush intentionally misled about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. 72% of Democrats think Bush lied about WMDs, Independents agree 48-45, just 13% of Republicans think so.

Considering the other crazy shit that Republicans revealed about themselves in this poll, I'm surprised that 13% of Republicans think Bush lied us into Iraq. They must be RINOs.

Rand Paul Gets It Partly Right, Jeb Bush Adds a Footnote

Sen. Rand Paul and Bong, image from Salon.com 

Senator Rand Paul (just saying that gives me the giggles) told keep-the-wingnuts-talking champion Chris Wallace that the last two Presidents could have gone to jail for drugs (odd that he didn't mention his own past drug use). While I appreciate the Wingnut Party Senator for his correct conclusion that the drug war is a bad thing, I would like to point out that he should keep talking about this because it's an important subject, and because he apparently has no freaking clue about why people get arrested for drugs.

When George W Bush¹ was snorting coke, drinking whiskey, breaking SEC regulations, and God-knows-what-all, his Daddy was head of the CIA, Vice President of the United States, and, eventually, President, although W had supposedly become a cold-turkey dry drunk by the time he was a President's son. The odds of George W Bush being arrested for anything are so small that not even a penny bet to win $9.99 at Intrade would even get close to approximating them. Obama, on the other hand was approximately 12 times more likely to go to jail for drugs than a white man.

...although Whites and African Americans use and sell drugs at about the same rates, Black men in 2003 were almost 12 times as likely to go to prison as White men. Although Black people are 12 percent of the population and 14 percent of drug users, according to Mauer and Cole, they comprise 34 percent of those arrested for drug offenses and 45 percent of those incarcerated in state prisons for such offenses.

1. Jeb Bush provided some context on GW's state of mind Friday, talking to Jake Tapper on CNN.

JEB BUSH: He is like the most focused, disciplined guy to imagine being a former president and not having an opinion on anything over the last four years, really? I mean, to have that discipline, to be respectful of the president that hasn't been as respectful of him as he should have been? Man. I could have never done that.

Either GW's smarter then Jeb and realizes he should keep his fool mouth shut after lying us into a $6 trillion dollar unpaid-for war and crashing the world economy with a recession bigger than the last 4 combined, or he's on some serious meds, the abuse of which is fast becoming the biggest addiction problem in America (20% of all Americans have used a prescription drug for non-medical reasons), and prescription drug abuse is predominantly a white suburban problem. Since we don't police the white suburbs like we do the black inner cities, we don't see as many arrests of prescription drug crimes as we do for other illicit drugs more popular in those inner cities. And, since rich white suburbs in the Dallas area probably have very little police presence (of the kind looking for drug abusers, at least), then GW Bush could be tripping on Oxycontin all day and never get busted for it. Come to think of it, that might help explain why W is painting puppies and scenes of his guilty mind reflected in a shower mirror, instead of talking to the press every time he gets a buzz on, like Jeb apparently does.

They're Too Lazy to Get a New Dog Whistle

The usually savvy Steve Benen wants the GOP to drop the whole "Obama is lazy thing."

Steve, you're the best, but I want to keep these guys talking. If these guys didn't talk, no one would ever know about the slobbery lips blowing a spit-filled, centuries old dog-whistle. The latest fat white guy to give the rusty/slimy/drippy old thing a wheezing blow bothered to leave Sinecure Inc's lushest country clubs because he was upset that someone would dare suggest that Ann Romney used her money to make her life easier.

Obama's the one who never worked a day in his life. He never earned a penny that wasn't public money. How many fund-raisers does he attend every week? How often does he play basketball and golf? I wish I had that kind of time. He's lazy, but the media won't report that. 

First things first. Fox "News" CEO Roger "I Won the Election for my cousin George W Bush" Ailes is a Bullshitter in the Philosophical sense of the word.

...bullshitters seek to convey a certain impression of themselves without being concerned about whether anything at all is true. They quietly change the rules governing their end of the conversation so that claims about truth and falsity are irrelevant. Frankfurt concludes that although bullshit can take many innocent forms, excessive indulgence in it can eventually undermine the practitioner's capacity to tell the truth in a way that lying does not. Liars at least acknowledge that it matters what is true. By virtue of this, Frankfurt writes, bullshit is a greater enemy of the truth than lies are.

Aisles should ask his cousin W, who thought all kinds of things qualified as hard work, about how hard fundraising is. Ask any politician about their schedule, and the amount of time they have to spend raising money. Roger and his buddies made sure that politicians would have to obsess over the one thing that destroys democracy faster than anything else. As Willard Romney himself liked to misquote: politics ain't bean bags. Of course, you could always forgo the fundraising and finance your own campaign, which is really putting your money where your mouth is, but I digress.

Steve goes on to cover the rest of the obvious points nicely. No, Roger, The President actually did work in the private sector. And who are you to suggest that public sector workers don't work? Go tell the families of all the public sector workers who died doing their jobs how lazy their loved ones were, you fat puke. Actually, Steve was nicer than that, bless his heart.

But please, Roggie Baby, don't let the fact that I'm mean to you shut you up. You've got a whole media empire at your disposal, so please, keep talking, wingnut.