Remember, please, that an actual elected official, and an adult, wrote this:

"Ok, so, this is total crap, we sit the kids down to watch ‘The Charlie Brown Christmas Special' and our muslim president is there, what a load…..try to convince me that wasn't done on purpose. Ask the man if he believes that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and he will give you a 10 minute disertation (sic) about it….w…hen the answer should simply be ‘yes'…."
[...]
In Wiseman's extensive thread that attacked the president, his supporters and Muslims, he stated "…you obama people need to move to a muslim country…oh wait, that's America….pitiful."

It is the fact that we are basically completely inured to actually legitimately dangerous rhetoric like this that is worrying.

Like, this man believes that it is self-evident that our nation's first black President, who was born in America and who is a Christian, is a Muslim who intentionally preempted A Charlie Brown Christmas. And this man is the mayor of a town with a population of almost 10,000 people. And he has 1,600 Facebook friends. And according to more than 2,000 voters in an internet poll, this man "speaks for a lot of Americans who are frustrated with the President." (Why is that even a poll option, Memphis Commercial Appeal?)

This is eliminationist rhetoric. These are 2,000 people who believe that Barack Obama is a threat to this nation. Plus there are Sarah Palin's Facebook fans.

So, yeah, this shit is funny. But with the mainstream GOP more than willing to rile up the nuts if it means a little fundraising cash and a higher media profile, lord knows where this ends.

Candidate #1: Arlington, Tennessee mayor Russell Wiseman, who took to his Facebook page with a message of despair upon learning that Obama's speech had trumped Charlie Brown, on the teevee. We'll just blockquote this thoroughly worthwhile Commercial Appeal story:

"Ok, so, this is total crap, we sit the kids down to watch 'The Charlie Brown Christmas Special' and our muslim president is there, what a load.....try to convince me that wasn't done on purpose. Ask the man if he believes that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and he will give you a 10 minute disertation (sic) about it....w...hen the answer should simply be 'yes'...."...

In Wiseman's extensive thread that attacked the president, his supporters and Muslims, he stated "...you obama people need to move to a muslim country...oh wait, that's America....pitiful."

At another point he said, "you know, our forefathers had it written in the original Constitution that ONLY property owners could vote, if that has stayed in there, things would be different........"

No further comment. Contestant #2: News Corp! Which just bought a 10% stake in Rotana, a media company owned by Saudi Prince Waleed. Why the outrage? Well after September 11, you see, various Fox News commentators were outraged at Waleed! Because he suggested that maybe US foreign policy had something to do with the attacks. So NYC rejected a $10 million check from him. Media Matters has some choice quotes:

Bill Sammon: "[I]t's blood money and we're better off without it."
Sean Hannity: Al-Waleed's statement was "such an egregious, outrageous, unfair offense that I would have nothing to do with his money either."

Unless that money comes in the form of dividends from media company profits! So, vote for your god damn favorite. [Pic via]

Contestant #1: Drudge sidekick Andrew Breitbart knows how to handle scientific disagreements.

Thank you. Contestant #2: Some crazy birther group, that put the following ad in the Washington Times about, I don't know, British monkey Obama something something.

Who is the biggest wingnut of this day? Choose, why don't you? [Pic via]

Contestant #1: Hero lady Ann Coulter, a non-racist who said that Maxine Waters "couldn't get a job that didn't involve wearing a paper hat without affirmative action." But Ann has a non-racist explanation!

Contestant #2: Former Bush flack Dana Perino. Who says, "We did not have a terrorist attack on our country during President Bush's term." Yep.

Vote for the Queen of Thanksgiving now!

Thankfully Sarah Palin may now take her rightful place as America's "Commanderin' Chief" because Barack Obama is polling at 49% in the daily Gallup tracking poll. As Gallup notes, this is an unprecedentedly fast drop in presidential approval, not counting the three post-war presidents who dropped below 50% faster than him (Reagan, Ford, Clinton) and the one who also dropped below 50% after 11 months in office (Truman).

One of the fastest and most effective ways for any president to boost his approval rating (besides starting a war or botching his response to a terror attack) is to score a major legislative victory. So, with "centrist" and Blue Dog democrats spooked that Obama's low numbers will negatively affect their own reelection bids, look for them to attempt to obstruct and delay any legislation the president champions, in order to drag down everyone's numbers even further in the hopes that eventually elections will just be "called off."

The primary reason for the president's declining approval is, of course, the economy. Specifically jobs. Americans know an economic "recovery" without jobs is no recovery at all, so, once again, look for Blue Dogs and centrists to become incredibly terrified of the idea of spending any further government money on jobs programs of any kind, as we all know that's why FDR was a one-term president, because of his socialism, and how much it made Americans hate him. Jobless Americans are much, much more concerned with the abstract concept of "fiscal responsibility" than they are with material concerns like health care, regular employment, and "having enough money to feed themselves."

First up, the mighty Glenn Beck offers a new way to look at Obama's health care proposal:

"We're the young girl saying, 'No no! Help me!' and the government is Roman Polanski. In the end I think we're all going to be cowering in France."

The Obama administration is a child rapist. He just might be on to something. Next up, Washington Times editor emeritus Wesley Pruden gets truly provocative about Obama bowing down to foreign leaders:

But Mr. Obama, unlike his predecessors, likely knows no better, and many of those around him, true children of the grungy '60s, are contemptuous of custom. Cutting America down to size is what attracts them to "hope" for "change." It's no fault of the president that he has no natural instinct or blood impulse for what the America of "the 57 states" is about. He was sired by a Kenyan father, born to a mother attracted to men of the Third World and reared by grandparents in Hawaii, a paradise far from the American mainstream.

How much more pride would our nation have today if only Obama's mother had been attracted not to the lowly dirt-people of the third world, but rather to fine American men, like, say, Wesley Pruden, pictured? Vote for the most outrageous American hero, below!

We could not help but to enter Bill O as a contender after his classic "Devil's advocate" bit last night:

Let me play Devil's advocate here: Barack Obama wants to win hearts and minds in the Middle East. Which is a good thing. And you know that, as a soldier, we can't kill all the Muslims. So we want to win as many hearts and minds of good, moderate Muslims as we can.

Not kill them all? Provocative! His competitor is Bryan Fischer, the "Director of Issues Analysis" for the American Family Association:

It is time, I suggest, to stop the practice of allowing Muslims to serve in the U.S. military...
Of course, most U.S. Muslims don't shoot up their fellow soldiers. Fine. As soon as Muslims give us a foolproof way to identify their jihadis from their moderates, we'll go back to allowing them to serve. You tell us who the ones are that we have to worry about, prove you're right, and Muslims can once again serve. Until that day comes, we simply cannot afford the risk. You invent a jihadi-detector that works every time it's used, and we'll welcome you back with open arms.
This is not Islamophobia, it is Islamo-realism.

The preposterousness of allowing Muslims to not be killed, or the Islamo-realism of banning them, just in case? Vote now!

[Pic via]

Some of your entries were good, some were bad, and some were very, very ugly. We whittled it down to ten. Vote for the one you like best and it just might win. We're still going to pick our favorite anyway—this isn't American Idol, this is the real world—but popular opinion just might sway us. The poll is at the bottom. Enjoy!

"And I'm Spent..." by Kimsama

"I don't know I think it's supposed to move" by Colander

Opposites Attract by Anonymous

Balloon Boy 2 by Anonymous

"If only they had read the contract they signed, Ivanka and Jared would have been spared the humiliation of being kicked off their own dance floor for 'sexual bending.'" by Kimsama

"Such a charming wedding tradition. Imagine, though, the poors have to do it with cake!" by Kimsama

Monster Mash by Foster Kamer*

*not actually eligible to win the cash

"It's subtle..." by Anonymous

Trump Soho by Anonymous

Bachelor Party by Anonymous

At 42% poor ol' Joe is worse off than Al Gore, a man who bored people so much, they voted for George W. Bush instead. In fact, he can't even measure up to his predecessor Dick Cheney, a man who took polls very seriously indeed.

This is either "a fascinating and important" puzzle or, you know, perfectly understandable given Barack Obama Superstar is his boss and nobody really cares about a guy whose job currently consists of campaigning for candidates who don't need it, poking gentle ha-has at the eco-nazis who vote for his party, making reassuring noises in the Midwest, playing pessimist on Afghanistan, and visiting countries his boss would like to, but can't afford to, ignore.

He's so determined to the VP of Obama's dreams, he's even trained himself to be marginally polite to Cheney! That's some hard work, folks.

Also, since no report about Obama or Biden is complete without it, let us mention that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is currently more popular than either Obama or Biden. This means she should have held both jobs.

According to TPM, Carville's Democracy Corps polling group conducted a focus group study of "conservative Republicans" and "conservative-leaning independents." And basically conservative-leaning independents are worried about the deficit and quibble with the particulars of congress' health care reform plans, while base Republicans live in a scary alternate reality where Obama has this little goatee thing, see, and health care reform is literally a secret plot to bankrupt the nation so that he can enslave us.

First and foremost, these conservative Republican voters believe Obama is deliberately and ruthlessly advancing a ‘secret agenda' to bankrupt our country and dramatically expand government control over all aspects of our daily lives. They view this effort in sweeping terms, and cast a successful Obama presidency as the destruction of the United States as it was conceived by our founders and developed over the past 200 years.

They also view themselves as a minority under attack from liberal elites, and, obviously, Glenn Beck's martyr schtick plays really well. Especially with the ladies!

"Two aspects of the discussion on Beck among conservative Republicans were particularly noteworthy. One was a common fear among the women for his personal safety, a belief that his willingness to stand up to powerful liberal interests was putting his life, as well as the lives of those working with him, in danger. Of course, his willingness to face this danger head on only adds to his legend."

Carville is also trying to get everyone to shut up about race, and he insists that race has nothing to do with their fears of a black planet.

Instead of focusing on these intense ideological divisions, the press and elites continue to look for a racial element that drives these voters' beliefs - but they need to get over it. Conducted on the heels of Joe Wilson's incendiary comments at the president's joint session address, we gave these groups of older, white Republican base voters in Georgia full opportunity to bring race into their discussion - but it did not ever become a central element, and indeed, was almost beside the point.

Right. Carville gave them "full opportunity" to make White House watermelon patch jokes, but, weirdly, in front of focus group researchers, they declined to shout racial slurs, and in fact announced that their hatred of the president had nothing to do with his Blackness!

We cannot ever know how much of a role race plays in making a bunch of white dudes scared of a black man. But race informs it. That's patently obvious, and to declare that it's a non-factor because calling attention to it doesn't "play" well politically (because America is incapable of talking about race without people screaming "DON'T CALL ME A RACIST YOU'RE THE REAL RACIST YOU RACIST") is dumb. Yes, obviously any Democratic president was going to have to deal with crackers hating him or her, but that is because any Democratic president would've represented an America of black folk, gays, and uppity ladies that these people don't recognize as legitimately American. So, there is your race card.

In conclusion: there's no "reasoning" with these people and honestly the best we could possibly hope for is that the people lying to them constantly come up with slightly less deranged and dangerous lies.

Democrats win! 25% of Democrats think Bush "intentionally allowed the 9/11 attacks to take place because he wanted the United States to go to war in the Middle East" (that is much more specific wording than previous polls so there is less "it's fair to say Bush knew" wiggle room) and 12% are not sure. But a full 42% of Republicans are positive the President was not born in the United States and 22% just cannot make up their minds about where the President, who was born in Hawaii, was born.

And self-declared "independents," once you take away the genuine libertarians and socialists and Greens and fascists who make up .01% of the electorate, remain mostly white conservatives who voted for Clinton once.

(We continue to assert that truthers—while stupid and wrong—are not as "bad" as birthers.)

The Nation has come up with a fun way to make money when you're a cash-poor lefty mag, which is to just auction off any old crap they can get their hands on. Current auction items include a set of tires (value: $450) and a copy of Fighting Bob LaFollette: The Righteous Reformer (value: $23). Next week, the staff of The Nation will sell their own blood plasma.


Jack Shafer writes a true column about what inspires such epic coverage of Ivy League murders: Love of the Ivy League on one end of the media, and hate for the Ivy League on the other end. Jack, you left out "Genuine concern for the victim by the bloodsucking media bastards."


Apparently some citizens of America are urging Good Morning America to hire energetic money-chaser Suze Orman, as a face that they want to see on their television screens shortly after waking up? I will never understand Americans.


Politics are dividing American bloviation! National Joural asked its panel of "Congressional and Political Insiders" (whatever) to tell them which columnists are the most influential on their own thinking and Thomas fucking Friedman won, for fuck's sake. I assume these are the same "Americans" urging a major network to hire Suze Orman as morning news pep-squad leader? Anyhow the most divisive columnist was Charles Krauthammer, a psycho beloved by Republicans but not much at all by Democrats, who named Bob Guccione as their Most Admired Hero.

And if this poll is any indication, Virginians have the shortest fucking memory in the country. 31% of Virginians would definitely vote for Allen again, and apparently 40% of blacks would either consider voting or definitely vote for him again, even though he is a comical rich old entitled racist asshole from a long line of same.

So you go ahead and do that, Virginia. Go ahead and vote for Senator Macaca again, while you all pretend the President was born in Atlantis or wherever.

According to Public Policy Polling, 24% of Americans think President Obama was not born in the United States. That's not counting those who are unsure (14% of Americans).

But only 7% of Americans think Obama was born in Kenya! The rest are just inventing their own personal crazy stories made up of words they've heard on the radio, or something. "10% of the country thinks that he was born in Indonesia," where the President did at least live for a time, as a child. But: 1% think he was born in the Philippines! That one defies explanation.

And, of course, "6% of poll respondents think that Hawaii is not part of the country and 4% are unsure."

(Fun fact about poll respondents who don't believe Obama was born in the US: 86% of them are white!)

Bipartisanship

29% of Americans blame GOP leaders for the failure of the parties to work together, according to Pew. 17% blame Obama, up from 7% in February. You make of that what you will, but to us it suggests that blaming the other guys for the death of bipartisanship is a winner for both sides, but not actually bothering to engage in bipartisanship is hardly a loser for Republicans.

Health Care

Oh, hey, check it out, another one of those polls that says Americans don't like a Democratic proposal but when you describe it without distortions they like it, suddenly.

Also, while just 36 percent believe Obama's efforts to reform the health system are a good idea, that number increases to 53 percent when respondents were read a paragraph describing Obama's plans.

Right. So. The next time you see any poll cited that says Americans are against health care reform, please keep in mind that they are against "mass euthanasia of the elderly and imaginary Medicare cuts," not actually "the health care reform plans of Congressional Democrats."

But, you know, once again, lying and making shit up: it works!

Utah is pretty homogeneous and well-educated, even though they believe in the magic mushroom temple underpants stone tablet stuff, but also it has hardly any black people. It is harder for conspiracies based on racial resentments to build steam when, you know, there aren't any minorities around to resent.

[Note: Results are from 1592 total votes in two polls; we started a new poll after we added Miami and New Orleans to the list. This placed Miami and New Orleans at a disadvantage, so they can claim moral victory. Although they wouldn't have won anyhow. Results rounded to nearest percentage point.]


New York: 32%
Chicago: 16%
Washington, DC: 16%
Detroit: 9%
Los Angeles: 6%
New Orleans: 6%
San Francisco: 5%
Boston: 5%
Las Vegas: 2%
Miami: 3%

New York Magazine explores this perplexing issue at length in a story this week. Theory #1: People hate her because she's a woman.

Ruth's problem seems to be a particularly female one. "It's the gender politics of the culture," says Gloria Steinem. "It's easier to blame the person with less power." And, she adds, why aren't people blaming her sons? "They would be much more likely to be in cahoots, because they were in the same professional field. And the answer is, they're men, that's why."

Theory #2: She's just a dumb lady.

According to a friend from high school, it would not have been difficult to keep Ruth in the dark. "I don't know if you fully understand the difference between you and us," says the woman in her late sixties. "When we were young, and the man came home for dinner, he was the king of the house and we catered to him … We were the type of people who, if your husband came home and said, ‘Sign this,' you wouldn't ask why. If he asked you to sign it, you would sign it."

Theory #3: Oh maybe it's this .

"He conferred with her on everything. The idea that she didn't know anything is laughable," says the longtime Madoff employee.

Such a complicated issue, the whims of the public opinion! Really, where are these alleged people who have mixed feelings about, or even feel sympathy for, Ruth Madoff? We must smoke out this rare creature. With a poll. Vote below, and the truth will be revealed. [NYM. Pic: AP]