Before a few months ago, I’d seen maybe one or two Republican bumper-stickers in my entire five years in Rochester. I always figured that was mostly because I work at a university and live in the sort of Chelsea/Castro part of a heavily Democratic city. And obviously that has something to do with it.
In the past few months, though, I’ve seen all kinds of winger bumperstickers, including one homemade one saying “Saracuda — 2008 ** 2012 ** 2016”. I’ve also seen a lot fewer Democratic bumper stickers than before.
Based on these limited observations and on this epic winger freak-out at a Mike Castle townhall, I am concluding that something is going on in the wingoverse. I don’t know if it’s that they’ve gotten more rabid now that they’re out of power or if they just feel freer to express their crazy ideas now that they’re out of power. There’s no question that having no power and thus no responsibility gives you a sense that you can say any loony thing you want with no repercussions. But at the same time, feeling that you’re powerless can increase your actual crazy quotient.
So which is it?
And if Democrats control Washington for the next 8 plus years, will my left-fringe friends ease up on their conspiracy theories (Bush caused 9/11, the Bush family is buying up land in Paraguay to prepare for the coming water shortage, etc.)?
MikeJ
Are your friends lihops or mihops? Both factions crazy as shithouse rats, but I love the deep schisms in the insane-American population.
jake 4 that 1
Yeah, for the first time in nearly ten years the person in the White House isn’t as petty, obnoxious and selfish as they are and it drives them nuts. It’s hard out there for a vicarious pimp.
IndieTarheel
Not a matter of feeling free – more a matter of feeling desperate. They’ve been fed a steady diet of demonization, figuratively AND literally, of anyone who doesn’t look, act, or think like they do. They mistook volume for numbers, and now are being forced to face that fact.
MH
If I don’t subscribe to those conspiracy theories (and I don’t), it’s not because I think these things are below the Bush family.
sparky
hmmm…the easy answer is that power was the glue that held the disparate factions together in the GOP and that bond has been dissolved, but i think it’s a bit more. last year’s GOP campaign was a kind of experiment–the fringe was made the mainstream for campaign purposes, and now that the crap is out of the tube it doesn’t wanna go back in. also, in any downturn the fringe always assumes a more prominent place in discourse than it would otherwise. there was plenty of wacky crap in the 1970s and 1930s.
Hammy
UR Class of ’90 here.
DougJ
Are your friends lihops or mihops?
What do those stand for?
demkat620
The only thing worse than them in power is them out of power.
It’s going to get alot worse. And if they were able to get control of congress in ’10, it will make ’94-’98 look like a picnic.
bvac
Bush did 9/11 is as much a right-fringe thing as it is left-fringe, fwiw
MikeJ
Let it happen on purpose or Made it happen on purpose. The Lihops believe that they are the voice of sanity and moderation in the conspiracy community.
Calouste
@IndieTarheel:
“They’ve been fed a steady diet of demonization, figuratively AND literally”
So which supermarkets stock demonization, and what does it taste like? I can’t say I have ever seen it on the shelves.
Lev
I think it’s a real fear of losing their influence and importance in American life. They’re despairing because they think that they’re being passed by, and if only they can get the word out to the Silent Majority that Obama is evil and that we can go back to the good old days of Reagan, if only they can find the right message, then they’ll be back in the driver’s seat.
DougJ
Bush did 9/11 is as much a right-fringe thing as it is left-fringe, fwiw
So is the craziness about the swine flu vaccine.
flounder
@ bvac
I agree. I have heard most of the 9/11 truther stuff from Ron Paulites.
I have seen an enormous uptick in the Birther stuff in the comments at the local paper. These people are going f-ing crazy, I can’t decide if it is going to be more dangerous or hilarious?
Molly
Keep in mind, we also have an issue where politics is wrapped up in Old Time Religion, and that religion requires its adherents to testify to their beliefs. NOT speaking out would be considered Not Being a Good Christian.
I think this has a lot more to do with it than people realize, this raising up of right-wing consciousness is rooted in the conservative churches, is part of the sermons, part of church activities, part of “belonging” in those churches. Not all, of course, but a hell of a lot. Pardon the snark, but it truly is a crusade.
DougJ
Let it happen on purpose or Made it happen on purpose.
Made it happen on purpose.
I don’t thinking they let it happen on purpose is all that crazy. The warnings were ignored. (I’m not saying I buy the lihop line, but there is evidence for it of some kind.)
Zifnab
I think it’s a matter of perspective. Six years ago, there was some serious discussion about whether or not we should start dropping nukes in the Middle East. David Brooks and Dean Broder were having Serious People(tm) conversations about what kind of camps to round up the illegal Mexicans into. The CBS Evening News was under fire by the NYT and the WaPo for siding with the terrorists.
Now we’re having discussions about on whom to raise taxes in order to pay for socialized medicine and how to limit carbon emissions most effectively. It’s a completely new climate of debate.
So when Glen Beck gets on the radio and starts hacking up a hairball over Obama’s birth certificate, it’s discordant with the actual mood of the country. And when Limbaugh starts talking about making the Democratic Party fail by any means necessary, large majorities of the population respond with, “But I like the Democrats” rather than “Ha! Gitterdone!”
HumboldtBlue
I have a lot of lefty freinds, and I have never heard any of them subscribe to the bullshit you outlined above. Sounds more like you supposed lefty friends are secret Ron Paul supporters or else inveterate readers of Reason.
A lefty doesn’t need made-up bullshit stories about what Bush and Co. did to this country, one just need look at a crumbling economy, two immoral and unnecessary wars and the ridiculous profits being made by the same ponzi scheme scammers who led the rush to this crumbling economy.
There is nothing new in the wingnut world, they listen to shitheads like Limbaugh, Beck and the ever-odious Levin each and every day and the shit they hear they believe. Hence you get fucknuts like the woman in the video, irrepressibly ignorant, angry there’s a nigger in the White House and that whatever dipshit political and social philosophy she subscribes to has been heartily repudiated by the voting public.
Jay B.
They’ve gone galt! *
*Only in my fevered prayers. And they didn’t take enough Senators with them.
scarshapedstar
Fixed. Were you thinking of the villain from Quantum of Solace?
General Winfield Stuck
Yes, and throw in the likelyhood that job growth will continue to go south, and the frothing nutters will be just about insufferable, not that they aren’t already.
Obama made a rare mistake with rosy predictions on the economy, at least on the jobs front that voters care most about. It really is much worse than he thought, or said he thought, and the rot is structural I fear. This means a sputtering recovery for maybe years to come and the wailing wingnuts will get to a level of nasty that will be truly ugly.
Brendan
The wingnuts can never accept a Democratic president as a legitimate office holder. Remember, the House Republicans called Clinton “your president” because he never had a popular vote majority. These days, they can’t pin a 10 million vote margin on ACORN, but if it had been closer, a stolen election would probably be the dominant charge/outrage/nuttiness.
Watching Campbell on Hardball today reminded me of a passage in one of Franken’s books about the Washington tone in the 1990’s. The Republicans spent years going apeshit on Clinton, and then in 2000, Bush traipsed around pledging a calmer, more civil atmosphere. These days, the wingnuts howl and wail and LET’S PLEDGE ALLEGIANCE RIGHT NOW!! about the birth certificate, so dudes like Campbell come out and say “I raise this issue to make the questions go away…oh why won’t these questions go away?”
Also, as a fellow Rochesterian, I was always puzzled by how Kerry stickers continued to outnumber Obama (and Hillary!) stickers well through the ’08 voting. By a lot. I haven’t seen so many Palin fans on the road. Maybe you’ve been making too many trips to Greece?
anonevent
No. During the entire last 8 years, and the preceding 20+ years, one of the right wing themes has been the oppression of Christians (pointing out that churches are being built faster than businesses doesn’t seem to phase them). I suspect the Democrats being in power will make these people worse because, like the wingers, they won’t understand why their policies aren’t becoming law. Conspiracy theories are about explaining why things don’t happen the way you want, and the less in control you feel you are, the bigger they get.
DougJ
I have a lot of lefty freinds, and I have never heard any of them subscribe to the bullshit you outlined above. Sounds more like you supposed lefty friends are secret Ron Paul supporters or else inveterate readers of Reason.
Nope, they’re real lefties. Work for Democratic candidates, support all the good lefty stuff I do (clean money clean elections, universal health care). They’re not even that far to the left of me on actual issues. But they have some crazy ideas.
Anne Laurie
Welp, as long as there’s a single scion of the Bush Crime Syndicate left alive, I’m going to stay suspicious… that the Bush Adminstration’s global privateering encouraged Osama bin Laden’s machinations, while its criminal neglect of good police work allowed the terrorists to commit a very-profitable-for-the-Bush-Administration mass murder on American soil. And that the Bush family has a compound in a no-extradiction foreign nation, within easy reach of its bankrolling cults’ similar safe havens, because that’s what dedicated crime syndicates do. And, for that matter, that the Bush I “landslide victory” was Lee Atwaters’ first successful test of nationwide targeted electronic vote-rigging… a personal theory that, 20 years ago, was dismissed by my computer-savvy friends because “the technology isn’t available, and besides, no real Americans would commit that kind of treason”.
Not as much fun as monkey kidneys and presciently forged birth certificates, of course.
DarrenG
Nutty conspiracy theories are hardly new to, or limited to, the wingnut realm; Clinton Death Lists and all that.
The part I find more interesting is how much traction the lunatic fringe has among GOP party leaders right now. Sure, Limbaugh and the WSJ editorial page fanned the flames during the Clinton era, but now you’ve got high-profile Congresscritters signing on to even the most far-out conspiracies with no hint of shame or irony.
Alan
Chasing rabbits is easier than engaging the mind to something constructive.
Tsulagi
In their determined quest for the Holy Peak Wingnut Grail, both.
Ed Marshall
I like when the mihop people argue over whether it was a plane or missile that hit the pentagon. Your brighter mihop person will wonder where the plane and the people went that took off that morning and the missile person will say “that’s the question isn’t it!”
Violet
@DarrenG:
Agreed. It seems to support the theory that the only people remaining in the GOP are the far right fringe wackos. Sane people don’t do that kind of thing.
Ed Marshall
I also remember in the climate immediately after 9/11 it felt safer to speculate that the Bush administration attacked America than to suggest that American foreign policy had something wrong with it that someone might find worthy of killing us over.
JenJen
There is a slight difference, though… 9/11 Truther Moron Asshole Whackjobs were more or less shunned by the Left, and rightly so, if you ask me. A handful of them would show up at the big Iraq War protests I attended in DC, and the Right would use their tiny appearance to discredit the entire anti-war movement.
However, Obama Birthers are front-and-center, loud-and-proud for the Right, especially today (Rick Sanchez and Chris Matthews covered heavily). And with legislation now introduced, and Rush Limbaugh joining the chorus, Birther Nation will only grow, don’t you think?
WereBear
When the aim is lost, the effort is intensified.
They had it all! And yet, and yet… nothing worked out the way they had been promised.
They simply cannot believe it’s NOT a conspiracy.
JMG
The opposition always has the most bumper stickers. BTW, people who keep the losing candidate’s bumper sticker on their cars for years after an election are the most annoying people in politics, even if I voted for the same person.
Ed Marshall
9/11 Truther Moron Asshole Whackjobs were more or less shunned by the Left, and rightly so, if you ask me.
They were shunned by the intellectual, punditry type left across the board but I was a denizen of Democratic Underground back then and I remember a timeframe where it was mihop or lihop or you were a crypto-freeper (the lihop people were strongly suspected of being crypto-freepers by the mihop crowd).
lamh31
If some enterprising Repub politician was smart, they could use the whole birther movement as their “sista soulja” moment. It may get the base pissed at them, but it would definitely get moderates, conservaDems, and independents looking at them in a better light.
Marc Ambinder over at the Atlantic has a great write-up about the Mike Castle vid and the whole birther movement.
Should The GOP Take The Birther Threat Seriously? Rush Does….
Jim
Edwin
@Molly: Agreed. As I’ve said before, conservatism has become a religion in its own right. For those who believe in the literal truth of Noah’s ark, it’s a small jump to believe that Obama is a Kenyan antichrist.
DougJ
9/11 Truther Moron Asshole Whackjobs were more or less shunned by the Left, and rightly so, if you ask me.
I agree. I’m just saying I have left friends who believe crazy things like that. I wish I didn’t, but I do.
Montysano
I’m with Janeane Garofalo: it’s racism. No one could have predicted that we’re still a deeply racist nation, but the election of Supreme Kommander Hussein Obama X has brought it back to the surface. How else to explain it? Obama is a genial, intelligent, centrist, far too friendly to the corporatocracy for my taste, but the right sees him as this radical thug. To riff on Lloyd Bentsen, “I’ve known radicals, and you, sir, are no radical”.
I used to hang around some over at Karl Denninger’s Market Ticker forum, where at one time you could get some decent libertarian-based discussion. It’s degenerated into dark mutterings and outright raving, as if history began anew on 1/20/2009.
JenJen
@Ed Marshall: Hey… I was one of the original DUers and one of the first mods. :-)
And you’re absolutely right about that, but DU was never a mainstream kind of place for Democratic Party thought. It started on Inauguration Day, 2001 out of utter frustration, and just grew exponentially from there. At one time, in those heady post-Bush Inaugural days, it was the only place on the interwebs I could go and feel like I wasn’t crazy. And although I haven’t been back in a long, long time, didn’t DU break off the 9/11-MIHOP-LIHOP stuff into its own category, kind of buried, so you would really have to go looking for it?
I guess what I’m trying to say is that the craziest stuff you’d read on DU was never echoed by Democratic politicians. But some of the craziest stuff on Free Republic now seems to be represented and echoed by Republicans, up to and including Limbaugh and that nutbar Congressman on Hardball today who is introducing Birther Legislation.
Keith G
A defeated zealous faction shorn of its leadership is likely to become “crazy as shithouse rats” (thanks, Mike). See Iraq, among others. Without focus, the regulars kick back, tend their gardens and wait for developments. This is particularly true if they feel let down.
This means that the loudest voices in the room take over and shout their way to chaotic lunacy.
BombIranForChrist
They were this insane with Clinton, but the Contract on America elections helped temper the insanity.
Now they are dead-enders, and they know it, and they are letting it all hang out. I am surprised there haven’t been more shootings, frankly. I bet we will have 3+ more incidents this year at least.
MattF
I think the Winger Singularity is overdetermined. It probably (I’m hypothesizing here)– it probably looks to the genuine bat-shit crazy right like their nightmares are coming true. The Black Muslim Kenyan who can’t throw a baseball is going to take their guns away, give health insurance to illegal immigrants and make their kids marry teh gay. Or something.
JenJen
For those who missed it:
Birther Congressman on Hardball – Video:
http://thepoliticalcarnival.blogspot.com/2009/07/video-hardball-birthers-bring-down.html
jenniebee
OK, I need a reality check, how off-the-rails crazy is it to believe that the Bushies and neo-cons were contemplating staying in power by declaring a state of emergency. Because I do still believe that if the chain of command was more friendly and Obama wasn’t popular enough to convince them that public order couldn’t be maintained, they might have given it a try.
So on a scale of 1 to 10, how nutty is that?
gnomedad
@WereBear:
Exactly.
“But, but … those unchecked executive powers were for us!”
ironranger
Recently seen bumper sticker on a tourist’s big suburban with all the bells & whistles, “I’ll keep my guns, freedom & wallet. You can keep the change”.
El Cid
As a consistent reader of actually leftist writers and publications and blogs, I am quite used to them being consistently mischaracterized. So, nothing new here. Typically the pattern is for the actual leftist argument to be dismissed until a decade or so later, when the previously dismissed leftist perspectives become fairly common wisdom among more mainstream liberals.
freelancer
@JenJen:
Herein lies a huge disparity between right and left pundits or “entertainers”. Limbaugh has yet to disavow a caller that comes at him with the crazy from his right.
To paraphrase Bill Hicks, “Do you realize there are actually people in the world that think that
[George HW] BushRush Limbaugh wasn’t conservative enough? I think this is the conservative party that’s been hanging out in Argentina since about 1945.”Bill Maher had wackaloon truthers try to shout him down on his show, and promptly had them STFU and removed.
Only once without Rifftrax. Then every time after with Rifftrax.
http://www.rifftrax.com/displaythickbox?file=The_Room_sample.flv&width=500&height=400
Tax Analyst
“So on a scale of 1 to 10, how nutty is that?”
No more than a 5 or 6, I’d say.
Mike in NC
That might explain the van I saw parked at the post office yesterday, owned by a local electrician. It was plastered with wingnut bumper stickers, including “Osama = Obama” etc. I didn’t stick around to ask the asshole how business was doing.
Allan
Missy wants her country back.
OK, Missy, here’s the bad news.
If you want your country back, you’re going to have to do more than put your birth certificate in a baggy and shriek at your congressman.
You’re going to have to find candidates you can support, and make phone calls and knock doors and raise money and organize like-minded people.
Then you’re going to have to deliver a majority of registered voters to the polls and win an election.
That’s how we did it.
Good luck, and oh by the way, you’re already too late to influence the 2010 elections. See you in 2012.
The next-to-last samurai
Hello Jenniebee, I doubt very much that Cheney ever considered a coup. Why would he want to bother when most citizens don’t mind living in a corporatocracy?
mcd
They’re still playing the gilted lover, knowing that all it will take is just one more conversation, one more explanation. If only the country hadn’t blocked their telephone number.
JenJen
@freelancer:
I remember that, because I jumped off the couch and cheered. The other day while on a long drive, I was listening to Ed Schultz when a Truther called in, and Ed did everything but scream “GET OFF MY PHONE” in Glenn Beck-esque fashion.
As I think DougJ wrote above, LIHOP isn’t 100% crazy. But as soon as those loons start calling us idiots because we actually believe a plane did crash into the Pentagon, or because we laugh at their Building 7 theories, I just want to break things.
freelancer
LIHOP isn’t 100% crazy, but it is close.
I regularly compared the Bush Administration akin to having Tony Soprano in the White House.
However, I think it was Hubris in that they thought they knew and were so much better than the Clinton intelligensia, that they could ignore the warnings. They secretly knew what the real threats were, and were focused on things like Star Wars and Iraq in the first months. After September, they thought to themselves, “well, might as well make the best of it”, and exploited the hell out of the disaster. Shock Doctrine disaster capitalism meets PNAC’s neocon nation building agenda.
Cynical, morally repugnant, and completely self-serving, but not maliciously super-villainous
lotus
… conspiracy theories (Bush caused 9/11, the Bush family is buying up land in Paraguay to prepare for the coming water shortage …
Well, Doug J, there’s one, then there’s the other. The Bush-caused-9/11 woofing is way too outlandish to credit (suddenly Dubya achieves competence? C’mon). But the hogging-the-Paraquayan-aquifer story adds up somewhat more solidly — especially given Bush family retainer Dan Quayle’s connection to the water industry.
That one has real possibility, it seems to me. Something to watch for, anyhoo.
steve s
I actually just came over here to discuss that after seeing it on Think Progress. The retards the GOP has catered to lo these 40 years are really trying to flex their power, is my understanding of things.
kommrade reproductive vigor
@jenniebee: No offense but these theories essentially posit that BushCon would have done it, but they were just too nice and/or chicken.
No.
Seebach
No offense but these theories essentially posit that BushCon would have done it, but they were just too nice and/or chicken.
Well, they’ve killed more Americans via Iraq than Osama did, so I’d say they’re just callous enough to do so. There’s just no proof or reason to believe they did.
srv
@Ed Marshall:
Mihops now say both. The latest rage is that the C-130 that was flying over DC actually shot a missile to soften up the target for Flight 77.
Buffalopundit
Doug, 60 miles west along the blessed NYS Thruway, our local Rush Limbaugh clone took it a step further last week and went full Glenn Beck wingnut birther on us.
The topic of his show last Thursday was, “are all liberals psychopathic asshats”, and went on to say all Democrats were insane psychopathic asshats, that a civil war would be great, and an armed military coup d’etat is in order, and he wondered aloud whether – if that happened – the military would side with the “liberals” or the “people”.
I wish I was making up even a single word of this.
kommrade reproductive vigor
I like when the mihop people argue over whether it was a plane or missile that hit the pentagon.
kommrade reproductive vigor
I like when they show what’s probably the first troofer video ever of the “missile hole” in the Pentagon.
And the wall is covered in graffiti.
They can usually respond to the fact that people who were in the building say it was a plane (they’re all part of the plot, natch). They get a bit shaky when you ask about the ten zillion first responders (bribes, threats?) and the people driving along 395 at the time of the attack (Uh…Well if you can’t handle the troof, fine!)
There’s one fairly active band of troofers in this area and for some reason they’re obsessed with the NYC attack and rarely mention the Pgon. Which tells you they’re not that crazy.
gbear
I agree with Montysanto @ 40. It’s absolutely positively caused by the fact that an intelligent and popular black man is in the white house.
No doubt about it.
They cannot deal with it. It makes them hate so irrationally that they deny Obama’s birth, and they are only going to become more dangerous.
gbear
@ironranger:
Did you treat his windshield to a complimentary rock? I think I would have.
Molly
@ironranger: “Recently seen bumper sticker on a tourist’s big suburban with all the bells & whistles, “I’ll keep my guns, freedom & wallet. You can keep the change”.
That one’s getting popular around here too. Seems to be the big-ass pickups with gun racks that like that riff on change. Ah, so witty, they are.
It truly disturbs me that these people are armed.
3D
Does anyone really say ‘Bush caused 9/11′?
There is a pretty good case to be made that he aggravated the conditions that caused it (or the administration he was nominatively in charge of and responsible for). I don’t think anyone is making the case that he ’caused’ it.
Even most of the people who believe that the US government planned the attacks, don’t usually include Bush as being in the loop as anything more than an idiot boy puppet who would be busy doing photo ops while the evil plans were carried out.
Nellcote
The birther movement is an extension/iteration of “clinging to their guns and religion”.
Nellcote
@DougJ:
>I don’t thinking they let it happen on purpose is all that crazy.
Well, Ralph Peters called for the hostage soldier to be killed and Michael Sherer(?) called for the Taliban to attack us again. So while I don’t believe that particular conspiracy, it seems a case could be made.
ruemara
@jenniebee:
Jenniebee, you’re not too crazy, because I can see that happening. Or, thank deity, could’ve seen that happening.
DougJ
Doug, 60 miles west along the blessed NYS Thruway, our local Rush Limbaugh clone took it a step further last week and went full Glenn Beck wingnut birther on us.
Any idea if Nojay and Lonsberry have talked about it?
mai naem
They don’t like being out of power. And they are pretty much totally out of power, even worse for them, it’s after having all the power. At least the Dems lost control slowly.
Nellcote
@lamh31:
>(“Hitler had the “Untermenschen,” Pol Pot had the “Intelligentsia,” and now Obama has the “Birther.”)…
WTF???
Wile E. Quixote
@gbear
A much better way to deal with people like this is with a valve stem puller. You want to make sure that you pull the valve stems out of two of their tires so that they can’t just put the spare on and drive away.
dww44
I still see W stickers around, mostly on SUV’s which typically also sport a private school sticker in this small Southern City. But as proof of how extreme I think the right is becoming: on a trip to the nearby Kroger I spotted a white minivan a (new to me) bumper sticker that proclaimed: “Proud Descendent of a Civil War Veteran”. The only good thing was it didn’t substitute “War Between the States” for Civil War but that was likely because the owner didn’t know enough history to know that was the label that Southerners preferred back in the day. I believe it it is another manifestation of states rights, tea parties, and secession and agree with many here that Republicans simply feel they have a birthright to govern and cannot handle losing. Deep down they are not democratic.
And before any get off on how racist we Southerners are, just go take a gander at the comments at Boston.com on the Henry Louis Gates affair. Racism isn’t restricted to any region and most of the most extreme seem to be attracted to newspaper websites where they just love to hijack the comments sections on matters akin to L’affaire Gates.
Patrick
“Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to loose”
Kristofferson
Maus
“will my left-fringe friends ease up on their conspiracy theories (Bush caused 9/11” I don’t hear any of those from left-wingers, it’s all the Alex Jones / Glenn Beck / Lou Dobbs Amero NWO Bircher assholes. Truthers are the Ruby Ridge crowd, there’s really little difference between them and the birthers. There is a lot of cross-pollination.
Buffalopundit
@DougJ: I haven’t checked Lonsberry, but I’m unfamiliar with Nojay. I’ll have to look that one up.
JoeC
Hey DougJ,
I enjoy this site a lot. Where at U of R (I’m assuming)? I’ve worked here off and on for 15 years…
ironranger
Re: the “You can keep the change” tourist.
I didn’t see this myself. A local told me about it. The local said the older white guy was parked & sitting behind the wheel so he stopped by him, gave him an emphatic one finger salute & drove away. Maybe the tourist is still trying to figure what it out. I’m picturing a retired well off white guy who probably also uses his social security & medicare.
Pretty clueless with all the unemployment, etc, to think that is a clever, funny bumper sticker.
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
I followed the link to the Mike Castle freakout, and I came across this gem:
Audience member: “Do you have any idea what that cap and trade tax thing, bill that you passed is going to do to the Suffolk County poultry industry? That’s how chicken houses are heated, with propane. It outputs CO2. I mean, I’m outputting CO2 right now as I speak. Trees need CO2 to make oxygen! You can’t tax that!”
There IS no Suffolk county in Delaware. There are 3 counties- New Castle, Kent, and Sussex, where Georgetown is. The only Suffolk County I’m aware of is in New York, which is a pretty far drive from Georgetown, Delaware.
Either the audience member actually said Sussex, and was misheard; or this is someone who doesn’t know Delaware at all. I can’t watch the Youtube video, I’m at work. Is this question on there?
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
I mean, Sussex County is about as redneck as they come, and most of it resembles rural Georgia more than it resembles northern Delaware. So this guy could be from Sussex County. But if so, he would’ve said Sussex County. Is that a transcription error, or what?
mclaren
Unfortunately for people who dislike conspiracy theories (and there’s a lot to dislike), the last eight years has consisted mainly of a series of giant conspiracies to commit massive crimes on a global scale. And the conspiracies were mostly successful. Mostly.
For example, we witnessed a huge conspiracy to lie America into a baseless war of aggression against Iraq. That conspiracy succeeded. In fact, we’re still there.
Then we got to observe a gigantic conspiracy to torture and murder prisoners (most of ’em innocent of any crime, other than being in the wrong place at the wrong time, like the cab driver Dilawar) who’d been kidnapped without charges and without a trial. That conspiracy also succeeded.
We had a nefarious conspiracy inside the White House to gut the fourth amendment and throw out the rule of law and wiretape basically everybody in America with the help of the NSA. That conspiracy also succeeded. It’s still going on, by the way, in flagrant violation of the constitution.
Then we had a monstrous conspiracy to obstruct justice and destroy evidence to cover a series of high crimes and misdemeanors including firing every U.S. attorney who refused to prosecute democrats on baseless political charges, revealing the identity of a CIA agent married to a guy who embarrassed the White House, personal White House involvement with planning and aiding and abetting and ordering torture and murder, a conspiracy to kidnap peaceful demonstrators who haul them away on terrorism charges for planning (planning, mind you! Planning!) to hold non-violent demonstration at the Republican National Convention in November 2008, and then of course Dick Cheney’s private murder squad running around the world killing people. We don’t know all the details of that one yet. Let’s just hope the people who got assassinated weren’t American citizens living in America. All successful conspiracies, incidentally. Every one of those conspiracies succeeded. They accomplished exactly what they set out to do.
Along the way, we also got treated to a whole host of lesser conspiracies involving paying an ex-gay hooker to plant softball questions at White House news conferences in order to make the criminals in the White House look good, and a gigantic bribery and corruption conspiracy centered on K street and masterminded by Jack Abramoff. Those nefarious plots only involved stealing money and whitewashing crimes with media propaganda, not outright mass murder or torture or the really big evil Ernst Stavro Blofeld stuff, like the other conspiracies.
Point is, there’ve been a whole lotta conspiracies over the last 8 years. All of ’em criminal. Most of ’em succeeded.
Not all. We dodged the bullet when they conspiracy to privatize social security fell apart.
But people who want to snigger and giggle at the mention of the words “conspiracy theory” are having a tough time, given the incredible success of most of the criminal conspiracies that took place in the White House over the last 8 years.
IndieTarheel
@Allan:
I dunno, if this gets more play, she may yet influence the 2010 elections, in an advance to the rear kinda way.
Brendan M
@Brendan:
I’m not so sure it’s only in Greece. I’m a former Chili resident, who just made his first return visit in 10 years.
I saw all sorts of this crap in Chili. But then again, in Chili it seemed like everyone ran on the same platform, and switched parties to get elected.
Sean
“Chelsea/Castro” ?
Its okay… you don’t have to talk in code. No one will think you’re gay just because you live in a gay neighborhood… at least, no one north of the Mason-Dixon line.
-S
Maus
“Unfortunately for people who dislike conspiracy theories (and there’s a lot to dislike), the last eight years has consisted mainly of a series of giant conspiracies to commit massive crimes on a global scale. And the conspiracies were mostly successful. Mostly. … But people who want to snigger and giggle at the mention of the words “conspiracy theory” are having a tough time, given the incredible success of most of the criminal conspiracies that took place in the White House over the last 8 years.” That’s why the Alex Jones crowd is so hated, because they can actually do some good by throwing light and concern about how we’re being fucked over, and yet they’re focusing on the black helicopters that may or may not be circling overhead to drag them to the FEMA deathcamps.