Ten Totally Weird Days On The Far Right

I disappear for a couple weeks and look what I find upon returning: Ten days that were weird even for increasingly bizarre far right politicians, hangers-on and just plain wacko’s. Everywhere I looked, another freak was freaking out.

Senate Republicans confirmed they have an odd, almost sexual, obsession with “wise Latina women” that borders on a fetish. During her confirmation hearings, Jeff Sessions used the phrase repeatedly as he leered at Sonia Sotomayor so peculiarly that I suspected he was picturing her in stockings, a bustier and maybe Sarah Palin pumps. Tom Coburn’s tasteless – and bad – imitation of Ricky Ricardo during the hearing came off sounding like a third rate racist comic performing at a roadside strip club in the rural south.

In a related move, Pat Buchanan was shouting himself hoarse claiming only white men can jump. Because they built the continent by importing black slaves, killing red Indians and abusing Chinese workers, Buchanan insists that aggrieved yet clearly superior white males deserve special breaks when it comes to Supreme Court nominations. Fortunately, Rachel Maddow – who had him on her show – fact checked the old coot.

In the meantime, Palin herself was opposing cap-and-trade in an error-filled Washington Post Op-Ed piece, forgetting she gave it her full-throated support during the campaign, another sign that her debilitating Bridge To Nowhere syndrome is getting worse.

It Keeps Going

The tangled romantic webs of John Ensign and Mark Sanford became even more tangled, taking on a Keystone Cop feel except Les Affaire d’ Coeur of the two family value philanderers were overshadowed by the discovery of their common association with a scary, fringe religious cult called The Family, perhaps named in tribute to Don Corleone – and what appears to be questionable hush money payments made by Ensign’s parents to his mistress, her hubby and two of their three kids, with some more allegedly coming out of a Republican campaign fund.

And Sanford’s verbal diarrhoea continued, claiming his affair with the Argentine firecracker will make his marriage stronger. Note to married men caught cheating by their spouse: Don’t ever say this in real life; it will land you in a hospital with multiple injuries.

To cap things off, on Monday we learned that Irving Moskowitz, an ultra-conservative octogenarian, funnels profits from a bingo hall he owns in a largely Hispanic, desperately poor Los Angeles district with the improbable name of Hawaiian Gardens to fund illegal Israeli West Bank settlements on land stolen from Palestinians, possibly both a tax dodge and a felony because the money flows through Moskowitz’s “charitable trust.”

The only thing to make the past fortnight any stranger would be if Britney Spears converted to Judaism. Oh, wait: She did.

Ordinary Wacko’s

Common, everyday wing nuts managed to get in on the fun, too.

I flipped on my television to see a woman at a county GOP meeting holding up her birth certificate in a plastic bag like crime scene evidence to support her contention that Barack Obama is not a natural born citizen. Demanding “I want my country back,” the goofy birther was silenced only when the chair agreed to lead the meeting in the Pledge of Allegiance as people around her looked at each other and smirked in disbelief. Apparently, there are still a few Republicans rooted in reality.

Meanwhile, a Google Alert popped up in my e-mail.

In it, I discovered that a website called Conservatives4Palin is still trashing me for news articles I investigated and published 10 months ago. Somehow, a writer boosting Palin’s Op-Ed cap-and-trade piece managed to tie it to reporting I did in September, calling me a few unflattering names in the process.

Forgetting that rabid dogs roaming Palinistaville have no time for simple facts when they get in the way, innocently I wrote a reply comment pointing out the discrepancy between what Palin wrote in the Post and what she said as McCain’s running mate along with some of the fact errors. I also explained – again – how I did my reporting for the earlier pieces on Palin.

Big mistake.

In a succession of posts, I was called a liar – in all caps, naturally – anti-American, a Communist, a Fascist, a liar again, a “one worlder” whatever that means, a "9/11 truther" and a supporter of the UN.

Not surprisingly, no one who wrote in reply to my comment disputed any of my facts. Equally not surprising was that by the next morning the site administrator removed my comments and, I discovered to my delight, I am banned forever from commenting at the site. Some time ago, RedState.com also banned me and I wear the banning like war medals.

This truly must be a glorious time to be a conservative in America!