Squeezing the Johnson

From USA TODAY:

Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson had another tough night on the campaign trail when he couldn’t come up with the name of a foreign leader during an interview Wednesday.

“Who’s your favorite foreign leader,” MSNBC’s Chris Matthews asked Johnson, who sat beside his running mate, former Massachusetts governor Bill Weld.

…snip…

“You gotta do this,” Matthews said. “Anywhere. Any continent. Canada, Mexico, Europe, over there, Asia, South America, Africa: Name a foreign leader that you respect,” Matthews said as Johnson continued to fumble for an answer.

…snip…

“I guess I’m having an Aleppo moment,” Johnson said — referring to a much-lampooned moment in an interview earlier this month, where he responded “What is Aleppo?” when asked what he would do about the Syrian city that has been decimated by civil war.

Original image

OMG! What’s next? Caliph-ornia?!

Chris Matthews:

Yesterday when we were giving you the latest news from Cairo and the White House, Beck was preaching the coming of the caliphate. That’s right, the coming of the caliphate. ‘Oh, we’ve got trouble in River City.’ The mad professor is prophesizing now that Britain, France, Spain and Portugal are all going to be grabbed up by the second coming of the Ottoman empire.

Why is Beck selling this fear? Because he  doesn’t want to deal with the problem at hand. It’s too tricky for him, as it is for most of us. So what are Beck and the troublemakers doing? They’re scaring people into a frenzy over the coming of a global caliphate. And to what effect? To fight for Mubarak? To place blame if we don’t? To encourage Mubarak to fight the people in the streets? No. I’ll bet Its to begin a long campaign of fear, something to talk about on the radio, something to scare people with.

(Video at BUSINESS INSIDER)

Original DVD cover

The Party of Stinkin’

From Joan Walsh at Salon:

Credit where it’s due: Just days after insisting there are no racists in the Tea Party movement, Tea Party Federation leader David Webb told CBS’s “Face the Nation” today that Mark Williams and his Tea Party Express had been expelled from the group. Last seen trying to start a sponsors’ boycott of MSNBC’s “Hardball” because of Chris Matthews’s tough reporting on the Tea Party, Webb was apparently appalled by Williams’s blatantly racist Letter to President Lincoln from “Colored People” signed by “Precious Ben Jealous,” asking Lincoln to repeal emancipation because “coloreds” had it better under slavery, not having to look for a job and such. Webb called the letter “offensive.”

Original DVD cover
(Yes, that is Mark Williams’s real computer.)

Where the Necks are Red and the Llamas are Nervous

From WASHINGTON WIRE at THE WALL STREET JOURNAL (June 8, 2010):

The Lexington County Republican Party has scheduled a meeting Thursday evening to discuss if, or how, to respond to state Sen. Jake Knotts’s racially derogatory remarks aimed at President Barack Obama and South Carolina gubernatorial candidate Nikki Haley.

“We already got one raghead in the White House. We don’t need a raghead in the governor’s mansion,” Knotts said on an Internet political talk show last week.

…snip…

Haley is an Indian-American, and she would be the first non-white to be elected to the state’s governor’s mansion if she wins this fall.

COLUMBIA, SC (WLTX, AP) — Lexington County Senator Jake Knotts has again apologized but refused to resign for calling the Republican gubernatorial front-runner Nikki Haley and President Obama “a raghead.”

“I am not going to resign under any circumstances,” Knotts said told his fellow senators at the State House Tuesday.

Knotts said he has been called names, including redneck, in the past. He said he’s proud to be stereotyped as a redneck, and is honored by the true meaning of redneck — someone who gets sunburned from working long hours outdoors.

“If all of us rednecks left the Republican Party, the party is going to have one hell of a void,” Knott said.

Original DVD cover
(Click on image and then click on that one for a larger version if you can stand looking at these morons.)

It’s Not a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad Enough World!

From Alex Pareene at  Salon:

Grown-up professional political pundits and journalists have decided that President Obama’s response to the oil spill has been a complete and utter failure because he has not acted mad enough. Some of them are also mad that he has not magically stopped the leak. A couple of them have specifically wished for him to act more like America’s Dad.

Original movie poster

Morning Schmoes

From RICK UNGAR at TRUE/SLANT:

Oh no he didn’t!

In a piece written for the uber-conservative World News Daily [sic it’s WorldNetDaily], Pat Buchanan, MSNBC’s resident crazy uncle, writes in opposition to the nomination of Elena Kagan to serve on the Supreme Court-

Indeed, of the last seven justices nominated by Democrats JFK, LBJ, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, one was black, [Thurgood] Marshall; one was Puerto Rican, Sonia Sotomayor. The other five were Jews: Arthur Goldberg, Abe Fortas, Ruth Bader Ginsberg, Stephen Breyer and Elena Kagan.

If Kagan is confirmed, Jews, who represent less than 2 percent of the U.S. population, will have 33 percent of the Supreme Court seats.

Is this the Democrats’ idea of diversity?

Via World News[sic] Daily

Original DVD cover

Mexicans crossing the border with mules! No, not burros, shoes!

From the NORTH COUNTY TIMES:

Rep. Brian Bilbray, R-Solana Beach, was criticized this week by civil and immigrant rights groups for saying that law enforcement professionals could spot illegal immigrants by the way they dress.

On Wednesday, Bilbray was a guest on the MSNBC TV show “Hardball” with Chris Matthews. He was asked his opinion of an Arizona bill that would require local police to question people about their immigration status if there was reason to suspect they were in the country illegally.

Original DVD cover
(The shoe is the Nike Air Max 95 – Mexican Blanket. I’m not making that up.)

Gee, Gordon’s Giddy!

From MEDIA MATTERS:

Advancing the conspiracy theory that President Obama lacks a valid birth certificate and is therefore ineligible to be president, radio host G. Gordon Liddy falsely claimed during the July 23 edition of MSNBC’s Hardball that there is “a deposition, which is a sworn statement, from the stepgrandmother, who says, ‘I was present and saw [Obama] born in Mombasa, Kenya.’ ” In fact, while the conservative news website WorldNetDaily claims to be “in possession” of affidavits from Anabaptist minister Ron McRae and Rev. Kweli Shuhubia, two individuals who purportedly took part in a telephone interview with the president’s stepgrandmother, McRae’s and Shuhubia’s accounts have been discredited, and even WorldNetDaily does not claim to have a “sworn statement” from the stepgrandmother herself.

Original DVD cover

(That’s Lou Dobbs in the upper right corner, if you were wondering.)