FAR-RIGHT LUNACY

You know, it never fails. Just when you think ignorant political ideologues have finally started to see the light, along comes this week's batch of idiots: Presidential candidate John McCain, Oklahoma City 2nd District County Commissioner Brent Rinehart, and U.S. Representative Michele Bachmann (R-MN, 6th District). WHAT PLANET DO THESE PEOPLE COME FROM, AND HOW IS IT THEY COME TO INFLUENCE PUBLIC POLICY HERE?

Take John McCain. All week long he's been behaving like a spoiled little crybaby brat, competing with a sibling (Obama) for mommy's (the media's) attention. He has been trying his best to steal the focus away from Obama's very successful Middle East and European trip. He has lambasted Obama at every cheap opportunity and has confused or deliberately misstated the facts regarding the military surge in Iraq to make himself appear more knowledgeable and experienced in foreign affairs than Obama. He has had to backtrack to cover up numerous mistakess. Criticizing Obama for not supporting the surge, he first claimed the surge caused the Iraqi Sunni "awakening" in al Anbar province whereby they began to turn on alQaeda. When it was pointed out to him that the surge occurred 2 months AFTER the Sunni awakening, he spun a yarn about how Gen. McFarlane had told him about a "surge strategy" where we would first make overtures to Sunni sheiks and then phase two would involve an increase in our troops to root out alQaeda and protect the Sunni sheiks from terrorist reprisals. Of course, this was pure cover-your-ass spin, because the military buildup took place almost exclusively in BAGHDAD, NOT al Anbar, and, at the height of the military surge, a very prominent Sunni sheik was assassinated anyway. Uh huh, John. Right. YOU'RE on top of all the facts. YOU'RE the foreign policy and military expert! YOUR brains and "experience" are what we need to win the war on terror. NOT! McCain is weak on the region's social and political history. He confuses Sunni, Shia, alQaeda, and Iranians. Four times recently he has made reference to "Czechoslovakia", a country which went out of existence 15 years ago! McCain is just another paranoid, militaristic, desperate right-wing wack job who is TOO CONFUSED TO BE PRESIDENT! And then he had the balls to say "I would rather win a war and lose an election", inferring that his opponent would choose the opposite course. Sorry, McCain: A guy as rash and power-hungry as you doesn't DESERVE to be President! The more immature crybaby behavior I see in you, the more you look like a bitter, angry, and unstable old man. That's the LAST thing we need in the White House!

Next, there's good ol' upstanding, professed Christian, southern Baptist Oklahoman Brent Rinehart. Just Google this guy and read up on him. He's pretty unbeluevable. Rinehart has a vendetta against homosexuals and political and legal opponents. Like most of his extreme persuasion, he is ill-informed, ignorant, vindictive, and just doesn't care, because HE is always right. There's no arguing with these people. They're nuts. Now running for re-election, Rinehart has written, drawn, published, and is distributing a 16 page COMIC BOOK slamming homosexuals that he is using for his campaign literature! In it, he makes reference to gays being pedophiles, even though there is no basis in fact for this claim. Amusingly, he even misspells the word two different ways: "pedifile" and "pedaphile." I guess spelling, like fact, is a purely subjective or relative matter to Rinehart, as his book contains other falsities as well. Currently under indictment with trial set for September on campaign finance and ethics violations chargws, Rinehart in his comic accuses the man who has brought charges against him of being "a pedifile's (sic) dream come true." The book also depicts a gay in a toga holding a sign reading "I want to be a Boy Scout leader" and another whose sign reads "we're here, we're queer, get used to it." He even features Satan with pitchfork in hand saying, "If I can get the kids to believe homosexuality is normal", and an angel answering "Hey, Satan, not with Brent around you won't!" Satan is also portrayed endorsing his opponebts in the July 29 Republican primary, and an angel endorsing HIM. Rinehart professes to be Christian, but I don't know what Jesus HE follows. For the REAL Jesus NEVER lashed out at, persecuted, or ridiculed homosexuals or others in word OR deed. Don't be mistaken: My blog today is not an endorsement of homosexuality or a call for specific gay rights. Rather, it is just a reaction to the needless and over the top picking on of a particular controversial segment of society by paranoid bigots like Rinehart. He is just another deluded fanatic who has apparently decided to create God in HIS own image and likeness, instead of the other way around.

Then we've got dear, dear Michele Bachmann. She, you may recall, embarrassed her constituents and her entire state during President Bush's exit from his 2007 State of the Union Address. She grabbed and held onto his shoulder for a full 30 seconds and then planted a looonnnggg, slobbery kiss smack on his lips. (I wonder how she and Laura are getting along). In a Feb. 10, 2007 interview with St. Cloud Times reporter Lawrence Schumacher, she claimed knowledge of a plan to partition Iraq, whereby Iran would control fully half of the country and would set up a "terrorist safe haven zone" to launch attacks against the Middle East and the United States. This safe haven zone would be called "the Iraq state of Islam, something like that," she claimed. When grilled about this by the Associated Press in a subsequent interview, she retracted her ridiculously non-factual claim. Then, just this week, she returned all full of piss and vinegar from a Congressional energy study in Colorado and Alaska. She issued her claim (parroting the Bush White House) that domestic offshore oil deposits were plentiful and that we could get back down to $2.00 per gallon gasoline if only we could begin drilling in federally protected offshore and Alaska wilderness regions. This motor-mouth statement is preposterous and was immediately debunked. But Bachmann didn't stop there. She went on to compare these oil deposits to a fully stocked locked pantry, and likened the American consumer to starving children being unjustly deprived (in her view) of plentiful oil. Of course, energy experts like longtime oilman T. Boone Pickens and Al Gore have already pointed out that we cannot drill our way out of our current high oil price problem and that the real problem is our excessive CONSUMPTION. We, as only 4% of the world's population, wastefully consume 25% of global oil production, and it is bankrupting us. Ms. Bachmann, much like John McCain and George W. Bush, apparently just doesn't get it and has great difficulty comprehending and dealing with complex issues. But you can always count on her to be recklessly impulsive, a thoroughly partisan and doctrinaire reactionary, and most often wrong. This Congresswoman is definitely out to lunch.

It is truly unbelievable that, in this day and age, people like these three can get elected to public office. My, how low the bar has fallen. God help us!