Michelle Malkin And Glenn Beck Share A Brain Stem.

Gee, Michelle; it looks like your fellow fuckwad already used that line--in March '09:

Time to hire a new ghostwriter, honey...

"If You Tell A Lie Big Enough And Keep Repeating It, People Will Eventually Come To Believe It."

Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels infamously said that. Lots of people still live by it today.

I blogged about the synchronicity of the right-wing echo chamber yesterday. Well, looky-here, Ma! Not only was the Nancy Pelosi plane story an attempt at rehashing an old GOP fave, it's also largely bullshit. Imagine that--from those nice Republicans and everything!

From ABC News:

The treasure trove of documents obtained by Judicial Watch from the Department of Defense regarding Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi's use of military aircraft doesn't seem to prove the organization's allegation that Pelosi has made "unprecedented demands" for the flights.

In fact, it appears that Pelosi uses military aircraft less often than her predecessor, former Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert.

The documents cover the period from January 2007 to November 2008 and show that Pelosi made the equivalent of 20 round-trips between Washington (Andrews Air Force Base) and San Francisco. That's an average of less than one round-trip per month. In contrast, former Speaker Hastert traveled home to his Illinois district virtually every weekend and, his former aides tell ABC News, he would almost always travel on military aircraft. Like Hastert, Pelosi also occasionally leads Congressional delegations on foreign trips (the documents show six foreign trips: one to Asia, three to the Middle East and two to Europe).

The documents obtained by Judicial Watch also disprove another frequently repeated rumor about Pelosi's travel: that she regularly flies home to San Francisco in an Air Force C-40, the military equivalent of a Boeing 737. According to the documents, Pelosi did not make any domestic trips on a C-40 during the 23-month period from January 2007 to November 2008. Her trips to San Francisco have all been on smaller executive aircraft, usually an Air Force C-20 (the equivalent of a Gulfstream G-3) or a more plush C-37 (a Gulfstream G-5).

The whole ABC News report is here. You probably won't see it on Michelle Malkin's blog.

(Cross-posted on Daily Kos.)

Symbiotic Psychosis.

(A version of the following is cross-posted on Daily Kos):

Welcome to the underworld of right-wing hatred, courtesy of Michelle Malkin and the New York Post:

steveack wrote: nancy pelosi is nothing more then a parsite, and a poison in the veins of the american political syatem, which would benefit greatly if she were to receive a 50 calliber head massage!

Lee Anthony Nieves wrote: Steveack: LOL. Pelosi thinks she is queen, and she wants to be treated as such. 2010 can't come any sooner to send her back benching. Kudos to the Air Force. Next time she opens her mouth, put a parachute on her, and throw her out.

Bret wrote: Lee: Put a parachute on her? Heck no. Throw her out without one. That would put an end to her nonsense once and for all.

These are the comments from fans of fringe blogger and syndicated columnist Michelle Malkin in today's New York Post. Malkin wrote a column on the non-issue of Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi's use of a military airplane, and her fans are calling for the speaker's head. 

Here's the story:

Conservative group Judicial Watch, right-wing rabblerouser Matt Drudge, Malkin and FOX News are all a little slow on the uptake. Two years, to be exact.

In a prime example of the inner-workings of the right-wing echo chamber, here is a short sketch:

Judicial Watch--funded by arch-conservative billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife--starts the ball rolling with a "report" on supposed abuses by Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi regarding her use of a military airplane, specifically alleged last-minute cancellations.

Next, FOX News enters the picture and runs a "report", ostensibly regurgitating Judicial Watch's "report," which is picked up (and highlighted in red) by the Drudge Report. 

Devoid of her own material, Ann Coulter clone Malkin writes a syndicated column about this well-worn non-story, which runs on her hideous blog and several newspapers, including Rupert Murdoch's New York Post. 

Much like a rash or a retro-virus, the "report" produced by the partisan Judicial Watch--marketed as a "watch-dog group"--spreads to the always-willing Matt Drudge who is in bed with FOX News who passes it to media whore Malkin. Countless talk-radio mimics in markets large and small immediately contract the rapidly-replicating fever and pass it on to gullible listeners nationwide.

This is old, but it's not news.

MSNBC reported this in April 2007:

The Air Force transport plane decried by Republicans as an extravagance for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was requested by the House sergeant-at-arms as a matter of security, he said Thursday.“I regret that an issue that is exclusively considered and decided in a security context has evolved into a political issue,” Bill Livingood said in a news release. He said because Pelosi lives in California he was compelled “to request an aircraft that is capable of making non-stop flights for security purposes, unless such an aircraft is unavailable. This will ensure communications capabilities and also enhance security.”Republicans had taken issue with the size of the plane Pelosi would need to fly in to reach her hometown of San Francisco without refueling. There are three Air Force airplanes that have the fuel capacity to make the trip nonstop, with the largest being a C-32 plane, a military version of the Boeing 757-200. (The White House spokesman at the time, the late Tony Snow said), “This is a silly story, and I think it’s been unfair to the speaker.”After the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the Pentagon agreed to provide the House speaker, who is second in the line of presidential succession, with a military plane for added security during trips back home. Former House Speaker Dennis Hastert, an Illinois Republican, flew in a small commuter-sized Air Force jet. (Hastert's Illinois commute allowed such a plane; Pelosi's California trips do not.) Pelosi said she would be happy to fly on commercial airliners but said the House sergeant-at-arms office urged her to continue Hastert’s practice of using Air Force transport. She said she was informed on her first trip home that her plane would not make it across the country. I said well, that’s fine, I’m going commercial,” she told Fox News. “I’m not asking to go on that plane. If you need to take me there for security purposes, you’re going to have to get a plane that goes across the country, because I’m going home to my family.”The guidelines provided by the Pentagon say Pelosi could be accompanied by family members, provided they pay the government coach fare. The plane could not be used for travel to political events. Members of Congress could accompany her on the plane if the travel is cleared by the House ethics committee.

Dick.

Yet more from the noisy, lunatic right-wing vortex. 

Online nutbag rag Newsmax.com has this from GOP Confederate musket-boy Dick Armey:

Former House Majority leader Dick Armey told Newsmax in an exclusive interview Friday that he joins talk radio host Rush Limbaugh in hoping that President Obama’s efforts to impose a "nanny state" agenda on America will fail.

Asked if he agreed with Limbaugh’s controversial sentiments, Armey replied, "Well sure. I mean, who wants to see America [imitate] so many other nations that have gone down this primrose path of thinking government can be the nanny state and provider of all things?"

In fact, Armey said, "a great many Americans" agree with Limbaugh. But he went on to say that Limbaugh should have been "more circumspect and more judicious" in his choice of words, to avoid being misconstrued.

The 18-year House veteran also took strong exception to the anti-Limbaugh media campaign orchestrated in recent weeks out of the West Wing of the White House by Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel. Pundits have generally viewed that as a calculated effort to hurt Republican prospects with swing voters. (Editors note: right-wing pundits, of course. Besides, Limbaugh initiated the "I hope Obama fails" mantra, and Democrats are only too happy to let the nationally unpopular big mouth personify the leaderless GOP.) 

“Let’s say you’re the average American citizen," Armey told Newsmax. "The guy’s president of the United States. You’d say, 'I bet the guy has some real serious work to do.' But his chief of staff is what, operating as a political hack? Ronald Reagan did not let the political hacks in the White House. His point was very simple: ‘We’ve got serious work to do. People in this country who are good people have trusted us, and I’m not sitting here listening to a bunch of politics, let’s talk about policies.'"

Again with the Ronald Reagan man-crush? Yes, Dick, Ronnie's White House did have serious work to do: they had to get busy dismantling useful government programs and regulations, make up stories about the poor, close down mental health facilities, ignore AIDS, and sabre-rattle 'round the world. Plus someone had to figure out how to illegally trade those arms for hostages, right? 

Armey currently serves as co-chairman of the Washington, D.C.-based FreedomWorks organization, leading a grassroots effort to mobilize some 500,000 activists on behalf of lower taxes, limited government, and greater liberty.

In other words, he remains committed to the same failed economic policies that laid the seeds in the GOP's scorched earth resulting in the poison perennials that are killing us today.   

Who Put LSD In The PDF?

     UPDATED to change "sadistically magnetic" to "masochistically magnetic"--I was the one strangely enjoying the pain...

 

    I happened to be reading the Media Matters post on this latest Limbaugh Lie--that Democrats used a PDF format to post the stimulus bill because it can't be searched (!)--while MSNBC's Countdown was on in the background and I heard Keith Olbermann mention it.

     Here's my slightly off-topic but related $0.02.

     Over the weekend I clicked on a Drudge Report headline which asked, "What's the Rush?" and linked to a poorly-written, pointless New York Post item criticizing Obama's President's Day weekend getaway, attempting to suggest the stimulus bill couldn't have been that important if the president and his family left Washington prior to his signing of the legislation. 

     "Poorly-written" and "pointless" applies to almost everything in the New York Post, but it was the 500+ reader comments from the heavy concentration of Limbots that proved masochistically magnetic.

     It read like an uninterrupted army of deranged, clueless fools spouting off about--among other things--the stimulus bill that "nobody can read because it's too long!" (seriously), the Fairness Doctrine, Obama's "missing" birth certificate, ACORN funding in the stimulus bill (which doesn't exist), funding for mice in Nancy Pelosi's district, numerous attacks on Henrietta Hughes--the homeless Florida woman who reached out to President Obama for help--America's slide to either socialism or communism (very popular!), more hand-wringing on Obama's religion (still!), and the repetition of porkulus, porkulus, porkulus--the GOP Confederacy's newest, bestest word. It's a Limbaugh original--the conflation of pork and stimulus.

     Making words up doesn't mean they make sense.     

     The point I'm getting at is that this Idiot's Army wrote in the same lingo using the same phraseology as Head A-Hole El Rushbo.

     Perhaps none of 'em are smart enough to search a PDF, and I'll double-down that most also believe this latest Limbaugh lie.

     They couldn't have heard how to maneuver a search from Limbaugh, because their Pied Piper scam-man isn't smart enough to figure it out, either.

     And providing the stimulus bill in PDF form so that Rush Limbaugh can't figure out how to search its contents, ladies and gentleman, must mean the Democrats didn't want us to see the bill!  

Do You Hear An Echo In Here?

I blogged about anti-national health care zealot Betsy (Elizabeth?) McCaughey a couple of days ago. 

ThinkProgess is also on the case, and they posted a video of Betsy (Elizabeth?) making the rounds of the gasbag shows to spread the bullshit around: