June 16, 2013

I'll bet you're thinking this is another post about bizarre Republican public statements, like Rep. Steve King's claim Democrats knew what websites Republicans were surfing. Or what Glenn Beck said about living in the end times.

Or maybe it's a post about another one of Rand Paul's or Louie Gohmert's Islamophobic rants. It's not.

It's not about the stupid idiots who go on Fox News and rant, either. Or Rush Limbaugh.

It's not about any of them, but it is about all of them. I surrender. Sarah Palin's speech this weekend at the Ralph Reed Faith and Freedom Conference did me in. Who can top someone who says this about Syria?

“Until we have a commander in chief who knows what he is doing... let Allah sort it out!” Palin told the conservative crowd, according to The Hill.

I'm sick of that crap. I could write fifteen new posts about stupid, ugly things Republicans say, but on some level, that's really what they want. As long as I'm talking about stupid things they say, I'm not talking about things like immigration reform or how women are more marginalized than ever or repealing the sequester (which is causing real harm to real people) or income inequality or anything else that actually matters to people who have to live life without the luxury of dropping a word bomb into a room full of friendly people and receiving a large donation for it.

Conservatives left the planet years ago. After 2012, they burst out of planetary orbit into deep bizarro space where they fling large word turds into the public sphere like we should give a damn, yet they still splatter all over the front pages of the Big Newspapers and Media Outlets. Then we're supposed to wave our hands around and talk about how stupid they are (and we do), while we also wave our hands around and yell at the president for whatever it is he did or didn't do that day while giving Congress a pass on their utter uselessness.

Meanwhile, people in Syria are dying while Russia and Iran fight a proxy war with us on Syrian soil. A proxy war, I might add, that we haven't been an active participant in for any number of reasons, and one that doesn't have any easy answers or fast resolutions. Yet Sarah Palin spews "let Allah sort it out" like that's some kind of solution, some kind of political statement that actually has merit. It doesn't. It's just a game of Word Turd Toss.

Not long ago, the Heritage Foundation recommended that conservatives simply bombard President Obama with scandals - real and imagined. Jim DeMint and the Kochs called on Congress to refrain from actually governing and simply posture about scandal after scandal after scandal. That is happening now. Do you recognize it? They've taken that advice.

At some point, fatigue sets in. I'm there. I don't give a damn what any of them say or do anymore because they've left all rational thought somewhere in outer planetary turdland and resorted to simply filling the newspapers with their crap day after day after day.

I'd like to be writing posts that inform or at the very least, spark discussion. Telling you what Planet Idiot residents are doing just doesn't do that. What is there to say beyond "God, these people are out of their minds?" Not very much. So maybe we should just start ignoring them and their stupid media megaphones and start being the adult on this planet right here, in real time. They don't deserve our attention and they certainly don't need it.

With that, I'll leave you with one final factoid about where Sarah Palin's attention is these days:

Palin also used her speech to blast the “good ole boys” in Congress and she advised them to follow the lead of freshman Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), a Tea Party darling.

The former governor and Fox News contributor said the U.S. is “becoming a totalitarian surveillance state” and that she is listening more and more to libertarians in the Republican Party.

Of course she is. She's a Kochsucker just like the rest of them and she's not worth the time it takes to talk about whatever it is she thinks is important. It's time to reset things and get back to Planet Earth.

Update: Salon has a wonderful excerpt from Dollarocracy by John Nichols and Robert McChesney. See if this doesn't strike a chord:

Most striking is this: the explicitly liberal programs tend to spend considerable time fact-checking, debunking, and ridiculing the material on Fox and conservative talk radio. Right-wing media seem far less interested in what the liberals are saying. Why should they be? In the overall calculus, they are still calling the shots, and the liberals spend inordinate amounts of their time responding to the right. This call and response is a logical commercial manifestation of the post-journalism moment. Neither Fox News nor MSNBC has its own teams of reporters to send out to break news stories. Slogans like “We Report, You Decide” are rooted in fantasy. Cable channels have program hosts, producers, and guest bookers. They look at what others are reporting, and then they invite people to talk about the politics of the day. At their best, they invite interesting and diverse guests who might even disagree with one another—as happened on Ed Schultz’s MSNBC show during the debate about whether to include a public option in the Affordable Care Act. At their worst, they feature Sean Hannity and Karl Rove abandoning all the touchstones of realism and engaging in extended preelection discussions about how all the polls are wrong and Mitt Romney will win by a landslide.

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