And I am both proud and saddened to bring it to you...

In a nutshell, a collection of some of Santorum's craziest statements on abortion, contraception, homosexuality, global warming, Social Security, blacks (or "blahs"), Hitler, napkins, freedom and the left.

For daily updates on creepy sh*t Santorum says, visit Santorum Exposed on Facebook.

Ruth Marcus writes a pretty good article in the Washington Post about the crack pot conservatives running as teabaggers in the upcoming midterm elections like Rick Barber. After watching Barber's insane political ads she concludes her article with this:

As to the video, Barber was unapologetic. "We can't be so naive to think that just because we live in America that can't happen to us," he said. "We are being fed a socialist agenda spoon by spoon, and we don't see it coming. In Germany, when Hitler was first elected under the Socialist Party, no one would have thought in a million years it would have gone where it did."

I would not have thought in a million years that this kind of thinking would be inside the conservative mainstream. If it is not, it is time for rational conservatives to speak up.

I would not have thought in a million years that a Washington Post writer would have no clue about the history of the conservative movement. Does she not realize that there was a fight for the soul of that movement between William Buckley of the NRO and Robert Welch of the Birchers? Barry Goldwater refused to dismiss the Birchers as wackos entirely because they were useful like the teabaggers, but he did attack Welch.

Rick Perlstein's: 'Beyond The Storm:'

The attendees fell into two camps. Buckley and Kirk said they were ready to write the Birchers out of the conservative movement altogether. Goldwater and others canceled accommodation. He thought there were a lot of 'nice guys' in the Society and not just 'kooks' and that it wasn't time to precipitate breaks in the conservatives' fragile movement.

They settled on a compromise. National Review would attack Robert Welch, not the John Birch Society. Goldwater would take the line that Welch was a crazy extremist, but that the Society itself was full of 'fine, upstanding citizens' working hard and well for the cause of Americanism.

Haven't we heard the same thing from Newtie and Rove about the teabaggers? Sure, they have racist signs and say racist things, but it's only a few people.The rest are great Americans. Right wing extremists have populated the conservative movement since it began. It's only when a Democrat is elected president that they freak out and expose themselves to public view. That's why I came up with the idea of writing our new book. I thought what was happening should be documented. The 'Whiplash politics' practiced by the conservative movement as soon as Obama was elected, (The Tea Party folks) which is really the GOP now was just another chapter in their checkered history. Ruth Marcus should know that. I often wonder if the MSM is just too scared to write about the tea party people or conservatives because they were traumatized during the HCR town hall meetings last summer. They were shocked by the vitriolic insanity that was splashed across the nation. Here's another tip for Ruth. Conservatives rarely abandon their wingnuts. They may attack a Michael Steele once in a while, but they will never forsake a conservative transmitter like Coulter, no matter how far out they get.

Anyway, please support liberal authors and buy this book.

Oh, and Dean Baker takes her down because she doesn't know jack about Social Security either.

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Yesterday's media heroine has to be Patricia Murphy of Politics Daily, who yesterday on Fox managed to make Sean Hannity look like buffoon and a tool. Of course, Hannity does this to himself every day, but Murphy gave it a little extra edge.

First, she flatly knocked down Hannity's little right-wing talking point about Elena Kagan purportedly "kicked the military off campus" at Harvard (she of course did did no such thing).

But the most delicious moment was this one:

Murphy: Let's be really, really honest here. There are members of the Tea Party -- it's a tiny, tiny minority -- members of the Tea Party, and I've seen them, who compare President Obama to Hitler. I've been there and seen it, I've been on this show --

Hannity: I've not seen it.

Murphy: He's been compared to the Khmer Rouge, and to Nazism, while I've been here, this is just common cultural --

Hannity: Whom compared him to that?

Murphy: Tucker Carlson! When I was sitting right here, on this show!

Hannity: [red-faced] Did you disagree with him?

Murphy: I did disagree with him.

Of course, if you go back and look at that clip now, it's worth noting that Hannity did not.

Santorum Scandal-Nazi references thrown at the NY Times

viaSwing State Project: Two major updates on the Santorum Scandal.

Chuck Pennacchio, Democrat challenging Santorum in 2006, has posted a startling video on his blog of Santorum using a Nazi slander against the New York Times.

The Anti-Defamation League is outraged

Check out Bob's post on this.

For a man who opposes the use of Nazis references, Santorum sure likes to use them.

Digby torches Ricky: Ricky In Paris: So, we have both Byrd and Santorum making references to Hitler as regards this rules change. One is barely comprehensible and posits an absurd analogy to Democrats being Hitler in Paris. The other quite astutely points out that these arbitrary rules changes to advance the power of one party are not without precedent.

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Glenn Beck got all worked up yesterday defending Arizonans from the outrageous, slanderous comparisons of their fair new police state to Nazi Germany. Heaven forfend:

Beck: Arizona sure is putting the AZ in Nazi. I really hate to rain on the hate parade, but could we slow down for just a second here and ask: You’re out of your mind? Are you comparing the systematic cold-blooded extermination of millions of Jews, to America making sure people are here legally? The parallels are non-existent.

Of course, Beck blithely neglects to mention that the Nazi laws requiring papers were originally about "making sure people were there legally" too. That's how police states work. The roundups come later.

And in case anyone forgot, there have been a lot of comparisons of liberals generally and the Obama administration to Nazis and Germany. Right there on Fox News, a number of times. By a guy named Glenn Beck.

We provide the examples in the video.

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When you watch Roger Ailes on TV, you can really see why Fox News is what it is: a compulsively mendacious propaganda operation. Because nearly every word out of Ailes' mouth is a lie, distortion or prevarication of some kind.

The most egregious yesterday on This Week, as John already noted, was in defense of Glenn Beck, after Arianna Huffington -- who has already made an issue out of Beck's rhetoric recklessness -- called Ailes out on it:

HUFFINGTON: Well, Roger, it's not a question of picking a fight. And aren't you concerned about the language that Glenn Beck is using, which is, after all, inciting the American people? There is a lot of suffering out there, as you know, and when he talks about people being slaughtered, about who is going to be the next in the killing spree...

(CROSSTALK)

AILES: Well, he was talking about Hitler and Stalin slaughtering people. So I think he was probably accurate. Also, I'm a little....

HUFFINGTON: No, no, he was talking about this administration.

AILES: I don't -- I think he speaks English. I don't know, but I mean, I don't misinterpret any of his words. He did say one unfortunate thing, which he apologized for, but that happens in live television.

Well, as John pointed out, this is flatly false. Just a couple of months ago, Beck was telling his audience that "progressives" like President Obama and SEIU chief Andy Stern were taking the country down the path to genocide:

Beck: I told you yesterday, buckle up your seatbelt, America. Find the exit -- there's one here, here, and here. Find the exit closest to you and prepare for a crash landing. Because this plane is coming down, because the pilot is intentionally steering it into the trees!

Most likely, it'll happen sometime after Christmas. You're gonna see this economy come up -- we're already seeing it, and now it's gonna start coming back down again. And when you see the effects of what they're doing to the economy, remember these words: We will survive. No -- we'll do better than survive, we will thrive. As long as these people are not in control. They are taking you to a place to be slaughtered!

Moreover, as Arianna pointed out, he talked last October about the Obama administration embarking on a "killing spree," inspired by Mao:

Spread the wealth -- hello, Mao -- that is what this is all about. And anybody not on board, look out because you too could be the next victim of the killing spree.

More to the point, the point of Beck's most recent big project, his fake "documentary" touting Jonah Goldberg's "Liberal Fascism" thesis, is that the progressive movement -- represented by Hitler, Mao, and Stalin -- is responsible for all of the genocides of the previous century.

It's nothing new, in fact. Beck has been telling his audiences for some time that Obama and "the progressives" are planning all kinds of evil and nefarious activity in pursuit of the destruction of America -- including rounding people up into concentration camps, and marching us toward a "new" kind of fascism.

We've put together a compendium of these various moments.

So, who do you believe? Roger Ailes, or your lying eyes?

As Simon Maloy at Media Matters points out, Ailes also lied about Beck supposedly apologizing for an "unfortunate remark." Moreover, in spite of his endless deluge of misinformation and lies, Beck has not once apologized for a single thing he has said on Fox. On the few occasions when he has corrected a falsehood, he has decidedly not apologized; instead, he has used those occasions instead to launch fresh rhetorical assaults on the persons about whom he's already lied.

Seems a perfect fit for Ailes, really, considering just who Roger Ailes is and what he's done for years. Fox is just the final outcome of a lifetime stoking the politics of resentment -- a politics stoked by hate, fear, and above all, lies.

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Roger Ailes was a guest on ABC's THIS WEEK and after watching the entire round table discussion I understand why FOX News say what they do. Roger made it crystal clear by reinforcing every radical notion that is said about the president and his agenda on FOX and then uses nonsense to defend Glenn Beck's bizarre rantings. I'll have more on Ailes later, but Arianna called him out over FNC's behavior as soon as the topic turned toward the administration's relationship to FOX News.

HUFFINGTON: Well, Roger, it's not a question of picking a fight. And aren't you concerned about the language that Glenn Beck is using, which is, after all, inciting the American people? There is a lot of suffering out there, as you know, and when he talks about people being slaughtered, about who is going to be the next in the killing spree...

(CROSSTALK)

AILES: Well, he was talking about Hitler and Stalin slaughtering people. So I think he was probably accurate. Also, I'm a little....

HUFFINGTON: No, no, he was talking about this administration.

AILES: I don't -- I think he speaks English. I don't know, but I mean, I don't misinterpret any of his words. He did say one unfortunate thing, which he apologized for, but that happens in live television. So I don't think it's -- I think if we start going around as the word police in this business, it will be...

HUFFINGTON: It's not about the word police. It's about something deeper. It's about the fact that there is a tradition as the historian Richard Hofstetter said, in American politics, of the paranoid style. And the paranoid style is dangerous when there is real pain out there. I mean, with...

AILES: I agree with you. I read something on your blog that said I looked like J. Edgar Hoover, I had a face like a fist, and I was essentially a malignant tumor...

HUFFINGTON: Well, that's...

AILES: And I thought -- and then it got nasty after that...

HUFFINGTON: ... that was never by anybody that we had...

(CROSSTALK) AILES: Then it really went nasty, and I thought, gee, maybe Arianna ought to cut this out, but..

We now have to question if Roger Ailes does understand the English language. Ailes uses the old method of quoting a single post that attacks him from the Huffington Post as some sort of justification for the behavior of FOX News. Conservatives are always good at deflecting criticisms and trying to equate a small sliver of a blog post to Beck's entire hour long freak show that day after day calls liberals 'parasites' and pictures President Obama as a Nazi wanting to slaughter people. When Arianna calls out Beck for his violent language, Roger says we can't be the word police and then says he understands him. You see, Beck only meant to be outlandish against Stalin. Ailes is lying of course.

MMTV:

But now, last night, I get there and I see, I get on the website, and I see that Obama wants to legalize the illegal aliens, you know, when unemployment is 8.5 percent and underemployment rate is 15.6 percent. You know, you're having a hard time finding a job, you know, without having to be forced -- do you have any matches -- forced to complete, you know, compete with a whole new crop of workers.

So what does Obama do, he says, boy, I'm not -- I'm just out of stuff to do. What else could I possibly do to the American people?

President Obama, why don't you just set us on fire? For the love of Pete, what are you doing? Do you not hear -- do you not hear the cries of people who are saying stop? We would like some sanity in our country for a second!

We didn't vote to lose the republic. We didn't vote for any of this stuff. We voted for change.

When Glenn Beck poured gasoline over a lady and said Obama wanted to see Americans burn, that wasn't about Stalin, Roger. Do you think that might be incendiary?

UPDATE: Here's the post when Beck talked about being "Slaughter"

Beck: Black Obama fans were 'taught to be slaves,' while progressives like Stern are 'taking you to a place to be slaughtered'

It came, incidentally, at the end of an equally incendiary attack on the SEIU's Andy Stern -- the day before, Beck told his audience that Stern was "really running our country" -- which he wrapped up with a truly vicious attack on both the Obama White House and on progressives in general:

Beck: I told you yesterday, buckle up your seatbelt, America. Find the exit -- there's one here, here, and here. Find the exit closest to you and prepare for a crash landing. Because this plane is coming down, because the pilot is intentionally steering it into the trees!

Most likely, it'll happen sometime after Christmas. You're gonna see this economy come up -- we're already seeing it, and now it's gonna start coming back down again. And when you see the effects of what they're doing to the economy, remember these words: We will survive. No -- we'll do better than survive, we will thrive. As long as these people are not in control. They are taking you to a place to be slaughtered!

Evidence doesn't enter in the equation for Roger Ailes.

The State of the Union speech is normally just a big kabuki theatre exercise. On both sides of the aisle, political parties make clear what they value and show their support or lack thereof for the President's agenda.

No news there. But I think in these days where the political spectrum has been so skewed that tea-baggers actually think Hitler was a liberal, it's a good idea to know just what the GOP does not support, like:

Assistance and tax credits for small businesses to create new jobs:

Or ending tax breaks for companies that send American jobs overseas:

Student loans and helping Americans get higher education:

Prohibiting foreign money from influencing our elections:

Nice to see where small business, education and oligarchy play into the GOP's values, isn't it?

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The right wingers are pulling out all the rhetorical stops in trying to pretend that global warming is all just a hoax cooked up by Marxist ideologues. Take, for instance, Bill Bennett last night on Sean Hannity's show:

Bennett: It's amazing, you know -- the power of ideology to blind people to reality. You've got this Russian report that you cited -- you know, this thing is falling apart. You had the stuff out of East Anglia University -- I mean, this is reminiscent of the old alchemy, and phrenology stuff.

I mean, this, this -- there's so much junk, so much corruption in the fact that we would fork over a hundred billion dollars. Plus I think the biggest event at Copenhagen was the standing, thunderous standing ovation to Hugo Chavez when he condemned capitalism. That tells you really what that meeting is all about, it seems to me.

Hannity: That's what I want to get to. If we look at the ClimateGate scandal, coupled with what you just pointed out, we've pointed out, about this Russian climate center, what they had to say, there's another agenda. Why would a scientist -- and I have really not gotten a satisfactory answer from anybody -- why would scientists risk their careers and their reputations to lie and manipulate data if there wasn't some agenda? And if they are, and there is an agenda, what is it?

Bennett: Yeah, well, take a look at Soviet psychiatry under Stalin, take a look at various kinds of medical, quote, science under Hitler, and you'll again see the power of ideology to bend men to their, to the ways of the dictator.

You know, I remember reading that biography of Einstein. There's a list of all the scientists who were driven out of Germany by Hitler because of his crazy policies. It's the world's roster of greatest scientists. That's what's happening here. You're getting some of the best people in the world questioning what is going on in this supposedly accepted wisdom, and the thing's falling apart.

Really? A minor dustup among a handful of e-mails is just like Hitler's persecution of the Jews within the German scientific community? Climate scientists are acting like Nazi medical experimenters? Climate science is just like phrenology? Global warming is about bending us to the will exactly which dictator?

Christ on a crutch, get a grip, people. Or at least some tiny bit of perspective.

Hannity has been out leading the parade in trying to make global warming out to be a hoax. And he's obviously pulling out all the stops.

Bennett is right about one thing, though: This situation does indeed powerfully illustrate "the power of ideology to blind people to reality." Just not the way he thinks it does.

Or as the Pat Bagley cartoon put it:

From the wonderful artist Zina Saunders (click here for larger):

"Double, double, toil and trouble," chant Michele Bachmann, Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh as they stir up the pot against health care reform.

A few incantations from the trio's trick or treat bag: Congresswoman Bachmann says sex clinics will result from Health Care Reform, Ann Coulter says Obama's plan encourages assisted suicide for the elderly, and Rush Limbaugh says Obama's health care plan is right out of Hitler's playbook.

Boo!

Open thread below and John Amato has a World Series thread going as well...