As the gender gap threatened to undermine their crusade for a one-term Obama, the GOP turned to Twitter to un-sink the Titanic. Don’t worry your pretty little heads about our party’s mandated transvaginal rapes and birth control bans, a host of Republicans shrieked. It is President Obama who is waging the war against women by sentencing two of them to life…on the Supreme Court.

FullofMitt: There’s no war on women coming from me. I’m so committed to protecting equality that I promise to lock Lilly Ledbetter in an airtight kennel. #TheDogLovedThat

JohnMcMaverick: War, you say? Well, we must bomb Womanistan before they force us to swallow their nuclear pill. #AlsoBombSyria #AndIran #AndCanada

ReinceStag: Who cares what the marketplace pays women? I need my wife to stay home to wage war on all these damn caterpillars clogging up my tax loopholes. #1%TopRateForThe1%

GovNikki: Women don’t care about birth control. They care about the rising cost of a decent mani-pedi & a vacuum that doesn’t lose suction.

Limpbaugh: Quit having so much sex! Or else send me your sex tapes. See, we stand for choice even more than them. #SoMuchViagraSoLittleCatholicBabePorn

GreatStateOfArizany: You can get the pill from your doctor only if you obtain permission from your boss. Also be sure to ask your boss whether your lunchtime BLT offends his faith.

FullofMitt: Contraceptions are people, my friends.

VomiSantorium: We’ll get the sluts next time. #Theocracy2016

MrsMitt: It’s grueling work managing five kids, five houses, a herd of dressage horses…not to mention all those nannies, undocumented gardeners & accounts in the Caymans.

FullofMitt: But Moms without $100 million IRAs must learn the dignity of minimum wage work. Also, let’s get rid of the minimum wage. #AndPlannedParenthood

VirginiaGOP: If a woman is pregnant, she’s ipso facto been penetrated before. So why would she object if the state shoves this transvaginal stick up in there too? #DoesntSheLoveHerHomeState?

GovofPenn: If a woman doesn’t want to look at the ultrasound screen, she can just close her eyes. It’s worked for my wife in our bedroom for nearly 40 years.

Dubya: The people of the United States will not live at the mercy of an outlaw regime that threatens the peace with IUDs. #HeMustHaveHidThemInASecretWomb!

UndisclosedDick: The vaginas will treat us as liberators.

Not that Rush Limbaugh is the King of Calm or anything, but I can practically hear his veins bulging out as he spews a litany of completely irrelevant invective about how President Obama is a child of the '60s and therefore believes in tearing down the country because of the "ill-gotten gains" of formerly great American leaders who established America as an "exceptional nation."

You'd think perhaps such a rant was precipitated by some new policy proposal by the President, right? Actually, no. It was brought on when a caller asked why Republicans treat this President with unprecedented disrespect.

Whatever you may think about yesterday's scheduling scuffle, there has never been similar behavior from any Speaker of the House toward a request from the President to speak before a Joint Session of Congress. I happen to think it was not all that smart to intentionally step on the Republican debate (though others disagree), and I also happen to think the media blew it way out of proportion because it inconvenienced them, forcing them to possibly choose one over the other. But whatever any of us think, I sort of doubt the idea of him undermining the very fabric of America is part of that overall thought pattern.

But for Rush Limbaugh, it clearly is. He bases his argument on this truly odious column by Shelby Steele in today's Wall Street Journal:

If I've heard it once, I've heard it a hundred times: President Obama is destroying the country. Some say this destructiveness is intended; most say it is inadvertent, an outgrowth of inexperience, ideological wrong-headedness and an oddly undefined character. Indeed, on the matter of Mr. Obama's character, today's left now sounds like the right of three years ago. They have begun to see through the man and are surprised at how little is there.

Yet there is something more than inexperience or lack of character that defines this presidency: Mr. Obama came of age in a bubble of post-'60s liberalism that conditioned him to be an adversary of American exceptionalism. In this liberalism America's exceptional status in the world follows from a bargain with the devil—an indulgence in militarism, racism, sexism, corporate greed, and environmental disregard as the means to a broad economic, military, and even cultural supremacy in the world. And therefore America's greatness is as much the fruit of evil as of a devotion to freedom.

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"I misspoke"

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Crook and Liars
perseverance pays off. We called CNN and demanded an on-the-air apology by Novak himself because of the lie he spread about Howard Dean. Earlier in the week Judy Woodruff issued an apology for Novak's lie, but we felt that wasn't enough. We called and spoke to a PR person who said they would talk to the producers of Inside Politics and get back to us. We promised that we would not go away.

Since Novak claimed on February 26 edition of CNN's The Capital Gang: "Howard Dean gave a speech at Cornell on Thursday of this week in which he said that 80 percent -- over the years, 80 percent of the Social Security benefits will be lost." Then he repeated the lie on Inside Politics the following Monday. Off course Dean actually said: "if Social Security were left alone for 30 years, benefits would be reduced to 80 percent of what it is now." The GOP repeated his lie with video on their website (scrubbed now) and subsequently Rush Limbaugh used the same quote on 3/3. Novak came on the air today and apologized saying: "On Monday I said, I misspoke myself...what I meant to say..."

We know that he knew the actual quote being a seasoned "journalist," but chose to try and tarnish Dean with a lie. Also he claimed to have said it on Monday only, which of course is not true. The fact that he got on the air at all shows what can be done if we put our minds to it. Media Matters was on top of the story as well and proved invaluable in getting Novak to denounce himself. Thanks to all that called and emailed their concerns to CNN.

(Update-many feel it wasn't a good enough apology. We do agree. He still tried to say that Dean didn't "toe" the party line, which of course is incorrect. However, we still feel that it was important to get him to acknowledge his lie on the air, "something that had to kill him to do," even in the under handed way that he did it. We never expected him to admit much more. We tried our best.)

Facing South: Senators who voted against extending jobless benefits hail from states devastated by recession

Pharyngula: Repent Amarillo

Hypocrites Gone Wild: Here, here, and here

South Texas Chisme: Texas Republican ballot propositions read like a bad push poll

naked capitalism: No wonder the economy isn't improving

ANNALS OF JOURNALISM: The best of Journalism (2009)...NYT veers neocon...Bad news for Fox, Rush...When Peggy met Sally...WaPo editorial team crashes and burns...The reality of tabloid media...Quote bubble journalism...Dog that wouldn't bark...Liberals beware...Replay...Decoding Racism...Perfectly consistent...Bright future for progressive media?...Lost Exile...

What's that saying? "Out of the mouths of babes?"

Media Matters:

Limbaugh: "What's wrong with using a dead person's teeth? Aren't the Democrats big into recycling?" Responding to Slaughter's account, which he called the "sob story of the day, Limbaugh stated:

LIMBAUGH: You know I'm getting so many people -- this Louise Slaughter comment on the dentures? I'm getting so many people -- this is big. I mean, that gets a one-time mention for a laugh, but there are people out there that think this is huge because it's so stupid. I mean, for example, well, what's wrong with using a dead person's teeth? Aren't the Democrats big into recycling? Save the planet? And so what? So if you don't have any teeth, so what? What's applesauce for? Isn't that why they make applesauce?

Limbaugh previously told a caller who could not afford the $6,000 it would cost to treat a broken wrist that he "shouldn't have broken [his] wrist."

As Alan Grayson proclaimed: Don't get sick.

Well, apparently one good way to make sure your music video gets lots of airtime is to mention Bill O'Reilly flatteringly. Mr. Falafel Head will be sure to bring you on for a talk segment, as he did with Ray Stevens on Monday night.

Nevermind, of course, that Stevens' hit "Tea Party anthem" features a lyric about euthanizing Grandma, which he heard about "from Hannity, Beck and Limbaugh". O'Reilly replayed that part for us approvingly again.

But then he launched into a discussion with Stevens about his lame old 1962 hit novelty record, "Ahab the Arab," the video for which O'Reilly also played. And then he whined about how it's so politically incorrect to say that stuff now:

O’REILLY: So 48 years ago — 48 years ago in this country we could make fun of Arabs. … We could make fun of people in a general way, and certainly, Ahab was the Arab was a general parody. But now, we can’t. What has changed in America?

STEVENS: I think we’ve gone overboard with the political correctness just like so many other people think the same way about that. And I don’t know. We’ve got to come out of that, I think.

Yeah, it's just tragic. As Adam Serwer observes:

The subtext of this lament is O'Reilly mourning the demise of what he refers to as the "white Christian male power structure." It's not really that you "can't" make racist jokes anymore; it's that you when you make them, you can't expect everyone to remain silent as you assert your cultural or racial superiority through humor.

Still, while we're clearly a country where simply "making fun of Arabs" is seen in most circles as inappropriate, we are a country where it's not as taboo to whine about no longer being able to make fun of Arabs. Meanwhile there's also a bipartisan consensus that anti-Arab racism can be government policy.

But hey, what's racial profiling, indefinite detention, and unprecedented levels of warrantless surveillance when white guys can't publicly tell racist jokes? I think we know who the real victims are here.

Transcript via Think Progress.

Priscilla at NewsHounds has more.

(h/t Media Matters)

Conservative teabaggers couldn't contain themselves, as I predicted, unfortunately, because I figured they would complain that Obama acted quickly in a time of a real catastrophe. They are lapping up the Haitian disaster not because they are worried about the thousands of people that have been killed and are suffering there as we speak, but lapping it up to see how they can harm the president. Really, when will the media start treating them exactly like the disgusting lunatics they really are?

Think Progress:

Limbaugh said the White House thinks it can use the disaster to boost its credibility with the “light-skinned and dark-skinned black community” in the U.S. Defending his comments, Limbaugh attacked Obama for speaking publicly about Haiti sooner than he had the failed Christmas Day terror attack. Today on his radio show, Fox News host Glenn Beck jumped on the bandwagon:

BECK: I also believe this is dividing the nation…to where the nation sees him react so rapidly on Haiti and yet he couldn’t react rapidly on Afghanistan. He couldn’t react rapidly on Ft. Hood. He couldn’t react rapidly on our own airplanes with an underwear bomber…it doesn’t make sense. [...] Three different events and Haiti is the only one. I think personally that it deepens he divide to see him react this rapidly to Haiti.

The teabagging talkers are all lying about how America feels President Obama is handling terrorism. His poll numbers are actually improving, but that doesn't matter.

I challenge Howard Kurtz to stop playing the false equivalency games and be very succinct in his critiques of the right wing media's performance during the earthquake in Haiti on his Reliable Sources Sunday show. If he needs help and he can seearch C&L or any other credible blog for some facts and he can check out Jamison Foser's rundown: The right-wing media react to Haiti

Well, Sarah Palin's "death panels" may have been named "Lie of the Year," but they live on in Tea Party movement legend.

Ray Stevens -- noted for such novelty songs as "The Streak" and "Ahab the Arab" -- has a music video out that's being hailed as "the Anthem of the Tea Party movement" titled "We the People":

“We the People” is about Obamacare and the health-care reform bills that have passed both houses of Congress.

The lyrics express a comic, but pointed warning to members of Congress: “You vote Obamacare, we’re going to vote you out of there. We the People have awakened to your tricks. You vote to let this pass, you’re going to be out on your (sound of foghorn).”

They also feature a noteworthy lyric:

We've heard from Hannity, Beck and Limbaugh

What you got in mind for Grandma

[Video: Nurse putting chloroformed cloth over elderly woman's face]

Yeah, now that you mention it, we have heard that from those three -- and a number of others. And we also know that IT'S A FREAKING LIE.

And you'll notice that Bill O'Reilly played this very snippet the other night, quite approvingly, and made no attempt to correct the record. This is how the Fox propagandists keep spreading the lies.

But then, if there were some nugget of news on Fox that were actually true, these nimrods would never believe it.

Newt was the darling of the right just a few moments ago, it seemed, but now he's in a battle with the lunatic fringe of his own party.

Rush Limbaugh zeroed in on Newtie today and took out his rage against Gingrich and the "party bosses" because he supported a moderate conservative over the Palin-Beck-Limbaugh teabagger nominee named Doug Hoffman and Hoffman lost. Sarah Palin has as much egg on her face as the rest of them do. When a district like NY-23 comes up for election, a Republican always wins. Their purity test helped lose them a guaranteed seat. Pretty awesome.

LIMBAUGH: Here is -- these are my thoughts on New York-23. In the first place, I'll have to double check this, but I'm reasonably sure that this was the highest percentage of the vote ever won on the Conservative Party line by a House or Senate candidate. I think Hoffman had a higher percentage of the vote than even James Buckley, who won his U.S. Senate race on the -- against or against this Gooddell guy, Charles Gooddell, in the '70s. So, that's one thing.

But, the right message; we cannot forget how this whole thing happened in the first place. There was not a primary. The right message here would indict the way party bosses, Republican Party bosses and these big thinkers like Newt screwed the whole thing up from the get go.

Rush Limbaugh, on his radio show yesterday, via Media Matters:

You -- In 2008, in our presidential election, we had a, a, a war veteran, Vietnam War veteran, John McCain, against an elitist, five-minute career senator of a hundred and fifty days. That senator was running as a Democrat, and had actively sought the defeat of the U.S. military in Iraq -- had actively sought to undermine General Petraeus, who was the author of the surge that led to a turnaround in Iraq and a victory. And now that same man is dithering in Afghanistan while American soldiers -- not Bush soldiers, not Obama soldiers, American soldiers -- are dying. At record numbers.

The threat that people in this country who want to be free face is now within our own borders. That's the stark reality. We'll be back.

Obama and the liberals are, in the land of the Limbaughst, the True Enemies of America.

If only Limbaugh really were "just an entertainer." Then we could dismiss him as a clown. But "entertainers" don't have audiences of "dittohead" acolytes who absorb their every word as gospel truth. "Entertainers" don't make condemnations of half the country as being the "enemy within" and actually stand -- and actually stand a chance of the other half nodding its head in agreement.

This, of course, is how you whip up violence: You scapegoat, you demonize, you dehumanize, and most of all, you paint a target on people's backs and say they're they Enemy. And you can't help but suspect Limbaugh is perfectly aware of this.

I devote a fair amount of space in The Eliminationists to Limbaugh. For a lot of reasons. Obviously, he's been doing this for awhile. But he's also stepping it up quite bit.

PROMOTIONAL NOTE: I'll be speaking tonight in Mount Vernon, Wash., at the Lincoln Theater at 7 pm. I'll be discussing my book as well as the recent visit to the city by Glenn Beck.