There they go again...

The blog Right Wing News asked "more than a hundred bloggers" who they thought were the worst people in American history. The results may shock you! Or maybe not. [..]

This question was put out to over 100 crazies with internet connections:

Out of all the gangsters, serial killers, mass murderers, incompetent & crooked politicians, spies, traitors, and ultra left-wing kooks in all of American history — have you ever wondered who the worst of the worst was?"

[..]Here are the results, from 43 bloggers who responded:

23) Saul Alinsky (7)
23) Bill Clinton (7)
23) Hillary Clinton (7)
19) Michael Moore (7)
19) George Soros (8)
19) Alger Hiss (8)
19) Al Sharpton (8)
13) Al Gore (9)
13) Noam Chomsky (9)
13) Richard Nixon (9)
13) Jane Fonda (9)
13) Harry Reid (9)
13) Nancy Pelosi (9)
11) John Wilkes Booth (10)
11) Margaret Sanger (10)
9) Aldrich Ames (11)
9) Timothy McVeigh (11)
7) Ted Kennedy (14)
7) Lyndon Johnson (14)
5) Benedict Arnold (17)
5) Woodrow Wilson (17)
4) The Rosenbergs (19)
3) Franklin Delano Roosevelt (21)
2) Barack Obama (23)
1) Jimmy Carter (25)

I love the framing of the question: murderers, terrorists and "left-wing kooks". And what did these mental giants come up with? is Osama Bin Laden on the list? No. But FDR is. And he's WORSE than assassin John Wilkes Booth and domestic terrorist Tim McVeigh and traitors Aldrich Ames, Benedict Arnold and the Rosenbergs. And of course, the worst person in the history of the country is Jimmy Carter. Sorry Obama, you just missed the top spot.

Sweet Jesus, do these people have anything but bumper sticker slogans in their heads? The list is replete with such nonsense and brainless smearing (really, Jane Fonda and George Soros? Quick, someone on the right name for us how they have influenced the country. No fair cribbing notes from Glenn Beck).

The conservative movement is in shambles and this doozy comes from online conservative blogger Eric Erickson of Red State. Do we need any more proof that they are all certifiable? What's up with conservatives and their tweets? The men in white suits should be called in very quickly because he needs a serious 30-day observation period. Don't forget to bring a straitjacket with you.

pourmecoffee’s posterous finds this tweet for the ages:

Eric Erickson (@ewerickson), Editor-in-Chief of RedState didn't just toss off that gem. He wrote it, then deleted it, then re-wrote and re-sent it adding the proper hashtags ("LMRM" = Let Me Repeat Myself, "TCOT" = Top Conservatives on Twitter, "RS" = RedState). Made sure he got it just right. See for yourself.

This is the leader of the right's most prominent online community, not some carefree flame-throwing commenter or diarist. RedState is not an official GOP site, but it's a center of the conservative movement with a stated desire to take over leadership of the party. I'm not interested in flame wars. Everyone is entitled to their opinion. As a matter of strategy, however, I just can't understand why someone in a leadership position would act so publicly self-destructive. This stuff turns states blue. Put simply, a serious leader looking to amass political power does not publicly call a sitting Supreme Court Justice a "goat f**king child molester." A seemingly obvious point.

I'm surprised he took the time to think it over at all, but then he actually posted it.

Eric Erickson: The nation loses the only goat f*&king child molester to ever serve on the Supreme Court in David Souter's retirement.

Conservatives are a leaderless broken bunch of sad sacks and messages like this are really the norm for them. Howard Kurtz attacked anonymous commenters for writing vitriolic statements on websites, but he rarely goes after the creators or main writers that run the sites. Erik is someone who has been selling himself as The Great Savior of the conservative movement so I wonder how this will impact his efforts on that front as he tries to line up right-wing politicians and anyone willing to comment on the upcoming Supreme Court nomination. Actually, I think he'll get a medal from CPAC over this one.

It would appear that director Kevin Smith's new horror movie hits the nail on the head: Red State:

A horror film in which a group of misfits encounter fundamentalism gone to the extreme in Middle America.

David Neiwert of C&L has been covering the rise of militias in America since President Obama took office and which is being promoted by right wing hate radio and other media personalities, but now conservative bloggers are openly promoting revolt.

Erick Erickson is mad as hell and asks “at what point do people revolt?”

At what point do the people tell the politicians to go to hell? At what point do they get off the couch, march down to their state legislator’s house, pull him outside, and beat him to a bloody pulp for being an idiot?

At some point soon, it will happen. It’ll be over an innocuous issue. But the rage is building. It’s not a partisan issue. […] Were I in Washington State, I’d be cleaning my gun right about now waiting to protect my property from the coming riots or the government apparatchiks coming to enforce nonsensical legislation.

At issue here is . . . an environmental regulation relating to dishwasher detergent.

Glenn Beck is appealing to this type of audience, and which is a reason for his rise in ratings, but Erik's open invitation to beat politicians to a bloody pulp is revolting. By the way, the Bush administration is responsible for the mess we're in, and if you look at the protests going on while the G-20 begins, Erik can thank the man he supported with all his heart for that as well. What will Howard Kurtz say now that right-wing bloggers are openly calling for violence?

Duncan has more:

I've long rolled my eyes about armchair revolutionaries, the ones who dream of revolution but can't quite manage to get out of their chairs. We do have people on our "side" who express such sentiments, but they're limited to anonymous people in comments sections and not, you know, prominent bloggers and commentators.

Our comment sections were used against us by the media as if anonymous commenters were speaking for me somehow, but Erik is speaking for himself. You can bet that when Bush was in office and I had written something like that, law enforcement would have been knocking at my door.

John Hinderaker once again proves how incompetent the conservative movement is:

Today John Hinderaker at Powerline wrote the following about Barack Obama:

Everyone knows that Barack Obama is lost without his teleprompter, but his latest blunder, courtesy of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, via the Corner, suggests that the teleprompter may not be enough unless it includes phonetic spellings. [Obama apparently mispronounced the name of the company "Orion"]

So evidently we have to add astronomy to history and economics as subjects of which Obama is remarkably ignorant. I'm beginning to fear that our President has below-average knowledge of the world. Not for a President, but for a middle-aged American.

If that alone isn't enough to make your head explode, here's what the very same John Hinderaker had to say about our previous president:

It must be very strange to be President Bush. A man of extraordinary vision and brilliance approaching to genius, he can't get anyone to notice. He is like a great painter or musician who is ahead of his time, and who unveils one masterpiece after another to a reception that, when not bored, is hostile.

The alternative universe that these folks manage to create for themselves is really quite something to behold. In their world, a man who was the editor-in-chief of the Harvard Law Review and a constitutional law professor at a top law school is some sort of empty suit who is incapable of thinking or expressing a coherent thought without a teleprompter. A man who spent much of his childhood in Indonesia, has traveled extensively overseas, and who, by all accounts, is an avid student of foreign policy is some kind of ignoramus who knows nothing about the world.

But a man who was notorious for his struggles with the English language, who achieved everything in his life by virtue of his last name, a man who admittedly had no interest in foreign policy and had traveled nowhere prior to becoming president ... that guy is worldly beyond measure, a "man of extraordinary vision and brilliance approaching to genius."

What's really sad is that Hinderaker is not alone in this belief. If you read the right-wing blogs, it's just an accepted fact that Obama is a moron. It's as if they think that if they say it over and over again, it will somehow catch on with the public at large. The problem with this meme, of course, is that it's so easily disproven. No one who watched Obama give his hour-long prime-time press conference last month -- where he gave lengthy professorial answers to every question asked -- would entertain for even a moment the suggestion that he is stupid or unknowledgeable or incapable of speaking without a teleprompter. The right-wing blogosphere might as well be trying to convince the public that Obama is white.

But in the up-is-down world of the right wing echo chamber, anything goes, no matter how dumb.

I couldn't say it any better.

John Hinderaker just can't wait to get his Obama Derangement Syndrome on with this post.

So I confess to some satisfaction in seeing Obama's likeness paraded at a hate rally in Jakarta, along with those of Mubarak and Olmert. The protesters were blaming Obama for Israel's attack on Hamas, when he hasn't even been inaugurated yet!

Hinderaker once called President Bush a genius, which gives us some insight about his acuity and stability "mentally."

It must be very strange to be President Bush. A man of extraordinary vision and brilliance approaching to genius, he can’t get anyone to notice. He is like a great painter or musician who is ahead of his time, and who unveils one masterpiece after another to a reception that, when not bored, is hostile.

The Middle East is a horrible situation, as we are witnessing; for this wingnut to take pleasure in ugly scenes like this just shows the Conservative mind at its best.

It's true indeed that Obama hasn't been sworn in yet, but the world's sickness over Bush was caused by his policies. After 9/11, the world was with us like never before and it did take a true destructive genius to wreck that. By attacking a country that didn't do anything to us, Bush has created an international hatred of America like never before.

The wonder of Bush's tenure is that we actually have a country still standing after eight years of misrule. Now it's up to Obama to pick up the pieces of an economy that is in utter shambles, and a global reputation as torturers and thugs -- which inspires scenes like the ones Hinderaker seems to enjoy.

(h/t Kevin)

The wingnut website run by Charles Johnson, who attacked kidnapped journalist Jill Carroll when she was first released channels the ghost of Lee Atwater and says: America is close to electing a President who compares his own country to Nazi Germany.

Oliver Willis explains:

To Attack Obama, Little Green Footballs Defends Segregation

With a week to go it's only going to get worse. I'm waiting for the headline on FOX News that says:

Obama is an Alien, but the MSM doesn't want you to know!

Do everything you can to Get Out The Vote. Our country can't stand four more years of this garbage.

She doesn't see the difference between the Republican VP candidate denigrating most of the cities in America in front of millions of people and a comic that bashes Palin in a comedy routine. That's the level of intelligence that encompasses Conservatives.

She needs to watch a little more Dennis Miller, I guess. Well, that might be part of the problem.

From Red State: (yes, it goes there)

Remember John Edwards? Who broke the Edwards story? The National Enquirer of course.

After that coup, the left, which patently refused to mention the Edwards scandal decided that anything the Enquirer wrote about Sarah Palin had to be the gospel truth. They could talk about her alleged affair. They could speculate that her baby was not really her baby. They could go after her kids. After all, the National Enquirer covered it.

The National Enquirer now suggests Barack Obama had an underage, gay affair with a pedophile. Yup. That Frank Marshall Davis guy Barry says was his good friend? Turns out he was a perv of the first order and liked young boys.

This post is not intended to spread that rumor...

[snip] What goes around, comes around.

You stay classy, Mr. Erickson. There isn't one shred of evidence that any such relationship or molestation occurred and you know it. A broken clock is always right twice a day, but that's enough for you to quote the Enquirer, right? Are you suggesting that this would have any effect on Obama's ability to lead our country? Would those effects be any different to say...being a POW for 5 years?

This says it all about the Bob Owens and Michelle Malkin's of the right wing blogosphere.

Jonathan Schwartz

The Scott Beauchamp affair is reminding me of this, from 1984:

A Party member...is supposed to live in a continuous frenzy of hatred of foreign enemies and internal traitors, triumph over victories, and self-abasement before the power and wisdom of the Party. The discontents produced by his bare, unsatisfying life are deliberately turned outwards and dissipated by such devices as the Two Minutes Hate, and the speculations which might possibly induce a sceptical or rebellious attitude are killed in advance by his early acquired inner discipline...called, in Newspeak, crimestop. Crimestop means the faculty of stopping short, as though by instinct, at the threshold of any dangerous thought. It includes the power of not grasping analogies, of failing to perceive logical errors, of misunderstanding the simplest arguments if they are inimical to Ingsoc, and of being bored or repelled by any train of thought which is capable of leading in a heretical direction. Crimestop, in short, means protective stupidity.

At first it seems amazing that Orwell could have precisely described today's right-wing blurgh world sixty years ago. But the right-wing blurghs are just an outgrowth of human nature, which never changes. (In particular I'm always been struck by the consistency with which such people are unable to understand analogies.)

Shuster asked the right question of Rep. Blackburn and predictably the attacks followed. (Newsbusters) Whenever someone leaks info to right wing blogs---red flags should go up. Via Blue Texan:

Shuster's apology [re: Marsha Blackburn] may have been premature. The tiny hamlet of Bon Aqua, Tenn., is where Bohannon lived in the months immediately prior to entering the Army. The Census Bureau places his home in Blackburn's 7th Congressional District.

Media Bistro asks a good question:

Why did MSNBC rush Shuster to apologize? And, more importantly, who made him do so? Or did Shuster and MSNBC just not have the info (or didn't do the research) that Scripps dug up?

We know that Scooter Libby isn't around anymore to call NBC and complain to the Russert's of the world---so who is the new contact from the WH that's putting the heat on?

UPDATE: Oye:

FishbowlDC hears that MSNBC General Manager Dan Abrams asked David Shuster to apologize for Wednesday's Rep. Marsha Blackburn incident and even wrote the bulk of Shuster's on-air apology...read on