One of the problems about being a conservative is that if a wackjob goes off anywhere who's happened to watch 15 minutes of Fox News at sometime in his life, it's an indication of a vast boiling pit of seething fascist rage that is just WAITING to spill over and destroy America. When Timothy Macviegh committed his act of outrage after being inspired by white supremacist literature, it was open season on anyone to the right of Bob Dole, never mind a majority of conservatives have never even HEARD of the "The Turner Diaries", much less support the ideals within the book.

Now we have a nutjob in the D.C. area with a manifesto drawn from "My Ishmael", the sequel to the novel "Ishmael", which Wikipedia says "uses a style of Socratic dialogue to deconstruct the notion that humans are the end product, the pinnacle of biological evolution. It posits that human supremacy is a cultural myth, and asserts that modern civilization is enacting that myth." 

"Human supremacy is a cultural myth". Got it?

And it only gets better from there:

"Ishmael explains that the Fall of Adam represents the Semitic belief that once mankind usurps this responsibility - historically decided through natural ecology (i.e. food chains) - that mankind will perish. He cites as fulfillment of this prophecy contemporary environmental crises such as endangered or extinct species, global warming, and modern mental illnesses."

So essentially, everything that's happened throughout the entire course of human civilization has been a mistake. Everything we as humans have done since we left the hunter-gatherer lifestyle and/or The Garden Of Eden has been a mistake, and the only way we can rectify this mistake in the eyes of the Gods/Gaia is to return to our pre-civilized roots, rejecting such modern advances as medicine, agriculture, and everything that can't be built by banging two rocks together. 

You'd think that such a radical, nihilist, misanthropic, extremely Luddite philosophy would be rejected by today's "Progressives". 

Right? 

Wrong. 

"The film Instinct directed by Jon Turteltaub, starring Cuba Gooding Jr. and Anthony Hopkins is inspired by Ishmael as indicated in the end credits...Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam has cited the book as an influence on their album, Yield...New tribalists believe in a New Tribal Revolution outlined in the Ishmael series by Daniel Quinn...Ecoregional Democracy and peace movement advocates are also often new tribalists as well, as the groups share common ideals." 

The ideas inside "Ishmael" don't belong to the fringes of the radical environmentalist movement in the same way that the ideas of the "Turner Diaries" belong on the extreme end of conservatism. What's inside "Ishmael" is right smack dab in the middle of modern "progressive" thought. 

Remember those glory days of yesteryear, when President Barack Teleprompter Obama could give a stemwinder of a speech and all of America would hang on to every word like it was the last life preserver from the Titanic? 

Not anymore. 

So far, the most prominent politician to comment on President Obama's Iraq speech is President Obama.

Doesn't anyone else care? (No. - ed.)

With normally tweet-happy politicians virtually silent in the online social-media sphere, the president tweeted four times in the space of his 19-minute address -- all via automatic tweet feeder HootSuite.

Perennial Facebook poster Sen. David Vitter of Louisiana chimed in criticizing the president and Sen. John McCain took time out from tweeting with Snooki to say the president's withdrawal policy "will doom us to failure." But then, silence. From either side.

Ron Paul (R-Freakazoid) is determined to tilt at any and all windmills in his path, even if it's a windmill in the shape of Fort Knox. (Via Matt Cover on Twitter) 

“If there was no question about the gold being there, you think they would be anxious to prove gold is there,” he (Ron Paul) said.

“Our Federal Reserve admits to nothing, and they should prove all the gold is there. There is a reason to be suspicious and even if you are not suspicious why wouldn’t you have an audit?

“I think it is a possibility," Paul said when asked if there was truth to rumors that there was actually no gold at Ft. Knox or the New York Fed. 

Silly Ron. The gold from the Fed is in a big ol' warehouse in Nevada, along with the remains of the aliens from Roswell and the Ark of the Covenant. Everybody knows that, 

America finally has the anti-sparkly candidate we've been waiting for. 

I will stop debt collectors from calling you. I will make it illegal for a company to sell a debt you have for purposes of collection. You and your family have dignity: you are not cattle to be sold back and forth in the debt marketplace. You know how horrible it is to have those vampires calling you, again and again and again. (emphasis mine)

We've all been there, settling down for a quiet dinner with the family, and then suddenly the door bursts open and thousands of vampire bill collectors break in. Happens all the time.

And people thought I was crazy for stocking up on holy water, garlic and lawn stakes all these years, just for the day that the vampire debt collectors attack. I applaud Alvin Greene and his campaign manager Hugh Van Helsing for making a stand against this menace when no other candidate would speak out on this issue that touches all our lives.

Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go buy more buckshot for when the zombie bill collectors attack. Never can be too prepared.

Almost everything we now know about using a pistol for personal self-defense originated at Gunsite, a firearms training facility just north of Prescott. Col. Jeff Cooper, who created the Modern Technique of pistol combat and the Awareness Colour Code, founded the site as The American Pistol Institute in 1976 and it has been training policemen, military personnel and civilians ever since. Gunsite is the epicenter of the firearms training community: If it's not taught there, it's probably not worth learning. 

Which is why it makes so much sense that Gunsite's current owner (and former gubernatorial candidate) Buz Mills is now leading BorderSheriffs.com, a non-profit organization aiming to raise private funds for the legal defense of the 15 Arizona sheriffs named in a lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union. 

It's a perfect fit. Buz (and Gunsite) have saved countless lives by training law enforcement to shoot correctly and quickly, and now Buz can save law enforcement again from a government gone out of control. Swing by and toss 'em a few bucks; they could use your help. 

Dude, if you're going to look this dorky on a bike, why not just go for the full Pee Wee Herman?

(Image re-purposed from here.)

CNN anchor Rick Sanchez has never been called the sharpest tool in the shed. But today's gaffe was amazing:

Sanchez isn't the first to step into that unfortunate idiom. In the late '80s, former used car salesman and troubled Arizona governor Ev Mecham was under attack as a racist. His very first act in office was to rescind the state's Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday, and he had been caught calling African-American children... well... a term that rhymes with a "Nick-a-Pinny" (he claimed it was a term of endearment).

Eventually, Mecham appointed a black man to his administration, which had local reporters asking if he was just trying to quell the furor. Ev famously replied, "I don't employ them because they are black; I employ them because they're the best people who applied for the cotton-picking job."

Eventually, Mecham was impeached. It will be fun to see if the self-righteously liberal Rick Sanchez can wriggle his way out of this minefield.

ExLg has had some fun with Meghan McCain's political musings in the past. Over the weekend, Lori Ziganto and Jenn Q. Public posted a hilarious, expansive parody of our senior senator's daughter. Read the whole thing!

Please, please, please  Miss McCain – please run for office in Arizona. You won't get elected, but you'll make bloggers the happiest we've been in years.

Hush little baby, don't say a word 
Papa's gonna buy you the District Third

And if that District Third gets beat
Papa's gonna buy you a Senate seat

And that Senate Seat turns sour
Papa's gonna buy you more ways to power

Late last night on Twitter, Keith Olbermann started complaining about Glenn Beck's mammoth Restoring Honor event in Washington, D.C. And complaining.

Criticizing the crowd counts. Mocking the attendees. Insisting he would never want to hold such a rally. That, frankly, he doesn't even care about Glenn Beck and it's foolish that anyone does. After his 42nd (42nd!) comment, we had a brief exchange:

Apparently, Keith had to grab his Peter Gabriel cassettes for an overnight drive to Washington, D.C.

Tweet