Former GOP candidate and Right Wing blogger arrested for sending a bomb through the mail.

Courtesy of HuffPo: 

A former Republican political candidate in Indiana who authored a right-wing blog was arrested this week for allegedly mailing a pipe bomb and a threatening letter containing a bullet to two of his political opponents. The pipe bomb exploded at a post office, leaving a pregnant postal worker with “cuts, abrasions and bruises to her head, legs, and feet.” 

Eric Krieg, a 45-year-old resident of the city of Munster, was charged with knowing possession of a destructive device and transporting explosive materials. He was arrested on Thursday after the FBI executed search warrants at his residence, his work and on his vehicle. The Justice Department put out a straightforward press release about Krieg’s arrest, but a FBI agent’s affidavit offered a lot more of an interesting backstory. 

The package containing a pipe bomb that exploded at a post office in East Chicago, Indiana, on Sept. 6 had been addressed to an attorney who the feds labeled “Victim 1.” The lawyer had represented a person who filed a defamation lawsuit against Krieg that was settled for around $60,000, which led Krieg to declare bankruptcy, according to the feds. 

The feds say Krieg was a blogger who went by the nickname “buzzcut” and wrote a blog, “Blue County in a Red State,” which is no longer active. The blog’s tagline said it was about “Life in the most corrupt county in America: Lake County, Indiana.” But Krieg, who was described by a local columnist as “the unofficial mud-thrower of the Lake County Republican Party,” has run for county council and as country surveyor in Lake County.

Look at this guy trying to give bloggers a bad name. 

As for his also being a GOP candidate, well this is actually the kind of behavior I expect from that crew these days.

Rachel Maddow's interview with Kellyanne Conway was nothing short of amazing.

Courtesy of Raw Story:

Pointing out that Trump encouraged his rally crowd to target ABC reporter Martha Raddatz over false claims that she cried the night he was elected, Conway tried to insist that everyone on Trump’s team has “enormous respect” for Raddatz, whom they all agree is a “tour de force.” 

Maddow reminded Conway that “telling a story about her that is not true” to crowds of thousands throughout the United States is hardly indicative of “enormous respect” and asked if Raddatz could expect an apology sometime soon. Conway insisted those types of conversations don’t happen in public. 

“The accusation was made publicly,” Maddow pressed. 

Conway quickly changed the topic, instead discussing Trump’s “relationship with the press” and the “negative press coverage” she says marred his campaign.

Later in the interview Conway defended Melania's hiring of the same lawyer that drove Gawker out of business to go after the Daily Mail and a blogger who insinuated that she had once worked as an escort.

Conway's defense of that is that the damage had already been done so even though there was an apology as well as a retraction of the story it was too late.

When Rachel asked if this lawsuit might continue even after Melania becomes first lady, Conway said that it might.

When Rachel mentioned that this was unheard of for first families, Conway suggested that the Trump's had been under attack by the media in ways that no other presidential family had been forced to endure, “It’s just different for the Trumps."

At this point I literally jumped up out of my seat and yelled at the TV for Maddow to remind this peroxide little bitch, that her boss had risen to national attention by claiming that the sitting President of the United States was not born in this country.

Despite my yelling Rachel did not do that, nor did she mention the number of times that Carson herself had claimed that Hillary Clinton was a criminal and about to be indicted during the campaign.

Nor about that time her boss claimed that Ted Cruz's dad had something to do with the assassination of JFK.

(Though much earlier in the interview she did confront her about Trump's National Security Advisor Gen. Flynn had tweeted that Hillary Clinton was part of that fake Pizzagate scandal, and therefore a child rapist.)

We talk about the death of irony with the election of this orange tinted buffoon, but this interview drove that point home like a stake through the heart.

But even more chilling is that it reveals that not only does this evil administration expect to never be held accountable for their lies and misstatements, but that if any news outlet or blogger reports negatively about them they risk being sued into non-existence.

This is not a presidential administration, this is an authoritarian dictatorship where dissension will not be tolerated, and critics must fear for their livelihoods, if not their very lives.

The Immoral Minority finally comes to Facebook!

So finally after stubbornly refusing to give IM a Facebook presence, I caved in yesterday and created this page.

One of my faults as a blogger is that I am resistant to self promotion.

I do not typically post links to my blog on Reddit, or HuffPo, or any other news outlets or websites.

To me that has always seemed arrogant and conceited.

And for quite awhile this blog did just fine through word of mouth and the occasional glare of national attention.

However things have now changed.

As you have been reading in my recent posts, websites promoting fake news have managed to increase their clicks by huge margins simply by using the tools available to them on Facebook.

In fact fake news has overwhelmed actual news to the point where facts and truth have been all but drowned out completely.

So in order to compete against all of that it is important that rather than rejecting Facebook we start using it as a means to inform and do good, rather than simply a place to disseminate lies and do evil.

To accomplish that I need all of you to provide a little help.

If you can help spread the word and introduce IM to a few more folks on your friends list that would be of great assistance.

Also, many of you will be pleased that on Facebook there is a "Like" button which folks have been asking me to put here for years. So now you can like IM to your heart's content.

Trust me with Donald Trump in office we have much to do, and with your help I think we can have some impact.

Oh and yes, there is a little unfinished Sarah Palin business to tie up as well.

Thank you for your years of support, and thank you for the support on Facebook that I know you will continue to provide.

Malia Litman's explosive Secret Service expose hits the MSM.

So as a number of you are no doubt aware fellow blogger, and friend, Malia Litman has been doggedly pursuing stories about Secret Service malfeasance and scandalous behaviors.

Malia originally started her inquiries based on information she received from Shailey Tripp and it just exploded from there.

So here she is a number of years later and all of her hard work has now been vindicated.

According to The Dallas News this is just a portion of what she has uncovered: 

Here, though, are lowlights of behind-the-scenes mishaps of our vaunted Secret Service. 

• A culture of "wheels up; rings off" meant even married agents could party on foreign trips. 
• Secret Service K-9 units brought their dogs into their hotel room, which the dogs trashed. The agents made payoffs so the incident wouldn't be reported. 
• A agent who missed his flight later showed up drunk with two prostitutes. He was not disciplined. 
• Agents "engaged" with prostitutes in Amsterdam's red-light district during an advance team trip. 
• A supervisor choked a female subordinate because she rejected his sexual advances. 
• A supervisor offered a subordinate a larger office in return for sex. 
• A supervisor took a subordinate to a sex show while on duty. 
• A male agent's gun was stolen by a male prostitute he solicited online. The gun was never recovered. 
• A manager in the National Threat Assessment Center forced employees to drink alcohol in his office "so that he could trust them." The same manager was accused of multiple incidents of sexual harassment.

The article goes into more detail, but that right there is enough to take your breath away.

None of this information came easily and Malia spent $100,000 of her own money on legal fees to gain access to the documents which tell these troubling tales.

Which goes to show the kind of dedication it requires from citizen journalists to get to the truth, and then get that truth out to the American people.

All I can say is congratulations Malia! You do us proud!

The Anchorage Press takes an interest in Bristol Palin's exotic model friend. Update!

Courtesy of the Anchorage Press:

Bristol Palin—well, all of the Palins, apparently—have a new girl in their life, and it isn’t Bristol’s newborn daughter Sailor Grace, who entered the world on December 23. 

Her name is Marina Lupas, AKA “The Exotic Russian” (as she advertises on her website, exotixllc.com, and proudly declares on t-shirts she sports in various YouTube videos). And while news of their friendship isn’t brand new—tabloids and anti-Palin bloggers featured Lupas in spring of 2015, when Bristol’s engagement to Medal of Honor recipient Dakota Meyer was going south—Lupas was, according to a Facebook post from Mama Grizzly Sarah, in the hospital room with Sarah and Bristol’s little sis’ Piper when Sailor Grace arrived just before Christmas. 

The aforementioned blogs made much of Lupas’s small business endeavors—she apparently has a company called Exotix LLC, which seems to serve no other purpose than marketing Lupas as an exotic model.

I realize this is very old news to all of us, after all we were the ones to out Marina in the first place, however it should be noted that a whole lot of Alaskans don't read the blogs.

But many of them DO get the Anchorage Press.

So now there is a whole new audience that is learning all about Bristol's exotic BFF.

I swear that so far it seems as if just about every day of 2016 has been yet another slap upside the head for Sarah Palin and her hillbilly brood.

And there are so many delicious things yet to come that I can barely contain myself.

Update: It looks like Bristol is once again hiding behind one of her children, just like dear old mom.

Courtesy of Bristol's Instagram page:

afternoon cuddles with my girl

Apparently there are rumors swirling around that Sarah Palin might challenge Lisa Murkowski for her Senate seat. I have but one thing to say to that, "Ha!"

Palin's "newly enhanced" physique?

Courtesy of the brand new website that just came to my attention The Midnight Sun:  

Former Governor Sarah Palin, yes we really are talking about her, keeps raising questions about whether she plans on running against U.S. Senator Lisa Murkowski. First she said it was a possibility in a radio interview, then she put her Arizona home on the market, now we’re hearing murmurs from Washington D.C. that she is seriously considering the possibility. 

Our favorite story of the “will she run?” rumor mill that is starting to get traction is how Palin has a favorite new yoga spot in Anchorage. That yoga studio must be popular among politicos because I hear nothing but talk of her and her apparently newly “enhanced” physique. According to those who overheard the conversations, when fellow yoga practitioners told Sarah how much they miss her and ask whether or not she’d run against Lisa, she tells them “I’m thinking about it.” Well, there you go, all the confirmation you need. 

Is Palin really gearing up, exploring, or some other political verb for ”maybe” with regard to Murkowski’s seat or is she just stirring the waters for another round of attention? Its Alaska, so you never know.

Actually we do know. 

No she is NOT gearing up for anything. Unless perhaps it is yet another scheme to fleece her few remaining supporters out of their hard earned money.

If Palin DOES actually launch a campaign, and she just might be getting desperate enough to do so, it will be short lived and its only function will be to raise her public persona to attract more attention so that she can get more money flowing into SarahPAC and perhaps get another book deal. 

By the way is THIS what people are seeing in that yoga studio that is convincing them Palin is somehow getting healthier?

Well this is good news, but I am still never going to Bangladesh.

Murdered Atheist Ahmed Rajib Haider

Courtesy of BBC: 

Two students have been sentenced to death in Bangladesh for the killing of an atheist blogger there in 2013. 

Six others were convicted of involvement in the murder of Ahmed Rajib Haider, who was hacked to death as he was returning home from a rally in the capital, Dhaka. 

A five-year sentence was given to the head of Ansarullah Bangla, the group suspected of carrying out the attack. 

Five more secular bloggers and writers were killed in Bangladesh in 2015.

As hard as it is to be an outspoken Atheist in America, it is NOTHING compared to the dangers of speaking out about religion in countries where the faithful believe such apostasy is justifiably punishable by death.

Saudi Arabia threatens to sue any Twitter user who compares them to Daesh. Sounds a little terrorist like to me.

Courtesy of The Independent:

Saudi Arabia will sue any Twitter user who compares the Kingdom’s recent decision to execute a poet to punishments handed down by Isis. 

Ashraf Fayadh, a 35-year-old Palestinian poet, was sentenced to death for apostasy – renouncing one’s faith – by a court in Abha on 17 November, according to documents seen by Human Rights Watch.  

The sentence has provoked widespread condemnation, not only from international human rights organisations but also from legions of Twitter and other social media users. 

"The justice ministry will sue the person who described ... the sentencing of a man to death for apostasy as being `Isis-like'," a justice ministry source told newspaper Al-Riyadh.

So I guess that if somebody were to tweet or blog this chart that would open them up to a potential lawsuit?

Oops.

Here's an idea Saudi Arabia. If you don't like being compared to a terrorist organization that kills people indiscriminately, DON'T be just like a terrorist organization that kills people indiscriminately.

Just trying to help.

Sarah Palin hard at work trying to sound out the words in the book her ghostwriter typed up for her.

Courtesy of Palin's also mostly ghostwritten Facebook page:

 Having a "sweet" time recording the audio version of my new book "Sweet Freedom" - due out in just 20 days! 

Twenty days! Why that's just enough time for me to save up to buy....just about anything else.

The only thing that I imagine would be worse than reading through one of these horribly written, cut and past tomes of Palin's is to listen to her struggling to read through one in that grating voice of hers.

I can only imagine how many takes it requires for her to even make it through a paragraph.

"Well pardon me, but who told y'all to put in so many highfalutin words in the first place."

After being silent for almost a week, Palin has come back with a vengeance (A word that ALWAYS applies to Sarah Palin.), and there are posts featuring her new gig at Newsmax, a denial that the Tea party is dead, and of course an attack against the President.

And yet with all of that not one word about the impending birth of her new granddaughter. Hmm, how sad.

In the meantime Nancy French, her pseudo daughter, has been doing her thing over on the blog she grudgingly shares with Palin's real life daughter, with a new post that defends the now infamous South Carolina cop and of course blames the student.

Ahh the Palins! They never fail to reinforce just how right we were on any given issue.

Former White House Chief of Staff points the finger of blame for the dysfunction in the GOP today right where it belongs. Directly at Sarah Palin.

William M. Daley makes some very salient points in this Washington Post article.

Here are a few of them:You can choose from a litany of insurrections, government shutdowns and other self-inflicted wounds. But this year’s carnival-like GOP presidential primary makes one event, in retrospect, stand out as a crucial turning point on the road to upheaval: the 2008 embrace of then-Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin to be a heartbeat from the presidency. 

Palin’s blatant lack of competence and preparedness needs no belaboring. What’s critical is that substantive, serious Republican leaders either wouldn’t or couldn’t declare, before or after the election: “This is not what our party stands for. We can and must do better.”

Daley goes on to point out that by the end of the 2008 campaign many in the Republican party were relegated to defending  one of the dumbest people on the planet from criticism or from further media scrutiny.

After the election Palin actually ramped up the damage she had been doing to the Republican party:

Palin became a Fox News fixture, reinforcing the newly formed tea party’s “never compromise” demands. Bombast, not reason, reigned. Now the “settle for flash” aura of Palin’s candidacy looks like a warning that the party was prizing glib, red-meat rhetoric over reasoned solutions.

Palin, who back in those days still had great influence, helped to elect morons like Ted Cruz, and pave the way for disastrously unqualified folks such Christine O'Donnell and Todd Aikin.

Now those folks did not get elected but others such as Ted Cruz, Mike Lee, and Louie Gohmert did.

Now that tiger is devouring the GOP establishment. Party elders had hoped new presidential debate rules would give them greater control. But they are watching helplessly as Trump leads the pack and House Republicans engage in fratricide.

This is how Daley wraps up the article:   

This isn’t to heap new scorn on Palin. But let’s not diminish the recklessness of those who championed her vice presidential candidacy. It was well known that McCain, 72 at the time of his nomination, had undergone surgery for skin cancer. It wasn’t preposterous to think Palin could become president. 

Now Republicans ask Americans to give them full control of the government, adding the presidency to their House and Senate majorities. This comes as Trump and Carson consistently top the GOP polls. Republican leaders brought this on themselves. Trump calls Palin “a special person” he’d like in his Cabinet. That seems only fair, because he’s thriving in the same cynical value system that puts opportunistic soundbites above seriousness, preparedness and intellectual heft.

Amen to that. 

I have to say that I probably received more links to this article than I have any other article in quite some time.

Part of the reason for that is likely because this Daley guy is singing my song.

I have been saying some version of this for coming up on seven years now.

I still remember that day after Palin resigned and my fellow Alaska bloggers were celebrating the possibility of never having to write about her again.

But not me. Somehow I knew that not only had we not heard the last of that lunatic, but that the REAL lunacy still lay ahead of us.

That may have been a moment of clairvoyance on my part, but even I could not have imagined just how much damage Palin would do to the GOP before people stopped listening to her.

In the old days I used Palin as a barometer to measure just how crazy the party was becoming, but these days even SHE is not batshit crazy enough to measure just how far the party has drifted into the weeds.

In 2009 one of the first books ever written about Palin was entitled  "Trailblazer." And as it turns out that title was prescient.

However the trail that Palin blazed was toward the destruction of the very party that rescued her from the near anonymity of Alaska and made her a household name.

And as we see that name is now not only synonymous with ignorance and stupidity, it is also linked forever to the dumbing down and disintegration of the Grand Old Party.

Bristol Palin finally finds somebody in the media to defend her so there you liberal haterz!!!!!!!

After being mercilessly mocked by the media, and becoming so incensed that Nancy French had to post in an angry voice for her on her blog, Bristol has finally found a journalist to take her side:

Thanks, Federalist, for being more even handed than the other publications.

I mean sure the reporter is a conservative mouth piece, who graduated from an Evangelical college which mostly takes home schoolers, and has recently been in the news due to a sexual assault, but hey at least it was positive.

Or was it?

From The Federalist: 

Granted, Palin isn’t the best person to be a spokesperson for an abstinence advocacy organization, as clearly she isn’t practicing what she preaches, but that doesn’t strip her of the right to have a say on the reproductive process. 

The reporter,  Bre Payton, then goes on to agree with many of the misstatements made by Nancy/Bristol/Sarah in that initial piece, but of course since she is a conservative religious fundamentalist she kind of has to.

However it is hard to see this is as much of an endorsement of Bristol as a conservative spokesperson if the reporter also has to include her personal failings. 

I mean the point that many of the articles made while calling Palin out was that not only did she have her facts wrong, but that she herself was not the right person to deliver them for public consumption.

Bre Payton argues that Bristol has the right to have an opinion, and that is true.

However other media outlets also have the right to argue that her opinion is not worth anything based on her life choices, lack of education, and hypocrisy. 

And then if you add to that the fact that Bristol is not even the one really writing these posts, well then you turn the hypocrisy up to eleven.

Currently, thanks to the efforts of Nancy French and her employer Sarah Palin, Bristol is everyone's favorite punching bag.

If she does not like that, and based on that recent post about being called an idiot she must not, then Bristol knows what she needs to do about it.

And she might want to hurry, because Wonkette is already having another field day with that idiot post.

Stop telling Bristol Palin to shut up! As long as she has a ghostwriter putting words in her mouth she doesn't have to!!!!!!!!

This is the actual picture that Bristol.Nancy/Sarah chose for this post. I'm not mocking.

Courtesy of Brancy's blog:

Everyone’s telling me to shut up about commenting on the issue in Washington State… Do they not realize what is going on? (I'm going to say "yes" here.)

You have to get a parents approval to take aspirin or ibuprofen at school, you have to have your parents present to go tanning in a tanning bed, or get your eye brows waxed, or get your belly button or ears pierced. But girls as young as 10 – YES I SAID 10 – can get an IUD put in without their parents knowing??????? 

How is that NOT black and white to people? (Uh..because it's NOT black and white?)


I know I’m the last to talk about birth control. (Two baby daddies right? LOLZ!)

(She said it, not me.)

But I am expecting a girl and do have a 14 year old sister and I would be so concerned for her going into a clinic and having something pretty serious put into her body. (I told you it was a girl.)

I’m not against birth control by ANY MEANS so do not twist my words. But I am against the government going between a parent and a child at such a young age. THERE IS A BIG DAMN DIFFERENCE. 10-11-12 year olds don’t know what’s best for them. 

Their parents do. 

(Yes but these IUDs are implanted with a surgical procedure, which requires a doctor. And surely even Bristol Palin recognizes that doctors are perfectly capable of telling their patients what is good or not good for them.)

So anyone who’s saying I have “no place to talk” .. Let’s look at the issue – the important part of this entire blog post – why I brought it to your attention. 

WE as parents know what’s best for our young daughters – NOT the government. (For clarifications sake the "government" is NOT placing IUDs in the bodies of little girls. Doctors do that. And just for a moment imagine the likelihood of a ten year old girl transporting herself to a clinic in order to get an IUD all on her own. More than likely if any ten year olds have received these, they did so with their parents fully aware.)


Okay now I am not at this point certain whether Nancy French has been channeling Bristol so long that she is now typing like a barely educated Wasillabilly or if in fact Brislt wrote all or part of this.

I will let you decide. 

However it is worth noting that whoever is the driving force behind these posts, and it could very well be Sarah herself, they are becoming increasingly defensive and combative.

Which makes it seem that somebody, or perhaps a couple of somebodies, are on the verge of a complete, and very public, breakdown. 

Well I've got my popcorn.

Nancy French says something ignorant while wearing her Bristol Palin skin suit and gets mocked by the media. It must be a day ending in a "y."

Courtesy of Bristol's fish lip photo depository.

To be honest I kind of read this post a few day ago and went "meh." I mean sure it's stupid, but since it was written by Nancy French, and not the fish lip selfie taker, I was not sure it was worthy of my precious time and energy. (That's right "precious.")

However as it turns out others were not similarly inclined. So now it's news, of a sort.

So here we go.

First off you should know that this is a rant about a program in Washington which mimics a HIGHLY successful program in Colorado that saw teen pregnancies drop by a whopping 42%.

However since this is Nancy French who is pro-everybody get should get pregnant advocate Sarah Palin's ghost typist, the facts were somewhat misrepresented. To put it mildly.

Do you remember what it was like to be a 10 year old? I remember being an unabashed tomboy concerned with playing outside and acing 5th grade. 

But life isn’t so innocent and carefree for some 10 years old in Washington State. This summer a report came out claiming that some schools in Washington were giving free birth control implants to children as young as 10 years old! These birth control devices are implanted in a girl’s uterus, and all of this can be done without a parent’s consent!

So if that sounds wrong to you it's because of course it is.

French also goes on to make this claim:

It is crazy that the government is offering a controversial form of birth control that can have serious life-long side effects to 10-year-old CHILDREN, but then to do all of this behind a parent’s back is simply outrageous!

Now if anybody should recognize crazy it would be Nancy French, however facts are another issue altogether. As the folks over at Raw Story pointed out: 

Palin’s anger was directed toward the Take Charge program, a state Medicaid initiative that provides birth control at no cost for adults without health insurance, as well as to underage girls. She did not mention that it is legal in Washington — as it is in 11 other states — for minors to obtain birth control without either parents’ consent or an exemption from a judge. 

The daughter of former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R) also repeated the conservative claim that Take Charge was offering intra-uterine devices (IUDs) to 10-year-old girls, citing a report by the conservative site Judicial Watch making the same claim. 

However, the report Palin cited did not offer any specific statistics showing that 10-year-olds were getting the devices. Instead, it noted that only four 11-year-olds received birth control from state officials between 2013 and earlier this year. By comparison, 2,336 girls between 16 and 17 years old — the same age Palin was during her first pregnancy — received IUDs during the same period. 

Palin’s argument that IUDs can have “life-long side effects” was also debunked in 2012, when the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists determined that they were safe for use by teens.

So we have misrepresentation, followed by exaggeration,  followed by faux outrage. Yep that is a SarahPAC funded screed if ever we've heard one.

This same story was also covered by Wonkette (Who had a field day with it.), the Inqusitr, Jezebel, and the Huffington Post.

A number of them also referenced Bristol's past "work" as an abstinence spokesperson, as well as the fact that she is currently knocked up again.

Ultimately it once again shows Bristol to be an ill informed hypocrite, who is lecturing the country about teen pregnancies and birth control while still living off the proceeds from her own famous teen pregnancy and avoidance of birth control.

And since I have not mentioned it for awhile let's all remember that Bristol chose to get pregnant with Tripp, he was NOT an accident, and that she may have had numerous un-publicized pregnancies in the years since.

Or else she was raiding Dunkin Donuts, Taco Bell, and Chick-fil-a, every night after DWTS rehearsals.

Once again it is almost impossible to feel badly for Bristol (Especially if you know what I know about her.), however the fact that her mother continually opens her up to ridicule like this is a kind of hateful parental abuse that one does not see very often.

You might even begin to think that Sarah despises her oldest daughter.

Hmm, perhaps that is why we have not heard her brag about becoming a grandmother yet again?

2011 video of Ben Carson shows him claiming that the flood of Noah was real and that Darwin was encouraged by Satan to come up with Evolution.

Now that video up above is over 48 minutes long so I don't expect anyone to sit through the entire thing without ripping their hair out.

I certainly couldn't.

However here is a brief synopsis by the blog  Danthropology followed by some snippets of Carson's remarks:

Most people know that Carson denies evolution is a fact and instead subscribes to young earth creationism, believing the earth is only 6000 years old and humans were created as is. Whether he is stupid enough to actually believe this or is pandering to the ignorance of the GOP voter base has been up for question among some, but a video discovered from 2011 seems to close the door on that idea.

And here are some of the actual remarks that Carson offered during an event called “Celebrating Creation":

 [20:56] “… there is abundant evidence, geological evidence, that there was a worldwide flood. Go up into the Andes Mountains and see all those fossils on the top of those mountains. I mean, these things, when you talk to the evolutionists about them, they always say the same thing … ‘well, we don’t understand everything.’ And I just say, ‘I’m not sure you understand anything.’ You know, they look at all those layers, and then they find some fossils in one of the layers, and they says this fossil is this many years old because it’s in this layer. So, that means this fossil is like a million years old. And then later on they say, ‘well, this layer is a million years old because this fossil which is a million years old is in it.’ You know, that’s like saying, you know, ‘the sky can be red or blue’. And you say, well, the sky is blue. And you say why is it blue? ‘Because it is not red.’ Well why is it not red? ‘Because its blue.’ Yeh, you know that’s known as circular reasoning. That’s how they explain the age of all these things, its very circular reasoning, and really it has no real scientific validity.” [22:22]

How interesting that he recognizes the term "circular reasoning" but does not seem to understand that his entire argument is based on the premise that the Bible is the inerrant word of God and therefore any evidence which disputes that claim must be rejected, and only evidence which supports the Biblical accounts will be accepted.

By the way that is a consistent theme throughout his Q and A.

[27:24] “You know, according to the theory [of evolution] it [the eye] had to go pukh! and there was an eyeball, overnight, just like that, because it wouldn’t work in any other way. And when you ask the evolutionists about that they say, ‘well, we don’t understand everything.’ And I say, ‘well, I don’t think you understand anything.” [27:48] 

That is of course completely false, and evolutionists indeed have a working understanding of how the various eyes in the animal kingdom developed. (As you can see for yourself in this Ted Ed video.)

The fact that a medical doctor does not understand this is more than a little troubling.

[answering a woman’s question, 45:07] “I personally believe that this theory that Darwin came up with was something that was encouraged by the adversary [Satan], and it has become what is scientifically politically correct. Amazingly, there are a significant number of scientists who do not believe it but they are afraid to say anything.” [45:38]

So to be clear the man who is currently polling at number two for the GOP presidential nomination, believes that things which disagree with his religious perspective are the work of an evil entity whose job it is to undermine Christianity by introducing doubt.

The thing that I noticed while watching the video is how utterly convinced Carson is that he is absolutely correct in his thinking.

So sure is he that he feels comfortable ridiculing those who dare to consider that science may have the answers instead of the Bible.

That kind of absolute certainty is frightening to behold, and reminds me in no small way of George W. Bush in the lead up to the Iraq war. In my opinion Carson is a truly dangerous person who should be kept far away from the levers of power.

People of faith seem to feel confident in their belief, regardless of the evidence, while people of science are always searching for that next bit of evidence which will change their minds completely.

Personally I am much more comfortable with the uncertainty of the thinker, over the certainty of the believer.

Nancy French defends her adopted "mother" against criticism due to Sarah Palin's anti-Iran nuclear deal speech in D.C..

Courtesy of Brancy's blog:

To all the reporters covering the greatest threat to our security, and all the participants rallying around this most important issue – thank you for your great efforts yesterday at the anti-Iranian nukes rally. It opened America’s eyes to what Pres. Obama is doing with Iran. His “deal” with them actually strengthens the enemy and weakens America! Literally, it’s a life & death issue facing our nation and our allies. 

My mom spoke along with Donald Trump, Sen. Ted Cruz, Mark Levin, Glenn Beck, Duck Dynasty’s Phil Robertson, and this list of hard working activists who know how bad Obama’s deal is; thanks to all of you for taking time to let us know what’s going on: Reps. Louie Gohmert, Mike Pomeo, Mark Meadows, Gov. Jim Gilmore, Breitbart’s Steve Bannon, Penny Nance, Frank Gaffney, Jim Woolsey, Morton Klein, Michael Pregent, Genevieve Wood, Anne Bayefsky, Jenny Beth Martin, Lisa Mel Norton, Bill Walton… and everybody who showed up to protest the rotten deal that puts Israel and America in great danger! Thanks for bearing Washington, DC’s scorching heat – Mom said she felt like she was in a Bikram Hot Yoga class up on stage! 

Amazingly, there was crazy criticism of my mom’s speech from activists in the “Black Lives Matter” group. They totally twisted her comments, accusing her of racism! Mom doesn’t have a racist bone in her body – none of us do. They discredit themselves with radical and false accusations like this. How in the world are her comments “racist”?

Um..like this.

French then offers a transcript of Palin's speech to prove that she was not being racist, for some reason leaving out this portion: 

So up there in Alaska, across the way, Russia...You know there is a name for this taking advantage of America. There is a Russian name for that. And it is called 'fortochka.' And that means Obama's window of opportunity.

(By the way you should read what one Daily Kos poster wrote about that portion of the speech.)

Palin's Facebook page also linked to the article, proving once again that Nancy French is a woman of many faces.

Palin also takes a moment on Facebook to pimp her new book "Sweet Freedom."

(Which coincidentally is the same thing Todd said when Palin bought that new house in Arizona.)

In other Palin news Glenn Beck wrote a long, and mostly incoherent screed, apologizing for calling her a "clown," but standing by his claim that she is no longer relevant.

Here is a very small portion:

I don't have a relationship with her and most likely now never will. That is okay, she is not losing any sleep over this, I am sure; 

We don't see eye to eye on things. That is okay but some of them are large ticket items; 

I do hear her speak sometimes and I don't know what I saw in her. But, that is probably my fault because I probably projected many things that I wanted to believe she stood for. 

With all of that said: none of that makes her a clown.

No it doesn't, however the speech she gave in Washington, and many others that she has given in the past, DO make her a word salad spewing clown of the first order.

But then again who in the Republican party is NOT wearing a bulbous red nose these days?

Sarah Palin links to Bristol Palin's blog, linking to Nancy French's blog, defending jailed Kentucky clerk Kim Davis. Is anybody else dizzy?

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/bristolpalin/2015/09/freekimdavis/
Posted by Sarah Palin on Saturday, September 5, 2015

So Sarah Palin posted what you see above, which then linked to Bristol's ghostwritten blog, where we find this:  

EVERYONE should be allowed freedom of religion. If a gay baker doesn’t want to serve straight people, more power to him (It certainly wouldn’t hurt my feelings!) 

Kim Davis should NOT have been put in jail… especially since the mayors of those sanctuary cities haven’t been arrested, and their actions have resulted in deaths! (Wait, what the fuck does that have to do with this?)

But there are some who say that this woman’s act of civil disobedience – her refusal to sign same sex marriage certificates which landed her in jail — is even worse because she’s a “hypocrite.” News came out that she’d been married multiple times before her conversion to Christianity. 

Brancy then offers three reasons why Kim Davis is not a hypocrite, none of which is going to change any minds and only impress those who already view Davis as a martyr anyhow. 

Bristol's blog then offers a link to David and Nancy French's uber Christian blog, where we find the source for this defense of the anti-gay, pro-hypocrisy, Kim Davis.

Personally I am not at all surprised that Sarah, Bristol, and Bristol's brain are all bent out to shape over somebody being called a hypocrite.

After all what would you expect from a hypocritical ex-politician, a hypocritical abstinence spokesperson, and a hypocritical Christian?

To tell you the truth I would not at all surprised to learn that all three of these posts were written and published by Nancy French herself.

Which would essentially make her the biggest phony of all.

One of our bloggers wrote a book.

So Malia Litman, of Malia Litman's blog, has written a book.

I have not yet read it so I cannot give a full throated endorsement, but if you like Malia's writing on the blog then there is a good chance you will enjoy this as well.


I always like to promote books written by fellow bloggers or folks who are writing about Sarah Palin in factual manner.

Malia of course is both.

Nancy French, once again channeling Bristol Palin, attacks President Obama for playing golf, and claims it is unfair that Sarah Palin is called "the controversial one."

Courtesy of Bristol's Pikore account.

So Nancy French links to a story on the Business Insider which claims that over the last seven years President Obama has played more than 1,100 hours of golf.

French is appalled at this and makes the following completely unrelated comparison: 

Remember when my mom put a jet on eBay to save Alaska much-needed money? 

Yet, SHE is the one that the media tends to skewer, not the President who is spending our taxes on his many many rounds of golf while the nation struggles under the weight of government waste and fraud. 

Doesn’t seem right.

Personally, considering the vast number of accomplishments by this President, I would not care if he played golf every damned day of the year. Hell he could even take up smoking doobies again and play the game in a haze of marijuana smoke with Beyonce and Jay-Z so long as he keeps doing his job at this level.

WTF do I care?

Oh, it just dawned on me that some of our newer visitors might be confused as to why a middle aged woman like Nancy French is calling Sarah Palin "my mom."

You see my friends Nancy French is essentially a professional schizophrenic who is paid to pretend to be Bristol Palin, a woman so illiterate that her text messages look like they have been typed out by pigeon on LSD.

So periodically Nancy French puts on her Bristol Palin skin suit, sits down at a typewriter, and types out some BS so that she can earn that sweet sweet SarahPAC money. 

I have to admit that I almost missed this post as I was otherwise entertained by every other thing happening in the world which was by its very nature much more relevant. 

However somebody sent me a link to Wonkette, who had covered it, and I will share a little of what they had to say about the post:

A) While the president has spent about 46 days of his two-term presidency golfing, he has spent most of his time in office working, unlike some presidents named Republican President, who spent years — literally, YEARS — vacaying at their ranches, clearing brush, and ignoring important memos. 

(2) Even the king of vacationing while president, George W. Bush, says this obsession with Obama’s time on the links is idiotical. 

Third: Bristol, honey, your mom QUIT HER JOB right in the middle of doing it, sort of, and then she quit, like, OH ALL OF THE “JOBS” after that, and she even quit her bus tour, when all she had to do was sit on her ass, in a bus, and sometimes stop to wave at the people, that’s all she had to do and she couldn’t even do that, Jesus H.! 

Also, your mom is a dumb. A super real dumb. Like, dumb dumb. So many kinds of dumb. And she raised a dumb daughter, also too, who is too dumb to know how all of these babies keep ending up inside of her, when she keeps saving herself again and again. 

Gotta love it!

Oh and Wonkette also referred to the author of the post as  "Bristol Palin’s ghostblogger."

And one more thing about Sarah Palin being the "controversial one."

Brancy, right now Sarah Palin is the "irrelevant one." She only wishes that we all still considered her conversational.

But in a world where Donald Trump is leading the Republican field, and Jeb Bush is talking about "anchor babies," there is very little she could do to wrestle that word back from those who are using controversy as a stand in for actual political credibility.

A must read piece by the great Geoffrey Dunn on the whole Erick Erickson/Donald Trump/Sarah Palin/Bristol Palin/Nancy French kerfuffle.

Geoffrey Dunn and Gryphen.

This from a piece entitled "Cleavage to Nowhere: Trump, Breitbart, RedState, Fox News and Sarah Palin's Secret Emails" courtesy of HuffPo: 

Talk about a circular right-wing firing squad: Donald Trump; the marginalia at Breitbart Snooze; RedState's Erick Erikson & Co.; Sarah Palin; and her eldest daughter (aka Palin-Lite), are all going after each other in the ultra-rightwing blogosphere, and it's tempting to just sit back and watch the fur fly. Talk about some truly WWE material suitable for drive-in viewing. Where in the hell is Joe Bob Briggs when you need him? 

Let us see if it's possible to set the stage, which is a theatrical euphemism, because this conflagration is taking place in the middle of a cesspool of grand dimensions. If hypocrisy and deceit were bullshit, you could float the proverbial battleship in the muck. And the stench would spread all the way to Alaska's Matanuska-Susitna Valley and back again. 

In the wake of what was clearly a sexist and misogynistic attack by Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump on Fox News' Megyn Kelly -- is there really anyone who can argue otherwise? Really? -- Erikson courageously barred Trump from attending his annual RedState Gathering in Atlanta. Erickson was then unceremoniously attacked by that paragon of integrity and political insight, Palin-Liteweight, who charged Erickson with running a "demeaning fake photo" of her mother.

 Damn this picture is certainly getting a lot of attention lately.

I bet Palin wishes somebody would pay this much attention to her ACTUAL chesticles.

This entire article is awesome, start to finish, and Geoffrey has a great deal of fun pointing out how ridiculous this whole thing really is. And oh yes he also accurately identifies the fact that Bristol Palin's words, are not in fact Bristol Palin's words: 

The Real Palin, who, as I noted here in HuffPost with rather perfect prognostication, was avoiding the Kelly-Trump scuffle, sent out one her pups -- or more accurately one of her pups' ghost writers -- to enter the fray, so that there was no serious blowback on her. And as I accurately noted -- because the person I cited in Alaska had actually identified Palin-Lite as his source (I spared Lite that little embarassment the first time around), absolutely confirmed my speculation that there was no longer any love lost between Mama Grizzled and Faux News. How do we now know with certainty? Because Palin-Lite's ghost writer went after Fox's Chris Wallace and the Big Bad Wolf himself, Roger Ailes. 

Hell -- and Wasilla -- hath no fury like a Palin scorned.

Yes as I said you really need to read this whole thing, as it is chock full of delicious details that only  someone who spent as much time studying Palin-tology as Geoffrey Dunn has could possibly offer to the visitors to the Huffington Post.

Doctor points out that though he is attacking Planned Parenthood today Ben Carson also used fetal parts in his own research. Not the same thing says Carson.

Oh you weren't supposed to find that.

Courtesy of Dr. Jen Gunter's blog:  

Dr. Ben Carson, GOP nominee hopeful, told Fox’s Megyn Kelly that “There’s nothing that can’t be done without fetal tissue” and that the benefits of fetal tissue have been “over promised” and the results have “very much under-delivered.” 

Carson also said, “At 17 weeks, you’ve got a nice little nose and little fingers and hands and the heart’s beating. It can respond to environmental stimulus. How can you believe that that’s just a[n] irrelevant mass of cells? That’s what they want you to believe, when in fact it is a human being.” 

While opining on the uselessness of fetal tissue research to Megyn Kelly Dr. Carson neglected to mention his own paper Colloid Cysts of the Third Ventricle: Immunohistochemical evidence for nonneuropithelial differentiation published in Hum Pathol 23:811-816 in 1992. The materials and methods describe using “human choroid plexus ependyma and nasal mucosa from two fetuses aborted in the ninth and 17th week of gestation.” 

Yes, Dr. Ben Carson has done research on fetal tissue and published his findings. His name is on the paper so that means he had a substantive role in the research and supports the methods and findings.

Dr. Gunter also posted scans of Carson's paper to make her point.

 Can you say "awkward?"

So here you have a neurosurgeon, who knows from personal experience the benefits of fetal tissue research, joining the mouth breathers in the Republican part in their attack on Planned Parenthood.

However when confronted with this revelation, Carson claimed that his research did not mean he was wrong about Planned Parenthood: 

On the campaign trail in Manchester, New Hampshire, Carson told CNN his research simply used the tissue from aborted fetuses that was made available to him. 

"We have banked material in the pathology lab from people from every age -- from day 1 of concept to 120 years told. Those specimens are available for people who want to do comparisons," Carson said. "To not use the tissue that is in a tissue bank, regardless of where it comes from, would be foolish. Why would anybody not do that?" 

Of his own research -- which was to determine the patients who would be likely to develop certain health issues later in life -- Carson said, "That's a very different thing from killing babies, manipulating them, taking their tissue, selling them...To try to equate those things is absolutely ridiculous." 

So I guess we will assume that the fetal tissue that Carson used came from fetuses that voluntarily gave their life to science.  Right?

Or does he simply not care how the "banked material" was gathered because it was not something he could have used back then to fire up the conservative base and help him win the GOP nomination?

You know just when I think I have seen the worst case of hypocrisy that I can possibly imagine, I am proved wrong once again.