Last Call

It's not really paranoia if they really are out to get Obama, you know.

At the How To Take Back America Conference last weekend, conservative speaker Kitty Werthmann led a workshop called “How to recognize living under Nazis & Communists.” Announcing the panel in a column preceding the conference, talk show host Janet Porter gushed how Werthmann’s description of Austria in the 1930s is a “mirror to America” today — noting “They had Joseph Goebbels; we have Mark Lloyd, the diversity czar.” The room was packed over capacity to hear Werthmann, who grew up as a Christian in Austria and serves as Phyllis Schlafly’s Eagle Forum South Dakota President.

During her session, Werthmann went through a litany of examples of how President Obama is like Adolf Hitler. She noted that Hitler, who acted “like an American politician,” was “elected in a 100% Christian nation.” Although she failed to once mention Antisemitism or militarism, Werthmann explained how universal healthcare, an Equal Rights Amendment, and increased taxes were telltale signs of Nazism. Werthmann also warned the audience:

If we had our guns, we would have fought a bloody battle. So, keep your guns, and buy more guns, and buy ammunition. [...] Take back America. Don’t let them take the country into Socialism. And I refer again, Hitler’s party was National Socialism. [...] And that’s what we are having here right now, which is bordering on Marxism.

Well, alright Zandar, you say, but these people are mad, fringe lunatics. Surely the GOP is keeping a safe distance from people advocating armed revolt against the government given our recent history over the last 20 years.

You would of course be COMPLETELY WRONG.

Werthmann noted that her Nazism speech is gaining popularity. She not only has delivered it to several tea parties, but has been asked by “a group of bankers” to address them this month.

Before the event, ThinkProgress asked Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN), one of several Republican members of Congress also speaking at the conference, to autograph Werthmann’s DVD about National Socialism. She happily obliged:

Bachmanniac again. Anyone else surprised? Well, who else was there, you ask? How about World Net Daily founder Joseph Farah, conservative pain in the ass Phyllis Schlafly, GOP Presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee, and GOP Congressmen Steve King, Tom McClintock and Tom Price...and Joe The Plumber!

It's a Hollywood Squares of squares who hate Hollywood. And Obama. And anyone who isn't exactly like them.

But don't dismiss them as harmless cranks. These guys mean business, folks. The GOP is backing their play with the Pretty Hate Machine. Who will it set off next, and how many people will be hurt or killed when it happens?

Keep that in mind.

Auto Sales Running Out Of Gas

Without Cash For Clunkers, car sales have hit a pothole again.

U.S. auto sales likely fell in September back to the nearly three-decade lows of early 2009 without government incentives to spur buying, leaving in doubt the timing and pace of a recovery for the battered industry.

Nearly 700,000 new cars and trucks were bought by U.S. customers through the government "cash for clunkers" incentive program from late July through the first three weeks of August, a leap from recession-stunted sales earlier in 2009.

The massive jump in buying versus earlier in 2009 depleted the stores for all the major auto manufacturers, leaving industry inventories at historically low levels.

Major automakers made sharp production cuts due to the economic downturn in general. Chrysler, now under management control of Italy's Fiat, and GM, also broadly halted output around their restructurings in bankruptcy.

The exhaustion of the government incentive program and a dearth of key vehicles at dealerships curtailed activity at many dealerships through the first half of September, but there have been some signs of sales improving late in the month.

"We have started to get little rumblings that maybe the consumer isn't quite so flat on their back, that they have been responding to some of the incentive programs and the fact that leasing is coming back," said Rebecca Lindland, an automotive research director at IHS Global Insight.

The gas tank for the auto industry is down to "rumblings". Who's going to buy a car at this point unless you absolutely need one, and if you need one, you're going to be buying used.

But here's the larger, scarier problem: replace "Cash For Clunkers" with the "stimulus bill", and "car sales" with "the economy", and you have America roughly 12 months from now. We're in trouble, folks...and once the stimulus is gone, do you think we'll get more?

Obama Derangement Syndrome, Farmville Edition

Via Bob Cesca's place, NPR has the story:

A blog called The Political Carnival is getting credit this afternoon for calling out the ridiculous "Should Obama be killed?" poll that showed up on Facebook over the weekend (and is now being investigated by the U.S. Secret Service).

GottaLaff, one of the blog's authors, pointed out the offensive post last evening. Today, says GottaLaff, the Secret Service tracked her down to say thanks for having posted a screen grab of the poll.

Facebook, the company, had nothing to do with the poll, according to spokesman Barry Schnitt. It's no longer on the site.

Nice. "Should Obama be killed?"

Proof that John Gabriel's Greater Internet F'ckwad Theory is in full effect. Combine that with Obama Derangement Syndrome, and you get Facebook polls asking if the President should be assassinated.

Yeah, but it's okay because liberals did that to Bush, right?

Desert Storm

The Saudis are giving the thumbs up for whacking Tehran.

Excellent news for nutjobs! According to the always accurate and never at all hysterical Daily Express, Saudi Arabia has given Israel permission bomb Iran:

INTELLIGENCE chief Sir John Scarlett has been told that Saudi Arabia is ready to allow Israel to bomb Iran’s new nuclear site.

The head of MI6 discussed the issue in London with Mossad chief Meir Dagan and Saudi officials after British intelligence officers helped to uncover the plant, in the side of a mountain near the ancient city of Qom.

As you are no doubt aware, according to the US Constitution as interpreted by geniuses of the Mark Steyn class, this Saudi move compels President Obama to launch nuclear missiles at Tehran no later than 9PM EST next Wednesday.

It's 2002 all over again, unless Obama changes the script. He might, as commenter Paul W. has said on a number of occasions.

I'm hoping Paul is right. Me? Hope in one hand, a bunker buster bomb in the other, see which one fills Tehran's skies first.

Irony Science Theater 3000

Dennis Kneale: Financial genius and film critic.

Just spent two hours watching the upcoming film from Michael Moore— "Capitalism: A Love Story." It ends on a most hopeful note: The populist provocateur may be leaving the U.S. (Beat.) For good!

"I don't want to live in a country like that," he concludes at the end of two hours of ultra-liberal polemics and Wall Street bashing. To which I and a few colleagues cried out in instant unison: "So move!"

"Capitalism: A Love Story" is a truncated piece of trash, an utterly unbalanced, poorly argued screed. Its real title should have been "Vainglorious Bastard," for it skimps on facts and context in favor of unspooling Moore's own loopy, jaded and paranoid view of the world.

This meandering, ponderous flick deplores the past 30 years of the Reagan Revolution and free markets—and dotes lovingly on the wonders of socialism. Moore wishes we were more like France and Germany and Japan.

Freakin' JAPAN??? Replete with its 20-year slump?

The irony is lost on Kneale, apparently. He's not allowed to call anyone's work trash. Now, Michael Moore is a vainglorious bastard...but so is Dennis Kneale.

Attacking The First Fan

Obama is trying to bring the 2016 Summer Olympics to Chicago by making a personal pitch to the IOC in Copenhagen this week.

Obama will join First Lady Michelle Obama and other administration officials in pitching Chicago to the International Olympic Committee on October 2, spokesman Robert Gibbs said.

No other U.S. president has ever attended an IOC meeting.

Chicago is vying for the Summer Games against Madrid, Spain; Tokyo, Japan; and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Leaders from Brazil, Spain and Japan are expected to also make an in-person pitch.

So it's unprecedented, but certainly not out of the ordinary, since other world leaders will be there. But because Obama is doing it, he must be attacked for, well, whatever idiotic reasons the Wingers have now, which according to Malkinvania is "Evil Overlord Obama is silencing dissent from patriotic Chicagoans who hate the international sham that is the Olympics."

No, really. That's the logic. TBogg takes it from here:

It's a slow news day and Drudge is grasping at straws because wingnuts need something to HATE HATE HATE or they can't get out of bed before 11. So today it was the Chicago Olympic Organizing Committee asking the local Fox affiliate to not run a piece detrimental to acquiring the Olympics and THIS IS CENSORSHIP!!! and THE CHICAGO WAY!!! because the organizing committee is in Chicago which is where Obama is from when he's not from Kenya. Also. Jesus is involved. And probably ACORN.

This would not have happened under the Palin Administration.

I swear if Obama Derangement could be harnessed as an energy source, we could power suns with it.

Insert Obligatory Blues Brothers Movie Reference Here

Illinois Nazis.

BELLEVILLE, Ill. — A group waving flags adorned with swastikas traded insults with and challenged a crowd of about 250 onlookers from behind yellow wooden barricades manned by police including SWAT members during a midday protest Saturday.

After an hour of loud protesting by white supremacists, who were countered by a silent demonstration, police ended the two downtown rallies at 12:30 p.m.

While a police sniper watched from the roof of the police station, 22 members of white supremacist groups, shouted obscenities and made obscene hand gestures. One man, who had a crew cut and wore a black uniform, told the crowd of onlookers, "Wake up white America!"

"We were out there to denounce the violence," said Belleville resident Jason Bonn, who is a corporal with the National Socialist Movement, a group with a name similar to the Nazi Party of Germany during World War II. Bonn’s group is "fighting for white civil rights."

Free speech doesn't mean it makes sense of course. Then again, what did you expect after El Rushbo decided to call for busing segregation?

Stay Classy, Wingnut Nation

Jesse Taylor documents the Pretty Hate Machine versus Census worker Bill Sparkman.

Thankfully, after nearly days of professional investigation of the murder of a U.S. Census worker in Kentucky, a conservative blogger has collected all the gold and Cracker Barrel gift certificates his readership can offer, and is headed down there to Get To The Bottom Of This Mess, like Encyclopedia Brown would. And he has a hunch:

BTW, some people have a crazy hunch this Kentucky thing might involve teenagers and the horrorcore rap scene. Maybe they’re wrong about that, too . . .

You see, horrorcore rapper Syko Sam is suspected in the murder of four Virginians.

That’s the connection.

Seriously.

Yep, Robert Stacy McCain is on the case. And so is Dan Riehl:

UPDATE: Alternately, R.S. McCain could track down Dan Riehl’s theory that the murdered worker was a child predator, which is based on two ironclad pieces of evidence:

1.) What if he was?

2.) Wouldn’t it be irresponsible not to theorize?

Certainly, we believe things of greater import based on less evidence, such as gravity.

Because the fact Bill Sparkman died and the word "fed" scrawled across his chest couldn't possibly have been domestic terror perpetrated by anti-government nutbars. It must have been rap fans because somewhere a black man committed a crime in America, or justified because he was a pedophile, based on evidence that doesn't exist.

But this is how the Wingers roll, yo. Attacking a dead guy. Musta been "traditional Democratic voters" who did it, or the dude screwed kids, either way, the Wingers' hands are clear of blood.

Case solved! Right? Oh, and check the comments section on Dan Riehl's piece there. Real classy stuff. Destroying Bill Sparkman is now the Winger Crusade du jour.

StupidiNews!

• Iran claims to have successfully tested long-range missiles only days after admitting it has a hidden second nuclear facility.
• Panama will sign a treaty with the U.S. giving America two military bases on Panamanian soil.
• California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger faces a series of health care legislation initiatives to either sign or veto.
• State-based low interest mortgage loan programs are getting help from a new federal effort.
• AT&T takes on Google Voice in the wireless industry, and both sides want the FCC to administer net neutrality rules to help them.