Welcome to “This Week In Crazy,” The National Memo’s weekly update on the wildest attacks, conspiracy theories, and other loony behavior from the increasingly unhinged right wing. Starting with number five:
5. Kris Kobach
Kris Kobach, Kansas’ right-wing secretary of state (and former immigration advisor to Mitt Romney) has a name for those who protest his long record of racist, homophobic, anti-democratic bigotry: the Ku Klux Klan.
During an appearance on — where else? — Glenn Beck’s radio show, Kobach lamented that the immigration reform advocates who have peacefully protested outside of his home are actually engaging in “domestic terrorism.”
“They’re just not wearing white cloaks, but this is exactly KKK type of intimidation,” Kobach said. Yes, because if there’s one thing the Klan loves, it’s efforts to increase America’s racial diversity.
Not to be outdone, Beck compared the protestors to Greece’s neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party — even though, as Right Wing Watch points out, the group has ties to anti-immigrant hate crimes.
4. Personhood Ohio
Extreme anti-abortion group Personhood Ohio, which last year tried and failed to change the Buckeye State’s Constitution to define life as beginning when a human egg is fertilized, has a novel idea to raise money for another attempt in 2013: a good old-fashioned assault rifle sale.
Patrick Johnston, the group’s founder, announced the new effort in an email blast over the weekend.
“I’m selling some of my favorite things — some powerful assault rifles and ammo,” Johnston writes. Specifically, Johnston is offering Chinese SKS rifles and a MAK 90 — all assault rifles, two of which come with high-capacity magazines and one with a drum holding 100 rounds.
As the Plunderblund blog put deftly put it, “nothing screams pro-life like an assault rifle sale.”
While you may be justifiably concerned by the combination of assault weapons and extremists, there is a silver lining: at least the guns are leaving Johnston’s terrifyingly loony hands.
3. Rick Wiles
Screenshot: YouTube
For most right-wing commentators, getting a U.S. representative to agree that the IRS “scandal” should lead Congress to investigate whether or not President Barack Obama in an American citizen would be easily their craziest moment of the week. But for the unbelievable Rick Wiles, it’s not even close.
Wiles makes the list this week for devoting an entire interview to attacking his fellow conspiracy theorist and This Week in Crazy favorite, Glenn Beck. According to Wiles and his guests, anti-Islam activists Walid and Theodore Shoebat, Beck practices a Mormon/Muslim/Buddhist/pagan cult religion called “Chrislam.”
“Why is Glenn Beck so fascinated with universalism? Why does he keep pushing universalism? Because it is part of his religion,” Theodore Shoebat warned. “People need to understand this about Mormonism. Mormonism is an extreme version of Chrislam. Joseph Smith observed the most extreme form of Islam you could ever imagine.”
“The Latter-Day Saints church has sought to respect Islamic laws, that is sharia – that’s the thing that Glenn Beck claims to be fighting,” Walid Shoebat said. “They basically have the same faith.”
If only Alex Jones could have gotten involved, this could have been a conspiracy theorists’ perfect storm (so perfect that it could only be caused by a government weather weapon.)
Audio of the interview can be heard atRight Wing Watch.
2. E.W. Jackson
Photo: markn3tel via Flickr.com
E.W. Jackson, the ridiculous Republican candidate for lieutenant governor in Virginia — who’s too crazy for even Ken Cuccinelli — stuck his foot in his mouth again Wednesday when he claimed that the government has been more harmful to black families than slavery.
Speaking at a Juneteenth celebration in Newport News, Virginia, Jackson said it was “not slavery that eroded the black family but government policies in the 1960s.”
“In 1960 most black children were raised in two-parent, monogamous families. By now, by this time, we only have 20 percent of black children being raised in two-parent, monogamous families with a married man and woman raising those children,” Jackson said. “It wasn’t slavery that did that. It was government that did that, trying to solve problems that only God can solve, and that only we as human beings can solve.”
Someone — probably from the Cuccinelli campaign — should remind Jackson that zero percent of slave children were raised in idyllic two-parent, monogamous families. And if it somehow wasn’t already clear, you probably shouldn’t take history lessons from a guy who believes that yoga leads to Satanism.
1. Michael Burgess
This week’s “winner” is U.S. Representative Michael Burgess (R-TX), who set a new standard for stupid anti-abortion arguments Monday. While debating the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, Burgess offered fetal masturbation as a reason to outlaw abortions 15 weeks after conception.
Yes, you read that correctly.
“Watch a sonogram of a 15-week baby, and they have movements that are purposeful,” Burgess continued. “They stroke their face. If they’re a male baby, they may have their hand between their legs. If they feel pleasure, why is it so hard to think that they could feel pain?”
Back in the real world, the scientific consensus is that the brain is not developed enough to feel pain — much less masturbate — until at least 24 weeks after conception. But Burgess and the ridiculous anti-abortion bill — which passed the House by a 228-196 margin on Tuesday — are sure to do wonders for the GOP’s rebranding plan.
