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. Glenn Beck and Rick Santorum
Glenn Beck claims his customary spot on the list for a rant that he uncorked on his radio show on Wednesday, in which he accused NBC of being Satanic.
The network drew his ire for an incident on CNBC Wednesday, when reporter Steve Liesman requested that Mexican music be played alongside Cruz’s picture. According to Beck (who is suddenly more anti-racism than he was during his “Clydie Clyde” days), this is evidence that the peacock networks “have chosen the path of darkness” promoted by Satan:
Sure, the network that invested $50 million in the XFL has some issues, but the charges of Satanism seem a bit over the top.
At least Beck limited his criticism to NBC. According to Rick Santorum, the entire film industry is the devil’s playground:
Conveniently, the only way to remove Hollywood from Satan’s clutches is to buy a ticket to Santorum’s movie. What a coincidence!
4. Herman Cain
Remember Herman Cain? The former pizza magnate, whose underdog presidential bid imploded in epic fashion amid allegations of sexual harassment and carrying on a 13-year affair, has a new explanation for the failure of his campaign.
If you guessed startling incompetence, an economic plan stolen from Sim City, or general creepiness, you’re wrong. As Glenn Beck could have told you, Satan is actually to blame.
During an interview with RealClearReligion which was published Wednesday, Cain insisted that the women who accused him of harassment are “liars,” and blamed the media for not scrutinizing their allegations. Then things got weird:
Then he speculated as to who may have orchestrated the allegations: the Devil.
“It made me realize that there was a force bigger than right,” Cain said.
It may sound like Cain is paranoid or making excuses, but maybe he does know of what he speaks. After all, as Michele Bachmann reminded us during the 2012 campaign, “When you take the 9-9-9 plan, and turn it upside down, the devil’s in the details.”
3. Joe The Plumber
Samuel Wurzelbacher — the right-wing activist and failed congressional candidate who is better known as “Joe the Plumber” — checks in at number three for an unhinged rant directed at the man who made him famous: Senator John McCain (R-AZ).
Wurzelbacher begins his attack by praising McCain’s heroic service to the nation…for half a sentence.
“You served almost 6 yrs in a prison camp and now you have sentenced 300 million Americans to a LIFE sentence of Obamacare,” he writes. “I want everyone to remember your name as their 65 year old grandmother lies in bed dying because she is deemed too much of a ‘risk’ to help, ie, she is deemed too expensive.”
Killing grandma is just the tip of the iceberg.
“I also want everyone to remember your name when they can’t find work because you stabbed them in the back and allowed our borders…YOUR borders… to be opened to a flood of Illegal immigrants who have nothing to add to this country and our way of life beyond a lifetime of out of control growth in state and federal entitlement spending, and a guaranteed vote for Democrats for countless generations to come,” he continues (nobody’s ever called the guy “Joe the Grammar Teacher”).
“It’s clear that you would stop at nothing to help Obama and his regime, and your actions in recent years have given me, and many like me, no choice but to revoke my respect for you and for your so-called ‘service’ to our country,” he rages.
“What have you done for me lately?” Wurzelbacher concludes. Presumably, helping him transition from fake plumber to fake politician no longer qualifies.
Meanwhile, if Senator McCain thinks that This Week In Crazy favorite Louie Gohmert has “no intelligence,” one can only imagine what he thinks of his erstwhile-ally Wurzelbacher.
Photo: ronnie44052 via Flickr
2. Sheldon Adelson
Sheldon Adelson, the billionaire casino mogul who is currently the Republican Party’s top donor, offered a crazed bit of foreign policy advice to President Barack Obama on Tuesday: Stop negotiating with Iran, and start dropping nuclear bombs.
Adelson shared his curious brand of diplomacy during a panel discussion with former congressional candidate (and Michael Jackson’s former rabbi), Shmuley Boteach.
“What are we going to negotiate about? What I would say is, ‘Listen, you see that desert out there, I want to show you something,'” Adelson said of the Obama administration’s diplomatic engagement with Iran. “You pick up your cell phone and you call somewhere in Nebraska and you say, ‘OK let it go.’ So there’s an atomic weapon, goes over ballistic missiles, the middle of the desert, that doesn’t hurt a soul. Maybe a couple of rattlesnakes, and scorpions, or whatever.”
“And then you say, ‘See! The next one is in the middle of Tehran. So, we mean business. You want to be wiped out? Go ahead and take a tough position and continue with your nuclear development,'” he added.
Video of his remarks is below, starting at around the 5:20 mark:
While President Obama would presumably be shocked and appalled at violating the norm against nuclear weapon use for no particular reason, some of the beneficiaries of Adelson’s financial largesse would presumably be more amenable to the plan. After all, as Connor Simpson points out at The Atlantic, Adelson is basically advocating the same strategy that the Tea Party used during the government shutdown.
1. Gordon Klingenschmitt
This week’s “winner” is Gordon Klingenschmitt, a newly-minted candidate for Colorado’s state legislature whom Right Wing Watch helpfully describes as a “disgraced former Navy Chaplain who brags of having successfully performed an exorcism on a lesbian soldier and who has stated again and again that demonic spirits are behind everything from abortion to gay marriage to ENDA to President Obama to Madonna.”
In an email to his supporters, which Right Wing Watch flagged on Thursday, Klingenschmitt explained his opposition to the Employment Nondiscrimination Act. It is, to put it lightly, completely insane.
So-called [homosexual] civil “rights” commissions are replacing courts across America, stacked with Democrat appointees, and given unlimited power to punish, intimidate, and threaten Christian business owners. Not on my watch. Not in this America. Let’s end it now.
The militant gays essentially demand “let us have sex in your house, or we will kick you out of your house.” Do Christians no longer have control of their own home or business? This is coming to the USA if we allow ENDA to become law. I’ve been warning for two years that ENDA would bankrupt Christian businesses. Now the Oregon government is helping this anti-Christian intimidation. Just imagine if Democrats pass ENDA nationwide, to “investigate” all Christians who refuse to participate in gay ‘weddings?
Perhaps sensing your urge to laugh in his face, Klingenschmitt insists that militant gays kicking you out of your house so they can have sex in it is a serious matter. “They’re coming for us, people. This is no joke. This will happen to YOU if we allow ENDA to become law,” he writes.
Meanwhile, Klingenschmitt is probably starting to look awfully appealing to a certain subsection of the Colorado electorate.
Check out previous editions of This Week In Crazy here. Think we missed something? Let us know in the comments!
