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. Larry Klayman
Most Republicans were excited by the news that the GOP would be holding its 2016 convention in Cleveland, Ohio, as they hope that it could help their party win the state’s 18 critical electoral votes. But right-wing activist Larry Klayman knows better.
Over the weekend, Klayman took a break from trying to overthrow the federal government to brand both the city and the GOP as “losers.”
Writing in — where else? — WorldNetDaily, Klayman gave five reasons:
- Cleveland is “perhaps the most leftist major city in the United States,” so it won’t help Republicans win Ohio.
- “[D]owntown Cleveland, where the convention will be held, has at most three decent eateries,” and even the best neighborhood is so dangerous that “the number of street people and beggars approximates the number of white- or blue-collar workers who frequent and live in the area.”
- Cleveland is the third-fattest city in the United States, so naturally “the mood of the populace is depressing.”
- During the summer, “Gnat-like disgusting creatures swarm the area” (he’s talking about flies, not the political operatives who will flock to the convention).
- The city is so corrupt that the GOP will lose its moral high ground to attack “Obama and his comrades.”
“[F]or a political party that has lost the last two presidential elections to an incompetent and dishonest ‘Mullah in Chief,’ the future under any scenario does not bode well given its choice for the national convention, unless its new constituency is liberal fat people who have given up on life and enjoy seeing themselves as victims,” Klayman concludes. “Perhaps it is appropriate, as the GOP has metaphorically become fat, having fed at the trough of a dis-served American people that have few electoral choices to try to restore our beloved nation to the greatness of our Founding Fathers.”
It seems that GOP attempts to court to Ohio will go just about as well as the rest of the party’s outreach efforts.
4. Mark Levin
During Tuesday night’s edition of The Daily Show, host Jon Stewart criticized Israel’s use of airstrikes against Gaza in a satirical segment titled “(500) Crazies Of Summer.”
It may not shock you to learn that right-wing radio host Mark Levin wasn’t laughing. According to Levin, Stewart’s jokes at Israel’s expense make him a self-hating Jew.
“The people in the Gaza Strip serve as human shields and somehow this basic human fact, this simple logic is lost on Jon Leibowitz, I mean Stewart,” Levin said.
“I don’t trust Jews who change their names!” he then shouted.
“Have you f’ing seen Israel, you little twerp? Have you f’ing seen what surrounds Israel, you little twerp?” Levin raged at Stewart. He went on to suggest that Stewart probably has some “very funny” jokes about the Holocaust, before repeating his point about Stewart’s name change (he was born Jonathan Stuart Liebowitz).
“I despise the self-haters, I really do,” he added.
Of course, if Levin really can’t stand Jewish people who have changed their names, then one would think that he would be a bit more tolerant towards criticism of Avigdor Lieberman (who was born Evet Liberman), Shimon Peres (born Szymon Perski), Benjamin Netanyahu (whose father changed the family name from Mileikowsky), and all of the other Israeli leaders who adopted new names upon immigrating.
Then again, I do believe that Levin probably isn’t a big fan of Bob Dylan (born Robert Allen Zimmerman).
3. Larry Pratt
During an interview with “The Liberty Brothers Radio Show,” Gun Owners of America executive director Larry Pratt explained why Barack Obama, our “socialist in chief,” really hates America.
“Look at the way this guy was formed,” Pratt said. “His father was either a Kenyan socialist or the Communist Party member who lived across the street, Frank Marshall Davis, and there’s a lot more physical resemblance between the latter and Obama than Obama Sr. and Obama.”
As Right Wing Watch’s Miranda Blue helpfully explains:
The Frank Marshall Davis birther theory was invented and popularized by right-wing filmmaker Joel Gilbert, who thinks that Obama got plastic surgery in an attempt to hide his resemblance to Davis and who also believes that the president wears a secret Muslim wedding ring and could have been behind the Aurora movie theater shooting.
So there’s that.
Pratt added that it doesn’t really matter who Obama’s real father is — “whoever was the dad, they were all Marxists” — but still, he insisted that “I really think that more likely was that the Communist that lived across the street in Hawaii could have been the father.”
Amazingly, Pratt is endorsing a conspiracy theory that even most birthers won’t touch; after all, if President Obama is the son of the Commie next door, then he can’t be removed from office for being a Kenyan usurper.
2. Rush Limbaugh
On Thursday, a Malaysia Airlines jet crashed in Ukraine, after reportedly being shot down by a missile. All 295 people aboard were killed.
According to Rush Limbaugh, however, there’s only one reason the media would cover this tragic loss of life, and its massive ramifications on international security: To distract Americans from “the bad Obama news at the border.”
“I haven’t had CNN on all day, what do you bet they have broomed everything and are covering wall-to-wall the Malaysian [sic] Airlines flight shot down by a missile?” Limbaugh said on his radio show. “This is, I mean, you talk about — I don’t want to appear to be callous here, folks, but you talk about an opportunity to abandon the bad Obama news at the border!”
“And no, I’m not suggesting anything other than how the media operates,” he added.
He’s just asking questions.
If you think that’s bad, just wait until someone tells Allen West that CNN is covering the horrific incident instead of #Benghazi.
1. Larry Smith
Photo: votelarrysmith.com
The crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border has inspired some genuinely awful reactions from politicians, but perhaps none has been as strange as that of Texas congressional candidate Larry Smith.
Smith, the Republican challenging Democratic Rep. Filemon Vela in Texas’ 34th congressional district, recently toldThe Daily Beast that the relatives of the migrant children who have crossed the border in recent weeks should sue President Obama.
“I believe really, internationally, these families need to get together in international court and sue the Obama administration in a class-action lawsuit for unilateral child abuse,” Smith said, in a surprising bit of advice for a Texas Republican (they’re not known for their love of international institutions).
“Whether it was incidental or accidental, they were the cause of it. They knew it was coming and they allowed it to happen,” he added.
Why would President Obama allow such a tragedy to take place? According to Smith, it’s a result of his mental illness.
“People who intentionally hurt children for attention can be accused of Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy,” a press release on Smith’s website explains. “The facts surrounding the surge of unaccompanied, non-citizen children across the border support this charge.”
“American society is riddled with mandatory reporters, such as teachers and doctors, who have the obligation to alert the authorities to prevent children from being harmed. Any adult who clearly sees danger for a child would step in to prevent it,” Smith said in a statement. “President Obama, when requesting transport services for 65,000 unaccompanied children earlier this year, saw the coming harm and did nothing to stop it. These unfortunate children have become pawns to benefit Obama’s push for his unpopular and destructive immigration policies.”
In fairness, while Smith may not be a doctor, it does seem plausible that he knows a bit about attention-seeking behavior.
Check out previous editions of This Week In Crazy here. Think we missed something? Let us know in the comments!
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