Teabaggers are animated by cackling, inchoate rage and hate, although they do have their icons, chief among them Sarah ‘Talibunny’ Palin, a christofascist psycopath who’s managed to parlay idiocy and incompetence into leadership of a paramilitary cult by leaping to the head of this parade of barking grotesques and crystalizing their creed of xenophobia, genocide, social Darwinism and bankrupting militarism with her demented word salad of Farmers’ Almanac phraseology and neonazi confections.

Small wonder that Delaware radio talkmeister Matt Walsh would feel their wrath at a teabagger festival of hate this month when he called them all out as Talibunny panty sniffers. Oh, yeah. Questioned their independence of mind and dismissed their patron saint as a stroke pin-up. Predictably, they went fucking nuts.

Right-wing radio host calls tea parties ‘the Sarah Palin movement’ [RAW Story]

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Harold and Clay

[Post Updated 4/20/10 9:15 am PDT with photo of Clay and Harold and excerpt from the complaint]

Clay Greene and his partner of more than 20 years, Harold Scull, lived together in Sebastopol, California in the idyllic wine country of Sonoma Valley. Clay and Harold made diligent efforts to protect their legal rights, and had their legal paperwork in place—wills, powers of attorney, and medical directives, all naming each other. Harold was 88 years old and in frail medical condition, but still living at home with Clay, 77, who was in good health for his age.

One evening in April 2008, Harold fell down the front steps of their home.  Clay called an ambulance, and Harold was taken to the hospital.

Based on their medical directives alone, Clay should have been consulted in Harold’s care. Tragically, Sonoma County and health care workers instead refused to allow Clay to see Harold in the hospital.

There, then, the men’s nightmare began. Read more »

“Romney not only sold his family home in Belmont, Mass., but he bought a house — for $12 million — in the northern San Diego community of La Jolla… They still do not own a property in Massachusetts, forcing them to claim temporary residence at a basement apartment in the Belmont home owned by their eldest son, Tagg. It’s the address Romney used to vote in Republican Scott Brown’s recent victorious Senate special election race, all legal with town officials.” [AP/SFGate, via SFL]

Since we saw fit to post the Creepiest Song Ever awhile back, it behooves us to provide equal time to other gifted practitioners of the Slavic Arts. Meet Aleksandr Hrustevich, shredmaster.

[via pourmecoffee]

It’s not quite in the category of moving pyramids or shading OJ — or even using stock photography to misrepresent your supporters — but using an artfully combined collage of actual crowd shots can still land you in hot water:

Andrew Romanoff, a Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate from Colorado, apologized Friday for a photograph on his web site that was altered to show an African-American woman standing next to the candidate. Romanoff also removed the photo…

“I take offense at any suggestion that our campaign attempted to deceive anyone. That’s outrageous and false,” he said.

We can’t help but sympathize. Romanoff wasn’t trying to show that some of his best friends are black. He was trying to show that there’s at least one black person in Colorado.

Colorado Senate Candidate Apologizes For Altered Photo [TPM]

Sheep, come ye and be fleeced:

Although her SarahPAC took in $400,000 in the first quarter and had more than $900,000 in the bank, it gave only $7,500 to candidates between January and the end of March, plus an additional $2,000 to two other PACs. None went to Republicans in the races she targeted.

To be fair, Talibunny only announced her hit list March 23, just a week before the reporting deadline. Then again, her quarterly spending includes $243,000 on consultants, $42,000 on travel, $31,780 on postage, $25,000 on online fundraising, and $11,596 on a photographer.

Note to future donors: It’s SarahPAC. That pretty much names the beneficiary right there.

Sarah Palin’s House Hit List: No Money to Favored Candidates So Far [Politics Daily, via Political Wire]

Maybe it’s a consequence of having grown up in the Alan Alda Seventies, but we’ve never understood Dude Culture. We’re certainly aware of it — any beer commercial will provide quick instruction — but it’s always been a world completely foreign to us. There’s something so fragile about it all, the fear that membership in the Guy Club is so easily revoked.

Especially if you change your action movie’s leading character from a man to a woman:

But the process was a bit trickier than just changing the hero’s name and adding high heels. “In the original script, there was a huge sequence where Edwin Salt saves his wife, who’s in danger,” says [Salt director Phillip] Noyce. “And what we found was when Evelyn Salt saved her husband in the new script, it seemed to castrate his character a little. So we had to change the nature of that relationship.”

Yes, it’s fine and dandy for Angelina Jolie to kick butt, but let’s not get carried away with that Grrrrl Power crap. No Anerican Male is shelling out twelve bucks just to watch some wuss who can’t rescue himself with a snappy one-liner.

Then again, we’re not entirely immune to the world we live in: We honestly, deeply hate asking strangers for directions.

[Entertainment Weekly, April 23/30 issue]