SOME of the right wingers, the further to the right you get, are pretty fringed (past participle of to fringe, the new political verb), pretty badly unraveled, not-wrapped-too-tight crazy. They have all kinds of conspiracy theories based on just plain made up foolishness. We need a catchy name for the 'assassination faker' crazies..... should we call them 'Stagers'?
They do a lot of fund raising off this stuff. They get their other little crazy fringies all worked up with this stuff.
But it used to be, before the GOP became far extreme, and before the Tea Party went even further over the edge of extreme and beyond into all-crazy-all-the-time land, that you would not find someone in political office putting crazy on official correspondence of any kind. That minor claim to decorum and legitimacy has completely gone out the window in Tennessee.
From the HuffPo:
WASHINGTON -- A Republican member of the Tennessee state legislature emailed constituents Tuesday morning with a rumor circulating in conservative circles that President Barack Obama is planning to stage a fake assassination attempt in an effort to stop the 2012 election from happening.
Rep. Kelly Keisling (R-Byrdstown) sent an email from his state email account to constituents containing a rumor that Obama and the Department of Homeland Security are planning a series of events that could lead to the imposition of "martial law" and delay the election. Among the events hypothesized in the email is a staged assassination attempt on the president that would lead to civil unrest in urban areas and martial law.
Keisling appears to have forwarded a more widely circulated email from Joe Angione, a Florida-based conservative blogger. Angione prefaces the rumor by saying it has not been confirmed but likewise notes it has not been denied. Angione also writes that people need to work to prevent the rumor from becoming reality.
The conspiracy theory started with an article written by Doug Hammon and posted on CanadaFreePress.com, which he said arose from conversations he had with an informant within the Department of Homeland Security.
Ah........the anonymous source, eternal origin of conspiracy craziness!
Of course, we have Michele Bachmann, so we can't laugh too hard when we point the ridicule finger at Tennessee. There is something about the southern states though, and especially Texas, that lends itself to that kind of foolishness; I suspect that 'something' is ignorance, given their low standards of education; they just don't know any better.
But this is really over the top, on a par with the craziest and most offensive Bachmann "members of Congress are Un-American" or "Huma Abedin has Muslim Brotherhood ties" or "HPV vaccines cause mental retardation" nonsense.
That it is at the state level political office in Tennessee doesn't alter the fact that the same rumor has a hold in Florida and elsewhere. These are the same people who believe that there are Russian tanks in quantity just waiting to take over the U.S. for the U.N. as part of their general suspicion of that organization. These are the same kinds of crazy right wingers who do not fact check, who believe garbage --- and we've seen that kind of garbage circulated by the right wing media and especially by the right wing blogosphere.
EVERY damned time we see a right wing crazy claim, across the whole range of usual topics, there is a pattern of indicators -- 'insider information' sources are a common factor they cite, but always, always anonymous; when there is a source cited, it is often internet fallacies, not factual or verifiable sources. That was true of the Indiana crazy state legislator who attacked the girl scouts for information he insisted on believing, despite all the evidence to the contrary, about the girl scouts, 'because he saw it on the internet somewhere'.
Even one of the witnesses in the Prop 8 court cases out in California presumed to testify to information, which he tried to pass off as expert and factual, that he 'saw somewhere on the internet, and therefore believed to be true'.... because it was ON THE INTERNET, so it MUST be true? The reason the Prop 8 crowd has consistently lost is because they have consistently claimed false things; they have no case so they either make stuff up, or recycle made up stuff from someone else.
This is reminiscent for me of my friend Mitch Berg's many claims and apparently sincere belief that 103 ballots in Dinkytown were faked, because someone he knew who was a Republican candidate told him so. That story was originally based on 'eyewitness first hand personal experience' but later became second hand or more removed...........but he still believed it! The source of course remained anonymous, there was no multi sourcing, and there was clear and compelling evidence that the story was completely wrong. You could, as with this story, track the rumor pretty clearly, and you could definitively from available information, including the full and complete records from the Secretary of State's office, corroborated by both Republican and Democratic observers at the 2010 recount process, but he insisted on holding to his claim. Sadly, there are people who read this kind of fact-free crap on these right wing blogs, and do not question if it is accurate, or even reasonable.
Part of the problems the MN GOP has is that they don't apparently vet their leadership very carefully, as we've seen from Tony Sutton and Michael Brodkorb crashing their party's finances and reputation, followed by a replacement leadership that still hasn't ordered an independent audit, and which has apparently rejected having one paid for by concerned Republicans. With that conduct by the party, how can we expect them to be accountable, responsible, or honest -- or factual, when they so clearly don't want any examination of fact?
We need more fact-based politics and politicians, we need to hold the right accountable for their factually deficient fantasies and fear mongering. We are not far enough beyond Indiana or Tennessee in holding the right accountable here in Minnesota - but we should be.
They do a lot of fund raising off this stuff. They get their other little crazy fringies all worked up with this stuff.
But it used to be, before the GOP became far extreme, and before the Tea Party went even further over the edge of extreme and beyond into all-crazy-all-the-time land, that you would not find someone in political office putting crazy on official correspondence of any kind. That minor claim to decorum and legitimacy has completely gone out the window in Tennessee.
From the HuffPo:
WASHINGTON -- A Republican member of the Tennessee state legislature emailed constituents Tuesday morning with a rumor circulating in conservative circles that President Barack Obama is planning to stage a fake assassination attempt in an effort to stop the 2012 election from happening.
Rep. Kelly Keisling (R-Byrdstown) sent an email from his state email account to constituents containing a rumor that Obama and the Department of Homeland Security are planning a series of events that could lead to the imposition of "martial law" and delay the election. Among the events hypothesized in the email is a staged assassination attempt on the president that would lead to civil unrest in urban areas and martial law.
Keisling appears to have forwarded a more widely circulated email from Joe Angione, a Florida-based conservative blogger. Angione prefaces the rumor by saying it has not been confirmed but likewise notes it has not been denied. Angione also writes that people need to work to prevent the rumor from becoming reality.
The conspiracy theory started with an article written by Doug Hammon and posted on CanadaFreePress.com, which he said arose from conversations he had with an informant within the Department of Homeland Security.
Ah........the anonymous source, eternal origin of conspiracy craziness!
Of course, we have Michele Bachmann, so we can't laugh too hard when we point the ridicule finger at Tennessee. There is something about the southern states though, and especially Texas, that lends itself to that kind of foolishness; I suspect that 'something' is ignorance, given their low standards of education; they just don't know any better.
But this is really over the top, on a par with the craziest and most offensive Bachmann "members of Congress are Un-American" or "Huma Abedin has Muslim Brotherhood ties" or "HPV vaccines cause mental retardation" nonsense.
That it is at the state level political office in Tennessee doesn't alter the fact that the same rumor has a hold in Florida and elsewhere. These are the same people who believe that there are Russian tanks in quantity just waiting to take over the U.S. for the U.N. as part of their general suspicion of that organization. These are the same kinds of crazy right wingers who do not fact check, who believe garbage --- and we've seen that kind of garbage circulated by the right wing media and especially by the right wing blogosphere.
EVERY damned time we see a right wing crazy claim, across the whole range of usual topics, there is a pattern of indicators -- 'insider information' sources are a common factor they cite, but always, always anonymous; when there is a source cited, it is often internet fallacies, not factual or verifiable sources. That was true of the Indiana crazy state legislator who attacked the girl scouts for information he insisted on believing, despite all the evidence to the contrary, about the girl scouts, 'because he saw it on the internet somewhere'.
Even one of the witnesses in the Prop 8 court cases out in California presumed to testify to information, which he tried to pass off as expert and factual, that he 'saw somewhere on the internet, and therefore believed to be true'.... because it was ON THE INTERNET, so it MUST be true? The reason the Prop 8 crowd has consistently lost is because they have consistently claimed false things; they have no case so they either make stuff up, or recycle made up stuff from someone else.
This is reminiscent for me of my friend Mitch Berg's many claims and apparently sincere belief that 103 ballots in Dinkytown were faked, because someone he knew who was a Republican candidate told him so. That story was originally based on 'eyewitness first hand personal experience' but later became second hand or more removed...........but he still believed it! The source of course remained anonymous, there was no multi sourcing, and there was clear and compelling evidence that the story was completely wrong. You could, as with this story, track the rumor pretty clearly, and you could definitively from available information, including the full and complete records from the Secretary of State's office, corroborated by both Republican and Democratic observers at the 2010 recount process, but he insisted on holding to his claim. Sadly, there are people who read this kind of fact-free crap on these right wing blogs, and do not question if it is accurate, or even reasonable.
Part of the problems the MN GOP has is that they don't apparently vet their leadership very carefully, as we've seen from Tony Sutton and Michael Brodkorb crashing their party's finances and reputation, followed by a replacement leadership that still hasn't ordered an independent audit, and which has apparently rejected having one paid for by concerned Republicans. With that conduct by the party, how can we expect them to be accountable, responsible, or honest -- or factual, when they so clearly don't want any examination of fact?
We need more fact-based politics and politicians, we need to hold the right accountable for their factually deficient fantasies and fear mongering. We are not far enough beyond Indiana or Tennessee in holding the right accountable here in Minnesota - but we should be.
It's odd that President Obama draws such comments even though he promptly released his transcripts, tax returns, birth certificate and every scrap of documentation concerning gun-running into Mexico.
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