Luckily for Erick (who seems to believe people "become" gay, the doughy rube), there are still a few societies left on the planet that he might feel more comfortable raising his son in -- like Saudi Arabia, Iran, or Uganda.

Should we buy him a ticket?

This reminds us that the big "GOP Rebranding" project I keep reading about -- which is supposed to usher in a more libertarian, less hateful Republicanism -- won't amount to much until the party can purge the Teamams like Erickson. Good luck with that, guys.

Barry Goldwater weeps.

It's like they say: The more things change, the more they stay the same. Especially when it comes to right-wing extremists.

As Karoli reported yesterday, now the conspiracy theorists are claiming that President Obama deliberately created the killer tornadoes that swept Oklahoma last week, with Alex Jones (of course) leading the way.

It's not just Jones. Some Oklahoma versions of Truther nutcases, as Alexander Abad-Santos reports at The Atlantic, are also jumping aboard with a variation on Jones' theory:

So, yes, the Oklahoma tornado truthers claim the administration whipped up a storm that killed 24 people through HAARP, the High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program, in Alaska. Here's a screen grab of a contributor post on Before It's News, a citizen journalist website that's home to many of these conspiracy theories, from a contributor who says this is "compelling evidence" that HAARP is at work:

As Gawker's Ken Layne writes, the "stated goal of HAARP is to study the ionosphere and how the spectrum of radio waves works within these upper layers of the Earth's atmosphere." Essentially, HAARP researches communications. But there are budding conspiracy theories that HAARP could be ultimately used to disrupt the ionosphere, and manipulate weather patterns. As one Redditor pointed out, one of the permutations of the conspiracy theory in Moore is that the left-wing financier George "the Sorcerer" Soros is behind all of this.

Actually, the HAARP theory has been around since about 1994, when it was being avidly promoted by Militia of Montana founder John Trochmann. Here's how he explained it to his audience at a militia meeting in western Washington in 1995, as I reported it in my first book, In God's Country: The Patriot Movement and the Pacific Northwest:

Trochmann then turns on the overhead projector and puts on the cover page. It reads: ``Enemies, Foreign and Domestic: Part I -- The Problem.’’ A few words: ``You’ll have to excuse me, I’m going to fly right through this, because it takes about an hour and a half.’’ He flips to the next sheet. It’s the cover of a military journal with a story about international armed forces cooperating under United Nations auspices, and the cover illustration shows a number of nations’ flags, including the Stars and Stripes, all subordinately positioned beneath a U.N. flag.

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You have to see this. Bob Fitzsimmonds is the treasurer of the Republican Party of Virginia who served as Ken Cuccinelli's legislative aide in the Senate, and is a close adviser to the man who very well may be Virginia's next governor:

1. Starting at 7:45, Fitzsimmonds starts ranting about sex education and "the spread of STDs." He claims that "HIV's kind of hard to catch, abortion happens if you get pregnant, but we're on the trajectory for 50% of the American people to have herpes... and that is a profound not only health but sociological crisis that's facing this country, and it's not even as prevalent as HPV." Fitzsimmonds adds, "we have a disease [HPV] out there that's killing women more than HIV is, and we don't even talk about it."

Hmmm...actually we do talk about vaccinating young people against HPV (see this video of Del. Patrick Hope, for instance) but isn't Cuccinelli against that?

2. Starting at 9:10, Fitzsimmonds claims, "We have an entire generation of children who are in their teens, 50% of the ones that are sexually active have an STD...we never lived with this kind of crisis; so I think we absolutely have to address that, and I think Ken will do it." Alrighty then.

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If I had kids in high school right now, I'd make them think long and hard before taking out school loans. There's still a theoretical edge in getting hired, but enough to justify being in debt servitude for the rest of your life?

Overdue student loans reached an all-time high as students struggle to find work after college, according to a government report renewing alarms about the rising burden of higher-education debt.

Eleven percent of student loans were seriously delinquent -- at least 90 days past due -- in the third quarter of 2012, compared with 6 percent in the first quarter of 2003, according to the report by the U.S. Education Department. Almost 30 percent of 20- to 24-year-olds aren’t employed or in school, the study found.

The research is being released amid concern in Congress and President Barack Obama’s administration about rising college costs and $1 trillion in outstanding student loans, the largest category of consumer debt besides mortgages. Borrowers say the burden is affecting their choice of jobs and their ability to buy homes and get married.

“Today’s economy puts young graduates in a difficult position,” Jack Buckley, commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics, which published the report, said in a statement. “A college diploma no longer guarantees a direct pathway to the middle class, making it harder to justify the expense of a degree.”

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Texas Congressman Louie Gohmert (R) on Thursday told a woman that she wrong to have an abortion after it was discovered late during her pregnancy that her fetus had no brain function.

At a House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution and Civil Justice hearing to push for a 20-week abortion ban, Christy Zink testified that the bill would have required her "to carry to term and give birth to a baby whom the doctors concurred had no chance of a life and would have experienced near-constant pain."

"Being there in a neonatal ICU, I did see that there was one child there that was missing parts including a spine," Gohmert said, recalling the birth of his daughter. "And the parents ended up, when it was clear that there was no brain activity whatsoever, there was decisions that they had to make at that point."

"Ms. Zink, having my great sympathy and empathy both, I still come back wondering, shouldn’t we wait, like that couple did, and see if the child can survive before we decide to rip him apart?" he asked. "So, these are ethical issues, they’re moral issues, they’re difficult issues, and the parents should certainly be consulted."

"But it just seems like, it’s a more educated decision if the child is in front of you to make those decisions."

Earlier this month, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that a similar 20-week abortion ban in Arizona was unconstitutional.

(h/t: Think Progress)

Y’all, it’s not natural for a girl to get this lucky.

First, Ole Louie Gohmert, God Bless His Heart, got to speaking in tongues again. This time about owls mating. I know. And K-Mart. I know, I know, it’s crazy.

Gohmert recalled that once during a discussion about endangered species, he had heard that “a pair of spotted owls that we were told for years couldn’t mate anywhere but virgin woods, untouched by human hands, they may have been seen mating in [a] Kmart sign.”

“And sheer sarcasm and out of irony I said, you know, there are a lot of Kmarts that have been out of business,” he continued. “Maybe we need to see if that’s really true and if so, maybe get Kmart signs, see if they ought to be declared endangered and maybe have a Kmart sign forest, where these little owls could mate like crazy out there on the Kmart signs.”

That is neither irony or sarcasm. That’s talking without saying nothing. Louie, normal people do not spend a lot of time thinking about KMart being the NoTell Hotel for owls.

Then, as if to put a crown on my damn perfect day, I pick up the local rightwing newspaper, who like Fox News, ironically names themselves The Independent. Mostly, I think, because the only writer for the newspaper is owned lock, stock, and barrel, by some rightwing good ole boys who want their own newspaper and independent is the last damn thing they are.

Okay, so they did a front page story about Louie Gohmert coming to speak to the local Belles of Heaven Republican Women’s Club. They call themselves the Spirit of Freedom but everybody else calls them the Belles of Heaven. I told you all about it.

What we did not know is that Tom DeLay was coming out of his delusional closet where he has been hiding to try to rewrite history.

Seriously. You have to see this front page to believe it.

OH HOLY GOD IN HEAVEN ABOVE.

Louie Gohmert and Tom DeLay – THE Titans of Congress.

NO GOD, DON’T LOOK.

We don’t need any more tornadoes and this many lies and frightening thoughts in one place could only mean that even Pat Robertson can’t piss You off this much.

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Pardon my French (and the really bad pun), but what a nasty, vindictive piece of shit David "Huggies" Vitter is. Imagine the mind of the person who came up with this punitive way to punish poor people for their past sins, and to further marginalize and isolate them. (I guess he wants to be remembered for something even more memorably egregious than this.) I feel my blood pressure rising as I write this. Via Colorlines:

Yesterday, Sen. Vitter of Louisiana offered up an amendment to permanently drop anyone ever convicted of a violent crime from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).

According to Robert Greenstein, president of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, Democrats in the Senate obliged him. The amendment is for a farm bill, which is currently being debated in the Senate.Says Greenstein:

The amendment would bar from SNAP (food stamps), for life, anyone who was ever convicted of one of a specified list of violent crimes at any time — even if they committed the crime decades ago in their youth and have served their sentence, paid their debt to society, and been a good citizen ever since. In addition, the amendment would mean lower SNAP benefits for their children and other family members.

So, a young man who was convicted of a single crime at age 19 who then reforms and is now elderly, poor, and raising grandchildren would be thrown off SNAP, and his grandchildren’s benefits would be cut.

[…] Democrats accepted it without trying to modify it to address its most ill-considered aspects.

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A host of the Fox News show The Five was so angry that the Justice Department had investigated one of the network's reporters that she told her viewers on Thursday to find anyone who voted for President Barack Obama and "punch them in the face."

"Fox said, we're targets, clearly Media Matters and others have put us on a target list," Fox News host Andrea Tantaros explained on the Thursday edition of her radio show. "And they said, 'Oh, Fox is just crazy! They're just paranoid!' Really? Are we?"

"This is what is happening to our press! This is Obama's America! It's like the Soviet Union," she continued. "He said he would change the country. He said it. And a lot of people voted for him."

"And if you see any of those people today, do me a favor, punch them in the face."

After a commercial break, a caller from South Carolina told Tantaros that he hated Obama, but worried that telling people to punch Obama voters in the face was sending the wrong message.

"To be clear, I didn't say punch Obama in the face," the Fox News host pointed out. "You're going to get me arrested with this type of government."

"If someone voted for him!" she insisted to the caller. "If anyone that you know who voted for President Obama, smack 'em down."

(h/t: Media Matters)

Guest host Mark Thompson, “The War Room” host Michael Shure, Sierra Club Washington representative Lena Moffitt and BuzzFeed contributor Michael Hastings break down the Koch brothers’ involvement in petroleum coke being openly stored on the banks of Detroit River. Petroleum coke is a by-product of the oil refining process and can be harmful to the environment when burned. “This is the dirtiest by-product from the dirtiest source of oil on the planet,” Moffit says, adding that the 42817 ZIP code in Detroit “is one of the most polluted ZIP codes in the country. … This is the unfortunate lab where we can see what it means to bring tar sands to our country.”

Yes, that was Code Pink's Medea Benjamin, shouting questions at President Obama during his speech yesterday on counter-terrorism. Many online journalists joked it was the closest thing to the president answering questions they'd seen in a long time:

WASHINGTON -- Even Medea Benjamin was surprised she managed to get into President Barack Obama's major national security address at National Defense University on Thursday. The long-time Code Pink protestor (and HuffPost blogger) is a fixture on Capitol Hill and well known to most D.C. reporters.

"I had my head down for about two hours and was talking on the phone for about two hours. I tried to be inconspicuous. I think sometimes I must be invisible," Benjamin said. "There were a couple of journalists that came over to talk to me, but that's about it."

Benjamin, 60, was escorted out of the the hall after she repeatedly interrupted Obama's address, pressing the president on the use of drone strikes overseas, including the killing of a 16-year-old U.S. citizen.

"I must say, I do really appreciate that I live in a country where if you interrupt the president you don't get beaten and tortured and thrown inside a prison for a year."

[...] Benjamin was wearing a pink belt and a pink watch and even drove onto the military base in a car with a Code Pink bumper sticker. While several reporters knew and recognized her as they waited to pass through security, the event's organizers evidently didn't. (One photographer said Benjamin's badge indicated her first name was Susan, her given name.)

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