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I read your missive to the president, and once again feel it necessary to repeat that despite being a veteran myself, I don’t put much stock in those whose primary qualification is listed as “veteran” because what follows is generally bullshit. Likewise, anything reprinted on Sarah Palin’s Facebook page is bound to stink of bovine origins.

Mr. Estes, I’m sure you’ll find plenty of aggrieved comments about the bit where you address a black man as “boy,” “son,” but it was the last line of your epistle that caught my attention:

I sure as hell don’t want to think my president is the enemy in this final battle. (Emphasis mine)

This emphasis on “final battles” betrays you as an End-Timer. You have struck a trifecta here: authoritarian paranoia, religious clash-of-civilizations rhetoric, and Teh Stupid™.

Mr. Estes, it may surprise you to learn that permanent wars and clashes of civilizations are not in the role of the commander-in-chief as envisaged by the founders; the Constitutional articles do not contain such a job description.

Indeed, it would seem to me that in the age of nuclear weapons and wackaloons bent on starting Armageddon, pursuit of domestic tranquility would rather put the making of peace in his job description. And it is with those wackaloons that you stand, Mr. Estes.

The 9/11 hijackers thought they could initiate the End Times that Tuesday, and folks like yourself have been itching to meet them there ever since. Your fear is palpable in the letter, but so is your excitement. You want the end of the world and don’t care how many get hurt in the process.

For there is one thing notably missing in your piece, Mr. Estes: a description of how surging any number of troops into Afghanistan leads to victory. How can America win if our “partner” elects himself Mahmoud Ahmedinejad style? And since there are practical, logistical limits to how many troops we can support in Afghanistan, how do you propose we reach anything near the troop levels that counterinsurgency manuals recommend?

I see no answers, only fear and loathing.

Even as I’ve researched Beck’s sources, it seems to me that he’s been sounding more and more like Jack Van Impe. Take this latest slice of his radio show, as recorded by Media Matters:

Greece is “collapsing,” Beck claims, because a “communist invisible committee” has a “foothold” in the country. But there’s been a communist party in Greece since 1918. Beck also refers to Greek riots that began in 2008, and fizzled in January 2009, as if they were ongoing today.

The point here is not so much that Beck is making shit up as he goes, but that he’s imitating a particular style of nonsense-peddling. Jack Van Impe has been peddling this same crap for two decades:

Breitbart is still trolling for Drudge and Malkin linkage with “finds” in the “Worship-like reverence” department. The following video depicts the Gamaliel Foundation, which Breitbart calls “the community organizing group that helped sponsor Barack Obama’s initial work in Chicago.”

(Wait — I thought he started with Bill Ayers and the Weather Underground? Or was it ACORN? Oh well, they’re all one giant conspiracy anyway.)

Here’s Breitbart’s, um, controversial YouTube find:

The comments on the Breitbart.tv page are fun, too:

Fine I’ll be the first to say it.

Antichrist anyone?

Just sayin.

Well, I’ll be the first to say this: NONTROVERSY. The “ceremony” here is for a fake coffin representing “the death of old ways of providing health care and pray for a new day for health care in America” — according to Breitbart’s own website.

Given that the “ceremony” depicted is an irreverent joke, how seriously can someone take the “Obama cult” complaint? If I hold a mock surgery using a t-bone steak and a mannequin, is Breitbart going to accuse me of practicing medicine without a license?

I’ve been watching this meme develop for a while. It’s an especially silly one, and clearly born of pure psychological projection. If you want to see what a “Dear Leader cult” looks like, watch this:

I’m HALFWAY to $500 for investigative journalism with twelve days left — Click here to help!

Context is everything: Michele Bachmann said those words when arch-birther website World Net Daily asked if she would ever run for president. It’s a wingnut puff piece: the interview is jam-packed with every variety of fringe wingnuttery. Bachmann is a True Believer in Teh Crazy™.

Here she is telling an audience how God “called” her to run for office:

Can we stop it with the “Obama is not God” and “false prophet” nonsense? The wingnuts are the ones who think their politics are heaven-inspired.

Bachmann’s “call” from God began (predictably) with her kids’ homework:

Bachmann, a federal tax litigation attorney before serving in elected office, told WND that she is “first and foremost a mother.” In the late 90s, the mother of five and foster mom to another 23 children through the years, grew concerned about what her foster kids were bringing home from the public school.

“Through the Goals 2000 program, the federal government was pushing knowledge, facts and information out of classroom study, substituting them with a study of attitudes, values and beliefs,” she said, “but not necessarily the values that moms and dads would like.”

The actual “goals” of the Goals 2000 Program:

Bachmann used the evangelical message-machine to remove Minnesota from participation in these goals — until cooler heads prevailed, anyway. In the world of Wing Nut Daily™, this is cause for effusive praise.

Presumably, Bachmann was upset by the part of the curriculum where students are asked to identify with children from another culture and religion. Like, say, Hawaii. We can’t have the kids think of other people as human.

One by one, the Wing Nut Daily highlights Bachmann’s stands against abortion, death panels, and compact flourescent bulbs. It’s a perfect storm of Teh Stupid™. In fact, Bachmann has something to say about Teh Stupid™:

“In some ways, it’s an honor, because it means that I must be effective. Otherwise, they’d be ignoring me,” Bachmann told WND. “The other side seems to have two tricks that they pull out of their bag: the Republican is stupid, or the Republican is crazy. … It’s straight out of Saul Alinsky’s ‘Rules for Radicals’: they identify their target, then try to marginalize their target.”

Alinsky’s rules seem rather prescient:

RULE 5: “Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon.” There is no defense. It’s irrational. It’s infuriating. It also works as a key pressure point to force the enemy into concessions. (Pretty crude, rude and mean, huh? They want to create anger and fear.)

Michele Bachmann is ridiculous. But as we’ve learned at our cost in this decade, giving ridiculous people political power pretty much guarantees disaster. So I’m proposing a constitutional amendment:

Anyone who submits to a Wing Nut Daily™ interview is ineligible to be president, no matter how good their birth certificate looks.

This is a health care town hall protester pulling the veil off her Stupid™:

This silliness about Obama being a “false prophet” is pure psychological projection. Only religious fanatics think this way. Democrats are constantly accused of atheism, and indeed many (though by no means most) are agnostics or committed atheists. And while pious Republicans gather at C Street to discuss their god-given exemptions from moral law, religious Democrats are out in the street doing social service the way Jesus taught them.

The woman in that second video isn’t protesting health care. She’s protesting because Glenn Beck is a fascist fear-monger.

I realize it’s a little like banging my head on the wall, but Teh Stupid™ demands refutation. Via Crooks & Liars, we learn that another meme stands ready to replace birtherism among the fringe: Obama is the Antichrist!

Sigh.

The pronunciation of a word has nothing to do with the translation of its meaning. You may recall that in 1996, the press in Iran had a minor problem covering the American presidential race because in Farsi, “Dole” transliterates to a common street term for the penis. “Dole” has no such meaning in English. The video thus begins with a fallacy and doesn’t make any progress afterwards.

“Obama” is a word from the Luo family of languages resident in the Nile and Sahara regions of Africa. It has no relation whatsoever to Greek, Hebrew, or Aramaic. Here’s the WikiAnswers page on the surname’s origins:

Obama was the given name of the senator’s great-grandfather. Like most African cultures, the Luo of Kenya did not have hereditary surnames until the British (or other European colonizers) required them. Most of them chose the names of their fathers as their surnames. Obama was chosen as his surname by the senator’s grandfather.

Most Luo names were given at birth by mothers or grandmothers and referred to circumstances connected with the birth, or to things going on in the life of the mother near the time of birth. Obama is based on the Luo verb that means “to be slightly bent” or “to be twisted”. Though no one knows for sure why his great-grandfather was given the name, experts on Luo language and culture think the most likely possibilities are that the baby either had a leg or arm that looked a little bent just after he was born, or that he was born in the breech position. (Emphasis mine)

Turning now to Obama’s first name, we should note that its origins are similar to madrassa. Both are common Arabic words adopted by cultures wherever Islam has spread. Arabic and Hebrew actually share a common linguistic ancestor, as you can tell from so many similar words that share meaning: shabbat/sabaah, shalom/salaam, elohim/allah. (Yes, Allah derives from the Old Testament word for God.)

Nevertheless, Arabic meanings for “Barack” are very different from the ones offered in the video: in various measures, the verb root can mean “to make a camel kneel,” “to invoke a blessing,” or “to be blessed.” Nouns derived from the root can mean “puddle,” “blessing,” good wishes,” or “fortunate.” My Hans-Wehr Arabic-English dictionary doesn’t offer any links to Satan or high places. At least, not any higher than a camel’s back.

Which brings us, finally, to Obama’s middle name (which, contrary to popular opinion, does not translate to Nicholae Carpathia). Notably absent from the video, “Hussein” is among the most common names in Arabic, directly translating as “handsome” or “beautiful.” The verb root can be used in many different contexts, including “to treat with kindness” and “to act rightly.” Noun variations include husn (“excellence”), hasan (“excellent”), hasana (“charity”) and other positives, but nothing antichrist-y. We’ll just have to chalk this one up as another wingnut fail.

Because wingnuts are smart! With words!

This letter ran today in the Times Daily. It’s a response to a classic of hooplehead wisdom from a Mr. Jimmy Wayne Cosby. (Don’t serial killers go by all three names?) Wayne Cosby has a habit of using the president-elect’s middle name whenever possible; turnabout is fair play.

To the Editor:

Recently, Mr. Wayne Cosby said “there may be good reason to question the accuracy of some Internet information, but it represents a forum where we, the average citizens, can get what the national media has covered up.” This much is true. We bloggers do engage in journalism – in every phase of it, including the editorial process. No one can quash our stories if they might offend advertisers or public figures.

The flip side is that we have no Mike Goens to check our facts or quotes, either. Yes, bloggers report all kinds of things withheld by the gatekeepers of media; for example, depending on the Web site you visit, Earth is controlled by Zionist Jews, the Masons, aliens, or a subterranean race of reptilian-human hybrids.

Thus, when stories cross over from the Web to the so-called “mainstream media,” or MSM, reporters and editors exercise more than the usual diligence. Of a dozen leads on Joe the Plumber developed by bloggers, only three penetrated the mainstream media; the others were misleading or mistaken.

Mr. Wayne Cosby has fallen victim to the dark side of Internet journalism. “The fact … is that Arabs, Muslims, were responsible for 9/11,” he says. (Several Web sites aggressively disagree with this presumption, but I digress.) “It is reasonable that persons with like ethnic and religious affiliation should be viewed with suspicion.”

What rot. Islam requires the public confession of faith. There is no such thing as a “secret Muslim;” ask any professor of comparative religion. And Obama is no more an Arab than is Wayne Cosby – ask any ethnologist. These inventions don’t become true just because someone posts them on the Internet.

Fantasists have made a handsome profit convincing people like Wayne Cosby that Obama was already perpetrating a vast fraud while in the womb. When he says “The crisis looming over (Obama’s) place of birth will not go away,” what he really means is that a few million people want to believe in a conspiracy so much that they will see one. Occam’s Razor has never convinced UFO enthusiasts or 9/11 theorists; neither will it convince Mr. Wayne Cosby. Regardless of the evidence – or lack thereof – they will not let it go for eight years.

The paranoid will always be with us.

Matt “Hussein” Osborne

Florence

In yet another blow to the ongoing campaign to convince America that Barack Obama’s middle name is actually Nicolae Carpathia, the US Supreme Court has told a New Jersey crackpot that he cannot sue the president-elect on charges of gestational fraud.

Occam’s Razor said the decision was not unexpected. “These morons want to believe that Obama is some kind of Manchurian Candidate,” the famous law of logic said. “They seriously believe that his mother perpetrated an elaborate crime with the object of creating a foreign-born president; that the State of Hawaii, the local newspaper, and the hospital staff colluded in this sinister conspiracy; and a US Senator engaged in such a perfect forgery that it fooled the experts — all for the sole purpose of electing a foreign-born president almost five decades later.”

The imaginary plot smacks of fantasy at every level, putting it on par with internet-fueled rumors about 9/11, subterranean reptilian aliens manipulating human history, and the Bavarian Illuminati controlling the global economy.

“I have just one question for these imbeciles,” Occam added. “If there really was a vast, hidden conspiracy at work here, wouldn’t it have been much simpler for them to arrange the birth of a white man? Why make their agenda extra-complicated and unlikely by injecting race into the picture at all?”

Nevertheless, Occam’s Razor confidently predicted that the rumors would never die. “The paranoid will always be with us,” he said.

It appears that I will spend the next eight years shooting down letter-writers to the Times Daily who perpetuate stupid myths about the president-elect. Tonight I’m working on a reply to this gem. I’ll post it here when it’s done.