Quote of the Day, Jr.

"You're going to have to wait along with everybody else. I will say that there are vast programs, both domestic and international spying, that the world will be shocked to learn about, that the NSA is engaged in with no democratic accountability and that's what driving our reporting."

-- Glenn Greenwald to Fox News's Eric Bolling today

A tease. A tease, you fucking hack.

I swear, I'm going to deck the next person who tells me that Glenn Greenwald is a serious journalist and not a narcissistic child who's strictly doing this for the shot of pure adrenaline into the heart of his sense of self-importance it's giving him. First of all, Greenwald talks to a racist piece of crap like Eric Bolling as if he's someone whose views are worth taking seriously -- then he drops back to coy-little-girl mode just as Bolling decides can't take it anymore and needs to show his appreciation and excitement by basically pulling his dong out and stroking it for him.

Jesus, Greenwald's a joke.

Quote of the Day

"When was the last time you heard about a rape on campus?"

-- Bob Beckel of Fox News's The Five yesterday

The show's roundtable dunce chair was heatedly debating a Colorado measure that would ban women, and everyone else, from carrying concealed firearms on college campuses when Beckel unleashed this little gem. The show's conservative contingent roundly condemned one of the bill's loudest supporters, Democrat and bow-tie aficionado Joe Salazar, for saying that women didn't need guns to defend themselves from rape, that call-boxes and whistles should suffice. According to Eric Bolling and Dana Perino, the threat college women face these days is serious enough that they need to be able to fight back with deadly force; this is of course one hell of a dubious argument, relying, as most vehement pro-gun advocacy does these days, on the kind of paranoia that paints pictures of an America descending into a Thunderdome-esque hellscape where danger from marauding bandits lurks around every corner.

Still, for Beckel to make the asinine statement that rape doesn't happen on college campuses only proves what I've said more than a few times before: Beckel is a slovenly blithering idiot, a tomato can brought in by Fox News to be an easy take-down for its more seasoned, brutish fighters. Of course rape happens on college campuses -- there more than just about anywhere else, in fact.

The most fascinating and entertaining thing about this, though, is watching how quickly the two sides of the ideological spectrum will switch when it becomes politically convenient. If the debate was over, say, abortion in the wake of rape, you just know Bolling, Perino and the rest of those clowns on the right would be arguing that rape isn't that big a deal and that it's often over-reported on college campuses for the sake of covering up sexual encounters thought the better of the following morning, while Beckel would barely be able to contain his gnashing-of-teeth at his co-host's deplorable misogyny. But make it about guns and watch the confirmation bias play hell with the traditional orthodoxies and articles of faith.

All that said, don't you somehow get the idea that if rape-fearing college girls had been heavily armed back when Bolling was in school, he wouldn't even be alive today?

Quote of the Day

"That is an obscene lie... You are misleading the American people because you want to make a political point. We have never in the history of this republic mounted a raid on the circumstance described here ever."

Geraldo Rivera, smacking down Fox News über-douche Eric Bolling, who was continuing to push the conservative talking point that what happened in Benghazi was a failure of leadership, that there's a cover-up at work, and that U.S. forces should've attacked the crowd of protesters that attacked our embassy

Between Geraldo and Chris Christie bucking the Fox News tide of histrionic idiocy, I'd normally say that it feels like Opposite Day or something. But the reality is that while he can certainly be a pompous tool, Geraldo generally tries to be as intellectually honest as possible, and I've always given him credit for that.

As for Benghazi, I got into a big debate with someone about it on Facebook yesterday -- one of the very rare occasions that I choose to argue politics on anyone's page besides my own. Here's the deal: As tragic as it is, and it is absolutely tragic, it's a relatively by-the-numbers incident. Over the past few decades, our embassies in Arab and North African countries have faced deadly attacks countless times, irrespective of who happens to be in the White House. We choose to undertake diplomacy in very dangerous places and -- while I certainly don't mean to diminish what happened in Libya -- violence against our very brave and dedicated men and women stationed in those areas is simply the cost of doing business. Should every single possible question be asked about what happened in Benghazi in an effort to determine whether it could've been prevented and to help ensure it doesn't happen again? Of course. Is there some nefarious plot to cover up institutional incompetence afoot at the highest levels of government. Not a fucking chance.

I wouldn't have blamed George W. Bush or any Republican president had it happened on his watch, untethered to any specific administrational act overseas, simply because when you're in an Arab country there's almost no way to prevent the kind of anger and violence we saw in Benghazi. Pretending that Obama could, or that he reacted the wrong way to it -- which neither he nor Panetta, nor the military officers in that region did -- is ludicrous. No one left anybody to die. Also, do I even need to add that should the roles have been reversed and we'd had a Republican in the White House, the same people who immediately began beating up on Obama -- while our embassy was still on fire, no less -- would be calling any public critic of the president during a crisis like that a traitor who's guilty of giving aid and comfort to the enemy.

Gerlado, by the way, went on to say that he talked to Charles Woods, whose son was killed in the attack, and that it bothered him to hear Woods's accusations against the Obama administration because they're based on little more than conspiracy theory perpetuated by outlets like Fox News, who are looking for something, anything to hang around the neck of Obama during an election year.

"He is being led down a primrose path of misinformation that is making it look as if President Obama went gambling in Las Vegas when he could've been saving people in Benghazi and that's a lie." Rivera said.

Related: The Daily Banter: The Right's Made-Up Benghazi Cover-Up/11.1.12

Adding: Cesca remains convinced that if Obama wins next week, the Republicans will almost immediately begin looking to impeach him over Benghazi. And he's apparently not the only one who thinks this.

Adding More: Suck it, Bolling. You bullying little turd.

Quote of the Day

"President Obama and his allies in the press are trying to pull a fast one on you. You've heard all about the so-called 'contraception controversy,' well there's no such thing... his foot soldier, Sandra Fluke, a contraception activist, is at the center of the storm... President Obama, on the ropes with the economy and specifically with women voters, gets Mrs. Fluke to create a controversy, and the liberal media puppets play along as scripted."

-- Unrivaled jackass Eric Bolling discussing the contraception battle and Sandra Fluke's role in it last night on Fox News

You remember a couple of weeks ago when I said that I was giving serious thought to abandoning politics as a regular topic of conversation around here? This is why. What can you possibly say about something this delusional, divorced from reality and shamelessly batshit crazy? In an effort to spin this Republican-generated PR cataclysm into something its audience will be able to robotically harumph, Fox News is attempting to manufacture a conspiracy. No, Sandra Fluke isn't a concerned citizen with something to add to the very legitimate debate over contraception -- she's a sleeper agent activated by the White House during an election year in the hope of diverting attention away from President Obama's incompetence. There isn't even a national debate over contraception happening. In fact, there's no such thing as contraception -- or women for that matter. You are getting very sleepy.

It's like Bolling and his audience are living in some alternate universe where facts like an improving economy and President Obama's current popularity with women voters simply don't exist. This is Bellevue-quality paranoia. Is there any wonder -- any fucking wonder at all -- why Fox News viewers are the least informed in the country? They're peddled propagandist fantasy 24/7.

But again, is it even worth talking about anymore?

It's Not Easy Being Red

No sooner had I mentioned Fox News's lunatic bent toward victimization at the hands of the great liberal conspiracy than this nonsense popped into my in-box. Yeah, I know I'm actually a day late with it. I had a thing.

The Hollywood Reporter: Fox Business Host Calls Muppets Communist/12.5.11

I'd put it up as a Quote of the Day, but Eric Bolling is such a ridiculous self-parody that he isn't even worth it. Speaking of which, is it worth mentioning that the new Muppets movie was released by Disney, which is one of the most soullessly conservative corporate behemoths on the planet, to the point where Walt himself, were he alive today, probably would've delighted in setting Occupy Wall Street protesters on fire while kicking an immigrant in the balls.