Here’s an open thread to talk about the amazing collapse of a big piece of the Republican Party’s obstructionist agenda tonight, as Speaker John Boehner’s “Plan B” took a long walk off a short pier…

Coming soon: John Boehner introduces Plan 9 From Outer Space.

— Charles Johnson (@Green_Footballs) December 21, 2012

The House will not adjourn the 112th Congress until a credible solution to the fiscal cliff has been announced.

— Eric Cantor (@GOPLeader) December 13, 2012

The House of Representatives has concluded legislative business for the week. The House will return after the Christmas holiday when needed.

— Eric Cantor (@GOPLeader) December 21, 2012

Yesterday in Indiana, 52-year old truck driver Randolph Linn pleaded guilty to all charges in an arson attack against the Islamic Center of Toledo.

Linn testified that he got “riled up” by Fox News and right wing talk radio, drank 45 beers, and set fire to the mosque’s prayer room because he learned from Fox that Muslims are terrorists who don’t believe in Jesus Christ: Mosque Arsonist Tells Court: ‘I Only Know What I Hear on Fox News’.

Linn explained to the court that he had gotten “riled up” after watching Fox News.

“And I was more sad when Judge [Jack] Zouhary asked him that, ‘Do you know any Muslims or do you know what Islam is?’” one mosque member who attended the hearing recalled to WNWO. “And he said, ‘No, I only know what I hear on Fox News and what I hear on radio.’”

“Muslims are killing Americans and trying to blow stuff up,” Linn also reportedly told the judge. “Most Muslims are terrorists and don’t believe in Jesus Christ.”

Linn claimed that he had consumed 45 beers in the 6 hours before leaving his Indiana home to set fire to the mosque, which he had discovered while working as a truck driver.

After his arrest on Oct. 2, Assistant U.S. Attorney Ava Dusten said that Linn had told officers, “Fuck those Muslims… They would kill us if they got the chance.”

DERP

In the strange, incredibly simple mind of the Dumbest Man on the Internet, Jim Hoft, union members are always “thugs” or “goons,” Democrats are always “far left loons,” and even the social-conservative-on-meth Westboro Baptist Christian cult is “left-wing:” Bikers Turn Out to Protect Newtown Mourners From Left-Wing Westboro Cult | the Gateway Pundit.

Hoft is upset that the Cochrane Times correctly identified the Westboro Baptist group as “right wing.”

The vocal right-wing Christian group, whose website is godhatesfags.com, produced a video called “God Sent the Shooter,” and has blamed the massacre on gay marriage.

Since the Fred Phelps clan’s main obsession is their hatred of gays, and that’s also one of the right wing’s primary obsessions, this description is pretty self-evident.

But Hoft’s formidable intellect has discovered proof that Westboro is actually “left-wing” — Fred Phelps ran for office as a Democrat! Game over, man!

(GP Correction: Fred Phelps is not a ‘rightwinger’, he’s a Democrat. And the Westboro Church is not a Christian group - It is a sick cult.)

It is well known that Fred Phelps has run for office as a Democrat several times.
Shame on the Cochrane Times for labeling him rightwing!

Daniel Henninger weighs in with yet another ridiculous right wing excuse for gun violence; in this article for Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal, Henninger argues that to really understand why the Newtown school shooting happened, we have to go back, back through years, all the way to 1968 (cue harp glissandos), when everything started to go wrong thanks to the hippies and the anti-wars and the college professors and the intellectuals and the mmm glavin!

We think it is possible to identify the date when the U.S., or more precisely when many people within it, began to tip off the emotional tracks. A lot of people won’t like this date, because it makes their political culture culpable for what has happened. The date is August 1968, when the Democratic National Convention found itself sharing Chicago with the street fighters of the anti-Vietnam War movement.

The real blame here does not lie with the mobs who fought bloody battles with the hysterical Chicago police. The larger responsibility falls on the intellectuals—university professors, politicians and journalistic commentators—who said then that the acts committed by the protesters were justified or explainable. That was the beginning. America had a new culture for political action and for personal living.

The virtue known as self-restraint was devalued. Certain rules that for a long time had governed behavior also became devalued. Whatever else was going on here, we were lowering the barriers of acceptable political and personal conduct.

Clearly, 1968 was a very traumatic year for Mr. Henninger; he still hasn’t recovered.

(h/t: Wesley.)

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