Here’s Bonnie Raitt way deep in the pocket at this year’s New Orleans Jazz Fest, with “Used To Rule the World” from her great new album Slipstream.

Yes, Birtherism is back. That idiotic article at Breitbart.com by Joel Pollak has opened the door for the Birthers to come rushing back in, babbling incoherently.

Actually, this craziness never really went away; if you’ve read any right wing blog for the past four years, or the comments at Fox News or Free Republic, you know that the Birther delusion is deeply rooted in today’s right wing psyche. That’s why the Breitbart.com article set them off in such spectacular fashion. The right is heavily invested in portraying the first black President as a dangerous, angry, un-American radical “other” from somewhere else, probably Kenya.

Here we see two spokesmen for the politically-connected American Family Association, Buster Wilson and the execrable Bryan Fischer, spouting Birther craziness and conspiracy theories while complaining that they’re being labeled as “Birthers.”

And at the far right propaganda site Daily Caller, wingnut attack clown Jim Treacher (real name: Sean Medlock) has latched onto a new technique: he’s going to call anyone who criticizes Birthers “Birthers.” Yes, even President Obama himself: Why Was Obama a Birther Until He Decided to Run for President?

Treacher’s tweets today are bizarre and childish, as usual:

@silviobreckman Obama was born in Hawaii. If you have proof to the contrary, Birther, let’s see it.

— Jim Treacher (@jtLOL) May 20, 2012

@silviobreckman Because you think Obama was born in Kenya. Prove it, Birther.

— Jim Treacher (@jtLOL) May 20, 2012

@BigPapa1849 @silviobreckman Whatever you say, Birther.

— Jim Treacher (@jtLOL) May 20, 2012

@BigPapa1849 @silviobreckman Prove you’re not a Birther, Birther.

— Jim Treacher (@jtLOL) May 20, 2012

@BigPapa1849 @silviobreckman If you want me to stop calling you a Birther, all you have to do is ask, Birther.

— Jim Treacher (@jtLOL) May 20, 2012

@BigPapa1849 @silviobreckman Birther.

— Jim Treacher (@jtLOL) May 20, 2012

Journalism, Daily Caller style.

Diligently working night and day to do the vetting the mainstream media refuses to do (because they’re IN ON IT), Breitbart.com editor Joel Pollak has released a new BOMBSHELL EXCLUSIVE report on Barack Obama’s evil plots.

Well, actually, it’s not really about an evil plot. It’s a document that shows Obama graduated from Columbia University in 1983.

Which everyone already knew.

The Vetting - Exclusive Document Debunks Myth About Obama’s Columbia Years!

It’s almost cute how Pollak pumps up this total non-story, almost managing to make it seem as if Breitbart.com is doing real journalism.

The image above—never before released—is from public records at Columbia University that prove that Obama did, in fact, graduate in 1983 from the Ivy League school. Contrary to some conspiracy theories, Obama was a student within the Faculty of Arts and Sciences—not the less selective, “nontraditional” Columbia University School of General Studies (which only merged with the Faculty of Arts and Sciences in 1990).

This never-before-seen document debunks a persistent myth that is unfairly unfavorable to the President.

Some “fact-checking” websites—such as snopes.com and FactCheck.org—have attempted to debunk the “Obama never graduated Columbia” conspiracy theory before. Yet they have relied almost entirely on secondary sources and mainstream media reports, which fail to cite primary sources. And the Obama campaign has not provided details of his admission to, or graduation from, the prestigious Ivy League school.

Crucially, Obama has refused to release his college transcripts from Columbia and Occidental College, which certainly do exist. Other candidates—such as George W. Bush—released their transcripts, though their grades were not necessarily flattering.

The mainstream media has clamored for, and investigated, and leaked information about other presidential candidates. But not Barack Obama—not in 2008, and not now. …

As more and more information about Obama emerges—through Breitbart News and other New Media sources, left and right—the failing mainstream media look more and more foolish, reduced to beatifying the president instead of reporting what he and his administration have done to this country.

Yes, that’s right; Pollak is congratulating himself on “debunking a myth” that circulates only on the fringes of the conspiracy-minded right wing, a myth that no sane person in America believes. A myth that needs no debunking, because it’s batshit loony from square one.

Devastating.

By the way, Pollak is flat wrong when he says George W. Bush released his Yale transcripts. In the real world, Bush tried to prevent the transcripts from getting out, but they were leaked to The New Yorker.

The fail is strong in Joel Pollak.

Ben Folds Five are making a new record, and they’re doing it through PledgeMusic, an interesting initiative to let musicians finance their own records with support from fans.

Here’s a track from the album, scheduled for release sometime this year…

It’s been an awesome week of right wing failitude; the Ricketts/Rev. Wright Debacle, followed by the Breitbart Birther Bogosity, followed by National Review’s Massive Elizabeth Warren Plagiarism Fail-a-Ganza: The National Review’s Fake Plagiarism Scoop.

The National Review says Elizabeth Warren is guilty of the gravest crime a writer can commit: Plagiarism. Katrina Trinko compares passages from “All Your Worth: The Ultimate Money Lifetime Plan,” Warren’s book with her daughter, Amelia Warren Tyagi, with passages from “Getting on the Money Track,” a book by Rob Black. The passages line up perfectly. The wording and even the punctuation are identical. It’s plagiarism all right. Except it looks very much like Warren is actually the victim.

The National Review headline says “Plagiarism in Elizabeth Warren’s 2006 book.” The body refers to Warren publishing the book “in 2006″ and Black’s book coming out in 2005. That’s true! Except that in 2006 the paperback of Warren’s book was published. The hardcover came out in March of 2005. Black’s book seems to have come out, if Amazon is correct, October 14 2005. (Or, according to Barnes and Noble, July 2005?) Months after Warren’s book. Unless there was an earlier published hardcover version that I can’t find on Amazon, it seems like Black most likely plagiarized Warren.

Then, to put the dim-witted icing on this many-layered cake of fail, Breitbart.com jumped on the “Elizabeth Warren Plagiarism Bombshell” story after it had already been debunked! Evidence of Plagiarism in 2006 Elizabeth Warren Book.

Gotta hand it to the loveable little wingnuts — they’re dedicated, if nothing else! A bit over-eager, sure, but I don’t want to criticize them too much lest they stop providing such great inadvertent comedy.

Go ahead on, brave wingnuts. Forward, into the past.

Also see:
Correction on Warren - by Katrina Trinko - the Corner - National Review Online

The Breitbart gang have now deleted their post calling for Elizabeth Warren to be fired, but here it is in Google’s cache for a limited time: Evidence of Plagiarism in 2006 Elizabeth Warren Book.

And here’s the full text, with the original formatting:

Earlier today, Breitbart News published evidence suggesting that several of Elizabeth Warren’s contributions to a Cherokee-themed cook book were plagiarized. Late this afternoon, more evidence of plagiarism appeared in National Review’s The Corner. The following excerpt comes from Warren’s 2006 book All Your Worth:

For millions and millions of Americans, debt has become a way of life. Owing a bunch of money has become normal in this country, right up there with playing baseball in the summer and eating turkey on Thanksgiving. In fact, more than 80 million Americans now owe money on a credit card. And not just a little bit of money: The average family that carries a balance now owes more than two months’ income on their credit cards.

Maybe your grandpa has told you that “back in his day” if you couldn’t pay cash, you didn’t buy it. And that was pretty much true: Debt just wasn’t a routine part of American life the way it is today. A generation or two ago, almost no one carried any debt except for a home mortgage and maybe a car loan. There were no giant credit card balances, no payday loans, and no home equity loans. In fact, just 35 years ago, the total amount of debt outstanding among all American households was about 1/600th of what it is today. That means that for every dollar your generation owes today, your parents’ generation owed less than half a penny!

The portions in bold are identical to another book published in 2005. Here are the same paragraphs as they appear in Rob Black’s Getting on the Money Track:

For millions of Americans, debt has become a way of life. Owing thousands of dollars in high-interest debt has become the norm in this country.  This is astonishing and shows we are a nation of spenders and not savers. In fact, more than 80 million Americans now owe money on a credit card. And not just a little bit of money:  The average family carrying a balance now owes more than two months of income on their credit cards. Because bankruptcy laws in the United States were recently changed, getting away from credit card debt is going to be even tougher than in the past.

You might have heard this from your grandparents: “Back in the day, if we couldn’t pay cash, we didn’t buy it.”  This was pretty much the truth:  Debt just wasn’t a routine part of American the way it is today; it was viewed quite differently. A generation or two ago, almost no one carried any debt except for a home mortgage and maybe a car loan. There were no giant credit card balances, no payday loans (watch out for these as they  end to charge 10 percent or more for the right to your own money), and no home equity loans. In fact, just 35 years ago, the total amount of debt outstanding among all American households was about 1/600th of what it is today. That means that for every dollar your generation owes today, your grandparents’ generation owed less than half a penny!

Warren’s excerpts were obviously cut and pasted. This sort of thing would usually be considered a firing offense for anyone who writes for a living; however, Warren’s book was co-written with her daughter. It’s possible the daughter is responsible for this. I suppose Warren will have little choice but to throw her under the bus if she wants to stay in the Senate race (and keep her job).

Rob Black has a business conducting financial seminars. I contacted Mr. Black via Twitter but haven’t heard back from him so far.

A screenshot:

Since I’ve been posting some of the Obama campaign ads from YouTube, it’s only fair to post the first official ad from Mitt Romney, in which he promises to kill “Obamacare” on day one of his presidency:

Followed by the latest ad from the Obama campaign, hammering Romney hard with his own words:

All day long, Breitbart.com editor and CNN contributor Dana Loesch has been spewing insults at me on Twitter; it probably has something to do with our posts on Breitbart.com’s Ludicrous ‘Not-Birther’ Article and on Loesch’s claims that Mitt Romney is counting on bloggers like her to attack Obama using Rev. Wright. Clearly, a nerve was struck.

Here’s one example out of more than a dozen:

Ponies unite! Refreshed after buying new brushes and Scrunchies at Sally’s Beauty Supply, Johnson Bloggers sit down to a day of trollin.

— Dana Loesch (@DLoesch) May 18, 2012

She’s also now imagining a conspiracy between me and Mediaite writer Tommy Christopher:

Just got an email from Tommy Christopher who is apparently now taking story direction from Charles Johnson. Seriously.

— Dana Loesch (@DLoesch) May 18, 2012

Loesch has had me blocked on Twitter for months, but still constantly tweets juvenile insults and paranoid conspiracy theories about me, nearly every day. She and her pals are now totally convinced that I’m the mastermind of an evil plot to ban conservatives from Twitter. Not only do I pull Tommy Christopher’s strings, but I also control Twitter. Moo hahaha.

And today, I’m told that Loesch also spent a good deal of time trashing me on her radio show. Wheee!

Meanwhile, LGF reader SidewaysQuark pointed out something amusing about Loesch’s new “brave right wing Twitter warrior” avatar, which you can see in the tweets above. Here’s a larger version:

And here’s where it comes from:

This could start to explain why prosecutors have reportedly been considering charging George Zimmerman with hate crimes in the death of Trayvon Martin: AUDIO: Witness Says George Zimmerman Repeatedly Bullied Him at Work, Targeted Him With Racist Jokes.

Among the evidence in the Trayvon Martin case released by the Florida state prosecutor yesterday was a 15-minute interview with a former work colleague of George Zimmerman. The man, who is not identified by name, says that Zimmerman relentlessly bullied him at work.

Zimmerman, according to the witness, targeted him because he was Middle Eastern. He repeatedly called the man a “fucking moron” and mocked him using the voice of “Achmed the terrorist.” Zimmerman’s stories about the man would involve “bombing,” “I’ll kill your family” and other “jokes” about “Middle Eastern stuff.” According to the man, this went on “for days and days.”

Readers on this site are already aware of the leaked document that showed a super-rich right-winger planning a $10 million “scary black President” smear campaign. Of course, once the plan and the billionaire backer were exposed to the sunlight, they quickly pivoted to say that they never really planned on running the ads.

Romney, after initially hemming and hawing and saying he hadn’t “read the papers yet,” eventually got around to “condemning” the attack strategy, saying, “So in regards to that PAC, I repudiate what they’re thinking about.”

But some in the right-wing blogosphere think that Romney actually is offering “wink wink nudge nudge” support for the smear campaigns, and is simply employing the strategy of “good cop, bad cop” alongside his surrogates. For example, here’s what one Breitbart.com editor had to say (chronological from bottom to top):

Now, I’m tempted to dismiss this as another example of Breitbart.com editors being completely unaware when everyone is laughing at them. But on the other hand, Breitbart representatives did recently participate in a secret meeting with the Romney campaign about campaign messaging. You’d think that if the Romney campaign wanted ridiculous race-baiting campaigns or birther conspiracy theories off the table, they could have made that clear.

Though it violates my general rule-of-thumb, if Breitbart.com editors are claiming that Romney is actually supporting their smear campaigns, I say we should believe them.