Huntsman’s gushing letters to leaders simply follow the super-sweet Utah style.

(This satire by our modern day Mark Twain appeared in The City Weekly, April 28, 2011. The mind from which it came is brilliant, irreverent, and should be embalmed and admired alongside the world’s greatest works of art, and when that should be done depends on whether you are continually amazed, amused, or angered.)

By D.P. Sorensen

The Huntsman campaign is moving swiftly to counter the barrage of bad publicity in the wake of the leaked “love letters” to President Barack Obama and former president Bill Clinton. Political observers across the nation were cringing at the gushing ick of the aforesaid missives, in which the ambassador to China and former Republican governor of Utah ladled vast quantities of worshipful syrup upon those two Democratic worthies (with slobbery verbal kisses smacked in the direction of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton).

A few morsels from the Huntsman Jr. letters convey the calorie-laden epistolary meals delivered to messieurs Obama and Clinton. To Mr. Obama from Ambassador Huntsman: “You are a remarkable leader, and it has been a great honor getting to know you … I’m anticipating an extraordinary experience in Beijing.” To Mr. Clinton from Ambassador Huntsman: “I have enormous regard for your experience, sense of history and brilliant analysis of world events.”

Not content to perform a deep-tissue massage on Mr. Clinton’s well-upholstered ego, the ambassador proceeds to give a flirtatious squeeze to Mrs. Clinton’s delectable knee: Mrs. Clinton is “well-read, hard-working, personable, and has even more charisma than her husband! It’s an honor to work with her.”

Now, we Utahns are used to this style of over-the-top approbation. In fact, linguists have done detailed longitudinal studies cataloguing what they term Utah’s “hyperappreciative locutionary style.” The supreme maestro (one might say exceedingly exalted maestro) of this style was, of course, the late prophet, seer and revelator Gordon B. Hinckley, who dispensed superlatives like a parade grandmaster scattering Tootsie Rolls to the candy-bag- clutching kiddies. “It is remarkable! It is marvelous! It is extraordinary!”

Our ecclesiastical betters and public servants alike have long availed themselves of the hyperappreciative locutionary style, as anyone who has attended award banquets, civic ceremonies and religious services can attest. We know that remarkable, extraordinary, splendid, marvelous, wonderful et al. are nothing more than verbal packing peanuts.

But the rest of the world is unenlightened and reacted to Huntsman Jr.’s love letters with a sustained squirm and a very loud yuck! The Huntsman campaign, knowing that explaining Utah’s adjectival addiction would be an exercise in futility, has decided to release other letters that demonstrate that the former governor is an equal-opportunity gusher.

“We hope these letters will return Ambassador Huntsman to the good graces of the Republican faithful, a substantial portion of which has harbored doubts about our candidate’s political orientation,” said spokesman Jacob Pratt. “You’ll notice that compared to his fawning epistles to illustrious Republicans, his so-called love letters to Obama and Clinton come off as insignificant air kisses.”

The full texts of what are being called the Letters of Adoration can be found on the Huntsman campaign Website. What follows are excerpts from notes, cards, letters, text messages and Tweets from Mr. Huntsman to assorted Republican statesmen:

To Ronald Reagan,  August 1982: “Dear Mr. President: Who does your hair? My mom says you use a ton of Brylcreem, but I think your luxurious locks shine with natural oils. When I hear that velvety baritone of yours, every inch of my body tingles with total love! You are a remarkable leader!”

To George Bush, July 1992 or June 1993: “Dear Former First Son: I saw you throw out the first pitch for the Texas Rangers. What an arm! You are much better-looking than your dad or your pudgy brother. Plus,  you have a ton more charisma! I notice you have the same accent as Ross Perot and the actor Slim Pickens. I heard you interviewed by Dan Rather, and it’s clear as day that you have a stupendous intellect!” [Mr. Bush wrote back an angry letter to the young Huntsman, saying, “I is not dumb! How dare you call me stupendous!”

To Dick Cheney, April 2004: “Dear Mr. Vice President: I have come to the conclusion that you are simply the manliest vice president in the history of our republic. Your charm blows me away! That darling thing you do when you curl your upper lip reminds me of Elvis and I get all rubbery in my knees. In memory of the extraordinary Dick Nixon, I just want to say, you are a remarkable Dickhead!”

In the event the Letters of Adoration fail to restore Mr. Huntsman to Republican graces, his campaign is prepared to release his anonymous letters to Mit Romney, whom they suspect of leaking the Obama love letters. A random example: “Go f–k thyself, Mit, thou remarkable flip-flopping phony.”

This column by Pulitizer Prize winner Leonard Pitts is one of our all time favorites. Mitt Romney was the justifiable target of Pitts’ laser sharp comments. This was written several years ago, but is worth reprinting again today in view of Romney’s double-speak at the recent CPAC convention. The lies and deliberate manipulations by two-faced Republicans to please their ideologically, radical, almost totally unthinking base stands reason on its head—and nobody has ever put it any clearer than Leonard Pitts.

“We need change, all right. Change from a liberal Washington to a conservative Washington. We have a prescription for every American who wants change in Washington — throw out the big-government liberals.”

— Mitt Romney, Sept. 3

And then the gorilla run knee-socks paint porno on the Cadillac. But school laughed and didn’t we sing hats?

Ahem.

Maybe you wonder what the preceding gobbledygook means. I would ask which gobbledygook you mean: mine or Mitt Romney’s? If he’s allowed to spew nonsense and people act as if he’s spoken intelligently, why can’t I? If he gets to behave as if words no longer have objective meaning, why can’t I?

I mean, baffle grab on the freak flake. Really.

And again, ahem.

If you’re a regular here, you’ve heard me rant from time to time about intellectual dishonesty. By this, I mean more than just your garden-variety lie. No, to be intellectually dishonest means to argue that which you know to be untrue and to substitute ideology for intellect to the degree that you’ll do violence to language and logic rather than cross the party line.

Yes, we’re all intellectually dishonest on occasion. But no one does it like Republican conservatives. They are to intellectual dishonesty what Michael Jordan was to basketball or The Temptations to harmony: the avatar, the exemplar, the paradigm. They have elevated it beyond hypocrisy and political expedience. They have made it … art.

Which returns us to the astonishing thing Mitt Romney said while addressing the party faithful in St. Paul, Minn. You want to walk around it the way you would Michelangelo’s “David,” admiring the elegance of the workmanship. You hesitate to touch it, much less pull it apart. To do so seems almost an act of desecration.

Unfortunately, some of us are too plodding and earthbound, too blind to the seductions of art, too stubbornly wedded to some vestigial notion that intellectual honesty matters, to walk past a steaming pile of bovine excreta without calling it a steaming pile of bovine excreta.

So excuse me, beg pardon, so sorry, but I have to ask: what liberal Washington is he talking about? The federal government has three branches. The legislative, i.e., Congress, was under conservative control from 1995 until 2007. The judicial, i.e., the Supreme Court, consists of nine justices, seven of whom were nominated by conservative presidents. The executive, i.e., the president, is George W. Bush. Enough said.

Washington is already what Romney wants to make it. Our current state of affairs, love it or loathe it, is indisputably a product of conservative governance. I wish that mattered more than it does.

That it doesn’t matter much at all you can credit to conservative politicians who have, over the years, trained their followers to respond with Pavlovian faithfulness to certain terms. Say “conservative” and they wag their tails. Say “liberal” and they bare their fangs. More to the point, say either and all thinking ceases, so much so that a representative of the ideology that has controlled most of Washington most of the last 12 years can say with a straight face that his ideology needs to seize control of Washington to fix what is broken there. And people hear this Orwellian doublespeak … and cheer. Why not? They have been taught that words mean what you need them to in a given moment.

Sadly, it has proved an easy lesson to impart. Turns out, all it requires is a limitless supply of gall and the inherent belief that people are dumber than a bag of hammers.

And all it costs us is language, the ability to have reasoned and intelligent political discourse, the idea that words do, and should, have weight, dimension and intrinsic meaning. Maybe you disagree. In which case, let me just say this:

Piffle crack eat monkey snow. Really.

Miami Herald columnist Leonard Pitts Jr.’s column appears Sunday on editorial pages of The Times. His e-mail address is:lpitts@miamiherald.com

By D.P. Sorensen

(D.P. writes a regular column entitled Deep End for The City Weekly. Other columns by D.P. can be found at cityweekly.net and selected ones can be found on this web page by clicking the Comedy button on our home page.)

When I first started reading D.P. Sorensen’s Deep End it was with disgust at his disrespect for the respectful in our society, but gradually I sensed the enormous sense of humor and began to discard the disgust and admire the confluence of brilliant writing and gut wrenching humor.

Furthermore, his column appears in a newspaper full of night club and beer ads, not to mention racy burlesque come-ons, a paper eschewed and vomited on by the uprighteous who seek a much higher standard of personal comportment. Amidst all that ‘other stuff’ I found our current day Mark Twain and now I proudly pick up a City Weekly without even looking around to see if my neighbors are watching.

(Note: you can find a City Weekly on the ‘left’ side of the street. The ‘right’ side won’t distribute them.)

We are all saddened by the predicament of  Sheldon Killpack, and all of us, having found ourselves in shameful situations at one time or another, would prefer to shrink into the shadows and heal in private rather than be the subject of such public scrutiny, and especially of becoming a useful tool in the hands of the comic of comics, D.P. Sorensen.

Long before Mitt Romney came to Utah on his white horse to save the Olympics he was the point man of many of Sorensen’s satirical pieces. I read Deep End for at least a year before I realized that Mitt Romney wasn’t really D.P.’s missionary companion in France. Gullible me, but I’m not the only one. There are still some of his readers who think it is true. They often ask him if Romney really wears a wig. That’s actually more believable than Sorensen being on a mission.

In this particular column Sorensen gave Romney the week off, and that was bad news for Brass and Killpack.

As for Brass and Killpack one must ponder—-was Sheldon’s decision to plead innocent a little bit more ridiculous than his decision to drink and drive? In the matter of public scrutiny he made the worst decision he could make–especially when the video tape made public by his plea of innocence removed all doubt of his guilt.

And what to make of Ed Brass, who is truly a magnificent attorney? Well, a good attorney has to be made of brass, as D.P. points out so well.

This piece is one of D.P.’s best efforts. As you read it, pause and enjoy the brilliance of each twist and turn.

The Chutzpah Society of America recently honored Utah attorney Ed Brass for his stellar efforts defending drunken driver and disgraced public servant Sheldon Killpack, who finally pleaded guilty to driving under the influence—you’ll remember Killpack was caught behind the wheel with a blood-alcohol level of 0.11 back in January of 2010 after getting snockered at Liquid Joe’s, a Salt Lake City watering hole.

The Chutzpah Society was so impressed with Mr. Brass’ work that it created an award in his name, The Ed Brass Brass Prize, which, according to Elmer J. Gallworthy, “will honor that individual who in the face of his client’s overwhelming guilt, is not merely content to provide his client with the best defense money can buy, but is also determined to leave onlookers speechless with baseless assertions of his client’s innocence, purity, gentility, nobility, courage and unsurpassed virtue.”

In announcing the award, Mr. Gallworthy paid tribute to Mr. Brass’ willingness to say or do anything to get his client off the hook. “I thought I was pretty good at unmitigated gall, but my friend Ed Brass really surpassed me in the cheek department. It took all the brass in Ed’s being to ask Attorney General Shurtleff to fix the length of Killpack’s driving suspension. But for sheer cheek, effrontery, undiluted chutzpah or whatever you want to call it, nothing can match Ed’s remarks after drunken driver Killpack finally saw the writing on the wall and copped a plea.
“Let me read you what Ed Brass said about his client in the Deseret News: ‘Having his name drug through the mud was difficult.’ Incidentally, Ed has chutzpah, but he’s usually not ungrammatical. Maybe that quote was transcribed by one of the Deseret News’ new citizen reporters. KUTV 2 and The Salt Lake Tribune quoted Ed as saying, ‘It was pretty tough to be dragged through the mud the way he has the last year.’
“In any event, this is a great example of the tried and true Mud Maneuver, in which you fling mud to obfuscate an uncomfortable reality, in this case the fact that his client was out there endangering the public by having a few too many adult beverages and then getting behind the wheel. I sure didn’t notice Sheldon Killpack being dragged, or even drug, through the mud by anybody. If there’s any mud on him, it’s because he fell in it all on his lonesome. Ed’s use of the Mud Maneuver is pretty brilliant, I’d say. Even more brilliant, or brillianter, is how Ed performs the rare Double Mud Maneuver, throwing and dragging at the same time. Before you know it, the malefactor has become the victim.”
Mr. Gallworthy paused and seemed to shake his head in wondering admiration. “You know, the Double Mud Maneuver would have been enough to establish the Ed Brass Brass Prize as a permanent fixture in the annual Chutzpah Society achievement awards. But then someone showed me the KUTV clip of Ed praising his client and, in the process, elevating the poor dragged-through-the-mud victim to the status of sinned-against saint. ‘He’s a pretty courageous guy,’ Ed says of Sheldon. Even better was the quotation in the Deseret News: ‘I’ve never seen someone handle a situation like this better,’ Ed is quoted as saying. ‘He’s a real gentleman.’ Don’t you just love that?
“I don’t know about you, but Ed’s encomiums put Sheldon’s actions in a whole new light. It was pretty courageous to challenge the Word of Wisdom and dare the wrath of the General Authorities. It was pretty courageous to get stumble-bum drunk. It was pretty courageous to drive a motor vehicle when you’re looped. And when the cop inquired about the aroma of alcohol emanating from interior of Killpack’s SUV, Sheldon, ever the courageous gentleman, gave all the credit to his passenger.
“There’s more! Everyone would agree that it was pretty courageous of Sheldon to refuse a breathalyzer. Who knows whose mouth might have been slobbering all over the breathing tube? Finally, the average Joe might question the cojones of someone who tried to weasel out of fessing up and taking his medicine. But we at the Chutzpah Society think Sheldon is a pretty courageous guy. You might even say he has balls of brass.”

Meanwhile, Ed Brass, the recipient of this year’s Ed Brass Brass Prize, is not resting on his laurels. He has vowed to stay on the case until the last globule of mud has been washed from the gentlemanly visage of his pretty courageous client.

(This humorous report is not true—-yet)

By D.P. Sorensen

Note from the author: When news of the pending City Weekly sale reached my desk, I realized this might be my last chance to write for the paper. Thus, this is my report on the City Weekly sale. For all I know, I’ve got it exactly right.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints yesterday revealed that it has acquired City Weekly, the popular alternative publication seen by many as a Mormonbashing, gay-loving and tattoo-promoting tabloid. President Thomas S. Monson told a stunned audience in the ornate lobby of the Joseph Smith Memorial Building that he was excited to bring City Weekly into the fold, and urged the faithful to hurry out and pick up the latest issue.

The beloved Prophet, known for his humorous stories about widows in distress, then launched into a heartwarming tale about an elect lady in his local ward who was an avid reader of City Weekly. Eventually, Brother Monson introduced John Saltas, the bon vivant from Bingham who started the tabloid on a shoestring and turned it into a media powerhouse, earning a fortune that has allowed him to spend months at a time cruising the Aegean Sea in a yacht that once belonged to Aristotle Onassis. (Standing to the side, nervously tapping one foot, was City Weekly publisher Jim Rizzi.)

Originally known as Private Eye, the publication began in 1984 as a promotional vehicle for local private drinking clubs. Mormon church officials are keeping mum about whether they plan to change the tabloid’s name (though there is a rumor it may be called the Mormon Expositor) or keep the City Weekly brand, which has proven to be a gold mine.

After an awkward bear hug, Prophet Monson and Mr. Saltas shook hands and smiled broadly for cameras, posing for what seemed like an eternity. Mr. Saltas at one point appeared to be wincing in pain, leading to speculation that he was having second thoughts about selling the paper he had nurtured so lovingly over the past 25 years. It was later learned, however, that Mr. Saltas was rushed to the emergency room to be treated for a broken hand, the result of the Prophet’s surprisingly vigorous application of the grip patriarchal.

Also present at the ceremony were several General Authorities, among them Elder Boyd K. Packer, heir apparent to the prophetic throne; Elder Dallin H. Oaks, the bullet-headed enforcer of doctrinal purity (he is often mistaken for the cowboy singing star Dallen Oats); Elder H. David Burton, the presiding bishop who gained fame for dangling former Mayor Sparky Anderson out of a window on the 23rd floor of the Church Office Building; and Elder Mark “Bud” Willes, recently named top banana of Deseret Management. A dead-ringer for his late uncle, the Prophet, Seer and Revelator Gordon B. Hinckley— who preceded Prophet, Seer, Revelator Monson—Elder Willes’ entrance elicited startled gasps from many in the crowd who could be forgiven for thinking the late prophet had risen from the dead.

Immediate response to the church’s purchase of City Weekly was mixed, with some expressing shock and others professing to have seen it coming for a long time. Among the latter was media icon Rod Decker, who observed, “Not a surprise. You got the church. You got a pain-in-the-ass paper. The church used to be dumb. Look what happened with the Nauvoo Expositor. Now they’re smart. No smashing of the press this time. Instead, gonna get a buy-out.”

Mr. Decker was apparently referring to the 1844 destruction of the Nauvoo Expositor’s printing press on the orders of Joseph Smith. The Prophet got wind that renegade apostle William Law was printing an expose of plural marriage and had his henchmen render the press inoperable. This led, of course, to the arrest and subsequent murder of the prophet by a Carthage mob.

Brigham Young was no doubt sorely tempted to smash the presses of the heretic Salt Lake Tribune, the organ of the apostate Godbeites, back in 1870, but ordered 23 of his wives to physically restrain him from destroying it, remembering the retaliation visited upon Brother Joseph. But had he acted to remove the newspaper, just as his hit man Orrin Porter Rockwell acted to remove pesky Mormon dissidents, the Church would have enjoyed a century, at least, of freedom from cheap shots and unrighteous criticism. Once a thorn in the side for the Church, the Tribune for a long time has been a faithful and adored family pet, curled up and snoozing in the ample lap of the Church.

City Mormon Times
So, what will the Church do with City Weekly? Extract its teeth? Let it slink away to a slow death in a dim and dusty corner? Put it down with a quick and humane blow to the cranium?

Since the spatulate thumbprints of Elder Mark “Bud” Willes are all over the church’s acquisition of our pesky paper, it seemed only fair to give him an opportunity to anatomize the purchase. The affable and avuncular dynamo invited the entire staff of City Weekly to his palatial penthouse apartment at the Eaglegate. After personally passing around a tray of microwaved taquitos, Elder Willes eased his substantial body into a La-Z-Boy recliner next to a huge picture window overlooking the Salt Lake Temple.

“I don’t like to stand on ceremony,” said the Elder Willes. “Please call me Brother Bud.”

“Hello, Brother Bud,” we all said in spontaneous unison.

“Well, let me tell you just a bit about myself. I’ve been called a hatchet man because of my fondness for cutting costs. They called me the Cereal Killer when I ran General Foods, and General Jack Ripper when I ran the Los Angeles Times into the ground. As I said, I’d like you to call me Brother Bud, but I don’t care what you call me, just as long as you don’t call me late for dinner.”

Following the explosion of laughter, Brother Bud resumed his exposition. “But let me reassure you about the church’s plan for your salvation. You have a great operation here. I’ve looked at your bottom line, and everyone in the presiding bishop’s office is happy that you will be putting money into our purse, as opposed to having our pockets picked by that money pit called the Mormon Times. Some of the boys in the First Presidency and the Quorum of the Twelve are not as sanguine; in fact, Brother Packer and Brother Oats damned near blew a gasket when I said I wanted to buy you guys. To them, you are Satan’s spawn.

“But then I made a pitch about how you fit into our values-based growth strategy, especially our new mission statement at Celestial Media, you know, blah blah trusted voices blah blah light the fire within blah blah light and knowledge blah blah to knuckleheads around the world. Brother Packer made an impassioned speech about the need to be faith-promoting and uplifting. Know what I said? I said, Brother Packer, you want uplift? Get a good brassiere.”

Staffers at City Weekly began feeling a little better about the buy-out, but still had questions about what changes might be in the works.

“Well, the first big headline is that Brother John Saltas has just accepted a call to head up our mission in Greece. He will have his hands full supervising the construction of our new temple in the heart of Athens, which will begin just as soon as our crews finish demolishing the Parthenon. Brother Jim Rizzi has been called to serve as personal trainer for current Deseret Book CEO and new City Weekly etiquette editor, the vivacious—vroom, vroom!—Sister Sheri Dew.

“Finally, I’m pleased to announce that Brother D.P. Sorensen, who has served us well on the Strengthening Church Members Committee in the Ministry of Truth, will continue to write his faith-promoting Deep End column.”

Oh, Glory Days
Brother Bud leaned back in his La-Z-Boy, put his meaty hands behind his head, and gazed beneficently at the eager faces before him.

“As for the rest of you, well, you, like the dead people up there in the Celestial Kingdom holding cell, will have a chance to accept the Gospel and retain your positions. And please, please, help yourself to some more of those tasty taquitos. Paula, are you here? Yes, there she is. May I call you Sister Saltas? The Apostles wanted me to extend their appreciation for those yummy souvlaki things you’ve been sending over to the temple.”

Brother Bud hinted that Bill Frost’s popular Ocho feature would be expanded and renamed the Doce, and that the edgy Ask a Mexican column would become an even-edgier Ask a Lamanite. As for who would replace Brother Saltas’ Private Eye column, Brother Bud said he was confidant he would be able to persuade Prophet Monson to give up his breezy sports column in the Trib and favor City Weekly readers instead with occasional reminiscence of widows he has visited in their time of need.

“We’ve succeeded, I’m happy to say, in twisting the arm of Brother Josh Loftin to continue presenting his weekly Hits and Misses, though that feature will henceforth be known as Exaltations and Excommunications. And your food guy, Ted Scheffler, who I see has been hogging all the taquitos, has been prevailed upon to do a column that will be called 101 Ways to Cook Funeral Potatoes.”

Already in development, according to Brother Bud, was a new feature that would call on the vast resources of the genealogy department. Various names have been kicked around, the leading contender at the moment being, Who’s Your Great-Great-Granddaddy?

“Finally, brothers and sisters, I want to say a word about the City Weekly feature that is hands-down the favorite among the Brethren. Every Thursday before their weekly convocation in the sanctum sanctorum they pick up the latest copy and turn immediately to Nice Tats. If I have my way, we’ll be turning that into a two-page, full-color spread.”

The room erupted in joy, and staffers rushed to envelop and give love to Brother Bud. Editor Jerre Wroble, music editor Dan Nailen and Apostle-at-Large Bill Frost, in a rush of adrenaline, hoisted the City Weekly Savior high upon their shoulders and were able to carry him three or four steps before dropping him on to the plush carpet.

Breathing hard, but face aglow, Presiding Writer Stephen Dark, who has re-baptized as Stephen Light, waved a taquito high above his head. “God bless the Cereal Killer,” he said. “And God bless us, every one.”

D.P. Sorensen is a former satirist for City Weekly.

Frothing at the Mouth

Church President Monson convenes a root-beer summit.

By D.P. Sorensen

Prophet, seer, and revelator Thomas Monson used all of his considerable powers of persuasion to bring together the parties in the now-notorious “Church Plaza kiss” episode. Termed the “root-beer summit,” the meeting took place last Thursday in the leafy inner courtyard of the Lion House, according to church spokesman Melchezedik “Dick” Pratt.

Initially, there were serious doubts as to whether the summit would take place. Highly placed church insiders say some of the General Authorities expressed adamant opposition to such a summit.

“It’s a slippery slope,” opined one apostle known for his iron-rod views and righteous demeanor. “First, you talk to these self-described ‘gay’ people, and the next thing you know, we’re playing show tunes at sacrament meeting.” In the end, however, the more moderate Liahona apostles prevailed—but only after agreeing to have the grounds of the Lion House sprayed with a powerful antiseptic after the visit of the gay participants.

“We love those boys,” said an apostle, “but that doesn’t mean we are obliged to expose ourselves to any dangerous homosexual hormones.”

Details are sketchy as to everything that transpired at the root-beer summit, but City Weekly has been able to piece together a general account of the meeting. After everyone was comfortably seated (Mr. Jones and Mr. Aune were assigned chairs sufficiently at a distance to preclude hand-holding or footsy finagling), trays of root beer and vanilla ice cream were brought in by modestly dressed young women. Participants had their choice of A&W, Hires, or Shasta root beer, and Meadow Gold, Dreyer’s or Western Family vanilla ice cream.

As the ice cream melted in the afternoon heat, President Monson gave a stirring opening prayer. At least one of the beefy security guards who had wrestled the slight Mr. Jones to the ground on the night in question seemed to grow impatient with President Monson’s giving thanks for the rich and creamy ice cream and the foamy root beer; the security guard was observed peeking at the ice cream (thought to be the Meadow Gold brand) growing milky at the margins of the already opened carton.

After his prayer, President Monson, who is justly renowned for his storytelling abilities, told a humorous anecdote about an earlier root-beer summit convened by Brigham Young in July of 1857. It seems a pair of traveling acrobats from San Francisco got in trouble for practicing the devilishly difficult four-legged somersault in an alley behind the Beehive House. Brigham Young’s personal bodyguard and swimming companion, Orrin Porter Rockwell, caught a glimpse of the intertwined acrobats and jumped to the conclusion that they were indulging in a notorious French practice that he had heard tell of from a returned missionary. Unlike the latter-day security guards, Brother Orrin did not merely wrestle the acrobats to the ground; he gave the hapless duo a thumping to within an inch of their lives.

Although videotapes of the incident have disappeared, Brother Brigham, knowing of Orrin’s propensity to fly off the handle, gave the acrobats the benefit of the doubt and, instead of booting them back to San Francisco, offered them a joint appointment as entertainers-in-residence, noting at the time that he was worn out trying to keep his numerous wives amused.

President Monson then invited the participants either to share a humorous anecdote of their own or to bear their testimonies. Reports are contradictory as to who spoke and what exactly was said, but everyone agrees that one of the burly security guards just wanted to say that he couldn’t understand why the homosexual guys wanted to engage in a public display of affection.

“I’ve been with my wife for 19 years now ever since I came back from by mission to t h e Central States,” he said, profusely sweating and scooping a heap of ice cream into a glass half-filled with Hires root beer, “but I’ve never engaged in any public display of affection. In fact, I haven’t kissed her for years, even in private, and we’ve never been happier.”

As the root-beer summit drew to a close, President Monson suggested that everyone engage in a group hug, but after the looks of horror all around, he gave the benediction and dismissed the parties with the standard Mormon shoulder massage.

We have been unable to verify the report that one of the security guards has been text-messaging one or both of the plaza kissers, expressing the strange feeling of excitement he experienced when he wrestled them to the ground.

Note from the author: When news of the pending City Weekly sale reached my desk, I realized this might be my last chance to write for the paper. Thus, this is my report on the City Weekly sale. For all I know, I’ve got it exactly right.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints yesterday revealed that it has acquired City Weekly, the popular alternative publication seen by many as a Mormonbashing, gay-loving and tattoo-promoting tabloid. President Thomas S. Monson told a stunned audience in the ornate lobby of the Joseph Smith Memorial Building that he was excited to bring City Weekly into the fold, and urged the faithful to hurry out and pick up the latest issue.

The beloved Prophet, known for his humorous stories about widows in distress, then launched into a heartwarming tale about an elect lady in his local ward who was an avid reader of City Weekly. Eventually, Brother Monson introduced John Saltas, the bon vivant from Bingham who started the tabloid on a shoestring and turned it into a media powerhouse, earning a fortune that has allowed him to spend months at a time cruising the Aegean Sea in a yacht that once belonged to Aristotle Onassis. (Standing to the side, nervously tapping one foot, was City Weekly publisher Jim Rizzi.)

Originally known as Private Eye, the publication began in 1984 as a promotional vehicle for local private drinking clubs. Mormon church officials are keeping mum about whether they plan to change the tabloid’s name (though there is a rumor it may be called the Mormon Expositor) or keep the City Weekly brand, which has proven to be a gold mine.

After an awkward bear hug, Prophet Monson and Mr. Saltas shook hands and smiled broadly for cameras, posing for what seemed like an eternity. Mr. Saltas at one point appeared to be wincing in pain, leading to speculation that he was having second thoughts about selling the paper he had nurtured so lovingly over the past 25 years. It was later learned, however, that Mr. Saltas was rushed to the emergency room to be treated for a broken hand, the result of the Prophet’s surprisingly vigorous application of the grip patriarchal.

Also present at the ceremony were several General Authorities, among them Elder Boyd K. Packer, heir apparent to the prophetic throne; Elder Dallin H. Oaks, the bullet-headed enforcer of doctrinal purity (he is often mistaken for the cowboy singing star Dallen Oats); Elder H. David Burton, the presiding bishop who gained fame for dangling former Mayor Sparky Anderson out of a window on the 23rd floor of the Church Office Building; and Elder Mark “Bud” Willes, recently named top banana of Deseret Management. A dead-ringer for his late uncle, the Prophet, Seer and Revelator Gordon B. Hinckley— who preceded Prophet, Seer, Revelator Monson—Elder Willes’ entrance elicited startled gasps from many in the crowd who could be forgiven for thinking the late prophet had risen from the dead.

Immediate response to the church’s purchase of City Weekly was mixed, with some expressing shock and others professing to have seen it coming for a long time. Among the latter was media icon Rod Decker, who observed, “Not a surprise. You got the church. You got a pain-in-the-ass paper. The church used to be dumb. Look what happened with the Nauvoo Expositor. Now they’re smart. No smashing of the press this time. Instead, gonna get a buy-out.”

Mr. Decker was apparently referring to the 1844 destruction of the Nauvoo Expositor’s printing press on the orders of Joseph Smith. The Prophet got wind that renegade apostle William Law was printing an expose of plural marriage and had his henchmen render the press inoperable. This led, of course, to the arrest and subsequent murder of the prophet by a Carthage mob.

Brigham Young was no doubt sorely tempted to smash the presses of the heretic Salt Lake Tribune, the organ of the apostate Godbeites, back in 1870, but ordered 23 of his wives to physically restrain him from destroying it, remembering the retaliation visited upon Brother Joseph. But had he acted to remove the newspaper, just as his hit man Orrin Porter Rockwell acted to remove pesky Mormon dissidents, the Church would have enjoyed a century, at least, of freedom from cheap shots and unrighteous criticism. Once a thorn in the side for the Church, the Tribune for a long time has been a faithful and adored family pet, curled up and snoozing in the ample lap of the Church.

City Mormon Times
So, what will the Church do with City Weekly? Extract its teeth? Let it slink away to a slow death in a dim and dusty corner? Put it down with a quick and humane blow to the cranium?

Since the spatulate thumbprints of Elder Mark “Bud” Willes are all over the church’s acquisition of our pesky paper, it seemed only fair to give him an opportunity to anatomize the purchase. The affable and avuncular dynamo invited the entire staff of City Weekly to his palatial penthouse apartment at the Eaglegate. After personally passing around a tray of microwaved taquitos, Elder Willes eased his substantial body into a La-Z-Boy recliner next to a huge picture window overlooking the Salt Lake Temple.

“I don’t like to stand on ceremony,” said the Elder Willes. “Please call me Brother Bud.”

“Hello, Brother Bud,” we all said in spontaneous unison.

“Well, let me tell you just a bit about myself. I’ve been called a hatchet man because of my fondness for cutting costs. They called me the Cereal Killer when I ran General Foods, and General Jack Ripper when I ran the Los Angeles Times into the ground. As I said, I’d like you to call me Brother Bud, but I don’t care what you call me, just as long as you don’t call me late for dinner.”

Following the explosion of laughter, Brother Bud resumed his exposition. “But let me reassure you about the church’s plan for your salvation. You have a great operation here. I’ve looked at your bottom line, and everyone in the presiding bishop’s office is happy that you will be putting money into our purse, as opposed to having our pockets picked by that money pit called the Mormon Times. Some of the boys in the First Presidency and the Quorum of the Twelve are not as sanguine; in fact, Brother Packer and Brother Oats damned near blew a gasket when I said I wanted to buy you guys. To them, you are Satan’s spawn.

“But then I made a pitch about how you fit into our values-based growth strategy, especially our new mission statement at Celestial Media, you know, blah blah trusted voices blah blah light the fire within blah blah light and knowledge blah blah to knuckleheads around the world. Brother Packer made an impassioned speech about the need to be faith-promoting and uplifting. Know what I said? I said, Brother Packer, you want uplift? Get a good brassiere.”

Staffers at City Weekly began feeling a little better about the buy-out, but still had questions about what changes might be in the works.

“Well, the first big headline is that Brother John Saltas has just accepted a call to head up our mission in Greece. He will have his hands full supervising the construction of our new temple in the heart of Athens, which will begin just as soon as our crews finish demolishing the Parthenon. Brother Jim Rizzi has been called to serve as personal trainer for current Deseret Book CEO and new City Weekly etiquette editor, the vivacious—vroom, vroom!—Sister Sheri Dew.

“Finally, I’m pleased to announce that Brother D.P. Sorensen, who has served us well on the Strengthening Church Members Committee in the Ministry of Truth, will continue to write his faith-promoting Deep End column.”

Oh, Glory Days
Brother Bud leaned back in his La-Z-Boy, put his meaty hands behind his head, and gazed beneficently at the eager faces before him.

“As for the rest of you, well, you, like the dead people up there in the Celestial Kingdom holding cell, will have a chance to accept the Gospel and retain your positions. And please, please, help yourself to some more of those tasty taquitos. Paula, are you here? Yes, there she is. May I call you Sister Saltas? The Apostles wanted me to extend their appreciation for those yummy souvlaki things you’ve been sending over to the temple.”

Brother Bud hinted that Bill Frost’s popular Ocho feature would be expanded and renamed the Doce, and that the edgy Ask a Mexican column would become an even-edgier Ask a Lamanite. As for who would replace Brother Saltas’ Private Eye column, Brother Bud said he was confidant he would be able to persuade Prophet Monson to give up his breezy sports column in the Trib and favor City Weekly readers instead with occasional reminiscence of widows he has visited in their time of need.

“We’ve succeeded, I’m happy to say, in twisting the arm of Brother Josh Loftin to continue presenting his weekly Hits and Misses, though that feature will henceforth be known as Exaltations and Excommunications. And your food guy, Ted Scheffler, who I see has been hogging all the taquitos, has been prevailed upon to do a column that will be called 101 Ways to Cook Funeral Potatoes.”

Already in development, according to Brother Bud, was a new feature that would call on the vast resources of the genealogy department. Various names have been kicked around, the leading contender at the moment being, Who’s Your Great-Great-Granddaddy?

“Finally, brothers and sisters, I want to say a word about the City Weekly feature that is hands-down the favorite among the Brethren. Every Thursday before their weekly convocation in the sanctum sanctorum they pick up the latest copy and turn immediately to Nice Tats. If I have my way, we’ll be turning that into a two-page, full-color spread.”

The room erupted in joy, and staffers rushed to envelop and give love to Brother Bud. Editor Jerre Wroble, music editor Dan Nailen and Apostle-at-Large Bill Frost, in a rush of adrenaline, hoisted the City Weekly Savior high upon their shoulders and were able to carry him three or four steps before dropping him on to the plush carpet.

Breathing hard, but face aglow, Presiding Writer Stephen Dark, who has re-baptized as Stephen Light, waved a taquito high above his head. “God bless the Cereal Killer,” he said. “And God bless us, every one.”

D.P. Sorensen is a former satirist for City Weekly.

(D.P. Sorensen’s column appears regularly in City Weekly, a Salt Lake City newspaper)

Crews are working around the clock at the Utah Capitol to clean up a money spill that has sent tons of cash, coins and personal checks cascading through offices, down marble steps, through the rotunda and out onto Capitol Hill, where aides to Governor Herbert are doing their best to stop looters from scooping up the flowing lucre and stuffing it into their pockets or down into their pants.

Investigators have yet to pinpoint the leak, but experts agree that the pipeline most likely burst in the governor’s private office. According to spokeswoman Darla Sheckel, the pipe was old and narrow and couldn’t handle the unprecedented cash flow.

“Previous governors didn’t have to worry about the load of dough we’ve been getting. The old pipe could handle the nickels and dimes occasionally trickling into the governor’s office when George Dewey Clyde or Cal Rampton or any of those other guys, and that one gal, were around. But ever since the governor got out one of his old real estate For Sale signs and pounded it into the lawn, we’ve had an avalanche of cash—sorry for the mixed metaphor—coming through the pipe.”

After the governor made a killing on the state’s contract for the huge Utah County Interstate 15 project, investors realized they could get a huge bang for their buck if they bought shares in the Herbert administration. Despite the overflowing coffers from the November election, Mr. Herbert continued his aggressive marketing efforts to raise cash for his inauguration, and some experts are of the opinion that the pipeline was severely overtaxed by investors eager to buy access and favors from the governor.

“Normally, we have aides whose only job is to monitor the cash pipeline, and keep the spigots open so there is no backup,” explained Ms. Sheckel. “The coins aren’t much of a problem, but the large denomination greenbacks can really clog the system. It seems that what happened was one of the guys monitoring the pipeline had a bit too much eggnog and left his post temporarily to make a run to the lavatory. Next thing we know, there was an explosion of cash, with coins raining down—fortunately, there were only a few minor injuries—and a blizzard of currency burying everyone in the vicinity.”

Ms. Sheckel praised the efforts of the staff to capture the cash before it spread throughout the surrounding neighborhood or flooded State Street. “And you should have seen Governor Gary,” she said, her voice welling with pride. “For a while, he was completely buried, and we had rescue teams searching for him with those avalanche poles. We even brought in dogs specially trained to sniff out corruption. Finally, Governor Gary dug his own way out and, clutching a fistful of cashier checks, he bellowed, ‘I love the smell of cash in the morning.’”

At this point, it seems that most of the pipeline money was recovered, thanks to the efforts of the governor’s staff, who were apparently able to catch looters weighed down by coins in their pockets or handicapped by wads of bills stuffed in their undershorts or no-panty-line bikini briefs. One unverified report has the governor himself chasing down an unemployed looter and berating him with a lecture on fiscal responsibility. “That’s my money, buster, and I earned it fair and square by lucking into the governorship when my predecessor took a slow boat to China. I don’t take handouts, no siree, because for every quid I get, I give a quo. It’s the Utah way.”

To make sure that any of the governor’s investors whose contributions might have gotten lost in the pipeline break would not go unrewarded, the Herbert administration has put out a call for investors to shell out some more dough of an amount equal to or surpassing that of their initial payment. (In accordance to Mr. Herbert’s career as an illustrious Realtor, investors are assigned a category commensurate with their munificence—Mansion, Rambler, Split Level, Bungalow, Fixer-Upper, Starter, Shack, Hovel.)

Until the pipeline is once again in working order, Mr. Herbert will accept investments in plain brown envelopes, or even carefully folded C-notes pressed discreetly into his palm. As always, the most generous investors will not only be guaranteed an handsome return but will also kick back at Mr. Herbert’s inauguration in a climate-controlled hospitality suite, where they can personally hand the governor their individualized wish lists and enter a raffle to receive one of Mr. Herbert’s famous shoulder massages.

This seemingly unending list of lies vomited up by pathological liars is so long you won’t have the patience to read it all. Sadly, this is what the Republican Party has come to. A ridiculousness that should result in an almost complete abandonment by anyone with a brain. Oh, the awful embarrassment of being associated with this stuff.

Latest update: Feb. 14, 2010

No, it’s not true that global warming stopped in 1998 and the world has been cooling ever since. This video does a good job tracking down the single wingnut who made that bogus claim, which has been repeated ceaselessly by climate change deniers ever since.  #

No, Republicans are just lying when they claim that prosecuting terrorists in ordinary American courtrooms is something unusual or dangerous. There’s nothing outrageous or even out of the ordinry about how the Obama administration is prosecuting the so-called underwear bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab.  #

No, contrary to conservatives’ claims, big snowstorms don’t disprove global climate change. A snowstorm doesn’t mean science is a fraud. As explained briefly, we’re going to see more snow, not less, because more precipitation — including heavy snowstorms — is a sign of global warming, as atmospheric moisture levels have increased with warmer temperatures, meaning more storms with heavy snow or rain.  #

No, it’s not true that Sen Barney Frank (D-Massachusetts) has proposed legislation the would establish universal voter registration, including votes for ex-felons and welfare recipients and oh my!
It sounds like a great idea to me. I believe people should be encouraged to vote and voting should be as easy as is practically possible — but for their own reasons, other people like to have a few hurdles in the way so that only people who bother to jump those hurdles get to vote. You could make reasonable arguments for the latter notion, and maybe that’s a conversation we should have.
But instead of making those reasonable arguments, right-wingers like John Fund, Rush Limbaugh, and Glenn Beck are simply lying, because Senator Frank has made no such proposal. There’s no universal voter registration legislation to oppose. When you hear or read about this proposal from Senator Frank, you’re hearing or reading a lie.  #

No, the widespread right-wing meme that the underwear bomber quit talking as soon as he was read his Miranda rights is bull.  #

No, it’s not true, despite columnist George Will’s claim, that the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) would “abolish workers’ rights to secret ballots”. It’s a right-wing talking point, but it’s no more true today than the last time it was debunked on this page. It’s untrue every time you hear it, which sure is often.  #

No, it’s not true that President Obama used a teleprompter to address a class of sixth-graders at an elementary school in Falls Church, Virginia.  #

No, despite Investor’s Business Daily‘s hokum, the Community Reinvestment Act didn’t cause the current economic collapse.  #

No, the International Criminal Police Organization (commonly called “Interpol”) will not be conducting investigations of US officials, arresting Americans, or whatever other conspiracy theories have been falsely asserted by Newt Gingrich, Andrew McCarthy, and others.  #

No, the London Daily Mail‘s coverage of “global cooling”, headlined “Could we be in for 30 years of global COOLING?” and gleefully echoed on Fox News and across the right-wing blogosphere, is wrong, false, and misleading, with made-up quotes attributed to a real scientist who isn’t amused and doesn’t at all doubt the facts of global climate change.  #

No, Sean Hannity is lying when he says (over and over again) that 2009 was the “coldest year on record.” In fact and of course, 2009 was one of the warmest years on record.  #

No, Cliff Kincaid of the misleadingly named Accuracy in Media is fibbing when he tries to link the right-wing’s endless smears against education bureaucrat Kevin Jennings to the efforts of some crazed fake Christians who’ve tried to have Uganda enact a death penalty for homosexuality. The two controversies have nothing in common, except that both are constructed of lies and both are intended to make life miserable for gays and lesbians.  #

No, Senator Jim DeMint (R-South Carolina) and the usual gang of liars aren’t telling the truth when they claim that President Obama is not “willing to use the word” terror. Obama has made some small effort to downplay the rather nonsensical term “war on terror” as a daily cliché, but he and his administration use the words “terror” and “terrorism” frequently. Of course.  #

No, it’s not true that the lunatic birthers’ challenge to President Obama’s citizenship will soon be heard by the US Supreme Court. It’s just a big ol’ lie based on a typo-filled, clumsily edited, and simply fake Associated Press article, circulating as a viral email that ends with an upper-case scream, “Let other folks know this news, the media won’t!”
We’ve received the same email half a dozen times, but it needs no debunking because it basically debunks itself. The alleged A.P. article doesn’t read like anything you’d see in a newspaper — it’s more like something a dimwitted junior high student might think makes a funny prank. We seriously invite you to click the link and read the phony A.P. article, so you can see for yourself just how stupid the liars think you are.  #

No, it’s not true, despite uncorrected false statements at Andrew Breitbart’s Big Government pro-blog, echoed falsely for days at Fox Nation and on Fox News, that ACORN CEO Bertha Lewis recently visited the White House and got a VIP tour. Breitbart and Fox News couldn’t be bothered to look closely at the name on the White House visitor logs, publicly released by the Obama administration, to see that the visitor in question was one Bertha E. Lewis, while the CEO of ACORN remains a different person entirely, Bertha M. Lewis. Several days after making their false report — and days after having their error pointed out publicly — neither Fox nor Breitbart has issued a correction.  #

The good folks at Right Wing Watch offer a moment of sad nostalgia, reminiscing about the frenzy of lies that swirled around President Obama’s early-2009 economic stimulus package.
You might remember that the stimulus was anti-Christian legislation that would “intimidate the free speech of traditional, freedom-loving Americans … [and] put a chilling effect on religious freedom in our country”, and “discriminate against people of faith, [and] deny them the educational opportunities and access to public facilities.” It would prohibit religious groups from meeting on college campuses or from renting space in public schools after hours… All lies, of course. Every word.
And there was more, so much more to fear in the stimulus package — it would funnel billions of dollars to ACORN, and give the federal government draconian control over health care, and build a high-speed rail line between L.A. and Vegas just for weekend gamblers, and Obama rigged the stimulus to favor Democratic-leaning states, and every stimulus job cost the government $275,000… All lies, of course. Every word.
Right Wing Watch wraps it all up rather eloquently. Pay attention, please, because this is the moral of the story:
“In essence, this entire charade perfectly encapsulates the method of operation for the Religious Right in 2009 and presumably for years to come: generate a phony controversy, raise money off that phony controversy, scream and yell about the fact that nobody is taking this phony controversy seriously, make bold threats and declarations regarding this phony controversy, and then move on to generating new phony controversies and starting the entire process all over again.” #

No, it’s still not true, despite the lie’s revival by Fox News and Anne Coulter, that as a boy Barack Obama attended a radical Islamic madrassa in Indonesia.  #

No, despite what Pat Buchanan and other right-wingers seem to be saying, it’s not true that the explosive-underwear would-be terrorist can’t be interrogated by investigators. Also, it’s not stupid or un-American to give every accused criminal the basic rights promised in the constitution — it’s part of the rule of law, something that Americans of all political stripes presumably support, or should.  #

No, it’s not true and right-wing activist Mary Matalin is lying when she claims that George W Bush “inherited” 9/11 or a recession from his predecessor, Bill Clinton. What she’s doing is the common tactic of speaking to the semi-informed and un-informed voters, people who don’t follow politics closely and who’ll assume that when someone credible enough to be on television says something it’s probably true. Sadly, those days of presumed credibility on TV news are long gone, and there’s no longer any real hesitance to lie on camera.  #

No, it’s not true that Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) is a criminal organization hellbent on stealing elections. As reported in the New York Times (use our login: unknownnews with password unknown) “A new report on the community group ACORN by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service has found no evidence of fraudulent voting or of violations of federal financing rules by the group in the past five years.” No evidence, just endless evidence-free accusations and insinuations . Bottom line: ACORN is a non-profit group that registers lots of poor people to vote, and the people making those accusations and insinuations don’t want poor people to vote. #

No, despite the re-telling of these long-debunked lies on Fox News, Al Gore never claimed to have invented the internet, nor did he claim to have been the inspiration for Love Story.  #

No, it’s not true, despite the rather sad dissembling of ex-Vice President Dick Cheney and others, that the trial of accused terrorist Khalid Shaikh Mohammed will give the accused a platform to spew propaganda for an audience of millions. Cameras have never been allowed in federal courtrooms, and for the audience of dozens in the courtroom, federal judges are notoriously impatient if the testimony wanders off-topic.  #

No, of course, the stolen emails of scientists, which are being hyped by right-wing and Big Business voices as somehow proving that global climate change is a hoax, show nothing even remotely akin to that. global climate change remains disturbingly real.  #

No, it’s not true that President Obama and the First Lady salute the flag with their left instead of right hands. It’s just another photograph that’s been clumsily tweaked to try to make the Obamas look disloyal, un-American, uneducated, or otherwise in line with the Right-Wing’s apparently widespread belief that a black man can’t be a good enough citizen to hold the Presidency.  #

No, it’s not true, despite claims by some emailer who signed himself Theodore Petruna, that Mr Petruna heroically stood up to a large contingent of Arabic-speaking Muslims who first refused to follow flight attendants’ instructions and later tried to storm the cockpit. The email went viral all over the internet, causing the airline to check its travel logs and passenger lists, determining that nobody named Petruna was on the plane and the incident involved one Spanish guy who, because of a language barrier, couldn’t understand flight attendants’ instructions. Nobody stormed the cockpit.
As always, when hearing such startling accounts, we recommend skepticism. Can anyone imagine that if a gang of Muslims tried to storm an airline cockpit, it wouldn’t be all over the real newscasts?  #

No, it’s not true, as Congressman John Carter (R-Texas) lies, that “4.7 million Americans will lose their jobs if the (health care) bill passes.” It’s just another grotesque lie.  #

No, it’s not true and it’s plain ludicrous for Republicans to claim that the stimulus was a flop or failure.President Obama’s stimulus package was, like everything he’s done as President, half-assed and way too weenie for us (or most thoughtful economists), but The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates that the stimulus saved or created 1.6-million jobs and boosted the gross domestic product (GDP) by more than 3%.  #

No, Congressman Mark Kirk (R-Illinois) is lying when he says that health care reform could result in rationing of mammograms. And as political lies go, this one’s more scummy than most, since it’s designed to scare women. It’s utterly, absolutely false, and Kirk is no dummy — he knows it’s false.  #

No, it’s not true and Congressman John Boehner (R-Ohio) is lying when he says there’s there’s “a monthly abortion fee” for everyone enrolled in the public health care option, under the Senate’s health care reform proposal.  #

No, the claim that the cap-and-trade climate change legislation would cost the typical American family $6,800 is another lie.  #

No, the claim that everyone who signs up for the public option will be required to get a chip implant is rather obvious horse manure.  #

No, it’s not true that a bunch of emails stolen from scientists’ accounts reveal global climate change to be a hoax. There’s been plenty of hype and hysteria to that effect, but this latest purported debunking of global warming is bullocks, of course, like all the other debunkings, and cleverly timed to coincide with the big summit on global climate change. Sit down, folks. I hate to break it to you, but global climate change is real and the twenty minutes I’ve spent reading breathless summaries of the hacked emails convinces me only that scientists are human and that they aren’t above playing politics — but my poppa was a scientist so I already knew all that.
I’ll tell you what, though. I’ve got an old Oakland A’s baseball cap that has several peculiar stains on it, and my wife would be happy to see it go. So if it turns out that these emails overturn all the science we’ve been reading for years and all the evidence that’s been increasingly obvious to anybody with eyeballs and lo and behold it’s all just been a big ol’ hoax and the same right-wing and big business sources who lie about virtually everything else were telling the truth about this and the scientists have conspired to fool us all, I will squirt massive amounts of mustard and mayo on my baseball cap and eat it. And post pictures on-line.  #

No, the claim that cap-and-trade climate change legislation would require home retrofits is just another lie.  #

No, there’s no chance that Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, widely described as the mastermind of 9/11, will ever be free to roam America. Alleged terrorists have been tried and convicted in US federal courts many, many times. There’s this thing called the US Constitution, which is usually given profound lip service by exactly the same people who want to circumvent fair trials for alleged terrorists. For all its shortcomings, we’ll stand by the Constitution and the American system of justice.  #

No, it’s not true that the cap-and-trade proposal to combat global climate change will cost the average American household $3,128 per year, or the less spectacular lie of $1,761 per year. “According to the Congressional Budget Office, the average would be about $175 per household — about the price of a postage stamp per day — which doesn’t include the economic benefits associated with a new energy policy.”  #

No, it’s not true that the health care reform being considered in Congress would include health insurance for dogs. It’s just another startlingly ignorant falsehood from the mind and mouth of Glenn Beck at Fox News.  #

No, it’s not true that health care reform being debated in Congress would amount to “government-run health care“. It’s a lie that’s been loudly repeated by leading Republicans for months, but at no time in decades has anything even vaguely akin to “government-run health care” been under serious consideration in either house of Congress.  #

No, it’s not true, despite World Net Daily‘s claim, that Nidal Hasan, the Army officer who killed a dozen fellow soldiers, had been an advisor to the Obama administration’s 2008 transition team.
You might ask yourself what kind of sicko makes up a lie like that just hours after such an outrageous act of violence? What kind of scum uses dead soldiers to falsely smear the President? Jerome Corsi, and World Net Daily.  #

No, it’s not true that President Obama skipped TV coverage of the 2009 elections to instead watch a documentary about himself. It’s just another lie, made up out of whole cloth by Fox News.  #

No, it’s not true that the cost of stimulus jobs works out to $275,000 for every job created, or $230,769 per job. Such numbers, bandied about by prominent Republicans, show a scant understanding of the most basic basics of economics.  #

No, it’s not true — everything you’ve been told about Mark Lloyd, who’s been nominated as Chief Diversity Officer/Associate General Counsel at the FCC, is a lie. He’s not a neo-Nazi, as radio mouth Michael Savage has claimed, and he has not advocated kicking right-wing liars like Savage off the radio. Like virtually everyone in high-level Obama administration positions, Lloyd is opposed to restoring the Fairness Doctrine.  #

No, it’s not true, despite claims all over the right-wing, that right-wing boogeymen Bill Ayers and Jeremiah Wright visited the Obama White House.  #

No, President Obama isn’t about to sign a treaty ceding US sovereignty to the United Nations. It’s just another lie.  #

No, it wasn’t true in July and it wasn’t true in August and despite the lies of Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann (R-Minnesota) it’s still flamboyantly false to claim that the health care reform legislation working its way through Congress will ban private health insurance.  #

No, it’s not true that the swine flu vaccine is any more dangerous than the minimal danger present in all vaccines.  #

No, it’s not true that many years ago Kevin Jennings, then a school teacher, counseled a 15-year-old student about his affair with an adult when he should’ve called the cops. The boy was 16 years old at the time — the legal age of consent, which makes his sexual activity a bad idea instead of a crime. Among honest people there’s no confusion about this, since the facts were explained long ago on CNN, but the story is too juicy to be interrupted by facts.
Jennings, you see, has been appointed to a rather low-level position as Assistant Deputy Secretary at the Department of Education for the Office of Safe and Drug Free Schools. And he’s gay. And he’s worked for a gay rights organization. The far-right opposes him because he’s gay, and that’s why they’re lying about him. #

No, despite being seriously reported by Pajamas Media and in an impassioned edition of The Rush Limbaugh Show, the so-called “thesis” by Barack Obama — full of disparaging statements about economic freedom and the Constitution — was a satirical piece. It was from a website that clearly marked it as satire, but somehow the word “satire” eluded Pajamas Media and Rush Limbaugh.  #

No, it’s not true that the Obama White House tried to block Fox News from interviewing some high-level official. It’s just a lie, made up out of whole cloth, by Fox News. #

No, it’s not true that Associated Press described then-Senate candidate Barack Obama as “Kenyan-born” in a 2004 article on the Senate race. Again, the tall tales about Obama’s birth are all lies.
Again, Obama’s papers are in order, and again, there’s simply no reasonable doubt that he’s an American citizen, born at Kapiolani Medical Center in Honolulu on August 4, 1961. #

No, again, President Obama isn’t trying to confiscate everyone’s guns, and most of what’s in the latest mass-emailing about gun control, gun confiscation, and the supposed gun paradise of Switzerland is bullsh*t. #

No, the swine flu (H1N1) is not tainted with antifreeze or Agent Orange, won’t Gulf War syndrome, hasn’t killed U.S. Navy sailors, and isn’t an “evil depopulation scheme.” The vaccine, which works under the same scientific principles as any other flu vaccine, is not required for the general public, and concentration camps are not being prepared to hold and punish those who decline. #

No, it’s not true that Obama’s White House won’t celebrate Christmas, and the tree will be called a “holiday tree”, and so on. It’s just another lie perfectly ginned up to fool stupid and gullible people.  #

No, it’s not true that interns from the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) are spying on Capitol Hill. #

No, when Glenn Beck says 45 percent of physicians would quit if health reform passes he’s being deceptive. But he’s Glenn Beck, so I repeat myself.  #

No, it’s not true, despite lies from the Gun Owners of America, that the health care legislation working its way through Congress “could be used to ban guns in home self-defense.” #

No, the Obama administration is not forcing a Catholic college to provide abortion coverage. It’s just another right-wing lie.  #

No, frightening terrorist William Ayers didn’t ghost-write President Obama’s autobiography. #

No, it’s probably not true that noted socialist Norman Thomas claimed that America would unknowingly adopt socialism “under the name of ‘liberalism.’” Makes a great conservative scare-point, but you won’t find that quote or sentiment in the numerous books Thomas wrote or the more numerous biographies written about him.
Perhaps more to the point, let’s briefly address the recurring right-wing scuttlebutt that President Obama is a socialist or a communist or a Marxist or some such. When we hear such claims, we wonder whether conservatives even know what those words mean.
This blog is published by a couple of real-live leftists, and our eyes roll at the suggestion that President Obama is a socialist or even a liberal in any meaningful way. The right-wing’s perpetual hysteria and hatred for Obama must be based on something other than his political policies, because what the President’s actual doing day by day — continuing the war in Afghanistan, bailing out criminal Wall Street operatives with billions in taxpayer handouts, protecting the insurance industry, increasing the military budget, extending the Bush-Cheney administration’s disregard for civil liberties, on and on — makes the Obama administration a daily disappointment to genuine progressives like us. #

No, it’s not true that Democrats’ health care reform proposals would tax ordinary wheelchairs. Sigh.  #

No, Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) didn’t fraudulently install Senator Al Franken (D-Minnesota) in office.  #

No, the government isn’t going to require inoculation shots against the coming swine flu. The shots will be voluntary. So just like the similar scaremongering rumors about virtually every medical scare for as long as I’ve been alive, these rumors are unfounded, but you won’t hear a word of apology from any of the kooks, survivalists, and the perpetually panicked who helped spread those rumors. #

No, Barack Obama was never a member of the Black Panthers. The photo supposedly “being suppressed by the main stream media” is (rather poorly) faked, and the claim is yet another stark appeal to fear and racism.  #

No, it’s not true that Christian televangelists, Christmas programs and carols, and Dr James Dobson are being banned from television by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).  #

No, virtually everything in the new ad from Conservatives for Patients’ Rights is untrue, just like virtually everything in their previous ad, and everything in their next ad. Like numerous right-wing pundits and politicians, they’re opposed to health care reform, but unwilling or unable to make their case without lying. #

No, Congressman Joe Wilson’s heckling of President Obama’s speech to a joint session of Congress wasn’t true. Wilson shouted “You lie!” in response to President Obama’s statement that the health care reform legislation will not subsidize medical care for illegal immigrants, but the language in Section 242 of the House bill limits benefits to family members who are citizens or legal residents. Section 246 says plainly, “No Federal Payment for Undocumented Aliens. Nothing in this subtitle shall allow Federal payments for affordability credits on behalf of individuals who are not lawfully present in the United States.”
So, Congressman Wilson, you lie. #

Maybe it’s true that the Obama administration has more “czars” than any administration in American history, but maybe it’s not — it depends on how “czars” are defined. More to the point, though, it’s unclear why it’s so scary to some people that the President has unofficial czars.
First and most obviously, calling someone in American government a “czar” is nothing new — it’s a catchy piece of slang invented by the media decades ago, and it’s become a fairly common shorthand way to define someone’s area of responsibility. The previous President, George W Bush, had a “food safety czar,” a “cybersecurity czar,” a “regulatory czar,” an “AIDS czar,” a “manufacturing czar,” an “intelligence czar,” a “bird-flu czar,” a “Katrina czar”, etc., and Glenn Beck wasn’t bouncing off the walls about it.
Here are three things to bear in mind while pondering the “czar” nonsense:
1) None of Washington DC’s czars actually have “czar” in their job titles (the Drug Czar, for example, is really the Director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy).
2) Having a czar for this and a czar for that is a bit tedious to the ear, but the word in itself doesn’t grant anyone czar-like authority.
And 3) contrary to the emails and Beck-rants about this, most of Obama’s czars have been approved by the Senate, as the constitution requires for most high-ranking officials — and those who haven’t should be, as Presidents since Nixon probably should have had all their “czars” confirmed by the Senate. But of course, whether Senate-confirmed or not, none of Obama’s so-called czars are doing anything that wasn’t done by previous administrations, and there’s no evidence that any of them are trying to do anything unconstitutional, socialist, or Marxist.
Also, the underlying assumption that naming czars implies a Soviet or communist mindset displays an ignorance of history — communists hated the czars, and deposed the last czar in 1917 with the Russian revolution. Suggesting that czars are a Soviet or communist thing is akin to suggesting that the Declaration of Independence showed America’s loyalty to the Britain monarchy. #

No, it’s not true that the Obama administration is planning “a massive, secret effort to harvest personal information on millions of Americans from social networking websites” including Facebook, Flickr, MySpace, Twitter, and YouTube.
What the White House has actually done is, it’s announced that it’s looking for a contractor to keep records of material posted by the Obama administration on such public websites, and of any responses from the Obama administration to comments on public sites. This is what’s required by law, under the Presidential Records Act.  #

No, it’s not true that the US Constitution bans our government from providing health care.
The Constitution neither bans nor mandates government-provided health care, but it does state unambiguously, in the preamble and again in the first sentence of Section 8, that Congress shall “provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States”. It’s from this that we get publicly-funded schools, publicly-funded fire departments, a publicly-funded Veterans Administration, and other government offices that provide for the common defense and general welfare of we the people, so there would be nothing un-Constitutional about government-provided health care.  #

No, it’s not true that President Obama is going to “indoctrinate” schoolchildren on “socialist” ideology or his new “Hitler Youth”.
The President is scheduled to give a speech next Tuesday, September 8, which will be televised to many American schoolchildren. This is not particularly common, but also not all that unusual. When President Ronald Reagan addressed the nation’s schoolchildren in a televised speech, he used the opportunity to talk about his support for reducing taxes and his opposition to gun control. When President George W Bush addressed the nation’s schoolchildren in a televised speech, he used the opportunity to push his agenda of education reform. When President Obama addresses the nation’s schoolchildren, his speech will be on utterly non-controversial, non-political topics.
“The President will challenge students to work hard, set educational goals, and take responsibility for their learning,” says Secretary of Education Arne Duncan. “He will also call for a shared responsibility and commitment on the part of students, parents and educators to ensure that every child in every school receives the best education possible so they can compete in the global economy for good jobs and live rewarding and productive lives as American citizens.”
If that doesn’t sound scary to you, if that doesn’t sound like “socialism”, you might wonder what off-the-wall group is falsely hyping this by “condemning President Obama’s use of taxpayer dollars to indoctrinate America’s children to his socialist agenda”, and claiming that the President’s speech will “justify his plans for government-run health care, banks, and automobile companies, increasing taxes on those who create jobs, and racking up more debt than any other President”?
Sadly, that’s a press release from the Republican Party we’re quoting. The Republican Party — a once-respectable outfit where I used to be a member, that’s sunk to non-stop lying about pretty much everything. #

No, there’s nothing to believe in a new television ad against heath care reform, in which Republican Party Chairman Michael Steele tells a breathtaking array of lies designed to terrify viewers.  #

No, it’s not true and it’s starkly preposterous, despite claims from radio star Rush Limbaugh, that President Obama is going to mandate circumcisions, or that men “need to save our penises” from the President.  #

No, it’s not true, despite claims from several popular right-wing blogs, that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-California) has “banned patriotic music” while callers are on hold to their Congresspersons’ offices.  #

No, whatever’s being claimed about the House’s health care reform legislation in the latest viral mass email, it’s almost certainly untrue. FactCheck.org took the time and trouble to assess the 48 worrisome claims made in the mass email, and finds 26 are flat-out lies and 18 more are misleading.
If you’re trying to understand health care reform (or anything) and you want the facts, a good first step would be disbelieving anything in a mass email. Ask yourself, who wrote and spammed this email to millions of people? Who stands to gain if you’re gullible enough to believe what it claims? #

No, the Obama administration is not building secret concentration camps to hold dissident Americans, and not planning mass executions of all Americans who criticize the President. Presumably the viral emails that claim this, echoed all around the internet, are intended for a readership that’s willing to believe anything at all, so let’s also add that the Obama administration is not preparing a cook book with recipes for charbroiled Republicans and sautéed white people. #

No, it’s not true, despite reports on Fox News and in the Wall Street Journal, that the Veterans Administration is advising US military veterans to kill themselves. The booklet in question was first published in 1997, and the section that’s being willfully misinterpreted as urging suicide is only suggesting that vets receive the same ordinary counseling and care that’s been standard policy for twenty years.
To believe this particular lie, you’d have to believe that as a matter of policy, the Veterans Administration wants veterans dead. The claim is so over-the-top absurd it almost debunks itself, but there is apparently no point at which such shameful jaw-dropping bald-faced lies are too enormous for Fox News and the Wall Street Journal to report them.  #

No, it’s not true what you’ve heard about scary provisions hidden deep in the health care reform legislation.
It’s not true that the legislation establishes “death panels” to determine who lives and dies (that’s what insurance companies do), and it’s not true that the legislation outlaws private insurance, and it’s not true that the bill gives free health care to illegal immigrants, and it’s not true that our government would be given access to your bank accounts and debit cards, and it’s not true that abortions would be funded (which would actually be illegal).
This is a good, solid summary of what’s actually in the House bill, which is the opposite of the tall tales told by Congresscritters and radio hosts and Fox talking heads owned by the insurance industry. We’ve been over most of this already and we’ll doubtless go over it again, because the fountain of lies about health care reform never goes dry.  #

No, it’s not true that President Obama’s mother-in-law, who lives with the President and his family, is “practicing Santeria, an African spirit cult, in the White House”. That was “reported” in a blog entry on the far-right website townhall.com, where a colorful ad at the top of the page says you too can “create your own blog” and have it published by townhall.com.
The blog entry goes into great detail describing conversations that never happened, naming no source and providing no evidence beyond being typed and on the internet. For me that’s not evidence. How about you?
Of course, it’s been widely circulated and quickly accepted by America’s most gullible and stupid people — Oh my God they’re practicing witchcraft in the White House — because it fits very well with the ever-present right-wing racist meme that Obama and his administration are bizarre and radical and not like the rest of America, hint hint. #

No, it’s not true, as the US Chamber of Commerce is claiming in TV ads, that the health care reform being debated in Congress would bring “big tax increases.” In all versions of the legislation under debate, taxes would be targeted at the wealthiest Americans, a tiny sliver of the population that makes substantially more than $250,000 per year. #

No, it’s not true that proposals for health care reform would slash veterans’ access to health care. It’s just another lie spread by mass e-mailings from parties unknown.
We always suggest pausing for common sense — if any politician suggested cutting veterans’ access to health care, it would be wildly unpopular and instantly newsworthy, so you’d read about it in newspapers and hear about it on newscasts, not in a viral email.  #

No, it’s not true that America has the best health care in the world. “There is one yardstick by which U.S. health care distinguishes itself: cost. The United States spends more — in total dollars, percentage of GDP, and per capita — than every other country on Earth. On virtually every other broad metric, the claim that U.S. health care stands for global excellence is demonstrably false.”  #

No, to whatever Conservatives for Patients’ Rights is saying in its ads against health care reform. Just, no. They’re lying.  #

No, there’s nothing in any of the health care proposals that would end your choice of health care provider, or let the federal government tap into your bank account, or have taxpayers subsidize free health care for illegal immigrants and community organizers, or anything else in the long list of lies that’s currently being circulated in a mass emailing. These are all ludicrous claims aimed at the gullible and un-informed, because if Americans hear an honest discussion of the problems currently being caused by the lack of health insurance and by the health insurance industry, health care reform would be wildly popular and supported by virtually everyone but insurance company executives. #

No, it’s not true, as former Governor Sarah Palin (R-Alaska) and others in the opposition have claimed, that the health care reform being considered would require the aged or the disabled to “stand in front of Obama’s ‘death panel’ so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their ‘level of productivity in society,’ whether they are worthy of health care.” Of all the myriad lies we’ve tried to tackle here in recent months, this is perhaps the most vile — and one of the most obviously untrue on its face.
Palin and other Republicans are intentionally distorting a rather un-shocking section of the proposal that lets doctors be paid for voluntary end-of-life counseling. Such conversations are of course unpleasant to think about, but good grief — to prevent a dying or elderly patient from talking to a doctor about a living will or other issues involving death would be a horrid example of our government standing between a patient and his/her doctor.
But of course, this end-of-life counseling isn’t mandatory, it’s just available — and it’s been available and un-controversial for years. Of course, there are no “death panels”. Of course, there is no proposed “program” administering “death counseling”. Of course, this has nothing to do with forced euthanasia. It’s not about killing Grandma, or ending the lives of the handicapped. It has nothing to do with anything remotely offensive to anyone who respects life or death, and pretending it’s something evil is what’s offensive. Of course. #

No, it’s not true, despite the fevered claims of Glenn Beck and others, that the Obama administration is using the Cash for Clunkers website to install tracking software on your computer.  #

No, the proposed health care reform won’t “hike your health insurance premiums 95 percent.” That claim comes from criminal hospital executive Rick Scott and his anti-health group Conservatives for Patients’ Rights, but the non-partisan Health Policy Research Center has evaluated the ad’s claims and concludes, “There’s absolutely nothing here that’s right. It’s unbelievable.”  #

No, the purported Kenyan birth certificate of Barack Obama isn’t real, and it’s actually quite a clumsy, amateur fake, but practice makes perfect so we’re confident that the next phony Kenyan document will be more realistic. Again, there’s simply no reasonable doubt that Obama is an American citizen, born at Kapiolani Medical Center in Honolulu on August 4, 1961.
I don’t remember any concerns about Richard Nixon’s birth certificate. I can’t recall any questions about Gerald Ford’s birth certificate. I never heard a whisper of doubt about Jimmy Carter’s birth certificate, or Ronald Reagan’s birth certificate, or George Bush’s birth certificate, or Bill Clinton’s birth certificate, or George W Bush’s birth certificate. Those birth certificates were never seen by you or I or any of us, but were never questioned on national television night after night.
Barack Obama’s birth certificate, though, is “different” … because Barack Obama is “different”. The difference is that a black man is now the President of the United States, and a lot of people can’t stand that.  #

No, it’s not true, as right-wing organ Politico and right-wing blowhard Rush Limbaugh and numerous Republican office-holders have claimed, that the proposed health care reform legislation will kill old people, promote euthanasia, encourage suicide, etc. It’s just a shameless lie, and a particularly vulgar one.  #

No, it’s not true, despite a headline on The Drudge Report echoed by Glenn Beck on CNN, that the federal government spent $1.4 million “to repair a door”. The cost was actually $246,100, about one-sixth of what Drudge and Beck claimed, and the doors (meaning, more than one door) repaired were actually hanger doors at an Air Force base. Hanger doors, behind which airplanes are parked for repairs, are of course much larger, more complex, and more expensive to repair than the doors at your home or office.  #

No, it’s not true, as Congressman John Boehner (R-Ohio) and talk show host Rush Limbaugh have claimed, that the Waxman-Markey “Clean Energy Bill” will forbid the sale of homes until the property is inspected and brought up to snuff on energy efficiency. It wasn’t true when Boehner posted this on his website, it wasn’t true when Limbaugh mentioned it repeatedly on his show, and it wasn’t true when you read about it in an email.
It’s not nice to use words like “lie”, so the good folks at factcheck.org simply say that Boehner and Limbaugh “got this wrong”.  #

No, it’s not true, despite a headline on The Drudge Report, that the Obama administration spent more than a million dollars buying two pounds of ham. “In fact, the contract in question purchased 760,000 pounds of ham for $1.191 million, at a cost of approximately $1.50 per pound.”  #

No, the hate crimes legislation in Congress won’t suppress religious expression, it won’t lead to prosecution of pastors who read or quote the Bible, it won’t protect pedophiles, it won’t legalize incest, voyeurism and bestiality, and it won’t “undermine moral values, socialize the economy, and trash American pride and heritage”, etc. The so-called “religious” right, including the Family Research Council, Liberty Counsel, the National Prayer Network, Vision America, and the Traditional Values Coalition, is bald-faced lying about all such claims. Their claims are ridiculous and utterly false, but lying is one of their cornerstone “traditional values”.  #

No, despite a false report from Investor’s Business Daily, it’s not true that the health care proposal winding its way through Congress “clearly states” that individual private medical insurance will become illegal. Even a cursory reading of the bill shows that Investor’s Business Daily has mangled or misunderstood the legislation, but that hasn’t stopped broadcast mouths Sean Hannity and Michael Savage and a startling array of big-time bloggers from echoing this false information.
To be clear: The bill does not ban private medical insurance, and nobody in Congress — left, right, or center — has proposed that.  #

No, the photo that’s everywhere doesn’t actually show President Obama admiring the rear of a young woman at the G8 summit in L’Aquila, Italy. What was actually happening at that moment? Even a cursory look at the videotape shows that President Obama was navigating some steep stairs and thus looking downward, as a young woman passed nearby.
But this kerfuffle does show something that’s at least as interesting and perhaps more revealing than a woman’s backside — it shows how the media pounces on fabrications from generally disreputable right-wing websites like The Drudge Report, without pausing to consider the evidence in context.  #

No, it’s not true, despite a breathless report from Fox News and in-depth follow-ups from right-wing bloggers, that the Obama administration is gerrymandering stimulus spending to give the lion’s share to areas that voted for Obama, and giving short shrift to areas that voted for McCain. #

No, President Obama has not apologized to Great Britain for America’s Declaration of Independence.  #

No, it’s not true that Kevin Jennings, who’s been appointed to the rather low-level position of Assistant Deputy Secretary at the Department of Education for the Office of Safe and Drug Free Schools, is only interested in safe schools for gay children, or that he’s “viciously hostile to religion”, etc.
Jennings is gay, and he’s worked for a gay rights organization. That’s why the far-right opposes him. They think that’s reason enough to block his nomination, but they know that most people wouldn’t think it’s reason enough, so they’re just making stuff up, as ThinkProgess explains at length. #

No, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is not suing to have Christian crosses or cross-shaped headstones removed or prohibited from the graves of Americans soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines. This isn’t even a matter where some small kernel of truth has been exaggerated into something that sounds scary. Like most of the right-wing’s hysteria about the ACLU, it’s just a bald-faced lie, intended to deceive the gullible.  #

No, the Obama administration isn’t suppressing science by blocking publication of some study that demolishes what’s known about global climate change. The guy who wrote the report is an economist not a scientist, and his report — which wasn’t assigned, but was written in his spare time — cites all the usual climate science deniers. If you’re ignorant enough to believe such claims, the debunking at the other end of this link is probably over your head.  #

No, the email echoing across the internet claiming that President Obama was rude to wounded veterans during a visit to the National Naval Medical Center is untrue. Where the President goes reporters follow, so if the President was rude to veterans, don’t you think you’d read about it in a newspaper and see it on newscasts?  #

No, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) isn’t going to be running or conducting the US census for 2010. Like virtually everything else you’ve heard about ACORN — how they’re a bunch of communists, how they’re stealing elections, how they’re connected to the Mafia or al Qaeda or both, etc. — it’s a lie. See also this ACORN debunking and this ACORN debunking.  #

No, it’s not true, as Glenn Beck claims, that America is the only country where everyone born within its borders is a citizen by law. It’s flat-out false.  #

No, it’s not true, as George Will and some less famous pundits have claimed, that President Obama’s persistent use of the pronoun “I” suggests he’s an imperial autocrat. It’s an amusingly long way to go to criticize the President, but the “I” claim has been analyzed by linguist Mark Liberman and it just ain’t so. Liberman, a professor of Computer and Information Science and Trustee Professor of Linguistics at the University of Pennsylvania, has counted Obama’s use of “I” in numerous speeches, and compared it with the frequency of “I” in speeches by Bill Clinton and George W Bush, and guess what? Obama uses “I” a lot less than either of his predecessors.
There are, of course, plenty of valid reasons to criticize President Obama — check our main page, where we’re always complaining about some dumb-ass or un-principled thing he’s done. We just think that Obama and other politicians should be criticized for things they’ve really said or done, or for things they should’ve said or done but didn’t, not for astoundingly un-important and un-true things they haven’t done, like overuse of a pronoun.  #

No, it’s not true, as politicians like Congressman Eric Cantor (R-Virginia) have claimed, that “we have no judicial precedents” for prosecuting alleged terrorists in American courts. He’s concerned that Ahmed Ghailani, an alleged terrorist from Tanzania who has been in US custody since 2004, has been brought to New York City to face trial in federal court.
In reality, though, there is ample precedent for prosecuting alleged terrorists in American courts. Hundreds of such cases have been tried, and if Ghailani is found guilty he’ll be the 217th person being held in American prisons for proven connections to international terrorism.
So what’s different about Ghailani? Why are Republicans like Cantor so distraught over this? Ghailani is the first alleged terrorist to face trial in America after being held at Guantanamo, and most Republicans (like Cantor) don’t want the prison at Guantanamo to be closed. If Americans can be convinced that it’s too frightening to hold trials for these accused monsters, or that it’s somehow unprecedented to imprison them in America, then Guantanamo can’t be closed. Holding people for years and years without trial is, in our opinion, more frightening than the relatively routine prosecution and imprisonment of yet another terrorist.  #

No, it’s not true, as former Congressman Newt Gingrich claims, that President Obama’s stimulus package “is anti-Christian legislation that will stop churches from using public schools for meeting on Sundays, as well as Boy Scouts and student Bible study groups.” That’s a totally bonkers lie, and it should make any intelligent listener doubt anything that Gingrich says.  #

No, Canadian-style universal health care isn’t what the well-funded voices who oppose health care reform in America say it is. It’s not a horrible, dehumanizing thing, it’s not weighed down by a bloated bureaucracy (like private insurance is); it’s not more expensive (it’s less), and there aren’t long waits for ordinary health services.  #

No, President Obama didn’t say that America is a Muslim nation. He said that America has lots of Muslims, which is true — 34 nations in the world have more Muslims than America, meaning that about 160 nations have fewer Muslims than America — but it doesn’t make America a Muslim nation, and that’s not what the President said.  #

No, Chrysler isn’t playing politics by targeting dealerships owned by Republicans for closure, as alleged by Michelle Malkin, Washington Examiner, and in right-wing blog posts like this one.
First and foremost, try a little common sense, please — while Chrysler has been less than brilliantly run in recent years, it would be staggeringly stupid and capitalistically counterproductive to base the decisions about which dealerships to close on anything but business factors.
Here’s political statistician Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight, who did the research to show that the overwhelming majority of car dealers are Republicans (and I can vouch for that, from several years spent working for a few different auto dealers, some years back). So there’s no “Dealergate”. 88% of car dealers’ political contributions go to Republicans, so it would be wildly improbable if the overwhelming majority of dealerships being shuttered weren’t owned by Republicans.  #

No, Sonia Sotomayor’s Appeals Court decisions don’t have a 60% reversal rate at the Supreme Court, as falsely claimed by the Washington Times and echoed by other highly-partisan sources. And no, she doesn’t have a track record of racist rulings.
On her rate of reversal, let’s do the math: Sotomayor has written 380 majority decisions in her eleven years on the Appeals Court, of which three have been reversed by the Supreme Court. That’s a reversal rate of about 8/10ths of one percent.
On her alleged racism, two points need to be made. First, her comment that “a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences” would tend to reach a “better conclusion” than a white male judge is perhaps clumsy, but it’s worth noting the context — she was talking specifically about court cases on matters of racial and gender discrimination. It doesn’t seem at all controversial to me to state that in discrimination cases, women and minorities would have different perspectives than white males.
But if you’re worried about her “racism” on the bench, let’s check her record, shall we?
Sotomayor has participated in roughly 100 panel decisions involving questions of race and has disagreed with her colleagues in those cases (a fair measure of whether she is an outlier) a total of 4 times. Only one case (Gant) in that entire eleven years actually involved the question whether race discrimination may have occurred. (In another case (Pappas) she dissented to favor a white bigot.) She participated in two other panels rejecting district court rulings agreeing with race-based jury-selection claims. Given that record, it seems absurd to say that Judge Sotomayor allows race to infect her decision-making.
Bottom line: There are, we think, valid reasons to be troubled by some of Sonia Sotomayor’s decisions. For example, in one case she decided that it’s OK for a school to punish a kid for calling school officials “douche bags” in her off-campus personal blog. In another case she sided with a cop in a matter that sounds somewhat outrageous. But if your arguments against Sotomayor are built on fundamentally dishonest statements about her supposed reversal rate or racism, well, you’re just lying.  #

No, the US Senate is not considering a bill to require that all household guns be listed on individual tax returns. There’s a viral email making that and other claims and causing apoplexy among the gullible, but the bill it’s referring to — the Handgun Safety and Registration Act of 2000 — was last introduced in the Senate nine years ago. It never got past committee hearings. It wouldn’t have involved your 1040 paperwork. Also, it was nine years ago.  #

No, it’s not true that the Obama administration burned the Bibles of American soldiers in Afghanistan. The facts behind the story are generally true — Bibles printed in the Afghan languages of Pashto and Dari, intended for use by Christian soldiers proselytizing the citizens of Afghanistan, were confiscated by military officials, and trashed and burned. But it happened during the Bush-Cheney administration.  #

No, Social Security is not going broke. It’s a wild exaggeration of a relatively minor funding problem, that could be fixed for generations by simply removing the “ceiling” on Social Security taxes, so that the tax doesn’t max out and stop when an individual’s earnings exceed $106,880.
Ponder the preposterousness of this — people who make $250,000 per year, or $2-million per year, or more, pay the same Social Security tax as people who earn $106,880. Not the same tax rate, but the same number of dollars, so millionaires who obviously have many more dollars pay the same taxes as someone earning $106,880. If this tax ceiling was lifted or raised — that is, if rich people were required to pay their fair share, the same tax rate that poor people pay, then all of Social Security’s funding problems would be solved, overnight. #

No, it’s not true that the THC levels in marijuana have skyrocketed in recent years. It’s a persistent talking point put forward repeatedly as an argument for the continued prohibition of marijuana, but there’s little serious evidence that it’s true, and increasingly potent evidence that it’s false.  #

No, there was nothing either offensive or newsworthy about Wanda Sykes’ performance at the 2009 White House Correspondents’ Dinner, at least not by present-day standards of political discourse in America. Her jokes, crudely but comically suggesting that Rush Limbaugh is a terrorist or Sean Hannity is a coward, were cruel and mean-spirited, but they were utter puff and piffle compared to the outrageous allegations and insults that are a daily routine for Limbaugh, Hannity, and the other major blowhards on national TV and radio.  #

No, it’s not true, as Washington Post columnist George Will claims, that Toyota sells its Prius at a loss. #

No, as nasty as al Qaeda is, it’s nowhere near the threat to America that the Nazis were in World War II. Congressman Pete Hoekstra (R-Michigan) and former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice have said or insinuated that America has never faced a threat so dangerous as al Qaeda, but that’s frankly preposterous.  #

No, President Obama didn’t ignore or threaten to cancel the National Day of Prayer, and virtually everything that some far-right-wing pundits and alleged Christian leaders have said about Obama and the National Day of Prayer is a lie. The National Day of Prayer was pretty much never observed with White House ceremonies until the Bush-Cheney administration, and Obama’s decision to not make a grand show of the National Day of Prayer is in keeping with Christ’s teachings and in keeping with every administration before Bush-Cheney. #

No, Oliver North didn’t warn Al Gore about the dangers of al Qaeda in 1987.  #

No, Obama’s “Intelligence Czar” Dennis Blair didn’t endorse Bush-Cheney era torture tactics. In a leaked memo, Blair acknowledged that the Bush-Cheney administration’s torture tactics may have rarely yielded some “high value information”, but then added that the damage done to America by torture “far outweighed whatever benefit they gave us and they are not essential to our national security.”
Of course, the media and some right-wing sources have headlined this as Blair’s “endorsement of torture”, but any sane and fair evaluation of what Blair said shows that it’s the opposite. #

No, it’s not true that Judge-nominee David Hamilton ruled that prayers to Allah in the Indiana House of Representatives would be OK, but prayers to Jesus are prohibited. That’s just former Congressman Newt Gingrich (R-Georgia) lying again. Hamilton’s judicial comment was the opposite of what Gingrich says it was. Hamilton said it’s inappropriate to invoke either Jesus or Allah in public legislative prayers.
That makes sense to me, because I believe in the separation of church and state. Perhaps Gingrich disagrees, but if so, he should tell the truth about what he’s disagreeing with. Instead he’s telling lies to convince Americans that Hamilton — a boringly moderate, middle-of-the-road judge — is somehow a radical supporter of Islam and opponent of Christianity.  #

No, H.R. 1913 would not have Christian ministers “prosecuted for preaching the biblical view of homosexuality”. That’s one of the overblown lies told by Focus on the Family, in their opposition to this hate crimes legislation. Another popular lie is the American Family Association’s bull that this bill would legalize homosexuality, necrophilia, and bestiality. Why, we wonder, do people who preach morality so loudly, lie so reliably?
Look, there are reasonable reasons to oppose this legislation (or almost any legislation) but it’s not smart to swallow monkey manure. If your opposition to this bill is based on lies you’re a sap, and if you’re telling the lies yourself you’re a schmuck. As we often say, please read, skim, or scan the bill.  #

No, Congress is not considering legislation that would make new mothers pass a mental health test before being discharged from the hospital with their child. That’s just a flat-out lie. Read the legislation — it’s quite short, it’s not written in heavy legalese, and it doesn’t mandate anything that’s particularly scary.
The Melanie Blocker Stokes Bill, a.k.a. the Mother’s Bill, a.k.a. S. 324 doesn’t institute motherhood tests. It encourages the Secretary of Health and Human Services to promote better education about postpartum depression for expectant mothers and health care providers, including screening and diagnostic techniques, and it’s hard to see how that’s a bad thing. It’s utter paranoia to jump from the bill’s call for “screening and diagnostic techniques” to nutty claims that there will be multiple-choice tests for newborn mothers, or the bizarre notion that mothers in hospitals will be “told that the only way you can take your child home is if you or your spouse goes into treatment or on anti-depressants”.
Again, please, just read, skim, or scan the legislation… and don’t believe every overwrought email you receive or every bullsh*t website you visit.  #

No, journalist I. F. Stone was not a Soviet spy. It’s at best an exaggeration but more bluntly a lie, and it’s been debunked over and over again. Mr Stone has been dead for twenty years — can we let him rest in peace?  #

No, it’s not true that hemming and hawing in the Obama White House delayed the rescue of Captain Richard Phillips from Somali pirates. Imagine that — there’s a “widely circulated” internet rumor fueled by Fox and World Net Daily and lots of email chatter, but the rumor turns out to be untrue. Yeah, imagine that.  #

No, it’s not true, as former Congressman Newt Gingrich has claimed, that American Presidents never shake hands, smile, or make small talk with foreign leaders who have strongly criticized America. “We didn’t rush over, smile, and greet Russian dictators,” said Gingrich in one of his numerous talking head appearances on cable TV.
This isn’t merely untrue, it’s absurd. Gingrich’s college degree is in European history, so he’s probably aware that at the height of the Cold War, President Richard Nixon literally went to Russian to give a Cadillac Eldorado to Soviet President Leonid Brezhnev. Why would an American President do such a thing? Because we know that some nations don’t like America, but we’d like them to.
For this reason, American Presidents frequently interact with foreign heads of state — even heads of states that consider America an enemy. And of course and obviously, this often includes shaking hands, smiling for the cameras, and generally behaving like civilized adults even with leaders of unfriendly nations.  #

No, the White House did not specifically ask Georgetown University to cover the letters “IHS” (an obscure Latin monogram symbolizing Jesus Christ) on a wall at the school before President Obama arrived to give a speech. The White House, to ensure that its message isn’t sidetracked, routinely asks that all symbols and statements be covered before the President speaks.
Those who think that this policy is wrong — who think the President should stand in front of whatever political or religious symbols or slogans are waiting on the walls — should make that honest argument. But to report, as Cybercast News Service (a branch of Brent Bozell‘s Media Research Center) repeatedly has, that the Obama administration specifically asked Georgetown to remove references to Jesus, is at best an intentionally misleading distortion of the facts. #

No, the Obama administration’s release of some Bush-Cheney era memos that sought to legally justify torture didn’t reveal American secrets, didn’t make Americans less safe, and didn’t help terrorists understand super-secret torture techniques. The torture techniques described in the Bush-Cheney memos were in fact already well-known, and the only thing that’s really newsworthy in the memos is the absurd lengths the Bush-Cheney administration went to pretend to find legal justification for its policy of torture.  #

No, it’s not true (as Rush Limbaugh has claimed) that the Department of Homeland Security has issued a report suggesting that “every mainstream conservative a right-wing extremist”. It’s not an attack on Christians or veterans (as the American Center for Law and Justice and the American Family Association have suggested). It’s not true (as Jonah Goldberg claims) that DHS never has or never would worry about left-wing extremists. And this report was ordered under the Bush-Cheney administration, so it’s basically bonkers to blame (as Michael Savage has) the Obama administration or Obama’s DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano.
We don’t usually have much respect for the Homeland Security Department (DHS), where their work seems to be all about looking tough on terror, but with tactics that accomplish little beyond hassling ordinary people. But there’s nothing particularly wrong, unfair, or slanderous in the DHS report that’s been leaked, which acknowledges the small but serious and increasing dangers posed by the wingnut contingent of the very-far right-wing. You can read the report for yourself (pdf), as the people criticizing it obviously haven’t, but you’d have to be a fool to not acknowledge that some of the current voices heard on the far, far, far right have a touch of Timothy McVeigh.
And of course, the people criticizing this DHS report the loudest are, by and large, the same people who’ve insulted civil libertarians for voicing concerns over increased surveillance of Muslims and Quakers and civil libertarians, over unlawful wiretaps and extended imprisonment without trial, etc., so it’s hard to take seriously their sudden concern over privacy and improper investigations.  #

No, President Obama did not fly a pizza-maker from St. Louis to Washington, DC to make him a pizza, and stick the federal government with the tab. It’s just another lie from the liars on the far fringe of the right-wing.  #

No, Harold Koh, President Obama’s appointment for the position of Legal Adviser to the Department of State, didn’t say in a speech to his alumni association that international law or Sharia law should trump US law within American borders. This alarming and absurd claim from Fox News’s Glenn Beck and Rupert Murdoch‘s New York Post is at odds with everything in Koh’s boring but distinguished résumé.
Pause and ponder, please, just how wacko it would be for an American lawyer to seriously suggest that America shouldn’t be run by American law — that’s like a milkman saying you shouldn’t eat dairy products. It’s perhaps more likely that Beck and other extreme right-wingers who have supported torture are concerned because Koh has been opposed to torture, since before being opposed to torture was even controversial.
Robin Reeves Zorthian, organizer of the speech where Koh allegedly made this unlikely statement, said in a letter to the Post that Koh said no such thing: “I was in the room with my husband and several fellow alumni, and we are all adamant that Koh never said or suggested that Sharia law could be used to govern cases in US courts. The subject of his talk was Globalization and Yale Law School, so, of course, other forms of law were mentioned. But never did Koh state or suggest that other forms of law should govern or dictate the American legal system. Hopefully, your readers are interested in the facts.” #

No, ACORN activists are not “crashing” the “tea party” protests staged by arch-conservative activists. #

No, it isn’t shocking or treasonous that President Obama bowed when he met the King of Saudi Arabia. It’s protocol. It’s what one does when meeting the King or Queen of a foreign nation. Even then-President George W. Bush bowed when he met the King.  #

No, former Senator Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) has not been vindicated of corruption charges. The Justice Department has asked a court to vacate his conviction, and will not re-file the charges, but that’s not vindication.
In most observers’ opinions (and in our opinion) it’s fair to end Stevens’ prosecution — as a rule, when police or prosecutors break the rules, the charges should be dropped. That’s what should be done when cops plant evidence, when interrogators beat or torture suspects, et cetera, and that’s what should be done in this matter. So Stevens shouldn’t go to prison or back to court, but it’s a stretch to suggest that this means Stevens has been vindicated.
There are, from time to time, news accounts of alleged criminals getting off on a technicality. The most famous example in recent years is Bill Ayers, the professor who, in his youth, committed violent acts in protest of the Vietnam war. He was spared prosecution on a technicality similar to the prosecutorial misconduct that saved Stevens, and while some people believe Ayers’ subsequent decades as a law-abiding citizen show that he’s been rehabilitated, nobody seriously suggests that Ayers was “vindicated” for his acts in the 1960s, or “innocent” of what he admits having done.
Similarly, having Stevens’ conviction vacated for prosecutorial misconduct doesn’t mean he’s vindicated, or innocent. There is no doubt — even Stevens’ defense attorneys conceded at his trial — that the Senator received a quarter-million dollars in home remodeling work, and didn’t mention any of it on the required disclosure forms. That’s illegal. On wiretap tapes, Stevens talked about his crimes, and talked about his strategy for getting away with his crimes. That’s illegal.
Prosecutorial misconduct is wrong and should never be tolerated, and lawyers who broke the rules should be punished, even disbarred. But the facts of the matter remain facts, and “getting off on a technicality” is not the same as being found not guilty.  #

No, despite everything you’ve heard from pundits and politicians about how the Obama administration is slashing the defense budget, President Obama and Defense Secretary Robert Gates have not cut the US military budget. They’ve proposed major changes in how the defense budget is spent, but the total defense budget they’re proposing is $21-billion more than last year‘s defense spending. Those who disagree with the Obama administration’s spending priorities are welcome to voice their opinions, but facts are facts, and increasing the defense budget by $21-billion is not a “budget cut”.  #

No, there’s no such thing as a “light-switch tax” in President Obama’s budget. It’s a tall tale told by Sen. Judd Gregg (R-New Hampshire) and a widely-heard Republican talking point, and it’s simply, unambiguously false. #

No, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-California) didn’t say that “U.S. immigration laws are ‘un-American”, as CNN’s Lou Dobbs and Newsmax have falsely claimed. Here’s the video of Pelosi’s speech, and what she meant is not hard to grasp: She was obviously speaking about the immigration raids that send parents into detention and home to Mexico, while leaving their children behind. She decried raids that rip families apart — not immigration law in general — as un-American.
Those who disagree should be able to disagree honestly, by fairly describing what Pelosi said and explaining why they disagree. But those who claim that she “told an audience of immigrants that U.S. immigration laws are ‘un-American’” are lying to whomever is stupid or gullible enough to believe them, and we sincerely hope that doesn’t include you.  #

No, H. R. 1388 would not require three years of mandatory service from young adults, would not ban protests, and would not establish a Marxist goose-stepping brownshirt goon squad. The Generations Invigorating Volunteerism and Education (GIVE) Act would expand AmeriCorps and other volunteer programs, offer $500 in college tuition credit for middle and high school kids who volunteer, and provide funding for volunteer support systems.
Nothing in this legislation would make public service mandatory, or establish a “national civilian security force” with military powers, and worries that the bill would “outlaw protest” probably spring from a mis-reading of language in the legislation that excludes protesting from funding or tuition credit as volunteer work. Reality check: When you read scary news only at arch-conservative websites or in emails citing such sites, chances are it’s horsefeathers. #

No, the Obama administration hasn’t rescinded the program that lets airline pilots carry arms. It’s an urban legend that started with a startling editorial in the Washington Times, slamming the Obama administration for ending the Bush-era policy that allows pilots to be armed for in-flight self-defense. But we’d seen nothing about this in the news, and in searching we couldn’t find any reports about it, and indeed, it turns out that the arch-right-wing Moonie-owned paper‘s editorial had been based only on whispered scuttlebutt from anonymous pilots — and the scuttlebutt was wrong. The program that allows commercial pilots to carry weapons is not being ended by the Obama administration; quite the contrary, it’s being expanded. The Washington Times, meanwhile, has thoughtfully deleted the editorial from its website, without running any correction that I could find. You stay classy, Washington Times.  #

No, Senator Chris Dodd (D-Connecticut) didn’t write legislation that allowed AIG to pay over $180 million in bonuses. In America, companies don’t need permission to pay (or ridiculously overpay) their employees.
In reality, Senator Dodd wrote provisions to block such bonuses — and then, to his great shame, Dodd agreed to withdraw that provision under pressure from Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner. The truth is bad enough to embarrass both Dodd and the Obama administration, so why not tell the truth? #

No, Congress is not considering a bill that would “make it illegal to grow your own food, or for any farm not to purchase and use government mandated chemicals, additives, and pesticides on all food consumed in the United States, violations are subject to a $1,000,000 dollar fine.” The legislation was introduced by Congresswoman Rosa DeLaurio (D-Connecticut), and worried emails and blog posts claim that her husband is a Monsanto executive, and the bill is a gravy train for Monsanto.
H.R. 875, the Food Safety Modernization Act of 2009, establishes a federal Food Safety Administration, and authorizes spending to study zoonotic diseases and research to reduce the antibiotic resistance in humans that comes from eating chemical-laden produce. Monsanto could bid for such contracts, but the funding isn’t all that lucrative, and that isn’t the bill’s main thrust. It’s a plausible effort to improve food safety standards, which became dangerously lax during the Bush-Cheney era.
Certainly, the bill isn’t great lawmaking — it requires even small farmers to register with the federal government, and it needs a rewrite to eliminate such stupidity and to ensure that its regulations for factory farming aren’t applied to small mom and pop farms. We’re opposed to H.R. 875 — like most Congressional legislation, it has too many stupid subclauses and it’s slanted to favor giant agribiz. But it wouldn’t outlaw your vegetable garden, and it wouldn’t do the other horrible things that panicked emails and worried bloggers claim it would. Also, DeLaurio’s husband doesn’t work for Monsanto; he’s CEO of Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research, a public opinion polling firm.
If you’re still concerned about H.R. 875, here’s a more thorough explanation of what the bill does and doesn’t do. #

No, President Obama hasn’t proposed banning guns within five miles of public schools, hasn’t proposed banning shotguns and rifles used by hunters, hasn’t proposed repealing the Second Amendment, etc. The hysteria began with an ad sponsored by the National Rifle Association during the 2008 Presidential campaign, claiming that Obama “supports a ban on the shotguns and rifles most of us use for hunting”, but the NRA’s claims were false, and in blogs and emails since then, the false claims have been stretched to the point of absurdity.
In reality, Obama supports restoring the ban on assault rifles, and has said he would like to close a legal loophole that lets handgun sales at weapons shows skirt the ordinary background checks required of gun sales at retail stores. Beyond that, there’s no evidence that the issue of guns or gun control matters much to Obama or the Obama administration, and there’s no evidence of anything factual behind the continuing flurry of blog posts and mass emails suggesting that Barack Obama wants to take your guns. #

No, the Obama administration isn’t paying, hasn’t paid, isn’t planning to pay for Hamas-affiliated terrorists to emigrate to the United States. The article at this wingnut website even provides a link to the text of the presidential order it’s allegedly responding to, and it’s a very short read that says none of the things the wingnut website says it says. Read it yourself: The President ordered emergency refugee aid for Gazans, but he didn’t order or allow them to be brought to America. If you’re a regular reader of newmediajournal.us, you might want to reconsider that bad habit.  #

No, Congress is not considering extending Social Security benefits to illegal immigrants. It’s a lie that far-right-wing fearmongers have been telling since at least 2004, and it hasn’t gotten any truer with age. Sure, the mainstream media does a pretty lousy job reporting the news, but do you really think a proposal to give illegal immigrants Social Security benefits wouldn’t be mentioned on the nightly newscasts? #

No, as a candidate for President, Barack Obama never promised to end legislative earmarks. Fox News’ Greta Van Susteren presented a deceptively edited sound clip to suggest that Obama has “broken a promise” to end earmarks, and the charge has been echoed widely, even by more reputable media — but it’s untrue. #

No, Obama’s economic stimulus package doesn’t fund an $8-billion high-speed rail line between Los Angeles and Las Vegas. That’s been claimed by, among others, US Reps John Boehner (R-Ohio), Candice Miller (R-Michigan), Tom Price (R-Georgia), and Mike Simpson (R-Idaho), and by commentators Steve Doocy, Newt Gingrich, Brian Kilmeade, and Charles Krauthammer on Fox News, but it’s simply un-true.
The bill sets aside $8-billion for rail projects, all across America, at the discretion of the Secretary of Transportation. Politicians and pundits could argue that $8-billion for rail projects is too much (we’d disagree) but they’re not making that argument. Instead they’re simply lying. #

No, the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) doesn’t eliminate workers’ right to a secret ballot. Lou Dobbs at CNN and such “think tanks” as the Heritage Foundation have claimed that it does, but they’re just repeating a false talking point from business lobbyists.
Present law requires an employee vote on unionization, which sounds all-American, but there’s a recurring problem: employers routinely exert subtle and not-so-subtle pressure tactics to influence and intimidate the employee/voters in such elections. For example, employers often hold mandatory workplace meetings to tell blatant lies about the union, while pro-union meetings can’t be held at the workplace and of course can’t be mandatory — so one side has an un-equal advantage in getting its message out. How American is that?
The EFCA legislation doesn’t end or ban these elections, and it still requires a majority of workers to join the union before certification. EFCA simply allows workers to choose other methods for union certification, if they’d prefer. But if workers choose to hold a election for union certification, that option remains available under the Employee Free Choice Act, because it’s about free choice, not about taking choices away. #

No, shopkeepers aren’t being forced to burn children’s books to comply with a new law prohibiting lead in products. The Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act (CPSIA) took effect on February 10, and requires a certificate attesting to low or no lead in products aimed at kids, including books, but the law is not nearly so heavy-handed as some bloggers’ headlines would have you believe.
First off, there’s rarely lead in books. But more to the point, CPSIA specifies that for books manufactured before Feb. 10 2009, the certificate isn’t necessary. The booksellers’ reasonable confidence that the book is lead-free is good enough to make it legal. So it’s unlikely that any bookstores are actually destroying books in a mistaken effort to comply with this law, but if it’s happening, it’s only at bookstores that are managed by imbeciles. #

No, it’s not true and Senator Jim DeMint (R-South Carolina) is lying when he says that President Obama’s stimulus plan will “intimidate the free speech of traditional, freedom-loving Americans … [and] put a chilling effect on religious freedom in our country”, or “discriminate against people of faith, [and] deny them the educational opportunities and access to public facilities.”
Gosh, that sounds horrifying, but it’s not in the legislation. Period. So what’s really horrifying is that a US Senator is just making all this crap up out of whole cloth.  #

No, President Obama’s economic stimulus legislation doesn’t give the federal government draconian control over health care. It doesn’t define (and doesn’t allow our government to define) what is “unnecessary care”. It doesn’t allow our government to “monitor” health care. Such claims are a deliberate distortion of the facts, as no fair reading of the bill finds any hint of such language.
The stimulus bill funds the establishment of an electronic medical records system — the charts that have been maintained on paper for decades will be digitized. Opponents could plausibly argue that such an update is worrisome on privacy grounds, but they’re not making that argument — instead they’re trying to frighten people by making up scary provisions that simply aren’t in the legislation. #

No, President Obama’s stimulus bill doesn’t direct billions of dollars to the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN). That’s a widely-circulated lie that seems to have originated in this press release from Rep. John Boehner (R-Ohio), who said “ACORN could get billions from Democrats’ trillion dollar spending plan”.
In fact, ACORN isn’t mentioned in the stimulus legislation, and it’s doubtful that the group would qualify for any of the bill’s appropriations. The section of the bill cited by Boehner deals with funding for the purchase, rehabilitation, and reselling of non-profit housing — none of which is part of ACORN’s mission. #

No, there’s nothing in Obama’s jobs bill that would prohibit religious groups and organizations from using buildings on college campuses. This little bit of inanity came about when Pat Robertson’s very right-wing activist group, the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ — it’s a riff on ACLU, get it?) mis-interpreted boilerplate legal language in the bill, the same phrases that have been standard in education spending bills for decades. It’s language that prohibits spending federal funds to build churches or chapels, but it has nothing to do with preventing religious groups from booking meeting space. #

Whatever number you’ve heard for how many people have been released from Guantanamo and subsequently involved in terrorist acts, it’s probably not reliable information. Numbers cited by the Pentagon have varied wildly, from two to 61, and every time the number has been different. …” And in early February, the Saudi Arabian government said eleven former Guantanamo prisoners who had attended the Saudis’ “extremist rehabilitation program” had returned to a life of terror.
Such claims of recidivism among ex-Guantanamo prisoners are favored talking points among pro-torture activists, so let’s ponder this for a moment. First, it’s hard to imagine who wouldn’t emerge from years of torture without vowing vengeance. Second, if these men were known to be terrorists before they were released from Guantanamo, why did the Bush-Cheney administration let them go instead of having them tried and justly imprisoned? And third, Saudi Arabia is a brutal regime with no respect for human rights, so its press releases are not terribly trustworthy — and it’s “extremist rehabilitation program” probably involves hanging prisoners by their toenails. #

No, Robert Reich, who was Secretary of Labor during the Clinton administration, has never said that white males should be excluded from taxpayer-funded construction projects.
What he said was, “I am concerned, as I’m sure many of you are, that these jobs not simply go to high-skilled people who are already professionals, or to white male construction workers.” That’s not the most eloquent choice of words, but reasonable observers understand that minorities and women still face discrimination, and it’s an absurd distortion to portray Reich’s statement as if he said “white males need not apply”. #

No, it’s not true that the Army Field Manual forbids “good cop/bad cop” interrogations. In January 2009, Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal published an op-ed by President Bush’s pro-torture lawyer John Yoo advancing that lie, and it’s been repeated by pro-torture advocates from Karl Rove to Rush Limbaugh. It’s a claim that’s intended to make opposition to torture sound absurd, and of course, it’s unambiguously un-true. As Media Matters explains, “In fact, the Army Field Manual explicitly permits good cop/bad cop interrogations under the name of “Mutt and Jeff” interrogations, which involve two interrogators “display[ing] opposing personalities and attitudes toward the source.” #

No, the US military oath isn’t being altered for the Obama administration. It’s a lie, spun from a site that publishes right-tilting satire, which its audience seems unable to recognize as satire. #

No, Democrats aren’t plotting the return of the Fairness Doctrine. Claiming that Barack Obama would bring back the Fairness Doctrine was one of the minor lies of Republicans during the 2008 campaign, and after the election it became a cornerstone opposition lie, repeated everywhere.
Now, to be clear, we at Unknown News would love to see the Fairness Doctrine restored, and with real teeth, with sharpened titanium fangs in place of the dentures it had decades ago. But in the real world there’s little serious discussion of the idea among Democrats in Congress, no legislation has been drafted or introduced, and it’s simply not on the agenda.
According to industry journal Radio Business Report, “The bottom line is that key watchdog groups on both sides of the ideological spectrum, including liberal radio network Air America, have come out against reinstatement of the Fairness Doctrine. There are so many forces stacked against it we do not see any clear path toward its reanimation.” #

No, Democratic leaders in the US House are not discussing the confiscation of 401(k)s and IRAs. Reports like this one, claiming that Democrats are plotting such seizures, are exaggerated over-reactions that amount to a flat-out lie. The proposal comes from exactly one economist you’ve never heard of, Teresa Ghilarducci of Notre Dame (not New College, as the article falsely reports). She’s one among dozens of economists who briefly testified in low-level Congressional hearings in early October, she’s the only one who made this proposal, and there’s been not a peep of interest in the idea from any member of Congress. #

No, Pepsi hasn’t prepared an ad making light of rape. Please stop sending the link to this blog post, or this one, or this one. The images aren’t ads, they’re art from this graphic design blog. And next time, try a little common sense: Why would Pepsi run ads that would infuriate at least half its customers? #

There’s no evidence that Sarah Palin’s son entered the military as punishment for drug dealing. Three of our readers have sent us this link, but the author’s remark is based not on fact but on a long-simmering rumor that Track Palin was prosecuted for vandalism and/or drug dealing, and offered a choice by the judge — join the Army, or face a jail stint. Problem is, it’s just another rumor. The record is sealed because he was a minor at the time, so there’s no knowing whether it’s true. #

No, there isn’t a cash machine dispensing Ameros in Florida. What customers of what bank in Florida are going to accept Ameros, the fictional currency of the fictional North American Union? At what business can Floridians spend these Ameros? It’s a canard, and worries about the Amero and the North American Union are, in a word, nonsense. #

No, Sarah Palin probably didn’t use racial slurs in public to describe Obama and Eskimos. She’s a major league politician, so it’s unlikely that she would use offensive language where it could be easily overheard. Furthermore, the blog claiming that she made racist statements, Dick & Sharon’s LA Progressive, quotes only anonymous Alaskans — “a waitress” and “an insurance agent” and “Juneau observers” — who may or may not exist. #

No, Barack Obama wasn’t born in Kenya. Jerome Corsi, Alan Keyes, and numerous other arch-partisans have raised baseless questions about Obama’s birth certificate, and claimed that by living in a foreign country as a child he somehow forfeited his American citizenship, but such stories are absolute nonsense. Obama’s papers are in order, and there’s simply no reasonable doubt that he’s an American citizen, born at Kapiolani Medical Center in Honolulu on August 4, 1961. #

No, President George W Bush never said, “Stop throwing the Constitution in my face. It’s just a goddamned piece of paper!” President Bush has always shown, shall we say, an unfamiliarity with the Constitution, but this line, widely attributed to him, is something he almost certainly never said. It was first published by Capital Hill Blue, where the news gathering is always suspect. CHB claimed to have inside knowledge from someone who was present at some hush-hush meeting where the President made this outrageous statement, but there are two problems with believing it.
First, the only people present for this alleged meeting were the President’s staunchest supporters, and it’s unlikely they would be offended by such a remark. But perhaps more obviously, even assuming that the President did say it and further assuming that someone present wanted to bring it to public attention, why would that someone call up Capital Hill Blue to spill the beans, instead of, say, the New York Times or the Washington Post? Sorry, it just defies credulity. #

No, Karl Rove is not the spawn of Nazis, or the grandspawn of Nazis. His grandfather was not Carl Röver, Karl Rovener, or Karl Roverer, and was not the Gauleiter of Oldenburg, a high-ranking Nazi Party official, or the senior engineer in the Roverer Sud-Deutche Ingenieurburo A. G. Engineering, the firm built the Birkenau death camp. That’s an internet legend, and it’s not true. #

No, it’s not true that “science” or “many scientists” warned of dangerous global cooling trends in the 1970. Very few scientists made that claim and they were generally on the fringe, like the few scientists who now argue that global warming isn’t real. In reality there was no scientific consensus about global climate changes in the 1970s, but there certainly is now.
And no, global climate change is not a hoax, not a plot, not a lie. It will be a few more years before the problems are obvious to the un-informed, and addressing the issues behind global climate change will cost money, so it is in the short-term self-interest of unprincipled wealthy and powerful parties to pretend that the facts are in dispute. They air lying commercials, publish ‘greenwashing’ ads, send spokespeople to spew manure on talk shows, all to hoodwink to an audience that doesn’t know better.
I’m not in that audience. Are you?  #

Recommended sites for reliable debunking of bunk:
Columbia Journalism Review ConWebBlog FactCheck Media Matters RightWing Watch Snopes.com ThinkProgress Washington Monthly

Compiled by
Helen & Harry Highwater
for Unknown News

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Someone’s in charge, right?

By D.P. Sorensen

Columnist for City Weekly

If we are willing to cut God (by the way, does anyone know what his last name is?) some slack, we could say that he just wasn’t paying attention when the earthquake struck Haiti last week, taking the lives, by latest estimates, of some 100,000 souls in that island paradise. Proof that he does pay attention, at least part of the time, came in the form of his intervention in 2008’s election, when, according to Sarah Palin, her selection as the Republican vice presidential candidate was “God’s will.”

The fact that God smiled on Sarah Palin, but not on the 100,000 Haitians, raises some troubling questions about God’s basic competence. Even if we do cut him some slack, and allow that he was distracted by other things—after all, he is a very busy fellow—he just doesn’t come off all that well.

There are those who will perhaps take a harsher view of God’s culpability in the Haitian matter. Rather than taking a tolerant view of the situation and attribute God’s negligence to him being understandably asleep at the wheel, these sticklers will jump all over our overworked deity and accuse him of being a cruel and vicious sadist. They will point to the long history of catastrophe, suffering and misery endured by his children here on planet Earth.

These ungrateful critics of the Creator of the Universe will accuse him of being, at minimum, a nasty piece of work. They are an overly earnest bunch. They should adopt the carefree and somewhat bemused attitude of the late Randolph Churchill, begot by Winston, who didn’t have occasion to think deeply on the mysterious ways of our Lord until he picked up the Bible during a slow period during the North African campaign of World War II. After thumbing through the Old Testament, with its amusing tales of wanton destruction and random punishment, Randolph famously remarked, “I say, this God chap is a bit of shit.”

Randolph the son of Winston chalked it all up to old stories in an old book and took the rational position that the angry and bloodthirsty God of the Old Testament was merely a fictional character, a scary personage whose usefulness in keeping people in their humble place had long since outlived its primitive function.

Poor Randolph just didn’t get it. Those of us fortunate to be living in our enlightened age know that God continues to work his will in mysterious ways. Much as we might like to, we cannot simply dismiss him as a mean old man, or as a mean old lady, for that matter. (It would be interesting to see what would happen if we imagined God as a lady instead of a gentleman. Would we be as accepting of Her fickle ways as we are of His?)

For, like it or not, God is still in the thick of things, though, as we know from the thousands of rotting bodies in Haiti, he seems occasionally to screw up. But we have to take a wider view of things and look at the big picture. From pulpits across the land, our godly superiors will be assuring us in the coming days that the appalling catastrophe in Haiti is part of God’s plan. I first learned about God’s plan when John Kennedy was assassinated. The Sunday after the assassination, a kindly and dimwitted ecclesiastical authority took to the pulpit to bring us the comforting news that the killing of Kennedy was part of God’s plan.

I must admit that, at the time, I was tempted to stand up and scream, “You gotta be kidding!” Then, as now, I was reluctant to entertain the proposition that nobody was in charge. That would seem to be the rational conclusion. Who, after all, would want to believe that someone called God, residing who knows where (Paradise? Kolob?), was inflicting awful suffering on the least of his creatures? Why would he want to do that? Does he get bored with the tedium of eternity, and on a whim decide to divert himself with the sport of suffering and the spectacle of death?

No, brothers and sisters, it is part of God’s Plan.

Someday we will know why the thousands of children are crushed by concrete, and why some are mercifully dispatched at one fell blow and why others are left screaming in the rubble to die of starvation or succumb to the pleasures of sepsis. Their slow and agonizing suffering will surely make sense to us one shining day.

Over the years Watts Cookin’ has saved many articles on many subjects simply because they were so well written, well reasoned, and/or had a timeless aspect to them. This is one of those special articles that come along so rarely. It was written in September, 2008. It so captured the essence of Romney and the politics of the moment that it is timeless and priceless. All hail language and Leonard Pitts for this special piece of word magic, and ah, so true. Print this out and frame it. It will gather more meaning as the next campaign begins.

Words on words: How do you say ‘hypocrisy’ in Romney-speak?

By Leonard Pitts

”We need change, all right. Change from a liberal Washington to a conservative Washington. We have a prescription for every American who wants change in Washington – throw out the big-government liberals.”
- Mitt Romney, Sept. 3, 2008

And then the gorilla run knee socks paint porno on the Cadillac. But school laughed and didn’t we sing hats?  Ahem.

Maybe you wonder what the preceding gobbledygook means. I would ask which gobbledygook you mean: mine or Mitt Romney’s? If he’s allowed to spew nonsense and people act as if he’s spoken intelligently, why can’t I? If he gets to behave as if words no longer have objective meaning, why can’t I?

I mean, baffle grab on the freak flake. Really.  And again, ahem.

If you’re a regular here, you’ve heard me rant from time to time about intellectual dishonesty. By this, I mean more than just your garden variety lie. No, to be intellectually dishonest means to argue that which you know to be untrue and to substitute ideology for intellect to the degree that you’ll do violence to language and logic rather than cross the party line.

Yes, we’re all intellectually dishonest on occasion. But no one does it like Republican conservatives. They are to intellectual dishonesty what Michael Jordan was to basketball or the Temptations to harmony: the avatar, the exemplar, the paradigm. They have elevated it beyond hypocrisy and political expedience. They have made it . . . art.

Which returns us to the astonishing thing Mitt Romney said while addressing the party faithful in St. Paul, Minn. You want to walk around it the way you would Michelangelo’s “David,” admiring the elegance of the workmanship. You hesitate to touch it, much less pull it apart. To do so seems almost an act of desecration.

Unfortunately, some of us are too plodding and earthbound, too blind to the seductions of art, too stubbornly wedded to some vestigial notion that intellectual honesty matters, to walk past a steaming pile of bovine excreta without calling it a steaming pile of bovine excreta.

So excuse me, beg pardon, so sorry, but I have to ask: What liberal Washington is he talking about? The federal government has three branches. The legislative, i.e., Congress, was under conservative control from 1995 until 2007. The judicial, i.e., the Supreme Court, consists of nine justices, seven of whom were nominated by conservative presidents. The executive, i.e., the president, is George W. Bush. Enough said.

Washington is already what Romney wants to make it. Our current state of affairs, love it or loathe it, is indisputably a product of conservative governance. I wish that mattered more than it does.

That it doesn’t matter much at all you can credit to conservative politicians who have, over the years, trained their followers to respond with Pavlovian faithfulness to certain terms. Say ”conservative” and they wag their tails. Say ”liberal” and they bare their fangs. More to the point, say either and all thinking ceases, so much so that a representative of the ideology that has controlled most of Washington most of the last 12 years can say with a straight face that his ideology needs to seize control of Washington to fix what is broken there. And people hear this Orwellian doublespeak . . . and cheer.

Why not? They have been taught that words mean what you need them to in a given moment.

Sadly, it has proved an easy lesson to impart. Turns out, all it requires is a limitless supply of gall and the inherent belief that people are dumber than a bag of hammers.

And all it costs us is language, the ability to have reasoned and intelligent political discourse, the idea that words do, and should, have weight, dimension and intrinsic meaning. Maybe you disagree. In which case, let me just say this:

Piffle crack eat monkey snow. Really.

LEONARD PITTS is a columnist for the Miami Herald. Readers may contact him via e-mail at lpitts@miamiherald.com.

By Peggy Fletcher Stack

The Salt Lake Tribune

Updated: 12/12/2009 11:38:20 AM

Thirty-one years ago this Christmas, a little book of Mormon cartoons by Calvin Grondahl, Freeway to Perfection , hit the LDS market like an underwater earthquake, suddenly erupting on the surface.

Brigham Young University students lined up by the hundreds to get a signed copy. Deseret Book couldn’t keep it in stock. The green-covered wonder was passed around surreptitiously at church and openly at Mormon family parties. White-haired Relief Society presidents bought dozens for their children and grandchildren.

“It was as groundbreaking as Columbus finding the new world,” recalls longtime Salt Lake Tribune political cartoonist Pat Bagley, who has published about a dozen Mormon cartoon books. “It opened up a new world of Mormon humor.”

Tribune humor columnist Robert Kirby says Grondahl, then an editorial cartoonist at the Deseret News , set the standard by which every LDS humorist would be measured.

Kirby remembers flipping through Freeway during a Mormon sacrament meeting when he landed on Grondahl’s cartoon of a father holding up a monster baby for congregational approval.

He couldn’t stop laughing and had to leave the chapel — a moment he marks as the beginning of his career in Mormon humor.

“That’s when I started thinking, regardless whether you believe this [Mormon doctrine] to be true,” Kirby says, “human behavior about it is still funny.”

Grondahl did not expect his Mormon cartoon book, soon followed by a second and third volume, to have such an impact.

“Back then, I believe that the [LDS] Church leaders wanted it all to go away, but it didn’t,” says Grondahl, a cartoonist at Ogden’s Standard-Examiner . “And now, with the Internet, an LDS laugh or a shock is only a click away.”

Indeed, Mormon humor now ripples across the culture — in movies, magazines, plays, books, blogs and Web sites. Its tone ranges from innocent fun to biting satire and raunchy sarcasm.

Adult Mormon humor has a “fair amount of passive-aggressivity to it,” says Christopher Bigelow, creator of The Sugar Beet, a satirical Mormon Web site modeled after The Onion. The Beet offers spoof stories and headlines such as “Missionary Accidentally Calls Prophet ‘Dude.’ ”

LDS culture and belief system can be rigid and “resistant to any kind of disruption of the smooth, conformist functioning of the hive,” Bigelow says. “But sometimes a worker bee has just got to assert his individuality and signal that some aspects of Mormon culture seem fairly absurd to him, and humor can be a veiled, indirect way of doing that.”

Few other religions, he says, “create as much of a cultural pressure cooker as Mormonism does.”

Small kids, big laughs

The most consistently popular style is the kids-say-the-darndest-things genre, but even that has opened up in new and riskier ways since the 1970s.

Anecdotes from Mormon Mishaps and Mischief: Hilarious Stories for Saints , a new book by Nichole Giles of Pleasant Grove and Cindy Beck of Santaquin, includes 200 of what the authors say are true anecdotes from various submitters.

They tend to highlight embarrassing moments such as toilet paper trailing from a skirt or naked children strolling up the chapel aisle. They play on mistaken words such as the “oddmonition of Paul” (instead of admonition) and doing battle with “Laman Knights” (instead of The Book of Mormon’s Lamanites).

But they also offer some unintended double-entendres such as the following:

“Holding a Kleenex to damp eyes and struggling with her feelings, [a woman in an LDS testimony meeting] said, ‘I don’t do this very often because I’m such a big boob.’

“After she sat down, a member of the bishopric stepped to the pulpit.

“Offering what he thought was consolation, he said, ‘That’s OK; we like big boobs.’ “Or this one:

A recently returned missionary, commenting on an LDS scripture, said to an all-male priesthood meeting, “At one time or another, everyone experiences some type of bondage.”

Giles and Beck see such slips as part of the fun.

“There are a few that are a little more edgy, but it’s the balance that counts,” Giles says. “What makes me laugh the hardest may not make someone else laugh. It’s all in your perspective.”

The two authors, who met at an LDStorymakers Conference about four years ago, see laughter as healing and important in the Mormon community.

“Church is a sacred, reverent time, but that doesn’t mean we can’t see the humor in things that happen there,” says Beck, who writes a humor column for the Sanpete Messenger . “I think God has a good sense of humor, so I don’t think he would mind at all.”

Walking the line

How do Mormons who write or draw humor about LDS culture decide when a punch line goes too far?

At the Sugar Beet, Bigelow says, writers “reined in” the satire enough to keep it from being too irreverent, but many members felt they didn’t hold back enough.

“Whew, good thing they didn’t see the raw stuff we didn’t publish,” says Bigelow, who edited a book of satirical items from The Beet, called The Mormon Tabernacle Enquirer . It met with moderate success.

He is frustrated with the lack of enthusiasm for edgy LDS humor.

“Humor is an important outlet for me,” Bigelow says. “It helps certain kinds of personalities stay more connected with the culture if we can gently mock it a little. I’d love to see the culture loosen up a little and not be so safe and conformist.”

Bagley knows the LDS Church, he says, and knows how far to push it. But he did break a barrier with his caricature of then-President Gordon B. Hinckley being interviewed by Larry King in 1998. It was the first time Bagley ever had depicted a living church president. Though some readers complained that the cartoon was disrespectful, Bagley felt Hinckley was drawn with affection.

That’s where Kirby draws the line, too — it depends on whether you love what you’re making fun of.

“It’s like your family members, who can be extremely annoying so much you want to beat them, but you also love them because they are part of you,” he says. “I love my church.”

Kirby stays away from lampooning LDS temple ceremonies and general authority speeches, but most everything else is a fair target. He especially is amused by people who can’t tell the difference between making fun of God and making fun of yourself.

“Through humor, we recognize, are comfortable with and can recover from our own fallible natures,” he says. “If we couldn’t laugh at ourselves, we’d go nuts.”

pstack@sltrib.com

A few “snicker” doodles

» A bishop was holding a leadership meeting. A baby in the nearby nursery was crying, making it difficult for the bishop to conduct the meeting. He excused himself and left the room. After a couple of minutes, he returned and continued the meeting — not a sound was heard from the baby. At the end of the meeting, one ward member asked him how he got the baby to be quiet. “Simple,” said the bishop. “I ordained him a high priest and he went right to sleep.”

Q: What do you get when you cross a kleptomaniac and a Mormon?

A: A basement full of stolen food.

» An LDS child needed to bring an old shirt from home for a school project about drug prevention. The mother was busy and handed her child an old T-shirt without examining it. Later, she was appalled to see her child wearing the T-shirt through the mall. On the front it said, “A Family Is Forever.” On the back: “Be Smart, Don’t Start.”

Source: http://www.mormonsite.org/humor/lds.html

Barack Obama, President and CEO of Government Motors, wearing a Chevy bow tie and singing “Wouldn’t you really rather have a Buick,” has announced GM’s revamped model lineup for 2010, which follows.

The Filibuster: A high-mileage endurance vehicle — keeps going and going and going.

The Geithner: Economy model. Tax free!

The Kennedy: An alternative fuel vehicle. Runs on ethanol … or Scotch … or bourbon … or …

The Socialist: Features progressive pricing designed to redistribute the wealth. The more you earn, the more you pay.

The Howard Dean: High-performance vehicle; a scream to drive.

The BLM: Rugged, off-road sport-utility vehicle. Ideal for river-running. Comes equipped with a drill rig so you can find your own oil and gas.

The Republican: The last of the gas guzzlers; a dying breed. Noisy, blows smoke, powerless.

The NASA: Designed for high-altitude driving. Goes up, but doesn’t always come down.

The Pentagon: Perfect for commuters; a regular war wagon. Options include a $600 toilet seat and a $434 hammer for pounding out dents.

ICE: The ultimate in one-way transportation.

The Bailout: Perfect for financial and insurance industry corporate fleets. Comes with a government credit card for fuel purchases and repairs.

The Sotomayor: The first entirely computer-controlled car. Programmed to make better driving decisions than privileged white males.

The CIA Interrogator: Dual climate controls (extreme heat or extreme cold). Overhead steering wheel for improved driver discomfort. Internal windshield washer pump sprays bothersome kids to simulate drowning.

The UAW: Driver must pull into a rest area every two hours to avoid a strike. Requires maintenance even after it’s retired.

The Nader: Safest car on the highway. Neck and arm restraints; five-point safety harness; drivers side, passenger side and overhead air bags.

The Senator: Runs once every six years. Comes equipped with a lobbyist in the driver’s seat.

The Congressman: Never stops running. Comes equipped with a lobbyist in the driver’s seat.

The Matheson: It’s complicated. Loaded with features to try to please everybody. No matter which way you turn the wheel, it steers to the middle of the road.

The Chaffetz: A light-weight recreational vehicle painted in garish colors to attract attention. When you stop for the night, it folds into a cot.

The Bennett: A legacy car. Requires frequent front-end alignments. (It pulls to the right in election years.)

The Hatch: A true getaway vehicle; helps drug-dealing musicians get out of jail.

The Bishop: Powered by low-level radioactive waste. Like its namesake, it’s dependent on EnergySolutions to keep running.

The Department of Education: Built for large families. Leave no child behind.

The Fort Knox: Gold exterior, empty interior.

The Cheney : Argues on the driver’s behalf during police stops, insisting that the operator had to break the law in order to make the highways safer.

The Palin: Headlights that wink, oversize trunk for large wardrobes, horn beeps “You betcha.”

The “W”: Failed concept car. (But perhaps history will look favorably upon it.)

Casey Jones is a member of the Tribune editorial board. E-mail him at cjones@sltrib.com

According to a church spokesman, the programming will be a bit on the subdued/dull side. I’m paraphrasing, of course. What he actually said is that it will feature choir music, firesides, conference addresses and potluck recipes.

I quickly put together a kicking proposal for real Mormon radio and ran it over to church headquarters. I pitched it to some guy who, truthfully, may have only been a janitor. Everyone wears a suit over there.

A few hours later, I allegedly received a phone call politely declining my proposal. The deal breaker was money. In general, there was no point in paying me to run the radio station when they could just call me on a mission.

“And there’s no way that’s happening again,” he may or may not have said.

If you’re interested in my proposal, here’s a brief overview. I think you’ll be surprised. Pleasantly or otherwise, it doesn’t matter.

First, you can’t have a real radio station without a lunatic morning drive duo. KLOB 108.1 “Potluck Radio” would feature the “Kirb & Erd” show.

Tuesday through Sunday at 6 a.m., Larry Erdmann and I would be calling the LDS faithful to morning devotionals with the Scripture of the Day, including verses like Jacob 1:12, Job 30:29, and even this little UDOT gem I found: 2 Kings 3:16.

Then we would get into the usual morning team nonsense: ranting about things we heard in church, the antics of celebrity Mormons, and useless food storage items. We might even make prank telephone calls.

Brad: “Hullo?”

Larry: “Elder Barnhole, this is President Pratt of the Missionary Committee. Listen, we’re changing your mission call from Paris, France, to Rock Springs, Wyo.”

Of course, there will be the usual contests and swag giveaways. “And to the 13th caller we’ve got a free Mr. Mac suit, or a Get Out of Excommunication Free card. Your choice.”

No radio station is complete without a traffic report. “The Cramp Heights 4th Ward just let out and the boulevard is a drag strip, people. Pedestrians and cyclists exercise extreme caution. It’s Fast Sunday.”

Music? Definitely. KLOB 108′s playlist would feature oldies like “Onward Christian Soldiers” along with harder spiritual stuff such as “Stairway to Heaven.” Listeners could even phone our request line.

Caller: “Yes, would you please play some Jonas Brothers?”

Larry or me: “Get bent.”

The talk portion of our show would include celebrity interviews with general authorities, polygamists, a couple of Osmonds, Satan and anyone else we could get.

Finally, and most importantly, we would have a daily fire index announcement, also known as the Second Coming Countdown.

If you like my plan better, please call church HQ and let them know. If they act like they don’t know what you’re talking about, ask to speak to the janitor.

Robert Kirby can be reached at rkirby@sltrib.com.