1. Conservative Hootenanny Over Firing of Duck Dynasty Star

In every cloud there is a silver lining. Phil Robertson may have lost his reality show over his vile comments about gays and blacks unrepentantly spewed to GQ magazine, but look at all the marvelous new friends he made, many who seem ready to anoint him to sainthood. If Mother Teresa had only known that all she had to do was imply that homosexuality leads to bestiality and promiscuity (in that order) and black people thoroughly enjoyed their subjugation in the Jim Crow south, she would not have had to spend so much time taking care of all those poor, sick people.

Okay, okay, we’re exaggerating. No one actually compared the duck patriarch to Mother Teresa. That’s crazy talk. Who would do that? Newt Gingrich just compared him to Pope Francis. Conservative radio host Mike Slater said he is like Martin Luther King, Jr. Monica Crowley, Megyn Kelly, Bobby Jindal and Sarah Palin all called him some combination of a First Amendment martyr and an example of a good Christian. Illinios GOP Congressional candidate Ian Bayne called him “the Rosa Parks of our generation,” and the American Family Association’s Bryan Fischer called him an American hero then warned, darkly that Robertson's suspension is “the Mark of the Beast.”

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

2. Chris Christie’s true colors truly revealed. Astonishing pettiness. Total willingness to abuse power.

Can there be any lingering doubt that Republican darling, Chris Christie, must not be allowed anywhere near presidency? If you have ever sat in traffic trying to cross the George Washington Bridge, (or anywhere, for that matter) assuming all the while, that it cannot be helped. That’s the way it is. There are a lot of cars—too many. Accidents happen. Work must be done. Security must be maintained. These are assumptions that can no longer be made in Chris Christie’s New Jersey.

Chris Christie revealed himself as a man perfectly willing to settle a petty political score (the Mayor of Fort Lee, the New Jersey town just over the bridge from New York, did not endorse Christie for re-election, and Christie’s henchman closed lanes to the bridge on the flimsy pretext of a traffic study to punish him) and to hell with the tens of thousands of people, just trying to get somewhere.

Do not let this out-of-control, bullying man anywhere near the reigns of the IRS, the NSA, the list goes on. Do not.

3. Rick Santorum delivers unhinged, illogical rant about nationalized healthcare.

We may need to run this excerpt from a Rick Santorum speech in its somewhat cleaned up entirety, because we’re still trying to make sense of it. But it seems very ominous. It is about that death-deliverer, government-subsidized healthcare. Even the Iron Lady herself, Margaret Thatcher, was too frightened to take it on. And she was so tough. That’s how scary it is! Then there is this leap of logic that has us scratching our now totally terrified heads. Because if you get sick, and you don’t have healthcare, you die. (Question: So, why isn’t that an argument for providing healthcare to more people?) And, as if dying weren’t bad enough, you also don’t get to vote if you die. So the whole system is rigged, because only living people can vote. And only living people can get healthcare. See?

Here’s Uncle Ricky to explain:

If we have a system where the government is going to be the principal provider of health care for the country, we’re done. Because then, you are dependent on the government for your life and your health…When Thatcher ran for prime minister she said — remember this, this is the Iron Lady — she said, ‘The British national health care system is safe in my hands.’ She wasn’t going to take on health care, because she knew once you have people getting free health care from the government, you can’t take it away from them. And the reason is because most people don’t get sick, and so free health care is just that, free health care, until you get sick. Then, if you get sick and you don’t get health care, you die and you don’t vote. It’s actually a pretty clever system. Take care of the people who can vote and people who can’t vote, get rid of them as quickly as possible by not giving them care so they can’t vote against you. That’s how it works.

We’re sure this thought-chain makes perfect sense in Rick Santorum’s head. But only in Rick Santorum’s head, where it must be very lonely indeed.

Want to see tape and the slightly perplexed crowd at the Young Americans for Freedom event at Reagan Ranch? Click here.

4. Rep. Jack Kingston: Poor kids should be forced to clean floors for their lunch.

And they say Republicans don’t care about poor children. Georgia Rep. Jack Kingston, who is running to replace Senator Saxby Chambliss does. He’s really worried that children living below the poverty line are getting the wrong ideas about how the world works, and about how work works. He’s worried they’re learning that there might be such a thing as a free lunch. His suggestion: Make them pay. Oh, they don’t have money? Oh, you say that’s what poverty is actually all about? Here’s another idea he suggested:

Kingston: “… maybe sweep the floor of the cafeteria—yes . . . that would be an administrative problem . . .”

Us: Right, but that’s absolutely the only problem with it, the administrative thing.

Kingston: “And it would probably lose you (the government) money.”

Us: Yeupp, that’s the only other problem with it. It does not, for instance, stigmatize kids whose parents are poor or going through hard times, or expose them to cruel teasing or bullying, or segregate them from their more well-off peers.

Perhaps, Mr. Kingston has spent some time with Mr. Newt Gingrinch (sic) who also thought there was some untapped potential in developing a janitorial labor force of poor children, and said so, to great reception on the presidential campaign trail.

And here’s the thing, Kingston is considered the reasonable one running to replace Chambliss. Yikes.

5. GOP lawmaker: Income inequality is real and it could be a good thing.

It has often been said that the first step towards solving a problem is acknowledging that it exists. That progression went astray, however this week when Minnesota lawmaker David Hann, the State Minority Leader, acknowledged that income inequality was indeed quite real—but, not a problem. No, not just not harmful, good. Because, if rich people don’t get to stay rich, they won’t pay taxes and that will be bad for the government.

News bulletin for Mr. Hann: Rich people already don’t pay their share of taxes.

There’s ample evidence of this, for example, from Huffington Post:

University of Minnesota Associate Professor Jay Coggins actually did have a chart showing who paid state and local taxes. It showed that, in reality, the top 1 percent of earners paid the lowest tax rate.

And, if anyone still needs yet more evidence that drastic income inequality does not serve the common good, the Associated Press provided it when it surveyed more than three dozen economists about income inequality; a majority of them said the gap is hurting the economy.

Basically because, many many people cannot afford to spend much money at all. Duh.

There is, as it turns out, no such thing as a no-brainer.

6. Meet the new tea-partying, public-school hating, Jesse Helms worshipping, secession-backing, wacko-bird candidate for North Carolina Senate.

Greg Bannon is a doctor, an ostensibly educated man. Sometimes education has been shown to help counter the problem of ignorance.

Not in this case. Where shall we start? Greg Bannon opposes public education, period. He supports nullification, which is when a state can choose to ignore federal laws. He moved to North Carolina because he worships the late segregationist/secessionist/obstructionist Senator Jesse Helms and wants to be more like him. Somewhat terrifyingly, Greg Bannon is an obstetrician/gynecologist who refuses to give his patients information about contraception or abortion. Shouldn’t one lose their stirrups for that?

Bannon may be ready to hang up his speculum (phew!) because he’s running for Democratic Senator Kay Hagan's seat next year. (uh-oh! Doesn’t North Carolina have those awful voter suppression laws?)

Rand Paul , Erick Erickson and Ann Coulter all like him. And, should he (gasp!) win, he’ll fit right in with the cuckoo-bird caucus in the Senate including Paul, Ted Cruz and Mike Lee.

7. Tea party leader: Blacks should stop bitching and moaning about slavery.

A New Mexico tea partier by the name of Glynis Racine has made the determination that it is time for black people to get over the whole slavery thing. Enough already. The Lincoln Country Tea Party patriot made this helpful suggestion somewhat obliquely while celebrating—in her own extremely festive way—the 148th anniversary of the end of slavery.

“White Irish slaves were treated worse than any other race in the US,” she tweeted. “When is the last time you heard an Irishman bitching & moaning about how the world owes them a living.”

Honestly, we can’t actually recall an occurrence where we heard either an Irish person or a black person “bitching & moaning” about that.

Quite a lot of flack ensued twitterspherically, some perfectly valid points about the obvious racism of her statement, and failure to grasp the totality of black suffering during and, of course, well after slavery. Some tweeters insulted Irish people, instead. The courageous tea partier removed her tweet, we’re sure having learned a very valuable lesson.

h/t: RawStory

8. N.C. GOP-er: Obamacare is like Hitler .. . . again? Yawn.

Another dispatch from the great state of North Carolina, where, unfortunately, right wing loonies are ascendant. By now, we’ve heard that Obamacare is a catastrophic law of epic proportions, tantamount to the Nuremberg laws, Indian Removal Act, Fugitive Slave Act, ummm, what else, pogroms, genocides, hurricanes, typhoons, nuclear bombs, tsunamis—and it may have turned Santa black.

Well, my friends, it’s not that bad. It’s much, much worse. According to North Carolina state Sen. Bob Rucho, Barack Obama is worse than Hitler, Stalin and Osama bin Laden and quite likely Voldemort.

This week, Rucho tweeted:

Justice Robert's pen & Obamacare has done more damage to the USA then the swords of the Nazis, Soviets & terrorists combined.

People complained. They thought the tweet unreasonable. Perhaps, a tad hyperbolic. But Rucho stood firm, tweeting back:

Those that tweeted, put your thinking caps back on:"The PEN is mightier than the SWORD."Edward Bulwar-Lytton,1839. But surely you knew that.

Later, when Rucho also spoke with Mark Binker of WRAL.com he softened his stance a bit, saying that he was just trying to highlight the economic consequences of Obamacare vs. the murderous tyranny of Nazis, Stalinism and radical Islam. He said: “I was concerned about the fact that there are 6 million people who have lost their healthcare due to Obama.” This is a completely fabricated number when it comes to Obamacare. Hmmm, though, rings a bell. Where might he have gotten the figure 6 million from?

It turns out that Rucho is a frustrated op-ed writer. He’d like to explain his points more fully, but no one will print his op-eds. Wonder why.

9. Creationist: Evolution is a silly story for silly people.

Once upon a time this week a man named Dr. John Morris—what kind of a doctor, we do not know—of the Institute for Creation Research (words that hardly go together) said some laughable ridiculous things on the radio. Here’s a sample: “No truly helpful discovery has come from evolution” since evolution proponents, unlike Creationists, “rely on silly evolutionary stories to make us believe it.”

These silly people he pointed out should really not be “gullible enough to think that a frog changed into a prince.”

There it is, evolution in a nutshell. He's certainly read his Darwin.

Silly, silly scientists. What they will come up with next? That gravity holds us on the earth?

See more here.

10. Crazy Libertarian radio host: You get MLK, Jr. We get Santa.

Paleolithic radio ranter Neal Bortz made such a reasonable point this week about that whole Megyn Kelly, White Santa debate. Why didn’t we think of it? Mr. Bortz pointed out that Martin Luther King, Jr. is always portrayed as black, you know, like in photographs and documentary footage. What a scam!

And that, my friend, proves Santa is white. “Deal with it,” Mr. Bortz helpfully said.