There were lots of right-wing lunacies tossed around throughout the Conservoverse this week, but first on that filibuster thing:

1. Rush Limbaugh managed to compare the change in the filibuster rule to rape

We have a sneaking suspicion that Rush Limbaugh is looking for an excuse to talk about rape. Just a hunch. Sure enough, a rape analogy popped into this profoundly misogynistic man’s mind to explain his objection to the change in the filibuster rule. Here he is, playing the role of what he and his gullible listeners think is an eminently reasonable man:

“Let’s forget the Senate for a minute. Let’s take 10 people in a room . . . six men and four women. OK? The group has a rule that the men cannot rape the women. The group also has a rule that says any rule that will be changed must require six votes, of the 10, to change the rule. Every now and then, some lunatic in the group proposes to change the rule to allow women to be raped. But they never were able to get six votes for it. There were always the four women voting against it and they always found two guys. Well, the guy that kept proposing that women be raped finally got tired of it, and he was in the majority and he was the one that [said], ‘You know what? We’re going to change the rule. Now all we need is five.' And well, ‘you can’t do that.’ ‘Yes we are. We’re the majority. We’re changing the rule.’ And then they vote. Can the women be raped? Well, all it would take then is half of the room. You can change the rule to say three. You can change the rule to say three people want it, it’s going to happen. There’s no rule. When the majority can change the rules there aren’t anything.”

It’s a million kinds of wrong, starting with the presumption, when push comes to shove, men just want to rape women. Can you say “projection?”

h/t Media Matters

2. Sorry, Elisabeth Hasselbeck is just a complete idiot

The background: In a recent interview with the BBC, Oprah, the “Queen of all Media,” said something mildly controversial and mildly hurtful to old white racists. And, boy did Fox News have a conniption.

Talking about President Obama, Oprah had the audacity to suggest that, “There is a level of disrespect for the office that occurs, and that occurs in some cases and maybe even in many cases because he’s African American. There’s no question about that, and it’s the kind of thing that nobody ever says but everybody is thinking it.”

Wha-a-a-a-a-t?

That was bad enough, but it was this next part that really shook the Faux Newsians. She said that the issue of racism is largely generational. Specifically, she said that cultural prejudice in the U.S. will largely recede after the last generation of individuals have died off.

“I said this, you know, for apartheid South Africa, I said this for my own, you know, community in the South — there are still generations of people, older people, who were born and bred and marinated in it, in that prejudice and racism, and they just have to die," Winfrey said.

Ooh, that hurts. Because Fox News has some young white people, and they’re still racist. So what’s their excuse? Supposedly, they were not marinated in racism. They chose this way of seeing things.

Well, there was all sorts of frothing and foaming, and no one was frothier than Elisabeth Hasselbeck, who warned Oprah Winfrey that she “undermines racism” by pointing out that some of President Barack Obama’s critics disliked him because of the color of his skin.

Wait, undermining racism? That would be a good thing, right? At least in the parallel universe to Fox where there is a modicum of rationality. Surely, she misspoke. Let’s give her another chance to clear up that misconception. Her cohosts, Steve Doocy and Brian Kilmeade did keep the conversation going. “There’s so much rude stuff toward 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. in my lifetime,” Kilmeade said. “Reagan was dumb, remember. George Bush was incompetent and illegitimate.” (Yeah, we’re with you so far, Mr. Kilmeade.) “Bill Clinton, we know where he ended up with the Monica Lewinsky stuff. Where was the racism there?”

Elisabeth’s turn to talk again: “But this is someone as powerful as Oprah instilling fear in those that may come to critique policy under a cloak of racism when it may not be there. So again, it undermines racism when it does occur.”

Oops, she did it again.

3. Climate denying group compares U.N. talks about climate change to the Holocaust—immediately after saying there’s no comparison

We know what you’re thinking. Oh no they di-int. Well, oh yeah, they did. But first, the head of the rabidly anti-science Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT), wrote in a fundraising email unearthed by DeSmogBlog that nothing can be compared to what happened during the Holocaust at Aushwitz and Birkenau, which he had just visited. Certainly not the climate negotiations currently taking place in Poland.

“There simply is no parallel,” he wrote.

OK then, that’s that. Can’t be compared. Not going to do it.

“Surely, the political and policy battles we are fighting cannot even begin to compare to the horrors represented by those camps,” he affirmed.

Yes, yes. Why would anyone even go there?

And yet, having said he mustn’t, go there he does:

“Yet such examples from history are instructive to show just how far otherwise-civilized people can descend when they are gripped by false ideologies and twisted utopian ambitions," he continued.

“They reveal the loss of freedom, taken to its ugliest level.

“Right now, the UN is attempting to carry out what its climate chief last year termed “a complete economic transformation of the world.”

And this is why, he reasoned, believers in freedom, haters of Holocausts, you should give our organization money. So that we can keep fighting science, progress, international cooperation.

That’s it. That’s the argument. That’s all he’s got.

h/t: salon

5. Fox’s Charles Payne: Obama’s Arab Spring thwarted by eunuchs

Fox News’ Charles Payne served two helpings of crazy when he spoke to a conservative audience recently: 1. President Obama has been trying to create an “Arab Spring sort of thing” in America, because, of course, he’s a Muslim, and that’s just what they do—or is it wage jihad?—we always forget.

And 2. It didn’t work because even after Obama “succeeded in creating the kind of climate that is an economic and rhetorical tinderbox,” Americans didn’t have the balls for it. And the reason for this ball-less state is Social Security disability benefits, which have turned young American men into “modern-day eunuchs,” whom Obama has “castrated at the soul.”

No, we don’t really understand it either.

“This tinderbox has a limp wicket,” Payne continued, in an orgiastic climax of mixed metaphors. “The White House is laying it on too thick. Consequently, that army of would-be rioters, well, they’re kinda chilling out, waiting for their next Xbox. They figured out how to game the system or they’re just going to sit in their parents’ basement, brooding.”

Wait, so he wants an Arab Spring type revolt in this country? Color us confused.

If you enjoyed this little snippet, here is Wayne’s speech, via the Raw Story:

6. OK Governor finds a clever way to defy marriage equality—deny everyone spousal benefits

Oklahoma Governor Mary Fallin announced this week that her state is going to have a little hissy fit. It will no longer allow any married couples to apply for spousal benefits at any state-owned National Guard facility, regardless of whether they're same-sex or opposite-sex. If gays want equal rights, then you know what? Nobody gets rights. So there!

"Oklahoma law is clear,” Fallin said. “The state of Oklahoma does not recognize same-sex marriages, nor does it confer marriage benefits to same-sex couples. The decision reached today allows the National Guard to obey Oklahoma law without violating federal rules or policies. It protects the integrity of our state constitution and sends a message to the federal government that they cannot simply ignore our laws or the will of the people.”

Twenty-nine states have constitutional bans on same-sex marriage, but nearly all of them have decided to comply with the federal rules on recognizing couples in the National Guard in terms of benefits.

Fallin, was no doubt darn pleased with herself when she thought this one up. Heck, it might even stir up more hostility towards gay people. Wouldn’t that be a bonus?

7. Alabama Rep. introduces bill to eliminate overtime pay

This is nice. And just in time for the holiday season. Meet U.S. Representative Martha Roby, a.k.a. Cruella DeVille. While the Tea Partying 37-year-old is not fighting tooth and nail against people getting affordable healthcare, she’s coming up with ways to deprive employees and workers of their hard-won rights and protections.

This week she introduced a resolution euphemistically called “Working Families Flexibility Act of 2013,″ which would end the requirement of the Fair Labor Standards Act for employers to pay Time-and-a-Half to employees for every hour worked over 40 in one week. It’s called H.R. 1406, and here’s what the Congressional Budget Office has to say about it:

“H.R. 1406 would amend the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 to provide compensatory time for employees in the private sector. In lieu of overtime pay, employees could receive compensatory time off at a rate not less than one and one-half hours for each hour of employment for which overtime pay would otherwise have been required. Such compensatory time could be provided only in accordance with a collective bargaining agreement or with the consent of affected employees. The changes would be effective for five years after enactment of the bill.”

Long story short: It’s another way for employers to exploit workers with long hours and less pay. Note the use of the word, “flexibility,” which, when used by conservatives always affords more “flexibility” to employers, not workers, flexibility to work people round the clock, say, without paying overtime. Kind of like “right to work,” which is, of course, code for “right to be exploited, worked to death and fired for no particular reason.”

You know what would be good to take on next? Those silly laws against Child Labor.

8. Baptist church official: Wives who are not subservient violate biblical law

Equality in marriage is an abomination. We’re not talking LGBT rights here—although, of course, that’s an abomination too. We’re talking good old-fashioned heterosexual marriage. Husband and wife, cleaved to one another, as the bible somewhat creepily puts it. Not equal, this cleaving. Get it straight ladies.

To avoid the dreaded equality between spouses, Russell Moore, president of the Baptist Church’s ethics and liberty commission, cautions married men from getting too close to their wives. And by close, we mean equal.

“Sometimes you have people who are preaching a false gospel to themselves in their homes,” he said, “By men who aren’t loving their wives as themselves and wives who aren’t submitting to their husbands.”

He did get around, as he always does, to denouncing same-sex unions as well. And same-sex unions where nobody is subservient—we can only assume that the concept would make his head explode.

9. NC Christian school to require families to cast out gay relatives, and sign an anti-LGBT pledge

It’s not really enough not to be gay, lesbian, bi-, or transgendered, you must vow to hate people who are, and vow not to be related to them. That’s the approach Myrtle Grove, a Christian private school in Wilmington, NC, plans to implement with its “Biblical Morality Policy.” The policy would both allow the school to refuse admission to LGBT children, or children with any LGBT relatives at all, and to expel them if any relatives reveal those tendencies.

And then those solely heterosexual families with no gay relatives or friends must sign on the dotted line swearing—so help them god—not to participate, support or in any way affirm “sexual immorality, homosexual activity, or bisexual activity; promoting such practices; or being unable to support the moral principles of the school.”

Icing on the cake? Salon reported that in spite of the blatantly discriminatory policy, Myrtle Grove will still be eligible for taxpayer-funded government subsidies in 2014.

10. John Derbyshire: 12 Years a Slave is “abolitionist porn,” and no, I haven’t seen it

Being fired for being too racist for the National Review is its own kind of distinction, and maintaining that status requires constant stoking. Fortunately, for former National Review columnist John Derbyshire, it’s second nature. This week he sounded off about 12 Years a Slave, which he would never see, mind you, mostly because he does not like black people either in screen or in real-life. But he has no need, because he already knows how unfair this movie is to those nice white southern slave-owners, and also that it just won’t show the cheerier side of slavery. As Right Wing Watch reported, in his latest racist column, Derbyshire calls 12 Years a Slave “Abolitionist Porn.”

Here’s an excerpt:

“Plainly there was more to American race slavery than white masters brutalizing resentful Negroes. Slavery is more irksome to some than to others; and freedom can be irksome, too.”

We’d like to add that murder, hatred and torture can be irksome as well. And some people rather enjoy being enslaved. Dare we suggest that Mr. Derbyshire might be enjoying some fetishistic, S&M porn of his own.

Read more here.