Just Gotta Love The Crazy

(More bad news to report.  Sorry, gotta be done.  Rick (spell check: sanitarium?)) Santorum has finally decided to drop out of the Republican race for the GOP presidential nomination.  That's right, our man whose sweater vests defined an entire generation of Christian fundamentalist weirdos (you be the judge, is he or is he not cross-eyed?) and whose name became synonymous with anal lubricant discharge has abandoned us, leaving us with nothing but a robotic mormonesk stiff-collared nimrod named Mitt.  But wait! you cry.  There IS another!  The fun still continues.  There IS Mitt, but there is also NEWT!  Newt, the little huge-headed womanizer, the Mayor of the Moon, the grand wizard who, lurking behind the curtain, still cajoles us to click the heels of our ruby slippers and find ourselves back in Kansas or some other imaginary place once again, safe and sound. In our Conservative Book of Now WTF, Newt Gingrich is a whole new chapter of Crazy.  And we beseech him to hang in there, Baby.  Because try as we may, paint it any color you want, play any rockandroll, hiphop, techno, grandfunk philharmonic music you want, Mitt Romney all by himself is as interesting to watch as  a JT Wentworth commercial. And I'm being nice here, mind you.  So we join in the chorus of millions of the rest of us when we say "Hang In There, Newt!")

• And only because we love it so, allow us to speak more of the Crazy-That-Is-Called-GOP.  Apparently missing the grand old witch-hunting days when some paranoid lawmakers sought out Communists behind every woodpile, Republican Rep. Allen West said he believes 75-plus House Democrats are members of the Communist Party.  Ooh.  Evil Dooers, by thunder.  What flavor of kool-aid do Conservatives have to drink in order to become documented members of the GOP?  Whatever it is, keep it away from the children.  "Not even Joe McCarthy would have said anything so stupid ..." says Barney Frank.
• State Department of the United States of America admits that it is actively monitoring Peter Van Buren’s blogs, Tweets and Facebook updates that he posts during his private time on his personal home computer.  Mr. Van Buren is a Foreign Service officer for the State Department, and it seems he wrote a book critical of U.S. reconstruction projects in Iraq, We Meant Well: How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People. There's a lot more to this story, read about it here.
• And then came the headline that surprised exactly no one and delighted a great many, even as it openly terrified countless thousands across the deep south and also Utah and Kansas and pretty much the entire GOP. The poor dears. "Homophobes might be secretly attracted to people of the same sex."  Mark Morford reports on the biggest "Well Duh!" statements I've seen in a while.
• We were alarmed yesterday to see that the Gingrich campaign was having trouble with bouncing checks. That is, checks they're writing have insufficient funds in the account to cover the amount of money written on the check.  I'm sure that's basically how the whole thing works.  But what the hell, the check was for a $500 filing fee to get Newt's name on the ballot in Utah.  Mormanutah.  Mittutah. Where Mitt Romney is from.  (...) HANG IN THERE NEWT!  WE LOVE YA!
• We've mentioned this before on Bad Hat, about FOX News viewers being generally less informed about reality than the rest of us.  Well, we gotta add this to it: "Authoritarian people have a stronger emotional need for an outlet like Fox, where they can find affirmation and escape factual challenges to their beliefs."  Cris Mooney reports on The Science of Fox News: Why It's Viewers Are the Most Misinformed.