Alan Keyes In "Return To Ridiculousville" (We're Returning. He Never Left)

by: Paul Rosenberg

Sat Feb 21, 2009 at 09:00


Sprinting into the lead of the GOP Crazy Olympics, it's Alan Keys:

"Obama is a radical communist and I think it is becoming clear. That is what I told people in Illinois and now everybody realizes it is coming true.... He is going to destroy this country and we are either going to stop him or the United States of America is going to cease to exist....

"The man is an abomination.... That is a man with such a seared conscience, I can't even understand why anyone in their right mind would consider him worthy of political support....

"[He is a ]usurper occupying the office without constitutional warrant."

"He has refused to provide proof that he is in fact a natural-born citizen....

"Refused to provide proof" as in posted it on the Internet.  Obama's "Fight the Smears" website, as of last June:

Keyes:

I'm not even sure he is president of the United States."

Heck, he's not even sure what year it is. Or where he lives.  He's been under 72-hour observation longer than anyone else in history.

Paul Rosenberg :: Alan Keyes In "Return To Ridiculousville" (We're Returning. He Never Left)
This video is from KHAS, broadcast Feb. 19, 2009., via Raw Story.





Eat your heart out, Bling-Bling Steele. Keyes has been playing this crazy loser game a whole lot longer than you. Like since 2004:

Party           Democratic      Republican
Popular vote     3,597,456       1,390,690
Percentage          69.97%          27.05%
But, if you can match those results on a national scale, then "You da man!"

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Alan Keyes In "Return To Ridiculousville" (We're Returning. He Never Left) | 42 comments
Paging Jon Stewart... (4.00 / 2)

Not funny. (4.00 / 10)
Ordinarily I would enjoy a send-up of the idiot Alan Keyes, but this isn't funny:

"...we are either going to stop him or the United States of America is going to cease to exist...."

"The man is an abomination...."

This is a call for assassination, and as little as Paul Rosenberg or I or anyone else who is likely to read OpenLeft is inclined to take Alan Keyes or anything he says seriously, it isn't hard to imagine what effect calling the President an "abomination" who must be stopped before the United States "ceases to exist" might have on some semi-literate skin-head in Alabama or Idaho.

It's no coincidence (3.33 / 6)
The party of gun nuts and clinic bombers knows what it's doing, they are hoping for a repeat of what happened in Knoxville.

Montani semper liberi
[ Parent ]
I don't like the GOP anymore than you... (1.33 / 3)
But that's fucked up to lump all the GOP as people who want to kill Obama or see him dead.  It's a small fringe minority, just as there was a small fringe minority that wanted to see Bush, Clinton, etc. dead.

Shame on you for even making that ignorant blanket statement.   Disagree with the GOP on the issues, but to say the party represents murderers is spouting as much bullshit as Keyes spews... you are no better than him.  

And before you reference Jacob's comment, he CALLS OUT KEYES and the fringe, not saying the entire GOP are advocating murder.

[ Parent ]
And just to further clarify... (2.00 / 2)
I agree the GOP is declaring war on Obama, just as they did Clinton and Carter.  I don't agree that the whole GOP wants to try and kill or see Obama dead.   A small fringe, yes... but not the entire party as Sadie states.  Those kind of comments are just as bad as the lunatics on the right make and the two people that gave that a 4 need to really examine what was said and pull their heads out of their ass.
[ Parent ]
I agree with both sides of this argument. (0.00 / 0)
Like yitbos96bb, I don't believe that Olympia Snowe or John McCain or other mainstream Republicans are encouraging the assassination of Barack Obama, but I also partly agree with Sadie Baker that allowing psychos like Alan Keyes to call themselves Republicans is almost as malignant as if the RNC were actually calling for violence against the President.

And may God forbid that any such thing occurs!

[ Parent ]
As one of those people who rated Sadie's comment a 4, (4.00 / 2)
I think you should pay a little more attention to what's been going on around you. The Republicans you praise for being so morally stainless have been profiting from the crassest eliminationist rhetoric for more than forty years, and none of these righteous murder incitations from your small fringe has so much as made them blush. John McCain may not be a murderous scumbag himself, but he's long been willing to lick the boots of those who are. If there were any justice in the world, he'd wind up in the same cell block.

I make no apologies to you or any of the others who take such pleasure in shaking their fingers at us and admonishing us that Republicans are human beings too. Of course they are, they're just not very admirable ones.

[ Parent ]
You need to read more (4.00 / 4)
Start with Dave Niewert's blog, Orcinus.

Montani semper liberi
[ Parent ]
Troll Rated For Troll Rating Sadie (4.00 / 2)
That's NOT what troll-rating is for, dufus!

"You know what they say -- those of us who fail history... doomed to repeat it in summer school." -- Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Season 6, Episode 3
[ Parent ]
The party "represents" murderers? (4.00 / 2)
You think that Keyes is a far-out outlier in an otherwise sensible party and movement whose ideas and policies we might passionately disagree with, but whose members are mostly decent folks? Are you freaking kidding me?!? This is a party whose most prominent leaders:

--Lied to the country and world to take it to a war that's caused the utterly senseless and needless deaths of thousands of US troops and hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis, brought sheer misery upon those who weren't outright killed, and continues to proudly claim that this was the morally, militarily and geopolitically right thing to do.

--Proudly support and call for yet more torture, illegal rendition and detention, and wars.

--Called for the murder of federal "activist" judges.

--Figuratively and literally embrace far-right "religious" hate-mongers who yearn for mass genocide (Armaggedon) and the murder of family planning providers.

--Were behind the illegal covert policies in the 80's that caused the murder of thousands of innocent Central Americans.

And so on. And Keyes is an outlier?!? You've got to be freaking kidding me. And Hitler was just a shrill lunatic. (And no, Godwin does not apply here--he allowed for valid Nazi comparisons, and today's GOP is absolutely a fascist party that, were it able to, would convert the country to open fascism, and tried to do precisely that over the past 8 years.)

What fantasy world are you living in where the likes of Snowe, Specter and Collins represent the majority of Repubs? And even they're not exactly the moderate Repubs of the past, on the Javits, Chafee and Burke mold. That party is DEAD, and has been for several decades.

"Those who stand for nothing fall for anything...Mankind are forever destined to be the dupes of bold & cunning imposture" -- Alexander Hamilton

[ Parent ]
And I forgot the biggest refutation of your point of all (4.00 / 3)
Where are those vast numbers of decent, sensible and upstanding Repubs that you refer to who have come out to unequivocally denounce Keyes and his crazy eliminationist and seditious rantings and thoroughly disassociate themselves from him and his crazy ideology?

I'll give you time to come up with a list. Is 10 seconds enough? Ok, you can have 20...

"Those who stand for nothing fall for anything...Mankind are forever destined to be the dupes of bold & cunning imposture" -- Alexander Hamilton

[ Parent ]
You're Quite Right (4.00 / 2)
And if the Democratic Party weren't over-run by the likes of willfully blind folks like yitbos96bb, we would have nipped all of this in bud at least 20 years ago.

Of course sweet little old ladies who knit sweaters for clinic bombers aren't terrorists.  They're little old ladies who aid and abet terrorists.  And the GOP is just chock full of them.  Which is part of why the GOP is not doing so well with attracting young voters anymore.

"You know what they say -- those of us who fail history... doomed to repeat it in summer school." -- Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Season 6, Episode 3

[ Parent ]
Why so negative about yitbos96bb? (0.00 / 0)
I don't see either violent rhetoric, or intention to provoke violence in Olympia Snowe, or Arnold Schwarzenegger (Harhar! How's that for an example of non-violence?!) that I hear from a freak like Keyes, and IMHO that's all yitbos96bb was saying.

Neither party has clean hands when it comes to condoning and supporting violence, and plenty of Congressional Democrats voted for the War Powers Resolution in 2003, and the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution a long, long time ago, but not so long ago that there aren't some of us still alive who recognize the names of friends on the Vietnam Memorial.

[ Parent ]
Well.... (4.00 / 2)
Odd that you should name two of the half-dozen or so genuinely moderate Republicans still left standing after decades of RINO purges. If Snowe weren't in New England, where they still hate Southern fundamentalist yahoos, and Arnie hadn't delivered the GOP crazies in California from the horrors of Gray Davis, they'd have long since been sent to the same ash heap as Nelson Rockefeller.

Why not talk to us about someone a little more typical of the modern GOP, like, say, Grover Norquist, or Rudi Giuliani, or even St. effing McCain?

[ Parent ]
Jacob's A Troll (4.00 / 1)
A very clever and well-informed one, but the bad faith argumentation gives him away every time.  And that's precisely why he cites the figures he does.

"You know what they say -- those of us who fail history... doomed to repeat it in summer school." -- Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Season 6, Episode 3
[ Parent ]
I know, but... (0.00 / 0)
it was more dear yitbos and his pieties that I had in mind addressing -- in the interest of enhancing the general welfare, you understand.

Jacob loves sticking pins in everyone, but like so many who  take their egos more seriously than the positions they're advocating at the moment, he's relatively harmless, even when confronted in the darker recesses of the Intertubes.

[ Parent ]
A Relatively Harmless Troll, It's True (0.00 / 0)
But a troll, nonetheless.

"You know what they say -- those of us who fail history... doomed to repeat it in summer school." -- Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Season 6, Episode 3
[ Parent ]
Speaking of trolls... (0.00 / 0)
I'm not a big fan of Tweety, but boy does he nail it here:



"Those who stand for nothing fall for anything...Mankind are forever destined to be the dupes of bold & cunning imposture" -- Alexander Hamilton

[ Parent ]
Jacob Freeze is "very clever and well-informed!" Thanks, Paul! (0.00 / 0)
This looks good on my resume, coming from a very clever and well-informed writer like Paul Rosenberg, so this thread is a fantastic success!

But I think I may have disqualified myself as a water-carrier for the GOP by calling them "Republican Torture-Pigs and Perverts," here, here, here, here, here, and elsewhere, and now I'm doomed to remain just another marginalized left-wing fanatic for Dennis Kucinich forever.


[ Parent ]
Rush Limbaugh, (4.00 / 6)
Ann Coulter. That's who the GOP is, today.

Montani semper liberi
[ Parent ]
I hope they preserve his brain after he dies (4.00 / 4)

 There must be a term ready to be coined that describes the psychological profile of Alan Keyes. Because he is as unique an individual as can be.

 It's mind-boggling how little self-respect a person must have to prostitute himself in service of the far right the way Alan Keyes does.

He "served" as the Republican opponent to Senator Barbara Mikulski here in Maryland a couple of times, and he got his ass whupped both times. He carpetbagged over to Illinois so that Obama could leave a few tire tracks on his back. Now he galavants around the nation spewing out doctrinaire vomit.

All for...what?

What a sad, pathetic creature Alan Keyes is. But fascinating. There are seven billion people on this planet, and Alan Keyes is sui generis -- a man who will be studied and who will appear in psychological textbooks for centuries to come.  

"We judge ourselves by our ideals; others by their actions. It is a great convenience." -- Howard Zinn

Wouldn't he be the perfect AB E. NORMAL? HA! (0.00 / 0)
Speaking of ridiculousville but a bit off topic- does anyone know if the Republicans let Harry Reid include any $$ for the unemployed disabled or low income SS recipients?   There is a credit of $400 per person -but is only for those who pay in some kind of tax??

Nationalism is not the same thing as terrorism, and an adversary is not the same thing as an enemy.
[ Parent ]
And... (0.00 / 0)
What about people who supposedly 'worked' as self employed, but had so many write offs and credits they never paid in a dime.  Do they get the refund too??


Nationalism is not the same thing as terrorism, and an adversary is not the same thing as an enemy.
[ Parent ]
Wow! Alan Keyes won a few counties in Illinois? (4.00 / 4)
Man, that's sad!

REID: Voting against us was never part of our arrangement!
SPECTER: I am altering the deal! Pray I don't alter it any further!
REID: This deal keeps getting worse all the time!
Really! (4.00 / 3)
I was rather intrigued by that, too.  Notice how most of them are closely clumped together.  Makes you wonder.  Something in the water, perhaps?  Or maybe the wind?  Hallucinogenic mushroom spores, perhaps?

"You know what they say -- those of us who fail history... doomed to repeat it in summer school." -- Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Season 6, Episode 3
[ Parent ]
THose are definately rural right wing counties... (4.00 / 1)
But yeah after living here for that election, I never realized he won any counties either.  I just remember the massive ass kicking he got and that douche never conceding.
[ Parent ]
Olbermann dealt with him last night (4.00 / 3)
Link

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30...

With Jonathan Alter

Yes, Even The Tepid Jon Alter.... (4.00 / 6)
Managed to draw the appropriate connections to the all-out war the Reps waged on Clinton.

"You know what they say -- those of us who fail history... doomed to repeat it in summer school." -- Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Season 6, Episode 3
[ Parent ]
I'm also baffled as to why the Keyes story is on the front page of (4.00 / 1)
the LAT website. No doubt controversy sells, but come freaking on.  
This Is What The GOP Has Become (4.00 / 8)
Seriously.

What else have they got?

"Reviving the economy will destroy America"?

"You know what they say -- those of us who fail history... doomed to repeat it in summer school." -- Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Season 6, Episode 3

[ Parent ]
In times of lunacy, a little leftist invocation of my own (4.00 / 4)
To be a leftist of a certain age times like these is to be a sort of intellectual dyspeptic. Like everybody else, you get the Haggards, the O'Reillys, and the lost souls like Alan Keyes on the one hand, but on the other....

Rallies of the well meaning. In the West, they tend not to be political, at least not in the sense of short, chunky types festooned with buttons and adamant about the rights of labor, or of the LGBT community. We get tiny women in their late fifties or early sixties, with meticulously-combed gray hair reaching to the middle of their backs, and names like Harmony Windsong, who could still fit into the dresses they wore in high school if they had a mind to, part wraith, and part embalmed girl.

They wear long, flowing skirts reaching almost to the ground, loops of beaded necklace, wispy shawls and, yes, Birkenstocks. They lead us in exercises reminiscent of a five year-old's first ballet lessons, or they teach us to breathe, or they read interminable poems full of dappled sunlight and meadowlarks. You can't pry the microphone away from them for fear of breaking something.

Here, at least, one can look at 3-axis charts which detail the varieties of political experience, and how they're related historically, debate when a populist is a progressive, and when not, and pray for the end of such abominations as the conservative Democrat.

It ain't much, but when too much American diversity threatens to overwhelm me, it's enough to make all those acts of self-medication seem more plotted, and thus less desperate. I may not sound particularly grateful, but I am, I really, really am.

you should meet some of the Republicans (4.00 / 3)
who caucused for Keyes in Iowa in 2000. Talk about crazy!

Join the Iowa progressive community at Bleeding Heartland.
Do You Have Any Links To Contemporaneous Coverage? (0.00 / 0)
Either media, or preferably bloggers?

It would seem like a timely moment for a look back.

"You know what they say -- those of us who fail history... doomed to repeat it in summer school." -- Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Season 6, Episode 3

[ Parent ]
I hadn't discovered blogs at that time (0.00 / 0)
and I can't think of any Iowa conservative bloggers who have been writing that long, but I'll see what I can find.

Join the Iowa progressive community at Bleeding Heartland.
[ Parent ]
Yes, you told us so in that impressive MyDD diary... (0.00 / 0)
..about Steve Gilliard and how me made a lasting impression on you, even though you missed his DKos days of blogging. A great story, and a noble cause, remembering people of Gilly. It's sad that we already lost some of the pioneers of the blogosphere, but they shouldn't become forgotten! Thx for that touching memorial, and sry for getting a bit off topic here.

P.S.: Why not cross-post this story in your diary here, too? almost missed it, since I don't reglarly read MyDD or the GNB anymore, and imho this should reach a larger audience.  

[ Parent ]
Btw, here's what Steve wrote about Keyes... (4.00 / 1)
..a quite typical story, showing that Gilliard never held back when putting his opinion into powerful words. Strong stuff!

I don't want there to be any misunderstanding. Black people hate what Alan Keyes stands for.

I'm sure that some people like the guy, there are some useless fools who call themselves Republican. who do, but to most black people in America, he is simply a traitor. He betrays the community, the culture, everything good about being black.
...
Now, I know being black isn't easy, and some people, unfortunately, are driven crazy. I mean did Keyes try to lighten his skin? Bathe in milk? Why did he have to try so hard to adapt the way of his masters.

It isn't even that he's a conservative. There are lot of people who are black and conservative, at least socially. But Keyes crossed over and decided to take stands which would hurt black people, to prove he wasn't like us. He wanted to be a special negro, one white people would like, would let run something.

But of course, they would no more do that than let him marry their daughters.
...
People need to understand that black conservatives are our shame, our embarassment. People driven mad to assimiliate at ANY cost, their soul, their dignity, common sense.

Look at the respect people like Tom Joyner, Tavis Smiley and even Oprah gets. They don't debase themselves for the approval of white people. They have character and dignity. Look at the gollum which is Alan Keyes and you see something entirely different, sadder, but different.
http://stevegilliard.blogspot....

[ Parent ]
Alan Keyes Needs (0.00 / 0)
A new ontology.
Maya (4.00 / 3)
If you want to become more personally disgusted with Keyes, check out what his daughter wrote after daddy discovered she was gay.

{{--{mood}--{{but there's still tomorrow, forget the sorrow; and I can be on the last train home}}--{mood}--}}
...except the last train home has left without me

I tried to love you and I failed...

Well, it's happened.  Finally and officially.

A couple days ago I got my official two-week warning that I have to be out of this apartment; so finally for real I'm getting cut off.  I got no severance or anything like that from my sudden termination of employment (don't I have freedom of speech? the right to protest Bush without losing my job? Hehe... most people would think that working under a parent would be security but for me it's quite the opposite.) and so I definitely don't have anywhere near enough cash to find a new apartment; not even one room rented from someone anywhere.  I've been searching craigslist but even places where I'd have enough to pay the first month's rent on some room I never have enough for the deposit as well, so so far I've had no luck at all finding a new home, since shelter requires money. Sad boo.

...

Maya was 20 and working for her father at the time, supporting him against Obama for Senator, actually.

Also see: here, here, here.

Maya and some of her friends popped over to the comments, which was cool for me.  I was particularly interesting to see their conversation with a conservative blogger that often linked with mine.  He simply could not except that someone was kicked out because they were gay and assumed there must have been drugs or something else going on.

That last two posts are about her dying friend who was kicked out of his house as a teenager because he was gay.  The guy lived out the final years of his life a street kid, not really getting by at all.  (I was going to say 'just barely getting by', but it did kill him.)  Incredibly sad stuff.  I'll never understand how people can treat other people, particularly their own children, that way.

Check out this image of evil!

I Remember This (4.00 / 1)
Though I didn't get as deeply into the details, particularly about her friend.

Obviously, this sort of behavior (on behalf of Keyes) has nothing whatsoever to do with religion itself, and everything to do with "the Devil quoting Scripture if it suits his purpose."

Unfortunately, for far too many people, this is exactly what religion has become.  In their own lingo, they are fully committed to following the anti-Christ, and if Jesus himself came back, they would eagerly be the very first ones to seek to stone him, no doubt for continuing his same old low-down ways, hanging out with beggars, lepers, prostitutes and such, and railing against wealthy bankers and corrupt politicians.

"You know what they say -- those of us who fail history... doomed to repeat it in summer school." -- Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Season 6, Episode 3

[ Parent ]
Keyes' rationality (0.00 / 0)
Keyes should not be decried immediately as irrational, ridiculous, or crazy.

While it is a moot point to bring up issues of Obama's citizenship or natural birth at this stage, if one starts with the premises Keyes starts with, his statements seem logical. We cannot only look at his concluding remarks and dismiss him out of hand - the debate truly lies with where he starts.  He says Obama was born outside the United States.  If we accept that, we would accept that under the constitution, he cannot be the president of the United States.  Of course, many believe he was born in Honolulu as displayed by the certificate on the site.  But don't birth certificates usually say the name of a hospital and a doctor?  Is this not simply an attestation of live birth for which any person can apply and have made?  Please correct me if I'm wrong.  I'm just trying to play devil's advocate here.  

Next, as to the economy, Keyes' argument that there is no money is absolutely true.  Where does the money come from?  Governments essentially only make money from taxes (and loans and printing money), so if this debt is not paid by us as taxpayers now, it will be paid by our children.  The strain of fiscal conservatism that Keyes hits on is very mainstream.  People feel it does not make economic sense to help failing companies stay afloat.  The argument is that bad debt should be liquidated, companies and banks should go bankrupt, and the market should sort out prices rather than the government fixing them at artificial levels.  Who knows that this "do nothing" plan wouldn't actually work after about a year as new companies emerge and people start buying things again when prices fall? His conclusion is that under the mass spending, printing, and strain put on the dollar in Obama's plan, we will see the collapse of our economic system. Of course, Obama cannot be to blame for this economic crisis.  It's been brewing for a while and Keyes' own party has a lot to do with the conditions which allowed it to happen.  

Finally, Keyes' point about Obama and infanticide.  I have no idea if its true or not, but let us assume for his arguments that it is.  The direct conclusion that anyone who would allow infanticide is an abomination makes sense.  

So when Keyes' conclusions are just listed off, they seem crazy, loony, and irrational.  He is still too partisan, vindictive, and quick to sling mud, but one can see his statements actually do have logic to them if one cedes his premises.      

Your Attempts To Rehabilitate Keyes Are The REAL Danger (4.00 / 1)
Keyes is self-evidently crazy.  All one has to do is watch him.

Your attempt to re-present him as rational, an attempted mainstreaming of the lunatic fringe, is where the real danger lies.

After all, Hitler, too, was quite sane and logical, if one granted his premises.

Except for when he wasn't.

"You know what they say -- those of us who fail history... doomed to repeat it in summer school." -- Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Season 6, Episode 3

[ Parent ]
Everyone who disagrees with Obama is a lunatic. (0.00 / 0)
All I'm trying to do is get away from character assassination and separate out the ideas. Oddly enough, a lot of people may agree with Keyes' ideas.  Does that make them all lunatics and "dangerous"?  Is it a crime to disagree with Obama?  Should they be censored?

Its also too easy to compare someone to Hitler to bring the point home.  Keyes is really nothing like Hitler in too many ways to count.  He simply feels strongly that the direction Obama is leading this country is the wrong direction.  Of course his conviction has led him to make assumptions and those assumptions may be incorrect.  However, it doesn't further the argument to simply dismiss him as self-evidently crazy.  

[ Parent ]
Alan Keyes In "Return To Ridiculousville" (We're Returning. He Never Left) | 42 comments
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