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CERTAIN SPECIMENS OF UBERCONSERVATIVE ZEALOTRY AND TRUE BELIEF JUST CAN'T LAY OFF BARAK OBAMA'S SUGGESTION that maintaining proper tyre pressure is but one way to save gas and maintain fuel economy. In fact, some, like former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, have suggested that such measures may only give aid and comfort to Our Sworn Enemies, a Think Progress recently documented (emphasis supplied):

Well, I got a very funny e-mail from a retired military officer in Tampa who pointed out that most tire inflation is done at service stations and you pay for it. And it's actually a higher profit margin than selling gasoline. So Sen. Obama was urging you to go out and enrich Big Oil by inflating your tires instead of buying gas.

The which Think Progress quickly deflates thus:

This claim is absurd for a number of reasons. First, gas station owners, not Big Oil, receive the profits from selling air — if they sell air at all (presumably from mechanized air machines). Second, air is free. So of course the profit margin for selling air is going be higher than a gallon of gas. By contrast, the cost of oil accounts for a significant portion of the price of gasoline. So any profits from gasoline sales (which are actually quite small) also go to the gas station owners, after Big Oil has already been paid.

But beyond Gingrich's ridiculous assertion, the Auto Alliance has noted that maintaining proper tire pressure is "more important than you may think" because it saves fuel and reduces costs and greenhouse gases.

Indeed, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R-CA) — whom Gingrich once praised as one of the "great winners" — agrees. Today he endorsed the thrust of Obama's idea, saying "you can reduce your fuel costs by more than 15%. And I am talking about simple things, like proper tire pressure, avoiding rapid starts and stops, and keeping your engine tuned."

And remember, folks, this is not the first time that Herr Gingrich has been a shill for the "Wise Use" crowd, as in equating wasteful and inefficent use with True Patriot Love in All Thy Sons Command.

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A COUPLE OF QUOTES FROM SUSAN TEST (AS PER THE NEW CARTOON NETWORK SENSATION JOHNNY TEST) which the "Traditional Values" crowd, for all their implied defence of male chauvinism as one with "preserving and strengthening the Traditional Family" (though not willing to use the word openly For Obvious Reasons, understand), may want to ponder enough to maybe reconsider their support of the Religiopolitical Right, for one:

• "Monster trucks are a stupid waste of time, and a sad attempt by men to deal with their own deficencies." (To which Your Correspondent wishes to add that said "deficencies" are probably aggravated by latent hubris excusing and @ once defending machismo.)
• "Men are born violent, stupid!"

Don't come crying to me if the message has somehow been lost on you....

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NO WONDER CONSERVATIVE "NEWS PORTALS" ARE THEMSELVES ENGAGING IN PROJECTION, METHINKS, BY BERATING THE "LIBERAL MEDIA ESTABLISHMENT" for "reckless and irresponsible journalism" when they're probably guilty thereof. Case in point, per ConWebBlog:

Brent Bozell goes on a remarkable run of misstatements in his Aug. 12 column while ranting against the media for not taking a supermarket tabloid's claims about John Edwards' affair at face value, as well as purported disparate treatment of Republican scandals:

Ask yourself: what did Rev. Ted Haggard's use of drugs and male prostitutes in Colorado have to do with the national Republican Party?

Who says he did? Not the media (in the U.S., anyway). Plug in "ted haggard republican" into Google, and the first hit is an article from the British newspaper the Guardian claiming that "The Republican party today was assessing the potential political fallout" from the Haggard scandal." The second is a satirical article from The Onion claiming that Haggard "revealed Wednesday that he was repeatedly molested by an unnamed Republican congressman in the late 1990s," adding, "Authorities have not acted on Haggard's allegations, saying that Republicans are often accused of wrongdoings simply because so many of them lead secret gay or criminal lifestyles." The only other article from a news organization, real or otherwise, on the first page of Google's results is a Rocky Mountain News article noting that Haggard has "direct access to President Bush," noting that "Republicans - who have leaned enormously on the vote of conservative Christians in recent years - already reeling from a series of congressional scandals." That would seem to answer Bozell's question.

Or Mark Foley's dirty Internet messages to congressional pages?

We'll let the New York Times answer that one: "Top House Republicans knew for months about e-mail traffic between Representative Mark Foley and a former teenage page, but kept the matter secret and allowed Mr. Foley to remain head of a Congressional caucus on children's issues."

What did Larry Craig's shoe placement in an airport bathroom in 2007 have to do with the Republican Party as a whole? The media treated that story as a much larger scoop than John Edwards cheating on the wife dying of cancer.

Let's see ... one case involved (at the time) unverified rumors promoted by a supermarket tabloid of someone who holds no political office and ceased being a candidate several months ago, the other involved an on-the-record guilty plea of a sitting congressman. Further, Edwards' affair is reported to have occured in 2006; Elizabeth Edwards' recurrence of breast cancer, which she may or may not be "dying" from, was revealed in March 2007.

[T]he very same media that almost immediately spread unproven trash on John McCain's alleged "romantic" relationship with lobbyist Vicki Iseman because the source was the allegedly professional New York Times now remained as quiet as a cabin full of Carthusian monks.

First, the Times never claimed McCain and Iseman had an affair; rather, the article noted that "Convinced the relationship had become romantic, some of his top advisers intervened to protect the candidate from himself" and that "to his advisers, even the appearance of a close bond with a lobbyist whose clients often had business before the Senate committee Mr. McCain led threatened the story of redemption and rectitude that defined his political identity."

Second, Bozell was singing a different tune about his new favorite supermarket taboid of choice just a few short months ago. Back in February, Bozell was attacking the Times over the McCain-Iseman story for being--wait for it--"fit to print only for the likes of the National Enquirer."

Bozell isn't slagging the "the likes of" the Enquirer now. Double standard much?

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IN MUCH THE SAME VEIN IS FOX PROLEFEED'S HABIT BORDERING ON VICE which suggests that anyone opposed to the Greater Conservative Agenda that Fox Prolefeed pushes is probably a Nazi in and of themselves, and, hence, ought not be trusted (up there with what kindergarten students back in Nazi Germany were taught about never trusting a fox on the meadow nor the word of a Jew).

NewsHounds illustrates that it may really be Fox Prolefeed playing the Nazi card:

Remember when the republican rightwing had its panties in a bunch about comparisons of the Bush administration with Nazis. They were just sooo outraged about Democratic Senator Dick Durbin's comparison of Gitmo to Nazi death camps. But in an amazingly hypocritical volte-face, the same rightwing uses Fox News to label anyone who strays from republican orthodoxy as–guess what–Nazis.

After receiving his talking point, Bill O'Reilly went on the offensive. In March of 2007, Bill O'Reilly in discussing the Democratic Party's opposition to Democrats participating in a Fox News televised debate in Nevada, said that "the Daily Kos or whatever that stupid thing is," and others "use propaganda techniques perfected by Dr. Joseph Goebbels.". In July of 2007, Bill O'Reilly compared Daily Kos to Nazis saying that "There's no difference between the KKK and the Nazis, who have websites, than the Daily Kos." He also said that "The website sells hate, as does the KKK and the Nazis. The comparison is valid." (Comment: Oh, the irony!) And who could forget that magical moment when Bill O'Reilly said, regarding Arianna Huffington, "I don't see any difference between Huffington and the Nazis." And in discussing the Rev. Jeremiah Wright (Obama guilt by association), non Mensa candidate, Fox's Ainsley Earhardt said regarding Rev. Jeremiah Wright, "I mean, Hitler did great things. Many Germans followed Hitler because they thought he did great things."

Last week's Obama Berlin was acclaimed, by those in the reality based media, as impressive; but that didn't stop Steve Doocy (not an historian) from making Barack Obama comparisons with Hitler. Stewart did a piece on Obama's appearance in Berlin which included a clip from the Fox morning kids show, Fox&Friends. Steve Doocy, not his usual inanely happy self (Obama was getting good reviews), made a statement which served to demonstrate either his lack of knowledge or a Fox talking point (or maybe both). Stewart showed a clip of Steve, not his usual cartoonish self, telling the audience that Obama was speaking at a monument "associated with Adolph Hitler." Stewart's response was priceless. The video, which includes a great Brit Hume imitation, is here:

The "association" of the monument with Hitler is a stretch as explained here:

It was moved to its current location, on the Grosser Stern plaza in the middle of the city's Tiergarten park, in the late 1930s as part of never-completed plans by Adolf Hitler's architect, Albert Speer, for a grandiose remake of Nazi Germany's capital, which was to be renamed "Germania." (Comment: Fox never lets the facts get in the way of propaganda. But association with Nazis–at least Obama didn't visit a German SS cemetery as did a past "messianic" Republican president!)

And to continue this theme of Obama as Hitler, we have Fox's favorite Canadian neo-con, Charles Krauthammer making this cute little statement "I'm not sure—I don't think he got a bounce. I'm not sure it was his intention. You don't get a bounce out of standing in front of 200,000 Germans at a rally who are chanting your name. Bad vibes sometimes, historically."

Comment: When Democrats use Nazi references, Fox gets upset - when Fox uses Nazi references to compare a Democratic Presidential Candidate to Nazis, not so much. But the Nazi card is just another in Fox's tainted deck of Obama smears.

Beg pardon, Fox Prolefeed, but in matter of fact, Nazism's articles of faith included a belief in Adolf Hitler as Supreme Leader and Saviour of Germany and the German People, the German nation being entitled "as of natural right" to being a world power, anti-Semitism being necessary to maintain the natural superiority of the German people (and, by extension, the "Aryan Master Race" of which Germans, in Nazi thought, were considered part of), and the use of domineering, even brutal, force to maintain its power against all enemies, real or imagined.

Dictionary.com thus cites the Online Etymology Dictionary for the following explanation of a possible origin for the term "Nazi" in describing members of what was officially known as the National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP, in its German abbreviate):

The 24th edition of Etymologisches Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache [Etymological Dictionary of the German Language] (2002) says the word Nazi was favored in southern Germany (supposedly from c.1924) among opponents of National Socialism because the nickname Nazi (from the masc. proper name Ignatz, Ger. form of Ignatius) was used colloquially to mean "a foolish person, clumsy or awkward person." Ignatz was a popular name in Catholic Austria, and according to one source in WWI Nazi was a generic name in the German Empire for the soldiers of Austria-Hungary. An older use of Nazi for national-sozial is attested in Ger. from 1903, but EWdS does not think it contributed to the word as applied to Hitler and his followers.

(In a similar vein is where the Japanese term kabuki, as in the traditional dramatic genre, is actually a corrupted form of kabuku, a Japanese colloquialism of the Tokugawa Era [1603-1868] describing ill-mannered or unseemly behaviour, as in suggesting that early kabuki performances were usually little more than low comedy or burlesque performed more often than not by prostitutes, the fact of which often led to rioting after performances ... in turn prompting the Shogunate to ban women from kabuki performances, thus restricting same to young men--only to lead to outbreaks of pedophilia as led to another edict, this time restricting the kabuki profession to mature men exclusively.)

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HAVE YOU HEARD THE NEW SLOGAN FOR FOX PROLEFEED?

As in: "And now, stay stewed for the nudes."