A Children's Treasury Of Derp: Your Labor Day Loonworld Roundup

Welcome to a special Labor Day edition of picked-up pieces, a baggy collection of stories that were too stoopid to ignore altogether, but that we couldn't quite manage a full post on. Or just didn't wanna. At the top of the list, Tucker Carlson snoozing on the set of Fox & Friends, because there's really not much more to say about it, other than "Hey, look at this professional teevee idjit sleeping on a couch!" Carlson's thoughts on the matter were limited to “Is this honestly live?” and "I was having these happy thoughts and I dozed off ... Is this honestly on TV?" There's probably a metaphor here, we think.  Stay in school, kids.

• Arkansas state Sen. Jeremy Hutchinson, who wants to deputize teachers and let them carry guns at school, took part in an "active shooter" simulation that played out a scenario where an armed bad guy invaded a classroom. Armed with a gun that fired rubber bullets, Hutchinson sprang into action...and shot the "teacher" who had a gun trained on the "bad guy." The money quote, from Hutchinson: "It was intense, enlightening and when we weren't being shot, it was fun ... I learned how little I knew about school safety." And now he knows how to shoot the wrong person, so we'd say our legislators is learning.

• New Mexico State Sen. William Sharer, who's leading the effort to block county clerks in the state from issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples, explained his opposition to gay marriage in a blog post where he said that marriage is all about “Procreation through the natural acts of men and women" and explained that even Alexander the Great “may have engaged in homosexual activity, but hemarrieda woman." Taking this as his historical template, he noted that Alexander

  directed his officers to stop “whoring” around and find a local woman to marry.

  WHY?

  BECAUSE

  “It is only through blood relations that hatred and war will end”. In other words, Alexander the Great thought that marriage was about creating and raising the next generation.

  Sharer also cited other examples of men and women getting married and having babies to prove that that purpose of marriage is for men and women to have babies, building to this 100% airtight statement of logical certainty: "Sex between a man and a woman produces babies -- society needs babies -- babies need both moms and dads." Sen. Sharer has been nominated for the 2013 Tautology Prize.

•  Radio wingnut Stan Solomon -- who has previously warned of the army of angry blacks that Barack Obama will soon incite to pursue a race war -- announced that Trayvon Martin was a "thug that deserves to be dead and I’m glad he’s dead" and added that he hopes Dan Savage will also die soon, because it only makes sense to associate the shooting of a 17-year-old with a wish for a guy with a sex advice column to die "of every disease known." To sum up, he said that white people need to buy guns to protect themselves from all the racist minorities, because Christians are under attack in this country. Jesus Christ, the Prince of Peace, was unavailable for comment.

• A gentleman in Maine, David Marsters, was questioned by the Secret Service last week after posting a Facebook message with a link to a story about impeaching President Obama along with the comment "Shoot the nigger." He insisted that the post was not a threat, because he did not include the words "I will" and because his fingers were crossed when he clicked "post." Marsters told the Bangor Daily News that the comment was not racist, because

  his comments would have been no different had the president been Mitt Romney. “I would say, ‘Shoot the n*****, because white people are n******, too.” He said where he comes from (Massachusetts) black people call white people by the same slur.

  Marsters is also convinced that the President's birth certificate is a forgery, and that he "believes Obama was placed in power by people Marsters wouldn’t name." Following news reports on his comments, Marsters has resigned from three local volunteer town committees, but plans to continue his run for a position as a town selectman. He also hopes to pursue his dream of becoming a minor character in a Steven King novel.

• Stepping away from people saying terrible things to people (allegedly) doing terrible things, we have the tale of Sutter County, California, District Attorney Carl Adams, who may or may not be connected to an arson fire that gutted the home of a former escort with whom he had an affair. The July 21 fire burned out the home of Sarah Garibay, who says she doesn't think that Adams set the fire; rather, she suspects "two other lovers who had recently expressed anger or jealousy toward her" and may be trying to smear Adams. On the other hand, Adams showed up at the fire scene the morning after the fire, made comments about "details no investigator remembered sharing with him," and went outside of normal procedures to seek financial assistance for Garibay. Money quote for this story, from Ms. Garibay: “Just because someone has a promiscuous kind of life doesn’t make them any less of a victim[.]” True enough. It just makes for a more interesting movie adaptation.

• Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard was threatened by a seriously weird man named Aniruddha Sherbow, who was arrested in Mexico after threatening to "sever her head from her body." The congresswoman's parents may have connections to the same obscure Hare Krishna sect as Sherbow, although Gabbard identifies herself as a Hindu, not a Hare Krishna. Sherbow stalked Gabbard in 2011 and seems to have a definite Charles Guiteau vibe to him that has virtually nothing to do with religion at all. Ick! Here's hoping he gets the help he clearly needs.

• Barack Obama put his foot up on a desk again. Wingnuts were outraged.

• Bill Whittle, a speaker at Americans for Prosperity's "RightOnline" Conference in Orlando, diagnosed the problem with American political culture:  we've gone from likingSuperman to watching Family Guy, with its "anti-American, anti-capitalist, anti-Christian, anti-morality messages." Sure, why not.

 Thanks to all you tipsters! You guys rawk. 

[ RawStory / Slate / TPM / RightWingWatch / Bangor Daily News / TPM / TPM again / TheBlaze / RawStory ]