Derp Roundup: Your Weekly Index Of Idjits

Hi-diddly-ho, Wonkerinos, and welcome to another installment of Derp Roundup, the feature where we scrape up a bunch of stories that were too stoopid to ignore altogether, but not quite worth a full post of their own. It's like Thanksgiving leftovers that have sat out too long, except they were kind of rotten to begin with.

1. Our first sally into the slushpile takes us to Rome, Italy, where the State Department will be relocating -- not closing -- its embassy to the Vatican from a freestanding building to a building located inside the complex that houses the U.S. Embassy to Italy. The size of the staff will not change, the embassy to the Holy See will have a separate entrance from the embassy to Italy, and the new location will actually be a tenth of a mile closer to the Vatican. Oh, and the move will save $1.4 million a year. And the review process that led to the move began under George W. Bush. 

   Needless to say, this routine bit of housekeeping was denounced as "an unmistakable slap in the face" to American Catholics and as evidence of "the antipathy of this administration both to Catholics and to the Vatican -- and to Christians in the Middle East." You know, the whole war on religion thing. Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush jumped on the bandwagon, tweetering that Obama was "closing" the embassy as "retribution" for some American Catholics' opposition to the Affordable Care Act. Dead Breitbart's Home for Rabid Howler Monkeys opined that the move 

   looks to some as though the Obama administration is trying to diminish and discredit the Vatican’s role in the world because it's [sic] pro-life, pro-family, and pro-religious freedom values is at odds with the Regime's pro-abortion, pro-gay marriage stance.

   Saaaay... You know who else has been breaking with traditional Vatican obsessions on culture-war issues and hates capitalism, just like the Kenyan Keynesian? Heck, this guy even talks to atheists and relocated his own residence  from the Vatican's "Apostolic Palace" to a small guest house on the Vatican grounds, an unmistakable slap in the face to Catholics everywhere.

   Update: How could we forget? As Buzzfeed'sDorsey Shaw revealed this week, the real problem is that Barack Obama thinks he's the Pope:

   

1. In other New Pope News, fimicolous rage-fueled haranguebot Pam Gellerdenounced Francis's "Evangelii Gaudium" (The Joy of the Gospel) document, not for its slagging on capitalism, but for its call to "sustain dialogue with Islam" and to "embrace with affection and respect Muslim immigrants to our countries in the same way that we hope and ask to be received and respected in countries of Islamic tradition."

   Why, that's just RIDICULOSE, because anyone knows that all non-Muslims coming to such countries get their heads chopped off at the Arrivals gate. Geller took particular issue with the Pope's claim to know more about Islam than she does, because she is A Expert:

    Faced with disconcerting episodes of violent fundamentalism, our respect for true followers of Islam should lead us to avoid hateful generalisations, for authentic Islam and the proper reading of the Koran are opposed to every form of violence. 

   How does he know that? When did he become an imam? ... [snip of some "behead the infidel" verses from the Koran]

   Nothing will be gained by this refusal to face reality. Christians will still be slaughtered in the name of Islam and jihad all over the Muslim world. And now the Pope has forbidden Catholics to speak honestly about what is happening and why. It's a disgrace.

   Stupid ol' New Pope. A real Catholic leader would call for the nuking of Mecca . But... If Geller claims that she's better at interpreting the Koran than New Pope is, doesn't that mean she's an Imam? Well played, Ayatollah Geller!

1. A Florida Tea Party leader sent an email warning that the GOP in general, maybe, but very definitely the Broward County Republican Party, has been taken over by gay thugs, because some Florida Republicans seem willing to support the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA). Danita Kilcullen was driven to Great Butthurt by a generic press release calling for support of ENDA that was emailed by the Broward Log Cabin Republicans. Kilcullen fumed that the Log Cabin Republicans have "all but taken over" the Broward party, and that she will fight ENDA to her dying breath:

   I'll be damned if I will ever be forced to hire someone with orange hair, body/neck/face covered with tattoos, multiple piercings, or a man in a dress... or for that matter, a demonstrative effeminate male or purposeful butch-looking female.

   Apparently, she's perfectly OK with hiring accidentally butch-looking females, so really, there's no reason to call her judgmental.

1. In a surprising Confluence of Derp, Vivian Kubrick, the daughter of Wonkette's favorite director (is he, now?) Stanley Kubrick, made a rare public appearance, showing up in Dallas on November 22 to support Alex Jones's strange protest against the massive conspiracy to kill Kennedy with cancer-causing vaccines and create a race of elitist cyborg supermen or something. Jones and Kubrick chatted for a long time about tyranny and stuff, and how sheriffs at the demonstration tyrannically pushed people, just like in Nazi Germany. As RawStory points out, the 25-minute chat about shadowy evil forces didn't include any mention of the Church of Scientology, which pretty much took over Vivian Kubrick's life and forced her to cut off all ties with her father. But that's totally different, because only government can tyrannize people. We made it almost eight minutes into the video before shutting it down to protect our sanity; maybe you can beat that! Imperious! Tyranny! Disinfo! Think for yourself!

1. A German policeman was arrested in connection with the murder of a man whose dismembered body was found in the officer's Dresden backyard. Normally, this is the sort of horrific crime story we'd never cover, but for this WonkWorthy detail: The cop, whose name doesn't seem to have been released, met the victim online. At a cannibalism-fetish website.

   "The victim had been fantasising about being killed and eaten by someone else since his youth," Dresden's police chief, Dieter Kroll, told a news conference. It was not immediately clear whether any act of cannibalism had taken place.

   And yet another episode of  The I.T. Crowd  comes to life (yes, yes, and that was based on another German cannibal fetish murderin the early Aughts). And once again, the guiding principle of the old "Germany or Florida" game is confirmed: the kinky sex crimes are from Germany, the unbelievably stupid criminals are from Florida.

1. And in a story that is sort of Derp-meets-anti-Derp, the mayor of Hampton, Florida ( YEP! ), Barry Moore, was arrested and charged with possessing and selling Oxycodone; bail has been set at $45,000. Yes, yes, Florida mayor, drugs, blahblahblah, right? But! Attention must be paid! We proudly present our anti-Derp hero of the week, Bradford County Sheriff Gordon Smith, who released a statement saying,

   “This isn’t Toronto. We will not tolerate illegal drug activity in my jurisdiction by anyone to include our elected officials."

   Deliberate attention-seeking on the part of the sheriff? Goddamn right. And beautifully done.

[ WaPo / ThinkProgress / Breitbart / RightWingWatch / Sun-Sentinel via NYDN / RawStory / Guardian via tipline / TPM ]