Introducing the Wurlitzer Prize of the Week for Wingnuttery™

I gotta admit, when the idea came to me, I gave myself a palm-to-the-forehead, Homer-style “D’oh!” slap. I still can’t believe one of my liberal-blogger counterparts didn’t get there first.

There is plenty of wingnuttery out there, to be sure. I am certain that some weeks it will be difficult to select a winner. This week was rife with possibilities. There was Newt claiming that the war on the streets of America with illegal immigrants gunning down American teenagers is worse than the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. There was Time Magazine editor Michael Duffy on Hardball asserting that "for the last 25 years, Democrats have done everything they can to alienate religious voters, faith-minded voters" and Rudy making his absurd claim of the week, this time that he was at Ground Zero more than a lot of the rescue workers, when in reality he was there a grand total of 29 hours. There was Michael Gerson on the pages of the Washington Post feebly attempting to make the case that Karl Rove is the “opposite of a cynical political operative.” There is the entire body of work for last week of The Weekly Standard and The National Review, and pretty much anything posted at Town Toxichall. (Sorry, no links to those sad sites. If you read them, chances are pretty damned good that you don't read us, so...)

After inoculating myself against all forms of known pathogens, I waded into the fever-swamp of the Right and set about getting down to the business of finding a worthy recipient. So many choices! A veritable banquet of right-wingnuts just sitting there on the steam-tables, waiting to be selected! But alas, I could only pick one.

Our first Wurlitzer Prize™ is awarded to Ralph Peters of the New York Post for his ridiculous claim that al Qaeda targeted two Yazidi communities in the northwest Sinjar Province because they are losing and they are desperate, and the worst attack of the war to date is actually good news. If Ralph Peters was an amusement park attraction, you would have to be "this tall" to ride, he spins so furiously.

The foreign terrorists slaughtering the innocent recognize that their only remaining hope of pulling off a come-from-way-behind win is to convince your senator and your congressman or -woman that it's politically expedient to hand a default victory to a defeated al Qaeda.

First of all, there is no definitive proof that al Qaeda had anything to do with it, and no group has claimed credit for the devastation. Second, there was no al Qaeda in Iraq before Resident Evil™ opted to invade, and there will be no al Qaeda presence after we leave. The Iraqis have an aversion to all foreign fighters in their midst, not just coalition forces. The foreign militants will be slaughtered, or forced to flee on the heels of an American withdrawal. The ridiculous meme that Peters is pushing is merely cranking up the Mighty Wurlitzer to set the stage for the inevitable “liberals stabbed the military in the back” trope that they trotted out after Vietnam, and some are still embracing. It’s utter nonsense, of course, but it worked the last time, so they are set to dust it off once more, because it’s all they’ve got, after having been proven wrong, wronger, wrongest at every single turn. And besides all that, his man-crush on General Petraeus is just creepy.