Good Holy Christ, is this all they've got?

Geez...at least we had a war based on lies, massive sweeps of Americans' telephone and internet activity, people put on no-fly lists because they were anti-war activists, and billions of taxpayer dollars disappearing into the pockets of companies like Blackwater and Halliburton.

And they said we had Bush Derangement Syndrome.

Check this out:

Isn’t it just a pain in the neck when there’s an alternative media that prevents strict message control by a staged-photo-op of an administration and its willing mouthpieces in the MSM?

It’s painless for us, of course; rather, that pain is being felt in the necks of those who want to insist that a bow to a Saudi king isn’t a bow, that an omnibus spending bill with 9,000 earmarks is the beginning of earmark and fiscal reform, that indecisively waiting four days while an American ship’s Captain is held hostage on a rubber raft by four Somali pirates (before being bailed out by swift action by the hostage and a SEAL team) is bold, new leadership — and that a staged event with Obama voters only and a bunch of cameras handed out as props is a real sign of soldiers’ devotion to the new, inexperienced, non-military-friendly Commander in Chief of the United States Armed Forces.

This is the new favorite screech coming from the right -- when they aren't having the vapors over Obama's "narcissistic" naming of the family dog, that is.

So on what basis are they making this claim? Some idea -- not that they have any proof, or even evidence -- that Obama's people gave the soldiers identical digital cameras before the photo op in question; a sort of bribe-for-support.

As Greg Sargent reports, this is based on an anonymous call that some talk radio guy got from someone who claimed to be a sergeant in Iraq.

Because for the right, it's impossible to believe that a bunch of young soldiers, many of whom are black, would prefer a president closer to their own age than a 60-something-year-old guy who spent his cushy National Guard gig for which he didn't even bother showing up much of the time snorting coke off of hookers, then strutting across an aircraft carrier in a flightsuit with socks stuffed in the crotch as if he were some kind of drag king.

I guess if your eyes are so clouded with red at the idea of having a President who's at least partially ripping off the veil of bullshit that's been put up in front of the American citizenry for eight years that you can no longer see straight, the cameras in this photo WOULD all look alike.

Seriously. I am asking: Is this all they've got?

Nope. There's also the "Obama DHS Hit Job on Conservatives". I mean, after all, a massive increase in gun and ammo purchases, fueled by Congresswomen advocating that people be "armed and dangerous" to the Obama Administration, talk show lunatics predicting armed revolution have absolutely nothing to do with the return of the militia movement after it allowed George W. Bush to defecate all over the Bill of Rights for eight years.

Meanwhile, back on consensus reality, the wingnut hysteria over some notion that State Department nominee Harold Koh wants to install sharia law here in the U.S. has been debunked by no less a wingnut icon than Kenneth Starr, the über-Clinton-era pantysniffer. 71% of Americans have faith in Barack Obama's ability to do the right things for the economy. And only 53% of REPUBLICANS agree with Dick Cheney that Barack Obama is making America less safe.

The entire conservative part of the spectrum has become the wingnut equivalent of the A.N.S.W.E.R. left, except that most of even the progressive netroots, let alone mainstream Democrats, never paid any significant attention to the Code Pinkers and the Free Mumia crowd, because we knew damn well that their tactics were counterproductive and some of their views ridiculous. But mainstream Republicans are falling all over themselves to genuflect and kiss the rings of people like Glenn Beck and his ilk, because that lunatic base -- the gun nuts, the Sarah Palin photo masturbators, the guys still crouched under their beds with an AK-47, a roll of duct tape and a package of plastic sheeting -- is all they've got left.

Until recently, they could rely on most of the mainstream media to at least give them some legitimacy. But when even Joe Scarborough doesn't have the heart to tell Norm Coleman to keep fighting anymore, you know that the shark has been jumped ten times over.

UPDATE: Glenn Greenwald has a must-read piece on how conservatives are all of a sudden discovering that a surveillance state isn't so great after all.