Kyle Mantyla's blog

After watching the Republican presidential candidates lose the last two elections, right-wing activist Ken Blackwell cooked up a scheme whereby states would move away from winner-take-all allocations of electors to a system in which Electoral College votes would be assigned according to congressional districts.

The result would be that a Republican presidential candidate who does not win the overall popular vote in the state could still end up receiving a majority of that state's electoral votes simply by virtue of winning the popular vote in more individual districts.

Today, Blackwell appeared on "WallBuilders Live" to promote this scheme, where it was met with enthusiastic support from Rick Green and David Barton. As Blackwell explained, if every state had implemented this plan for the 2012 election, Mitt Romney would have won despite the fact that he lost the overall popular vote by nearly 5 million votes.

That, of course, is ridiculous ... and the fact that people think it is outrageous is, according to Blackwell, a sign that it is a good idea:

Blackwell: There's an old farmer's tale that if you throw a brick at a pack of pigs, the one that squeals is the one you hit.  Well, when we put this out there, the Left started squealing, the New York Times started squealing, so we must be on to something.

Green: You must be on to something. No doubt about that.  I haven't had a chance to look, I don't if anyone has done a map, I'd be real curious to know if every state did this, how would the last few elections [have gone]? Have you had a chance to look?

Blackwell: I already know. If every state did it, Romney would have won the election.  And so that's another reason that the Left just instinctively dislikes it.

...

Barton: This actually is a way to give the people a greater voice rather than just having the majority slap it to the minority every time you turn around. And I really like what he's proposed here with reverting back out of the winner-take-all philosophy of the states, going back to congressional district take all, which is a good way to do it.

Only to David Barton could a scheme designed to ensure that a Republican candidate who loses the national popular vote would still win the election be a good idea because it supposedly give "the people a greater voice."

Yesterday, The Daily Mail ran an article reporting that Saudi government had delivered a written warning to the Department of Homeland Security about accused Boston Marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev and had even been so concerned about his radical views that it had denied him a Visa to enter Saudi Arabia.

Later in the day, the article was updated to reflect the fact that the Saudi embassy denied the claims entirely:

But the Middle Eastern nation's embassy in Washington denied that account on Wednesday.

It issued a statement which read: 'The Saudi government had no prior information about the Boston bombers. Therefore, it is not true that any information, written or otherwise, was passed to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) or any other US agency in this regard,' an embassy statement statement claimed.

'The Saudi government also does not have any record of any application by Tamerlan Tsarnaev for any visa to Saudi Arabia.'

But it didn't really matter, because people like Glenn Beck had already seized on the original story and were running with it.  Even though Beck's own The Blaze reported on the Saudi government's denial of the claims, Beck never once bothered to even mention it as he instead just continued to cite the original Daily Mail story last night because it fit into his narrative that there is some conspiracy at work behind the bombing.

Ignoring the fact that his new belief that the Saudi government warned the US government about Tsarnaev is seemingly at odds with his other theory that Saudi Arabia was somehow behind the Boston bombing, Beck eventually wound up screaming at a video of President Obama, yelling that "if allowing terrorist attacks to happen after ignoring specific warnings is what the FBI and DHS is supposed to be doing, Mr. President, I want my tax dollars back! Get ready for some more blood in the streets America":

On his television program last night, Glenn Beck announced that ever since the re-election of President Obama, and increasingly so following the Boston Marathon bombing, he has been sensing that his mission has been changing. 

No longer is he being called to warn the nation that disaster lies ahead if we do not change our path, he explained, because now he is being called to point out the exits as America zooms past mile markers signaling that we're just about to go over the edge ... you know, just like in the movie "Back To The Future III":

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• Oliver Willis @ Media Matters: Ted Nugent: Military Service Members Are Committing Suicide Because Obama Is "Violating" The Constitution.
• Towleroad: Wisconsin Church Cancels Former NFL Player LeRoy Butler's Speech Over Tweet Supporting Jason Collins.
• Jim Burroway @ Box Turtle Bulletin: Robert Gagnon Explains Why Consensual Gay Relationships Are Worse Than Bestiality and Incest.
• Candace Chellew-Hodge @ Religion Dispatches: Hater Pastor Loses His Wife of 42 Years, Uses the Occasion to Trash Gays.
• Carlos Maza @ Equality Matters: Alex Jones Warns Against Transgender People “Vomiting And Crapping All Over The Place” If They’re Protected By Non-Discrimination Laws.
• Emily Heil @ In The Loop: Mitt Romney wants you to get married in your 20s (also, get a ‘quiver full’ of kids).

• Rick Joyner claims that Timothy McVeigh "was a left-wing extremist."
• Focus on the Family comes to the defense of Chris Broussard and encourages activists to show him support.
• Ted Cruz for President in 2016!
• FRC issues its latest prayer update: "The scourge presently upon our nation - wars, devastating weather, acts of terrorism, confusion and failure among our government leaders, spiritual confusion in many of our churches, decimation of the family, economic decline, government oppression, advancing socialism, government promoted and protected abortion, homosexualized politics, etc., are all the fruits and consequences of individual and collective sin and a departure from the God of the Bible."
• Finally, we won't hold our breath waiting for Bryan Fischer to correct the record after he spent several segments claiming that Saudi Arabia provided the US with a direct warning about Tamerlan Tsarnaev based on this article, which the Saudi government now denies.

On today's radio broadcast, Glenn Beck got pretty worked up about the fact that the jury in the trial of Kermit Gosnell has now entered the second day of deliberations, since Beck thinks it is an open and shut case and it should only have taken them seconds to find Gosnell guilty. 

That eventually prompted Beck to declare that this nation has become so evil that God "has got to destroy us; we are becoming an affront to him in every step of the way. We are denying his existence. We are denying his power. We are slapping him in the face. We are killing his children" before he broke down weeping, tearfully begging God to forgive us and remember that there are still millions of people here who are good:

On AFA's "Today's Issues" this morning, Wayne Allyn Root joined host Tim Wildmon to promote his new book "The Ultimate Obama Survival Guide: How to Survive, Thrive, and Prosper During Obamageddon."  Root and Wildmon agreed that President Obama is working to intentionally ruin the economy as a means of destroying the country based on a plan that Obama learned while attending Columbia University.

Root says that he knows this for a fact because this was exactly what he was taught when he attended Columbia with Obama ... despite the fact that Root never once saw Obama during their time as classmates.  Apparently Root knew everyone at Columbia during his time in college but never saw Obama, which must mean "that maybe he never went to class, maybe he was too busy attending socialist party meetings, I don't know, but he wasn't in class."

Despite the fact that Root claims Obama never went to class, he also claims that Obama learned Marxism there because all that was taught at Columbia was that Russia and China could never conquer America so it has to been taken over from within.  As such, "you have to elect someone who is handsome, who has a beautiful family who smiles and waves and hugs women and tells everybody what a uniter he is, not a divider, what a moderate guy he is, what a compromiser he is when, in reality, he's a Communist."

Once elected, that person would then set out to overwhelm the system with debt, spending, and entitlements ... just like Obama is doing!

And if you think this theory is crazy, it is only because you are naive:

On his radio program yesterday, Bryan Fischer dedicated multiple segments to dismissing the news that Jason Collins has become the first openly gay athlete to play in the NBA.

Things took a rather odd turn when Fischer started taking calls from listeners, one of whom tried to claim that the fact that gays use discretion in picking sexual partners proves that they can control their behavior and thus being gay is really a choice.

And Fischer agreed, saying "anytime a homosexual exercises any sort of selectivity at all when it comes to intimate matters, he is proving that it is a matter of choice. Nobody is compelled to follow those impulses."

Of course, by this logic, then being straight must also be a choice, since straight people also exercise selectivity in choosing partners.

But eventually Fischer got back to the topic at hand, asserting that gays celebrate things "that ought to be matters of shame, humiliation, and embarrassment" and criticizing President Obama for supporting Collins and "openly celebrating sexual deviancy, calling evil good and calling good evil":

• Chris Rodda: Pseudo-Historian Who Compares Obama to Hitler Invited to Speak at Army Prayer Breakfast.
• Matt Wilstein @ Mediaite: ‘It’s 9/11 All Over Again’: Graham Hits Back At Obama For Press Conference Rebuke On Boston, Benghazi.
• Igor Volsky @ Think Progress: Tea Party Congressman: Attorney General Holder Is On The Side Of The Boston Bombers.
• Steve Benen @ The Maddow Blog: 'Just below pond scum.'
• Media Matters: Pat Robertson Praises ESPN Analyst For Attack On Jason Collins, First Openly Gay Active NBA Player.

• The pastor convicted of helping Lisa Miller kidnap her daughter and flee the country says Miller "is a living testimony to the Power of Jesus, the Power that can set us free from the burden of sin, even the sins of a sexual nature that all of us face in this decadent age."
• Michele Bachmann seems to have real difficulty telling the truth.
• Rick Green really loves George W. Bush: "When President Bush and Laura came out to speak for a few minutes at the dinner, it only took about thirty seconds of his genuine, no-nonsense but joyful delivery for me to realize how much I miss him being my president and how much I truly detest the pompous, scripted, fake personality that occupies the office currently."
• Frank Gaffney says it is becoming impossible to figure out which side President Obama is on regarding Islamic terrorism and "we may even regard his malfeasance as constituting high crimes and misdemeanors."
• Paul Cameron continues to spread his anti-gay pseudoscience.
• Finally, Bryan Fischer doesn't seem to appreciate the fact that we watch him and his cohorts like a hawk: