Derp Roundup: Your Weekly Slog Through The Slushpile

Welcome to a Gummint Shutdown Edition of the Derp Roundup, your weekly accumulation of asinine asshattery from the aether that was too stoopid to ignore completely but that we weren't inclined to waste a full-length post on. To start off, let's do a little bit of mythbusting! We caught Tucker Carlson's Home for Lying Liars in a bit of a lie! On Wednesday, the  Daily Caller  proclaimed, based on a single photograph apparently, that Washington DC's monuments and memorials were all kept open during the 1995/96 shutdowns:

The administration’s decision to barricade the Lincoln Memorial marks the first time in its history the memorial has been totally off limits to visitors during a shutdown.

As proof, they offer a photo of the interior of the Lincoln Memorial in 1995, showing that the information booth was closed, but tourists were still able to enter the memorial. It took us all of seven minutes,* however, to find this photo from the Denver Post showing a Park Service Police officer standing in front of a completely closed Lincoln Memorial on November 15, 1995. The AP slideshow also includes a photo of the fenced-off National Christmas Tree -- with nary a single Republican congresscritter tearing down the fence while decrying Bill Clinton's War on Christmas. And the Washington Post also has a photo of tourists leaving the Lincoln Memorial as it was being closed down on November 14. So, yeah, Daily Caller -- utterly unprecedented.** At least they didn't argue that Clinton never closed the World War II memorial in 1995-96.***

• We aren't done with Daily Caller derpery just yet, though, because Friday, they brought us this proof that liberals were behind the actions of the mentally ill woman who tried to drive into barriers near the White House:  DC woman driver linked to pro-Obama elements. Wow! "Pro-Obama elements!" Are those like some kind of "guerrilla factions" or something? What exactly is the "pro-Obama" link here, aside from Miriam Carey being, you know, black? Well, you see, her sister Valerie specializes in "educating women about PMS and related issues" and does a radio show about menstrual-cycle advice. But here's the smoking gun: Valerie Carey is

  on the board of Brooklyn CARES, a chapter of the National CARES Mentoring Movement founded by Susan Taylor, who co-hosted a 2009 Washington awards dinner featuring President Obama. Taylor also joined first lady Michelle Obama, Spike Lee, Magic Johnson, and others at a 2010 youth leadership event in Detroit.

  Wow! Look at all those pro-Obama elements this woman was linked to! We can hardly wait to find out how many degrees away from Kevin Bacon she was.

• The old "Obama's Personal Army" myth continues to gain new facets, includingthis pile of derp that claims to have found evidence of Barry Bamz' dangerous scheme to use some weird combination of Obamacare and FEMA to gut the military, which might overthrow him because its oath is to defend the Constitution, and then replace it with his own private army. Guys, after five years of freakouts, you may want to give this one up: the 2008 speech you love so much, with that ominous line about a "civilian national security force," was about expanding AmeriCorps -- and that proposal got blocked by Congress. But yeah, he's probably gonna do it any day now, so he can take yer guns.

• The KKK group whose rally at the Gettysburg battlefield cemetery was cancelled due to the government shutdown planned to march in the town of Gettysburg itself today:

  Adams County 911 confirmed that members of the group were seen marching along Baltimore Street in the borough. It is unknown how many members of the group were marching.

  No news on whether the march was interrupted by blues musicians in a 1974 Dodge Monaco, but we can always dream, can't we?

• • Texas trailer hitch model Louie Gohmert took issue with Sen. Claire McCaskill after she criticized him and other congressional teahadis for grandstanding at the WWII Memorial. On Thursday, Gohmert said on Fox News,

    “My heart breaks for somebody with the ignorance of Claire McCaskill. Having served in the Army active duty ’78 to ’82, having been spit at in uniform, having been ordered not to wear my uniform off post because of the threats to people in uniform, I understand. I’ve stood with families when there was no camera anywhere in sight, anywhere with just a handful of people,”

    Yes, we remember how people were spitting on soldiers pretty much every day in 1978 to '82, Louie. [Citation needed]

  • Glenn Beck worried that General Electric is selling a "Progressive Dishwasher" and that a paint company is selling paint in "Woodrow Wilson White," as part of a plot whereby the word "progressive" is being "embed[ed] everywhere." RawStory found that Valspar Paint does indeed market a line of paint that slaps the National Trust for Historic Preservation's name on colors like “Mark Twain House Ombra Grey” and “Betsy Ross House Blue,” as well. Terrifying, isn't it?

  • On Friday's Fox & Friends, douchecanoe Briane Kilmeade showed off just how much he knows about Latin America when he said to cohost Maria Molina, who was born in Nicaragua and raised in Nicaragua, "You grew up on tacos, correct?" And then Elisabeth Hasselbeck jumped in for a graceful save:

    Brian: What are tips we need to know to do it correctly? You grew up on tacos, correct?

    Elisabeth: You gotta layer it right?

    Maria: No I did not grow up on tacos. I'm Nicaraguan. And it's not a native food.

    Brian: Oh...I didn't know.

    Elisabeth: But if you DID...if you DID grow up on tacos...

    Silly Brian and Elizabeth! Nicaraguans are completely different kinds of Mexicans!

  • And finally, we'll close out with a Nice-Time follow-up to our story about the Derp-Head congressman who yelled at that park ranger who personally caused the shutdown:  After she was yelled at by Randy Neugebauer,Old Handsome Joe Biden called her to say "I'm proud of you" for doing her job and being awesome.

  * Seven minutes of googling, plus another 40 minutes in MS Paint to add Derpy Hooves to the photo...

  ** For trivia nitpickers, there were two shutdowns in 95-96, November 14-19, and December 16-January 6. The Daily Caller's photo is from December 16, so apparently the Park Service allowed visitors during the second?

  *** It opened in 2004.

  [ Daily Caller / Denver Post / WaPo / Daily Caller / CoachIsRight / Penn-Live.com / RightWingWatch via RawStory ] / Politico / Buzzfeed via Jezebel / TPM ]