I never fail to be amazed at the interconnectedness of the folks on Right Wing Avenue. I was reading the latest market worshipping from the Heritage Foundation recently and somehow ended up scanning the bio of Rebecca Hagelin, a senior communications fellow who served as the vice-president of communications and marketing from 2002-2008.

Before joining Heritage, she was the vice-president of communications for WorldNetDaily, a truly bizarre faux news site that her bio describes as a"fiercely independent news site that specializes in the investigative
reporting of government waste, fraud and abuse."

Not exactly. You can find examples every day on the site of the fantasies presented as news or credible commentary. My recent favorite was a column February 10th by Janet Porter with Faith2Action. 

Porter raises the possibility that Obama is a communist and was groomed for the presidency since he was young by "Soviet Russian Communists...to pave the way for a Communist future." 

The source for this revelation is a former vice-president of the Southern Baptist Convention who received the information from a software developer who visited Russia often during the early 1990s. 

Porter realizes this might be hard to believe and even says she can't prove it, shocking as that may be, but says "in light of all that is happening, it doesn't seem that far-fetched anymore."

My question after making you read this insanity is how can somebody who worked for World-NUT-Daily be taken seriously at the allegedly credible Heritage Foundation?

The most prominent market fundamentalist think here in North Carolina has a staff member who used to write for WorldNut and several county chapters of the Republican Party list the site as a place to go for news.

I don't get it, not why right-wing groups associate with World-Nut, but how they can be considered credible if they do? Help me understand. And look out for the black helicopters coming over the ridge.

There's a great column up by Joe Flower on The Health Care Blog about the insanity of the Right on the health care provisions in the stimulus package and health care in general.

Here's a paragraph that sums up why the claims of Limbaugh and his Republican Party  about universal coverage are absurd.

The really sad irony is that we already have, in our system as it works today, every bad outcome these folks are imagining.  We already have bureaucrats telling the doctors what they can and cannot do, and telling consumers what doctors they can go to, they're just private bureaucrats working for health plans, informed more by the balance sheet than by effectiveness studies.

We already have people's private medical records being used to deny them coverage - by everyone except the government.  We already have healthcare rationing, we just do it by ability to pay, by whether you still have a job, and by whether you have been visited by the dread "pre-existing conditions."

All the flailing away at the stimulus package by the anti-everything folks doesn't seem to be working in North Carolina. A survey by Public Policy Polling finds that North Carolinians support the federal stimulus plan by a 50-39 percent margin.

The poll was taken before the Senate bill was crafted, so these numbers about are about the House plan.

Obama is still in pretty good shape here too, The January poll from the right-wing Civitas Institute finds that 60 percent of those surveyed approve of the job he is doing, Only 6 percent disapprove and 34 percent are not sure.

Congresswoman Virginia Foxx, R-N.C., not only opposed the stimulus package that passed the House recently, she doesn't think ANY of the spending in the bill was worthwhile.  The Daily Record iin Hickory, N.C. recently featured Foxx's answers to five questions asked by Media General's Washginton correspondent. Here's one of them.

Q: You also joined every Republican in voting against the $819 billion economic recovery package that just passed the House, arguing that most of the spending programs would not immediately create jobs. Were any of the spending programs worthwhile?

A: Not that I can recall. There is a possibility that some of the infrastructure spending on roads and bridges could create jobs, but a lot of the money will not be spent for years.

Among the many important things funded in the House bill were an extension of unemployment benefits, a provision to help people who lose their jobs continue their health insurance coverage, and a school construction program. Apparently Foxx does not consider any of that worthwhile.

And she is wrong about the infrastructure spending too of course, The Congressional Budget Office says two-thirds of the investments in the House bill will be made within 18 months.