Why I won’t be blogging CNAV anymore

Ordinarily, I probably wouldn’t turn down the opportunity to write about the pure, unadulterated insanity to be found on the pages of Terry Hurlbut’s “Conservative News and Views.” However, I’ve done some thinking – and analysis – regarding his site, and I really, really feel that such a coven of backwards hate-mongers need as little coverage as possible. After all, it’s not like it’s an influential site or anything – Alexa (for that’s worth) ranks it in the high 400,000s, and just about the only comments made on the posts, are by people critical of the twisted thought processes contained therein. There is an occasional round of mutual masturbation, when one of the site’s owner’s tame contributors gushes something along the lines of “Great article!” in the comments section, but apart from that, all the comments are Hurlbut defending his insanity from his detractors.

The fact that Hurlbut has taken to deleting comments that expose the lies he is publishing on his site, is another reason to ignore the man. I’ll have a look at some of these in more detail later on, but firstly, let’s have a final look at the people running this septic tank of right-wing lunacy.

Terry Hurlbut

This is a name that should be familiar to most people who’ve been involved in right-wing / creationist circles over the past few years. Hurlbut created CNAV after spending time at Creationwiki (where he claims he is second-in-command) and Conservapedia, where he was one of racist bigot Andrew Schlafly’s hand-picked senior administrators. It’s ironic that he is on record as saying the public school syllabus is being dumbed down, whilst at the same remaining silent about Schlafly’s home school “techniques” – which include sexual discrimination and awarding mulitple point scores for answers that generally consist of a single sentence or phrase and which are often grammatically incorrect.

He also wrote for a time for Examiner.com (where he famously wrote about how amazing science would be, if we threw all all the modern discoveries and went back to the 1600s), a site that paid contributors based on visits to their pages. It’s likely that CNAV works on the same principle – he certainly makes use of Goggle ads. However, this has not stopped him using Conservapedia’s main page to advertise his own articles on CNAV and Examiner, free of charge. Then again, this is a man who was an active member of the Digg Patriots (where he’s listed under his usual nick of Temlakos), those lovely people who went around, actively voting down and burying all the stories on Digg that painted conservatives in a bad light. So being a devious little shit is nothing new for him.

This is a man who claims to be an MD, but who is fiercely anti-science, anti-healthcare, anti-Obama and who genuinely believes that dinosaurs still roam the Earth. He is also an avid Ayn Rand fanboy, and has written numerous sickening articles covering such topics as why regulation is so bad and why the government should stop funding schools, the post office, libraries, roads, public land and how awesome it would be if private enterprise took these over. He seems to cling to the belief that if people are paying less tax, then they’ll automatically divert their extra funds towards paying for these services. The fact that people won’t do this sort of thing voluntarily, is amongst the reasons taxes exist in the first place. The really sad part is that his whole thesis boils down to “if you aren’t as successful as I am, screw you.”

Which sums Hurlbut up in a nutshell. He’s anti-abortion, but doesn’t support neglected children, nor has he adopted any children of his own. He’s anti-gay marriage, because he genuinely believes that gay people marrying is going to have a direct impact on his life. The one reason he gave was that “partners would have immunity from prosecution” – you know, like husbands and wives enjoy now. In fact, he’s such a small-minded bigot that he can’t even say “same-sex marriage” but rather refers to it as something like “people of the same sex who share a bedroom.” He’s rabidly anti-Obama (and a birther to boot) and can’t even bring himself to refer to the President as the President, usually slipping a “putative” President in first. He thinks Sheriff Joe is the greatest thing ever, and won’t hear a thing against the posse, the fact they’re publishing books before the investigation is finished, or that Jerome Corsi was fired from his job for making shit up. Hurlbut is also a director of the Creation Hall of Fame… which includes Nazi scientist Werner von Braun amongst its rank. He also sincerely believes that the United Nations are coming to hound American citizens off the land and into city ghettos, plus they’ll be coming for his guns too. He has yet to explain where the UN is going to get the army of millions from, that would be required to carry out these operations.

He is also incredibly childish and given to outbursts of impotent rage, when his bullshit theories are questioned. In one memorable reply exploded with, “And you dare accuse me of inconsistency? GOD DAMN YOU! You will apologize to me. FORTH. WITH” and yet is quick to get offended with what he sees an incivility. Of course, any filth he spouts against Obama, Chief Justice Roberts or liberals in general, is him being a conservative. Any criticism of conservatives by commentators is libel, which he won’t have on his blog.

Given his age and social standing, it’s also very likely that he dodged the Vietnam draft, although that is speculation at this point in time. However, he has refused to answer when questioned directly. In fact, I think it’s safe to call him a draft dodger until such time as he produces paperwork saying otherwise. After all, I think it’s fair to hold him to the same standard as he holds the President.

Still, despite all this, Hurlbut comes across as the sane contributor to the blog, when compared to the other hate-filled little troglodytes that populate his blog. These are:

RoseAnn Salanitri

Which brings us to Terry’s second-in-command and fellow wingnut. Salanitri is the perfect foil for Hurlbut – she’s a fellow creationist, Tea Party member and Obama-hater. In fact, it’s easy to see why Hurlbut keeps her around – he is very good at hanging onto the coat tails of people he thinks are influential, such as Chris Ashcraft at Creationwiki, Andrew Schlafly at Conservapedia, and Salanitri, who appears to be pretty influential in her part of the Tea Party. Salanitri was leader of the abortive (and hilarious) attempt to recall Senator Robert Menendez. I say hilarious, because they engaged the services of one Andrew Schlafly to argue their case and it was something special to see NJ Supreme Court justices facepalming as Schlafly went on about how heartfelt George Washington’s letter was.

I mentioned that Hurlbut was probably the most sane contributor to CNAV. He’s probably also the nicest. Salanitri, despite being the grandchild of immigrants, is rabidly anti-immigration, especially those filthy chicanos from down south. Of course, this is doubly ironic, given that she is clearly of Mediterranean stock herself. Still, what’s a little hypocrisy when you’re a right-wing nut, right? She has also called both Chief Justice Roberts (for voting in favour of health care) and President Obama (for signing some or other UN treaty) “traitors” for doing so – clearly indicating that she doesn’t understand the meaning of the world. She has also alluded to the fact that she would be in favour of a violent overthrow of the current government.

Roseann was also the head of Bader Qarmout’s election campaign (another reason why Hurlbut wants to hang on her coattails). Dear Salanitri genuinely believed that she was on a mission from God to get Qarmout elected, and seemed genuinely confused when the other guy was voted in at the primary, taking 71% of the vote to Qarmout’s 6%. It’s quite telling that both Roseann and Qarmout had no problem having their campaign associated with one Gene Hoyas (the guy who blogs under the eye-watering nick of “Manly Rash”). Hoyas is known for calling Obama a “ghetto pimp”; advocating the massacre of whole villages of noncombatant women and children as a response to the threat of terrorism; not caring about the rape and murder of Muslim women and children in Bosnia; and being a despicable human being. That Salanitri, Hurlbut and Qarmout would be associated with him, speaks volumes.

Then again, even other New Jersey conservatives tend to look at Salanitri and her association with CNAV and go, “What the fuck?” There’s a couple of telling quotes out there:

On the phone, RoseAnn Salanitri sounds like a nice lady. But then you go her website called “Conservative News and Views.”

People like RoseAnn Salanitri believe in absolutes, but they also believe that all absolutes begin and end with them. Whatever she says… is. It is as simple as that. She is The Alpha and The Omega. She is God.

The latter became apparent when she openly declared that what Bader Qarmout had posted on his campaign website, was not what Qarmout meant to say. Of course, Qarmout was in favour of an amnesty for illegal immigrants, whereas Salanitri wants to chase them back over the border… or preferably into the sea. When it was pointed out to Salantri that Bader Qarmout’s original illegal immigration plan – the one he had on his website for three months – clearly stated that illegals would be given the vote after 10 years, she called it “slander”. So it would appear that there’s a few words of which she doesn’t know the meaning.

However, the crazy doesn’t stop there. The first quote mentioned above goes on to refer to Roseann’s “novel” that she hosts on CNAV. It’s called “Witness’ and revolves how the Pope is trying to get DNA from the Turin Shround so he can clone Christ as the Anti-Christ. (Interestingly enough, Hurlbut started his own feeble attempt at a sci-fi novel, on the same day. Both projects have now stalled.) You might think it strange that somebody with a Mediterranean background is called the Pope the Anti-Christ, but Salanitri is no longer Catholic, instead embracing the kind of batshit insane fundamentalism that believes dinosaurs are still alive. She even posted a paper on how Noah took dinosaurs into the Ark.

Here’s another quote on her:

There is no debate with people like RoseAnn Salanitri. When she was a Roman Catholic, it was good. When she decided to become something else – the Pope became the “anti-Christ” and don’t you forget it! Despite Salanitri’s total lack of training in science, God says that the scientists are all wrong and that Noah had dinosaurs on the Ark. Wow!

Indeed, there is no debate with Salanitri. In fact, she must have a skin that’s so thin it’s transparent (thanks Dinsdale!) and any comments critical of her posts will vanish. Such was the example when she was bitching about her pet conservative, Qarmout losing, and such was the case when she posted bout how great Reagan’s economic policies were, compared to Obama’s. of course, any mention of Reagan increasing taxes and the budget deficit and increasing government spending – all of which are a simple Google search away – magically vanished.

So these are the two lovely people running CNAV – people that even their fellow conservatives regard with disdain.

No wonder it’s such a cesspit.

Nicholas Purpura

Purpura is probably the craziest of the contributors to CNAV. He’s also seemingly addicted to going to court and making his lawyer, Mario Apuzzo, rich. He’s been to court challenging health care reform and Obama’s eligibility… the former ironically on the grounds that as Obama isn’t eligible to be President, he can’t the new legislation. Like Orly Taitz, he’s another idiot intent on wasting the Courts’ time and taxpayers money on his insane beliefs.

Needless to say, every time he loses, he runs howling to CNAV to bitch about how evil the judges are. Like all the other birthers, he seems incapable of deducing that if 100 judges in 100 cases throw out the charges, the fault lies with the charge and not the judges.

Here’s an example of his post-health care rant:

The Marxist administration believed they won a victory, after the June 28 decision by the Supreme Court. Whether they know it or not, they won nothing more than a Pyrrhic victory, and staggering losses will follow. By Chief Justice John Roberts ruling with the liberal Marxists on the bench he inadvertently proved that the “Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act”, HR3590 is unconstitutional.

So now the Supreme Court is full of Marxist liberals.

Of course, just in case your wondering just how insane Purpura is, and that he doesn’t have a one track mind, let’s have a look at some excerpts from his submission to halt the Affordable Care Act:

Plaintiffs are not arguing whether Mr. Obama was or was not born in Hawaii, though it is incumbent for this honorable court to also address that question,” the plaintiffs wrote. “The question that mandates an answer, why is Mr. Obama above the law, when by law you need a birth certificate to obtain a driver’s license, Social Security card and/or passports,” the pleading said.

There are other questions that demand answers: why does Mr. Obama have scores of Social Security numbers, and those numbers it has been discovered were issued by the state of Connecticut. If a fraud was perpetrated upon the American people it is a crime.

Regardless, based upon the Constitution and the British citizenship of Mr. Obama’s father, he, Mr. Barack Obama Jr., is constitutionally ineligible to hold the office of the president.

Remember, this is in a case to do with Health Care reform. I’m sure the SC judges did some facepalming of their own.

Here’s just an example of the lies Hurlbut publishes. Remember, this is a man who calls himself a journalist and who claims his blog is “Renewing the fourth estate.”

• He claims in article that the ossury of James has been proven authentic, ergo Jesus was real. However, his source and even the article merely state that the person accused of forging the wording on the ossery was found not guilty – and then only because the prosecution hadn’t proved im guilty beyond resonable doubt.
• He claims not to be aware that the Koch brothers are funding the Tea Party, and protested his innocence by claiming that the Koch brothers hadn’t paid him a single red cent… which wasn’t the original question anyway.
• He claimed that following a survey of some 600 doctors, 9 in 10 of them, said they would quit practicing because of Obamacare. What he neglected to mention was that all of the doctors surveyed were members of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons. Now AAPS is a batshit insane collection of medical people who are already anti-Obamacare… not to mention anti-vaccines, amongst other things. To give you an idea of how batshit insane these people are, they’ve appointed Conservapedia’s Andrew Schlafly as their general counsel. If these quacks were to leave the medical pr0fession, medicine would probably benefit.

Suffice to say, you can’t talk reason with these people and their lies and paranoia become more ridiculous with time. In much the same way that Conservapedia became a parody of itself, so CNAV has become a parody of everything that is bad about the rabid, ignorant, religious right in America.

Not only that, but as bitter and twisted as these racists are, they are ultimately nobodies – reviled even by people on their side of the spectrum. And for that reason alone, they are worth ignoring.