SO WHAT ARE RIGHT-WINGERS FREAKING OUT ABOUT TODAY?

Well, via Lucianne.com, I see that they're freaking out about a bill reauthorizing and expanding AmeriCorps, which is sailing through Congress, and which they consider part of Barack Obama's fascist/communist/Alinsky-licious plan to take over the world. From the wingnut Examiner.com:

Expanded Americorps has stench of authoritarianism

... Lurking behind the feel-good rhetoric spouted by the measure's advocates is a bill that upon closer inspection reveals multiple provisions that together create a strong odor of creepy authoritarianism....

To begin with, the legislation threatens the voluntary nature of Americorps by calling for consideration of "a workable, fair and reasonable mandatory service requirement for all able young people." It anticipates the possibility of requiring "all individuals in the United States" to perform such service, including elementary school students....

Er, as even a skeptical Fox News story acknowledges, the bill merely calls for a "bipartisan commission" that "will be tasked with exploring a number of topics, including 'whether a workable, fair and reasonable mandatory service requirement for all able young people could be developed and how such a requirement could be implemented in a manner that would strengthen the social fabric of the nation.'" I'm trying really hard to recall any totalitarian dictatorships that traced their origins to a "bipartisan commission," and I'm drawing a blank.

Ah, but wingnut-friendly columnist Melanie Phillips, writing for Britain's Spectator, fully understands the dimensions of the Octopus:

...straight after he was elected President Obama launched Organising for America, a formal infrastructure of activism built upon his campaign's extensive database of supporters. This was ostensibly all about encouraging the public to tell Obama about the issues that concerned them.

... It seemed to me that such a street-force could be used to undermine the established constitutional order -- by creating pressure upon Congress, for example.

Omigod! Citizens putting pressure on elected legislators! What could be more fascist?

Phillips goes on to cite reports that last Saturday in Birmingham, Alabama -- a city of a quarter of a million people -- a whopping thirty (30) volunteers from Organizing for America headed to malls and other venues, presumably armed with jackboot-wearing clipboards on which sat armband-flashing petitions. I'm sure it was, at worst, approximately as fascist as the process of handing out cheese samples at Trader Joe's.

Ah, but one Organizing for America volunteer made a perhaps ill-advised remark:

"We're looking for supporters," said DeHaven of Hoover, one of the event's organizers. "We're not looking for a fight. That will come later, when we have an army."

And this, according to Phillips, can only mean a literal army. Because no one in the history of the English language has ever used this word metaphorically.

And Obama, Phillips informs us, has already leaked plans of just the army he wants to construct, of which AmeriCorps and Organizing for America are clearly a part:

There was also his deeply troubling suggestion during his presidential campaign – which received virtually no attention – of creating a civilian national security force that would be as powerful, strong and well-funded as the half-trillion dollar Army, Marines, Navy and Air Force, although he subsequently refused to elaborate upon this distinctly chilling suggestion (and indeed, according to this report these remarks actually vanished from the published transcript of Obama’s speech).

Except that (as I noted at the time of the speech), the remarks can be heard in a YouTube video posted by the Obama campaign, and still available. And the remarks were a reference to Obama's desire to fully fund the diplomatic corps -- which was and is obvious to anyone who isn't a wingnut, or a clinical paranoid.

But I repeat myself.

I love the way, according to this interpretation, President Ohitler and his Ohitler Youth alternately take great pains to conceal their sinister plans for world domination ... and then boast about them. And then conceal them. And then boast about them. The secrecy/candor double-reverse, you see, is all part of the nefarious scheme to throw us off guard. Or something like that.