Happy Hour Discurso

Today's opining on the public discourse.

My darlings, I'm finding it very hard to give a rat's arse about pollyticks today. The sun is shining, it's warm enough to have the windows open, I'm going out for Indian food later tonight if I can bestir my lazy ass from this sunbeam, and outrage has been reduced to a sort of low-level annoyance. So I think I'm just going to take this opportunity to make fun of stupid people.

It's a good thing we have an abundance of those in our political arena, then, isn't it?

On the people-in-glass-houses front, McCain's campaign sent out a fundraising letter begging for cash to defeat that nasty, evil librul George Soros's efforts to smear their saint:

Dear McCain Supporter,

George Soros the "liberal megadonor" is at it again. He and his group of billionaire left-wing Democrats have pledged $40 million dollars of soft money to smear John McCain in a national television ad campaign.

Well, with "liberal megadonor" in scare quotes, we just know he's got to be evil and must be stopped! Everyone taking money from Georgie is bad and wrong and... doh, shit.

But it turns out that Soros' charitable foundation, the Open Society Institute, gave $150,000 to a group called the Reform Institute, which is dedicated to campaign-finance reform and transparency in government, an OSI spokesperson confirms. The grant was made in 2003.

McCain was honorary co-chair of the Reform Institute starting in 2001, when the group was founded, and held that post until 2005.

It gets better.

It also turns out that the author of the fundraising letter attacking Soros -- McCain campaign manager Rick Davis -- was president of the Reform Institute from 2001-2005, the Institute spokesperson says.

So McCain and Davis are now attacking a nascent Dem effort because it's being partly funded by Soros -- even though a group that had McCain as honorary co-chair and Davis as president took $150,000 from Soros.

The sound you hear is a glass house crashing down. And, just in case there was any part still standing:

I've now learned that in 2002, Soros' charitable foundation, the Open Society Institute, gave $300,000 in grants to various groups that were defending the Arizona senator's campaign finance law against legal challenges to it.

An OSI spokesperson, Laura Silber, confirms to me that Soros' foundation gave $300,000 to the Brennan Center specifically for use defending McCain-Feingold. Brennan subsequently distributed that sum to various groups fighting on behalf of the McCain-sponsored law.

Cinderella said it best when they said:



And now, for those who didn't think the media could possibly get more inane, I present you Exhibit WTF:



Orange juice. They're blathering about fucking orange juice. There is some unbreakable rule in our society that states you can't possibly turn down coffee in a diner? You can't be like Barak Obama and ask for orange juice instead? Turning down coffee and asking for orange juice somehow proves you're a liberal elitist who just can't connect with the common folk?

You know what? If the common folk are really this stupid and shallow, it's no wonder thinking people have a hard time relating to them. But I suspect it's not ordinary people, but the fucking stupid mainstream media, that have serious issues with a presidential candidate ordering orange juice in a diner.

Here's your challenge for today: go out amongst the diner denizens and ask them, "Would you have a problem with someone turning down coffee here?" If they say yes, I'll be amazed.

For more on this controversy, see dday on Digby's Hullaballoo, The Carpetbagger Report, and John Cole's Balloon Juice.

And remember, kids, vapid fucking morons like Chris Matthews and David Shuster are watchdogs of democracy. Is it any wonder our democracy's been flushed down the toilet and is now oozing its way through the sewage?

And speaking of watchdogs, the reason why torture is such a totally non-issue, you know, is cuz, like, if it's done in the dark and stuff and you're a good guy, it's totally okay! At least, that's what Megan McArdle had to say in 2003:

If terrorists must be tortured -- and I am unwilling to state that there is no circumstance ever under which I could condone it -- then it should happen in dark rooms, at risk to the lives and careers of the men who carry it out, so that the hidden law will only trump the written law when times are truly desperate enough to call for such desperate measures.

Hidden law? WTF, Megan?! And now you're snivelling because Glenn Greenwald showed you up for the fucking retard that you and your fellow "reporters" are?