Happy Hour Discurso

Today's opining on the public discourse.

As if we needed any confirmation that the Republicon brand has been shat upon and flushed down the toilet:

Here's yet another sign of just how abysmal the map is for Senate Republicans this year: They are openly saying there are exactly zero safe seats this year -- not even Kansas, a red state that hasn't elected a Democrat to the Senate since 1932.

"We have no safe seats right now," NRSC spokesman Scott Bensing told the Kansas City Star. "In a normal election year, we would not be concerned at all. But those are the cards we're dealt. We're not taking any states for granted."

I guess it's more than just the economy that's the worst it's been since the Great Depression, then. This is causing a scramble to find a silver lining:

The Republican Party lost its majority in the House of Representatives in 2006, and is likely to lose more seats in November, but Nevada Republican Dean Heller says he doesn't think that's necessarily a bad thing.

"I'm of the position that we really need to clean house in this Republican Party, and I think the next couple of election cycles are going to do that," Heller said.

Republicans who should be swept out, in Heller's view, include some from the historic class of 1994, which gave the GOP a majority in the House for the first time in 40 years.

"It's an old mantra: they came to change Washington, and Washington changed them," Heller said several weeks ago. "I think we got to the point where the majority of Republicans were trying to change America and tell (Americans) what they wanted instead of listening to ... what they need."

Rep. Heller, would you like me to buy you some aluminum foil? It looks silver. Might work.

The poor man is getting absolutely pounded by his fat fellow Republicons, who've built their lives around dictating to Americans what they want. I absolutely agree with Heller - it's time for a clean sweep. The corrupt ol' neocons need to be scrubbed from the Republicon party - removed like a cancerous growth, in fact - to give it some slight chance at survival. The problem with that thinking is, they've lied so loud and for so long that people have come to think this is the way Republicons should be. And that's going to make real, necessary change, even with a resounding defeat this fall, incredibly hard for them to manage.

This is bad for the nation, which needs sane people in power. It's excellent for bloggers like me, who need a veritible parade of unrepentent fuckwits in order to keep the Smack-o-Matic busy. I mean, if the Republicons clean up their act, who am I going to spank? Religious frothers? They get dead boring after a while.

Suppose I could turn my attention to the global warming deniers and so forth, but it's ever so much more fun to pound them when our nation's government is part of the idiocy:

Today, the EPA published its response to the April 2007 Supreme Court ruling in Massachusetts v. EPA — which mandated that the agency determine whether greenhouse gases pose a threat to public health — listing various ways to control emissions. In letters attached to the document, however, administration officials “disavow[ed] the document’s conclusions.” The Wall Street Journal reports:

In a letter accompanying the EPA document…Susan Dudley, administrator of the White House Office of Information and regulatory Affairs, bluntly disavowed the analysis, saying it relied on “untested legal theories” and “cannot be considered Administration policy or representative of the views of the Administration.”

It surely can't. After all, Bush's joke might lose its currency if the United States takes steps to move out of the role of "world's biggest polluter." I think he should rest assured that his legacy's safe - few are in any doubt that it's been the biggest joke ever played on the American public.

Mukasey as the Attorney General meant to clean up after Gonzo's mess, now, he might be the second-biggest:

So while the Senate was legalizing warrantless wiretapping and granting Bush and the telecoms immunity yesterday, that nice Mr.
Mukasey had a meeting with the Judiciary Committee on the Hill. Thought you'd like to know what he said:

• He wouldn't admit that Alberto Gonzales politicized the Department of Justice, contradicting his own agency's recent Inspector General report that has put former DoJ officials in so much trouble that independent organizations are trying to get them disbarred. He also refused to allow for any accountability to those officials, probably because he wouldn't admit they did anything wrong.

• He argued that those Administration officials who authorized and directed torture at Guantanamo Bay and throughout US detention sites worldwide "cannot and should not be prosecuted," nor should any CIA agents who participated in the torture...

Of course, there's more! Head on over to Digby's to see the full list in all its bullshit-hued glory.

And for the after-hours comedy club special, here's the man they want to put forth as our bestest choice for the next American president. You know, Mr. Straight-shooter, maverick, common-touch, fiscally-responsible, can fix this country in a jiffy cuz he's a war hero! McCancan:

BELLEVILLE, Mich., July 10 -- Sen. John McCain ventured to an auto-parts supplier in this hard-hit Detroit suburb to express sympathy for those affected by Michigan's economic malaise and to talk up his ideas for creating jobs in the region.

But a day after a top McCain economic adviser dismissed the nation's struggles as a "mental recession," the presumptive Republican presidential nominee's message landed with a thud, as workers sat in stony silence.

Oh, you go, boy! You follow right in Bush's footsteps, there! Win those crowds with your amazing ability to not move anybody at all! Work that crowd, baby, work it!

But the 100 or so in the crowd sat on their hands throughout most of McCain's speech, especially during his remarks about the need for free trade -- a policy that is generally reviled in manufacturing areas. The first question McCain received was from a free-trade critic, who told the candidate that "what we need to do is control some of those trade issues going on. What we want is fair trade."

I wonder if his reponse to that question in any way resembled his response to questions about birth control:



Awk-ward.

Hasn't America had enough lame-ass mega-morons in power by now? Do we really need more?

I didn't think so.