Happy Hour Discurso

Today's opining on the public discourse.

Looks like Limbaugh is going for the open racism:

Yesterday on his radio show, right-wing talker Rush Limbaugh said it’s “striking how unqualified Obama is and how this whole thing came about within the Democrat Party. I think it really goes back to the fact
that nobody had the guts to stand up and say no to a black guy.” Limbaugh continued:

I think this is a classic illustration here where affirmative action has reared its ugly head against them. It’s the reverse of it. They’ve, they’ve ended up nominating and placing at the top of their ticket somebody who’s not qualified, who has not earned it. […]

Because we all know that a black man can't possibly win a nomination because people think his qualifications are just fine. Noper. Gotta be that affirmative action.

Hey, Lamebaugh, newflash for you: Obama won the nomination because he's got popular policy ideas, he was right on the Iraq war, his foreign policy makes so much sense that even the Bush regime is quietly thieving elements of it, because he's eloquent, and because he gives us hope. If that's affirmative action, it makes a fuck of a lot of sense to me. I'll take it.

Expect more of this shit. Neocons will attack anything and anyone, use every dirty trick in the book, and employ outrageous double-standards to get their way. Just look at what they're doing to a Republican Vietnam veteran, for fuck's sake:

Today on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal, a caller questioned Vets for Freedom (VFF) founder David Bellavia about the group’s attacks on Vietnam veteran Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-NE). Bellavia quickly praised Hagel, saying he was a “patriot.” “You don’t question another man’s service,” said Bellavia.” “I will never attack a Vietnam veteran, like some of these other individuals have during this political season.”

Content he paid enough lip-service to Hagel, he then began attacking the senator, an outspoken critic of the Bush administration. Bellavia’s dismissed the Hagel’s service in Vietnam — for which he earned a Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry, Purple Heart, Army Commendation Medal, and the Combat Infantryman Badge — as irrelevant to the current conflict:

BELLAVIA: Sen. Hagel has never been shot at in Iraq, he’s never seen what an IED looks like or been detonated on. This is an individual that could embed himself instead of doing a two-day congressional delegation. Go out there, walk with the troops, see what’s going on on the ground. […]

Now, again, with Sen. Hagel — my problem with Sen. Hagel is, again, his experienced is based on what? The Mekong Delta. It’s based to Vietnam, a totally different fight, a totally different enemy, and by the way, it was 30 years ago.

Fascinating. Senator Hagel's Vietnam experience was "30 years ago" and is "completely irrelevant." Let's just take that at face value, shall we? If that's the case, then John McCain's Vietnam service, his status as a POW all those years ago, all of that's "completely irrelevant." And that might help explain why McLame's foreign policy and ideas on the current wars are so incredibly bad.

If you're going to attack a Vietnam vet on his service, you neocons, be very careful how you do it, or it's going to blow back and take your heads off. Guaranteed. And I'll enjoy the sight more than I can possibly say.

We can't expect much more than this sort of schlock from the Party of Hypocrites. Just check out who's delivering their keynote speech at the Republicon convention: Rudy "The state pays for my affairs" Giuliani. Carpetbagger makes an excellent point:

It’s been a while, but it’s worth keeping in mind that Giuliani ran one of the more embarrassing presidential campaigns in recent memory and lost every contest in which he competed, usually by enormous margins. He invested millions and ended up without a single delegate.

The rationale behind giving Giuliani this high-profile slot is … well, I’m not quite sure what the rationale is. Maybe the McCain gang decided they haven’t heard “9/11″ and “stay on offense” quite enough.

Just to provide some additional context, though, Jonathan Stein raises an interesting point: “John Edwards cheated on his wife. The media found out about it. John Edwards will not be attending the Democratic convention. Rudy Giuliani used public funds to cheat on his wife and used city agencies to cover his tracks. The media found out about it. Rudy Giuliani will be delivering the keynote at the Republican convention.”

It is odd. Spitzer and Edwards get caught having affairs, and their careers are finished in Democratic politics. Giuliani and Gingrich get caught having affairs, and they remain high-profile Republicans in good standing. Hmm.

Hmm, indeed. I think that says all we'll ever need to know about the party of "family values."

And finally, for your viewing pleasure, here's McCain taking dead aim at both of his feet and preparing to pull the trigger:

At first blush, this report in the New York Sun seems to have very little relevance to the presidential campaign.

Republican or Democrat, will make a Syrian-Israeli peace agreement a priority only if the two sides, meeting now in Turkey, make substantial progress before the inauguration.

That is what a foreign policy adviser to Senator Obama told Syria’s foreign minister last month while on a visit to Damascus. While the trip was not connected to the Obama campaign, Daniel Kurtzer nonetheless provided Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem with some advice of his own.

“I urged him to move ahead in the Israel-Syria negotiations as much as possible so that whoever is the next president would not start from too far down the track,” Mr. Kurtzer, a former American ambassador to Israel, said yesterday in a phone interview. “I did not say anything about Obama or McCain. I said whoever is the next president is not going to want to inherit a process that isn’t going anywhere.”

Kurtzer was in Damascus for a law conference, he wasn’t representing Obama in any way, he isn’t even a paid member of Obama’s staff, and he’s in no way authorized by anyone to engage in any kind of official diplomacy a foreign government. He’s just a former ambassador with some friendly (and fairly obvious) words of advice for Syrian officials.

Nevertheless, a McCain campaign source told Greg Sargent the Republican campaign is poised to jump on this as evidence of … well, something nefarious. Indeed, it appears that Rudy Giuliani will help lead the outraged mob, which will denounce “an Obama campaign Middle East adviser” traveling to Damascus “for meetings with Syrian officials.”

Carpetbagger explains why this would be an awesome thing for McCain to do. By all means, attack on this front. We could use the entertainment.

Republicons. They just get more ridiculous every day, don't they?