Happy Hour Discurso

Today's opining on the public discourse.

Americans seem to be a wee bit confused about the meaning of "conservative:"

In recent days, conservatives have renewed a long-running campaign to convince the American people that they live in a conservative nation and support conservative policies. Conservative talker Rush Limbaugh is leading the charge, but he’s been joined by a chorus of right-wingers as well.

Quoting the American Thinker, Limbaugh used a cherry-picked poll to falsely argue on his radio show yesterday that a “conservative majority” exists in America. He focused on a single question from a recent Battleground Poll in which respondents were asked to place themselves on a conservative-to-liberal ideological spectrum. Sixty percent of respondents labeled themselves “very conservative or somewhat conservative"...

[snip]

The truth is, however, that the so-called “conservative majority” does not exist. While many American’s may call themselves conservative, the overwhelming majority of Americans support progressive policies. Indeed, a majority of Americans…

– Want universal health care.
– Want to expand environmental protections.
– Support increasing the minimum wage.
– Want abortion to remain safe and legal.
– Want federal funding for embryonic stem cell research.
– Want to raise taxes on the wealthy to pay for national priorities.
– Want same-sex couples to be legally recognized.
– Oppose the Iraq war.

I hate to break this to my fellow Americans, but those are liberal positions. Conservatives stand exactly opposite liberals on all those issues. So, Rush Lamebaugh can crow all he likes about how the majority of Americans are conservative, but what we're actually dealing with here is ignorance over what the terms actually mean.

American ignorance and neocon fuckery. What else is new?

Speaking of immense blowhards who shouldn't be taken at all seriously, Karl "I Should Be In Prison" Rove thinks Michelle Obama didn't kiss America's ass enough:

In a speech last night at the Democratic convention, Michelle Obama “began a weeklong effort to present her husband — and his entire family — as embodiments of the American dream.” The Houston Chronicle writes, “Despite Republican attempts to paint her as a liberal elitist, she said in her speech that she knows from her family’s struggles and successes ‘that the American dream endures.’”

Totally disregarding Michelle Obama’s repeated efforts throughout her speech to spell out “why she loves her country,” Karl Rove — an informal adviser to John McCain — went on Fox News last night and proclaimed that Obama didn’t show “adequate enough” love for her country:

I don’t think she did too well on saying I love America. That wasn’t adequate enough because, look, people are gonna hear that, and then those that have paid attention to her earlier comments are gonna try and square those two off.

Are you fucking kidding me? Talking about how great America is and saying outright, "That is why I love this country" isn't enough? Seriously? That's it - Democrats should just give up. Nothing they every say or do is going to be enough for Rove and his merry band of batshit insane extreme right wing frothers.

We can expect no less from the "Ministry of Truth:"

Wow -- a leading Republican appears to have just inadvertently admitted that the GOP's spin machine set up to counter Barack Obama during the convention is a propaganda machine spewing nothing but lies.

The GOPer in question is Colorado GOP chairman Dick Wadhams, who accidentally made the admission when describing the GOP's war room in Denver set up to hammer Obama during convention week.

Wadhams described the GOP's outfit thusly to the Denver Post: "Just consider this the Ministry of Truth."

Um, as anybody who has ever read George Orwell knows, the Ministry of Truth exists to disseminate false propaganda about how great the ruling regime is, continuously rewriting both history and the present-day facts in order to maintain total control over the population.

Sounds eerily familiar, don't it just? At least they're finally being honest on that point.

On the war on terror front, here's an interesting tidbit. One of McCain's favoritest lobbyists - I mean, advisers - would like to ensure even terrorists have free and easy access to guns:

We knew Randy Scheunemann, John McCain's top foreign policy adviser, was into guns. After all, in 1997 he was arrested for having a shotgun and several rounds of ammunition in his car on the grounds of the U.S.
Capitol. And in addition to his extensive lobbying work on behalf of former Soviet bloc countries, he's also a longtime lobbyist for gun-rights groups. But it now looks like, for Scheunemann, doing the bidding of the gun lobby takes precedence over efforts to combat terrorism.

Newsweek reports that, according to registration documents filed by Scheuenemann's lobbying firm, Orion Strategies, Scheunemann lobbied on behalf of the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) against a bill that aims to close a gun-control loophole that inhibits the government from stopping people on terrorist watch-lists from buying guns. According to Newsweek, "the bill was inspired by an official audit covering a five-month period in 2004 which found that, because of the loophole, the Feds had to greenlight 35 out of 44 cases where a gun buyer was on a terrorist watch list."

This is taking the Second Amendment to some ridiculous extremes, don't you think? Mind you, those watch lists can be a little, shall we say, inaccurate, but still. Better safe than sorry when it comes to Teh Terrahrists, right? Isn't that why we eviscerated the Fourth Amendment, thumbed our noses at the Geneva Conventions, and decided that torture wasn't torture as long as we're doing it?

That's the state of our country today. If you're weeping now, I don't blame you. Have another drink.