Happy Hour Discurso

Today's opining on the public discourse.

Yes, I abandoned you lot for Watchmen. No, I don't regret it. Yes, you must absolutely go see it. And prepare for male full-frontal nudity.

Lots and lots of male full-frontal nudity.

To which this woman says: about bloody time men got exploited.

Anyway. On with Happy Hour. It seems I missed a lot of delicious dumbfuckery whilst watching a very smart movie. Let us begin with Senators in Hot Water.

Norm Coleman, seeing as how he's a former Senator, gets to take point:

In a very awkward message to donors, Norm Coleman, after carelessly failing to protect personal information about his supporters, is now urging concerned donors to cancel their credit cards. Immediately thereafter, in the same message, Coleman urged them to send more money.

You can't accuse the bugger of lacking chutzpah. And why might he be begging for cash as this highly embarrassing time? Well, it seems the Coleman-Franken saga is rolling to a close, and Norm is in the serious brown and smelly:

But the whole question of Norm's abuse of credit-card info is poised to distort -- and possibly greatly shorten -- this timetable. Hamline University law professor David Schultz informed TPM's Eric Kleefeld that, since under state law the losing party of an election contest pays all court costs, Franken's team can demand that Coleman's people show them the money upfront -- that is, they can demand that Coleman's team put in escrow cash equal to the amount for which they're going to be liable. If Coleman doesn't have the cash -- and it's very likely that he doesn't -- then the appeal can't go forward, and Al Franken gets his election certificate signed the moment the Election Contest Court rules in his favor, which could happen as soon as the end of next week. (Of course, then the wingnut chorus of "we wuz robbed!" gets even louder, but that's the breaks, kids.) When asked if Franken's team was considering this option, Franken attorney Marc Elias said that while he hadn't really spent any time looking at it, now that the trial is nearly done he will be taking a look at that option. (By the way, you can still donate to Norm, but not through the website and not with a credit card.)

Excuse me a second.

*Cue hysterical laughter*

That's fucking beautiful.

And here comes David "Diapers" Vitter with dessert:

The Transportation Security Administration has opened a review into reports that he threw a tantrum last week when he arrived at Reagan National Airport to catch a United Airlines plane after the gates had closed. A report in Roll Call, a newspaper covering Capitol Hill, quoted someone anonymously describing events at the airport in a fairly detailed fashion. It indicated that Mr. Vitter grew incensed that airport personnel would not let him through, despite his insistence that he was a senator, and said he set off an alarm trying to get through a door to the plane.

“We’re looking into the alleged incident,” confirmed Lauren Gaches, a spokeswoman for the T.S.A. The inquiry is preliminary, and will involve interviewing “stakeholders,” meaning airport and airline personnel, and any law enforcement officials involved.

Yes, that's right, Diapers. Even Senators don't get to breech airport security. I know Bush's rampant lawbreaking probably gave you the wrong impression, there, but as a lawmaker, you should've understood that, Bush notwithstanding, laws are meant to be followed by all, not just the little people.

Good luck with your reelection bid, by the way. I'm sure the folks back home are going to be mightily impressed with your recent hijinks.

Continuing in a slightly different direction with the "Senators behaving badly" motif, Grampa McCrankypants strikes again:

During a Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee hearing yesterday, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) threatened to oppose President Obama’s pick deputy secretary of Interior, David Hayes, over comments that Hayes had made about former President Ronald Reagan in a 2006 report for the Progressive Policy Institute. “I will be considering seriously whether I can support your nomination or not,” said McCain.

My god. The horror. He said bad things about Reagan. Civilization will surely end if McCain does not save us from this menace. Fuck the economy, get the Reagan hater! And other sundry right-wing hysterical bullshit.

You wanna know what the awful comments were? Are your delicate ears prepared to handle them? Make sure you remove the children from the room first.

David Hayes had the audacity to write (.pdf),

“The conservative political agenda in the West is grounded in hoary stereotypes about the region and its people” and that “out of this conservative world view emerges the stereotypical Western man (and it is unquestionably a ‘he’)—a rugged, gun-toting individualist who fiercely guards every man’s right to drill, mine, log, or do whatever he damn well pleases on the land” and that “Like Ronald Reagan before him, President Bush has embraced the Western stereotype to the point of adopting some of its affectations—the boots, brush-clearing, and get-the-government-off-our-backs bravado.”

Dear me. Fetch the fainting couch and bring McCain some pearls to clutch! He feels a conniption coming on!

And yes, he's seriously ready to hold up a nomination for that. Seriously.

Now, mind you, certain Cons have been whining about "distractions," saying Obama should focus on the economy to the exclusion of anything else. Eric Cantor has been a particularly loud sniveller, yet has been busy distracting us from fixing our broken economy with bills to reduce the tax on beer and make English the official language. He's joined now in the House by an individual who seems to have nothing better to do than listen to conspiracy theories:

Rep. Bill Posey, a freshman Republican from Florida, introduced a bill yesterday mirroring proposed state legislation in Missouri and elsewhere that stems from fringe doubts about Obama's eligibility for office.

The full bill text isn't yet available, and Posey's spokesman didn't immediately respond to a request for comment, but here's a summary:

H.R. 1503. A bill to amend the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 to require the principal campaign committee of a candidate for election to the office of President to include with the committee's statement of organization a copy of the candidate's birth certificate, together with such other documentation as may be necessary to establish that the candidate meets the qualifications for eligibility to the Office of President under the Constitution; to the Committee on House Administration.

If you're starting to think that Cons passed crazy at Mach III and are headed for realms of mental defect we have no adequate words for, you're not wrong. They have become, in fact, so batshit fucking insane, so egregiously stupid, so self-satirizing, that they're once again slipping in the polls - with a twist:

Some striking numbers buried in a new Rasmussen Poll show that GOP Congressional leaders are viewed favorably only by a minority.

A minority of Republican voters, that is.

Just 35% of GOP voters have a favorable rating of GOP House leader John Boehner. Only 40% of Republicans view Senate leader Mitch McConnell favorably.

What’s more, these findings are the work of Rasmussen, who critics have accused of tilting their polling to the right.

Yes, Congressional leaders of both parties are viewed unfavorably by majorities of voters overall. But unlike Boehner and McConnell, Dem leaders Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid are viewed favorably by majorities in their own party.

Ouch. Very ouch.

The only thing that allows me to laugh myself into a doubled-over blob of aching-rib, teary-eyed hilarity is the fact that they brought it all on themselves.

Either that, or the stupid fairy and the insane fairy simultaneously got spasms in their smiting arms.