Happy Hour Discurso

Today's opining on the public discourse.

You know, there's plenty of Con dumbfuckery going on, but for sheer egregious stupidity, I do believe I've got to lead off with this story about the AP:

TechCrunch:

Here is another great moment in A.P. history. In its quest to become the RIAA of the newspaper industry, the A.P.’s executives and lawyers are beginning to match their counterparts in the music industry for cluelessness. A country radio station in Tennessee, WTNQ-FM, received a cease-and-desist letter from an A.P. vice president of affiliate relations for posting videos from the A.P.’s official Youtube channel on its Website.

You cannot make this stuff up. Forget for a moment that WTNQ is itself an A.P. affiliate and that the A.P. shouldn’t be harassing its own members. Apparently, nobody told the A.P. executive that the august news organization even has a YouTube channel which the A.P. itself controls, and that someone at the A.P. decided that it is probably a good idea to turn on the video embedding function on so that its videos can spread virally across the Web, along with the ads in the videos.

I see they've been taking lessons in self-parody from Cons.

Speaking of self-parody, Karl Rove's doing his level best to prove himself the most self-unaware dumbfuck in the crowd:

There's nothing wrong with political commentators developing a signature style, but when the common thread of a pundit's work is unintentional irony, there's a problem.

Let's take Karl Rove, for example. Last week, the Bush/Cheney "architect" used his role as a high-profile media professional to accuse the Obama White House of using hardball political tactics. A couple of weeks before that, Rove accused the president of looking at every policy issue "from a political perspective." A couple of weeks before that, Rove complained about the scourge of budget deficits. A couple of weeks before that, Rove accused the president of relying on "straw men" for his arguments. A couple of weeks before that, Rove decried White House "power grabs." (Rove also, about a year ago, accused the New York Times of having "outed a CIA agent," which "obviously puts the CIA agent in danger." Rove added that disclosing the name of a CIA operative represents "a very callous view about our nation's security and interests.")

Notice the pattern?

Today, Rove is in rare form, arguing that President Obama is "polarizing," because of his "petty" partisanship, while George W. Bush tried to bring Democrats and Republicans together.

Oh, yes, it was all champagne and roses when Bush was in office. I frequently remember Dems and Cons singing "Kumbaya" together (or was it Dems just pleading, "Not in the face!"?). And, of course, the whole wide world loved us and our freedom bombs:

In an interview with CNN earlier this week, Vice President Biden responded to former Vice President Cheney’s criticism that the Obama administration has made America less safe by saying that “the last administration left us in a weaker posture than we’ve been in any time since World War II.” Biden added that when Bush left office, America was “less regarded” and garnered “virtually no respect in entire parts of the world.”

Former Bush Press Secretary Dana Perino responded to Biden on Fox News’ The O’Reilly Factor last night, claiming it was “absolutely not” true. “I actually think that we are respected in the world,” said Perino.

Asked by O’Reilly if it was “a valid point” that the Bush administration “alienated” allies with “its swaggering” at a time that “we need cooperation to defeat terrorists,” Perino replied, “Where is the proof of that?”:

O’REILLY: But they feel — the Obama administration says look, we need cooperation to defeat terrorists. And we weren’t getting it because the Bush administration alienated so many people by its swaggering and its cowboy and the Dick Cheney stuff . Isn’t that a valid point ?

PERINO: Where is the proof of that?

O’REILLY: There isn’t any proof. It’s total speculation.

PERINO: Right.

Perino then asserted that the Bush administration “had allies all over the world helping us,” so Biden is either “not being honest about the briefs that he has gotten, or he just doesn’t know.”

Hmm. No proof. Riiight.

And they love us still, o' course:

Six years ago today, coalition forces defeated Saddam Hussein’s regime and watched the toppling of the dictator’s statue in Firdos Square. President Bush called the day “one of the great moments in the history of liberty.” However, today many Iraqis are marking the day with anti-American protests rather than celebrations.

Yup. That George, spreading sweetness and light everywhere. Left America smelling like roses. Too bad everyone knows they just sprayed perfume on shit, eh?

And finally, what day would be complete without some dumbfuck Con in Texas making an ass out of his/herself? Here ya go:

By now, you may have heard about the very foolish remarks made by a Texas Republican about Asian Americans changing their names for the convenience of everyone else. It's quite a story.

A North Texas legislator during House testimony on voter identification legislation said Asian-descent voters should adopt names that are "easier for Americans to deal with."

The comments caused the Texas Democratic Party on Wednesday to demand an apology from state Rep. Betty Brown, R-Terrell. But a spokesman for Brown said her comments were only an attempt to overcome problems with identifying Asian names for voting purposes.

The exchange occurred late Tuesday as the House Elections Committee heard testimony from Ramey Ko, a representative of the Organization of Chinese Americans.

Ko told the committee that people of Chinese, Japanese and Korean descent often have problems voting and other forms of identification because they may have a legal transliterated name and then a common English name that is used on their driver's license on school registrations.

State Rep. Brown asked Ko, "Rather than everyone here having to learn Chinese -- I understand it's a rather difficult language -- do you think that it would behoove you and your citizens to adopt a name that we could deal with more readily here?"

What amazes me about this is that Brown was talking to someone named "Ko." It's pronounced, "Ko." Just two letters, pretty hard to screw up. Why it would "behoove" Ko to adopt an "easier" name is a mystery.

[snip]

More to the point, the hearing was about voter identification, and Brown asked that Asian Americans make matters "a lot easier" for voters and "poll workers." Of course, a lot of Asian-American voters have already done exactly that, which in turn has led to -- you guessed it -- problems at the voting precincts because the proper names don't match the "easier" names.
Mr. Head, meet Mr. Desk. It's not like it's the first time....