Happy Hour Discurso

Today's opining on the public discourse.

Oh, for fuck's sake, someone elect us a better set of Con Congressmen. Because the vast majority of the current set are outrageous fucking idiots.

Here we have Sen. Graham grandstanding with nothing to stand on:

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) gave a harsh assessment of Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor Wednesday afternoon, criticizing her ideology, questioning her temperament and saying he had little intention of voting for her.

[snip]

“I think she does have the intellectual capacity to do the job,” Graham said. “But there's a character problem. There's a temperament problem that they — during the time they've had to be a judge, that they were more of an advocate than an impartial decider of the law. And I've got to find out, in my own mind” about her temperament.

With such lingering questions about Sotomayor's record, Graham said, hearings should be held in September after the August recess.

Well. At least he didn't call her stupid. Otherwise, he hit every Con talking point about her. Do these people have some sort of training camp where they learn to be such raging fucking idiots? First, this "temperament" thing's really got no traction in a country that thrives on Judge Judy reruns. Second, where the fuck does he get "advocate" from? If he'd bothered to look at her actual record rather than rumors about her record, he'd see that a little emotion doesn't interfere with Sotomayor's ability to impartially decide the law. What a fucking dumbshit.

Then we have a stiff double shot of dumbfuckery on the environmental side. Here are some of the Con party's finest on green jobs:

Yesterday, House Republicans took to the floor for an hour-long series of speeches dedicated to attacking Waxman-Markey clean energy economy legislation. But in addition to doing the usual — misrepresenting an MIT study to claim the legislation would result in a tax and flaunting their skepticism of global climate change — the members of Congress decided to fire a volley of smears at workers doing green jobs as well. ThinkProgress has compiled a video of some of the attacks:

REP. JOHN FLEMING (R-LA): What we really get is a pass-through of taxpayer dollars that go into what I would call artificial - or I call them paper mâché jobs, so-called green jobs.

REP. TODD AKIN (R-MO): The green jobs that are being talked about, we’re going to create all these green jobs. In Spain, they call them subprime jobs.

REP. G.T. THOMPSON (R-PA): This is all in the name of green, greening America, specifically solar and hydro. But I have to - in terms of the economy, the other green that comes to mind is gangrene.

And I wonder why the first word that comes to mind when I hear "Republican" is "fucktard."

A phrase comes to mind when I see Sen. Inhofe mentioned. It's "Fucktard to the tenth power:"

In a speech for the Heartland Institute yesterday, Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) said that the Senate could just “stall” any EPA regulation:

INHOFE: Don’t be distressed when you see the House passes some kind of cap-and-trade bill. And you know it could be worse and she could still pass it, so it’ll pass there. The EPA has threatened to regulate this through the Clean Air Act. That isn’t going to work in my opinion because we can stall that until we get a new president – that shouldn’t be a problem.

Note to my nation: elect only Democrats not affiliated with the Blue Dogs until Inhofe is dead. Otherwise, our environment's likely to take a shotgun to the head.

Let us leave the halls of Congress before I can't take any more. Not like the view's better anywhere else. If we turn on the teevee, we're likely to be assaulted with this nonsense:

On Monday's edition of Glenn Beck's hopelessly bizarre Fox News program, the host discussed General Motors' bankruptcy, and the federal intervention to save the company, with the National Review's Jonah Goldberg. If you're already thinking, "Uh oh," you still might be surprised by their chat.

Beck began by explaining to viewers that "Liberal Fascism," Goldberg's book, is necessary to "understand" what has "destroyed our country." Beck added that Goldberg's book "began to open my eyes," and prompted the Fox News host to do "an awful lot of research."

The notion of Beck using "Liberal Fascism" as a springboard for genuine academic research is literally laughable, but let's move on.

Beck asked his guest if there are "any examples in history where this kind of stuff has happened -- what's happening today -- and what does it lead to?" He was vague about what "this kind of stuff" included, but presumably it dealt with the government rescue of GM. Goldberg responded with the comparison that Beck wanted to hear:

"Well, I mean, we saw -- I mean, it's funny. I mean, again, you know, I'm not calling Barack Obama a Hitler and I'm not calling him Nazis and all the rest. But, you know, in fascism, we saw the people's car. We call it the Volkswagen, where the state said what we're going to do is we're going to take over the auto industry -- government and business and unions are going to get together and we're going to create cars to fill a political need rather than a market need and give people these cars."

There's just no stupid too stupid for these assclowns, is there?

And then, like a rancid cherry on top, comes Mark Sanford:

Now the governor has taken action on two bills that show where his priorities really lie: He vetoed a bill reigning in predatory payday lending, and signed a bill allowing loaded guns on school grounds.

Reinforcing his ideological approach, Sanford claimed that regulating payday loans was incompatible with “limited government and maximized individual freedom.” State Sen. Joel Lourie (D) replied, “His vision for South Carolina is for ineffective, underfunded schools, for kids buying cheap cigarettes and for unprotected consumers.”

The gun law Sanford signed allows anyone with a concealed weapons permit to leave a gun in their car while parked at a school so that, according to the bill’s sponsor, teachers can more fully exercise their rights:

“I’m not trying to bring firearms inside the school,” said [Sen. Shane] Martin, R-Spartanburg. “You don’t need to carry it inside the school. But I’ve had teachers tell me they can’t exercise their (Second Amendment) rights traveling to and from school. They ought to be able to travel to school without having to leave their weapon.”

So while Sanford refuses to fix crumbling schools or prevent thousands of teacher layoffs or crack down on some of the most predatory lending practices around, he was willing to join a freshman senator’s “grand gesture” to the NRA. It must be more of that “reform” Sanford has trumpeted.

Stupid really never does take a vacation, does it?