Happy Hour Discurso

Today's opining on the public discourse.

You know what? I give up. The Con party is full of too many hopeless nutcases right now for me to believe some breath of sanity may return to our political discourse. You find the occasional sane Republican trapped in the psychotic rabble like a lonely xenolith, but they're rare. The vast majority of Cons are wildly unfit to govern. I wouldn't trust them to govern an elementary school pageant, much less a country.

You know the fuckwits are beyond salvaging when they're forming a coup caucus:

Late last week, Sen. Jim DeMint (R) of South Carolina became the first U.S. senator to break with the position of the government and endorse the military-backed coup in Honduras. He issued a statement denouncing the democratically-elected president and heralding those responsible for the coup as "guarantee[ing] freedom."

He, apparently, wasn't the last. Mark Leon Goldberg reports today on the emergency of a congressional coup caucus.

Support for the coup in Honduras extends beyond the pages of right wing political magazines to the United States Congress. Tomorrow, the House Committee on Foreign Affairs Ranking Member Ileana Ros-Lehtinen will host a private meeting for her Republican colleagues with former Honduran President Ricardo Maduro and former Costa Rican Ambassador to the U.S. Jaime Daremblum. According to the invitation, obtained by UN Dispatch, "President Maduro will help to outline the sequence of events leading to the shift in power in Honduras and removal of Manuel Zelaya; provide insight into Honduran constitutional authorities; and discuss how the U.S. can now work to support the democratic institutions and rule of law in Honduras." Ambassador Daremblum will discuss his Weekly Standard piece titled "A Coup for Democracy."

In related news, Florida Republican Connie Mack is circulating a congressional resolution that effectively supports the coup. So far, the Congressional Coup Caucus includes Dan Burton (Republican from Indiana), Jeff Fortenberry (Republican from Nebraska) and Dana Rohrabacher (Republican from California) who are co-sponsoring the resolution.

These dumbshits don't understand democracy in the least. And no one exemplifies that dumbfuckery more than DeMint:

Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) today defended Honduran President Manuel Zelaya’s recent removal from office by the Honduran military. In the course of defending the military coup, DeMint attacked President Obama for having what he called an “ad hoc and personalized foreign policy that seems less about supporting the rule of law than it is about supporting particular rulers.” Zelaya’s “removal from office was no more a coup than was Gerald Ford’s ascendence to the Oval Office or our newest colleague Al Franken’s election to the Senate,” DeMint claimed.

Al Franken's election wasn't a coup, you fucktard. He was duly elected under the laws of this land. The military didn't scoop him up, deposit him in the Senate, and bodily haul Coleman out of the country. Gerald Ford acended to the Presidency precisely as the Constitution directs. Apparently, these democratic niceties are beyond your ken.

You and Sarah Palin both need to go spend some quality time with Christy Hardin Smith's Schoolhouse Rock collection:

Criminy. The woman has been governor of Alaska for the last few years.

She just finished a run at the Vice Presidency wherein, by admission of McCain campaign staffers, they tried to stuff her brain full of governmental knowledge in massive cram sessions for the Veep debate.

And THIS is what comes tra-la-ing out of Bailin' Palin's mouth on ABC?

But when I asked Palin if she ever decided to pursue national office again, as she did less than a year ago when she joined Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., in the race for the White House, wouldn't she encounter the same political blood sport? Can such ugliness ever be avoided?

Palin said there is a difference between the White House and what she has experienced in Alaska. If she were in the White House the "department of law" would protect her from baseless ethical allegations.

"I think on a national level your department of law there in the White House would look at some of the things that we've been charged with and automatically throw them out," she said.

There is no "Department of Law" at the White House.

Why do I feel the need to express mail a copy of the full School House Rock cartoon DVDs to Palin with a lovely hand-penned card telling her to watch the whole thing and take notes?

Probably because she has no fucking clue how the federal government actually works:

It's tempting to think Palin may have been referring to the Justice Department, but it's not "in the White House," and it doesn't have the authority to "throw out" charges against the president. Maybe she's thinking of the White House Counsel's Office, but again, it has the ability to defend against allegations, not "look at some of the things that we've been charged with and automatically throw them out."

Indeed, the very assumption that a president is somehow shielded or protected against allegations is itself misguided.

Exactly.

Alaska's not the only state beginning with the letter A to have an egregiously stupid Con making a damn fool of themselves on the national stage. Arizona's got Jon Kyl (among an abundance of other asses), who thinks nuclear proliferation is teh awesome:

Yesterday, President Obama and Russian President Dmitri Medvedev signed an agreement to negotiate a successor to the soon-to-expire START treaty that would “cut American and Russian strategic nuclear arsenals by at least one-quarter.” Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ) — “seasoned killer of past arms control treaties” — responded to news of the agreement on Bill Bennett’s radio show this morning by claiming that the Obama administration is “more anxious to make a deal than it is to ensure the protection of the United States.” Bennett told Kyl that he “didn’t think the reductions in missiles by the amount they were doing it was that serious,” but asked him to elaborate:

KYL: In the past, our assessment of what we need to protect our interests as well as the allies that rely on our nuclear umbrella put the number of weapons as a certain level. And the administration is planning to go far below that. … I’m very concerned that the administration is more anxious to make a deal than it is to ensure the protection of the United States.

[snip]

And despite Kyl’s attempts to portray Obama’s commitment yesterday to eliminate just a portion of the U.S. nuclear arsenal as detrimental to U.S. national security, James Collins and Jack Matlock remind us that former President Ronald Reagan and Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev “came within a hair’s breadth of agreeing to the complete elimination of nuclear weapons within 10 years” during their 1986 summit.

That Reagan was such an America-hating national security wimp, wasn't he, Jon? Jon? Helloo?

Funny. Cat seems to have suddenly got his tongue.

At least we know the "make war, not peace" constituency is abundantly represented. So is the racist demographic:

Conservatives have chosen a strange leader to spearhead their charge against Judge Sotomayor — Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL). With only days remaining until Sotomayor’s confirmation hearings begin, Sessions has focused his attacks on Sotomayor’s past service on the board of the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund (PRLDEF), a leading civil rights organization that Sessions calls “extreme” because it “brought several race discrimination lawsuits for minorities” while Sotomayor sat on its board.

Setting aside the facial absurdity of this attack — race discrimination is illegal, a fact which apparently also bothers Sessions — it’s puzzling that conservatives would let Sessions be their public face of opposition against the first Latina nominated to the Supreme Court, especially in light of his own checkered history with race.

In 1986, Sessions’ nomination to the federal bench was rejected by the Senate because of Sessions’ deep-seated hostility to the very notion of civil rights. In comments that are strikingly similar to his recent attacks on PRLDEF, Sessions attacked the NAACP as an “un-American” and “Communist-inspired” organization that “forced civil rights down the throats of people.”

[snip]

Nor were Sessions’ attacks on the NAACP an isolated incident. As a federal prosecutor, Sessions conducted a tenuous criminal investigation into voting rights advocates that registered African-Americans to vote, an investigation that culminated in an unsuccessful prosecution against a former aide to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Additionally, an African-American attorney who once worked for Sessions testified at his hearings that Sessions said that he “used to think [the KKK] were OK” until he found out some of them were “pot smokers.” The same attorney also recalled being called “boy” by Sessions and being told to “be careful what you say to white folks” after Sessions overheard him chastising a white secretary.

Attention, Cons in the audience: whenever you wonder why I spend so much time denigrating, demolishing, and otherwise disrespecting Cons in general, consider the fact that you keep electing racist, sexist, egregiously stupid fuckers to office, where other racist, sexist, egregiously stupid fuckers elevate them to leadership positions.

Consider also the fact that every time your glorious leaders raise hell about morality, ethics and all that, they somehow stop shrieking the second one of their own gets caught with his hand in the cookie jar or his dick in the wrong place:

This week, Sanford seems to have convinced Republicans to let him stick around.

The South Carolina Republican Party voted to censure Gov. Mark Sanford Monday -- rather than call for his resignation -- an outcome that makes it likely the GOP governor will be able to weather the storm surrounding his extramarital affair and remain in office.

The vote of the state GOP executive committee took place late Monday night following a nearly four-hour-long conference call and three rounds of ballots aimed at getting a majority of the committee to either censure, support or ask the governor to resign.

The censure finally agreed to by the committee called the governor's behavior a breach of "the public's trust and confidence in his ability to effectively perform the duties of his office."

Sanford was also criticized by the committee for failing to adhere to the "core principles and beliefs" of the Republican Party, though the censure noted that "barring further revelation" Monday's action would be "the party's last word on the matter."

The final vote was 22 to censure, 10 calling for resignation and 9 supporting the governor.

The party chair said in a statement that "now is the time for healing," which is apparently a subtle way of saying, "We're going to stop calling for his resignation." Indeed, the Politico reported that the party's censure vote -- which has no practical meaning and is effectively a rhetorical slap on the wrist -- may ensure Sanford's "outright political survival."

Note that the "family values, marriage is sacred, blah blah blah" culture warrior Cons made just enough of a fuss to convince the naive that they were really serious about this stuff and would toss Sanford out on his ear. Then they welcomed him back with open arms. Can we say "outrageous fucking hypocrites," children?

How about "dishonest sacks of shit:"

As I noted below, the National Republican Senatorial Committee’s new Web ad depicts Al Franken as a raging nut-job — but it actually uses footage of Franken talking about the late Minnesota Senator Paul Wellstone to do it.

Here’s another wrinkle. The statement that NRSC spokesperson Brian Walsh sent me about the ad links to a notoriously debunked fake pic of Franken in diapers.

The link came in this sentence from the NRSC statement making a tongue-in-cheek offer to substitute other photos for the b-roll used in the ad: “We’ll certainly consider substituting it for this one if they would prefer though.” That links to this photo (click to enlarge):

But the thing is, this photo was revealed to have been faked by the Ohio GOP back in 2006. What’s more, as David Kurtz notes, this fact was widely reported yesterday after an Ohio columnist used the faked photo.

And yet, the NRSC is still selectively editing the Wellstone-Franken footage to put a dishonest spin on it, and playing dumb with a fake photo, even though all it does is make them look like a bunch of middle-school bullies. Only people with a mental age of 12 think this shit is clever.

Here's the upshot, my darlings: politics is a dirty business, and Dems have a definite bit of mud spattered on them here and there. But they look like a compulsive cleaner's kitchen compared to Cons. I'll take slightly grubby over cesspit any day, thank you very much.