Happy Hour Discurso

Today's opining on the public discourse.


Yes, indeedy, the Cons are still on about teh horrible President Barack "Hitlerhusseinmussolinistalin" Obama and his nefarious scheme to tell the kiddies to stay in school. While the White House attempts to defuse the situation with reason and sanity, the DNC has a more appropriate response:

The Democratic National Committee’s political hits on Republicans have taken on a fairly hard mocking edge this cycle, a combination of the large victory last fall and the addition of operatives like Brad Woodhouse and Hari Sevugan to run DNC messaging.

In this vein, Sevugan sends over a typical statement mocking the conservative, er, argument that Obama’s speech to kids will indocrinate them with socialism by reminding people that Obama intends to stress school and hard work:

“What this absurd episode shows is that the GOP can in fact come up with new ideas. For example, it’s now clear that the new Republican education platform will argue against personal responsibility, hard work and staying in school.”

Yup.

Although it surely looks like the Cons are making much ado about nothing at all, engaging in outrageous hypocrisy in the bargain, perhaps there's an explanation:

Setting aside the surely ludicrous notion that conservatives are infuriated that an excessively-pigmented Democratic president is the one delivering this alarming message to the impressionable youth of America, I can think of only two rational explanations for the uproar:

1) 3,000 Americans died when the tough-on-terror-est president evar read "My Pet Goat" to just one room of schoolkids. Who knows what kind of terrible tragedy might befall us if a terrorist-loving Islamocommunofascist is allowed to address millions of them? One can only conclude that Obama has grown tired of waiting for his death panels and wants to start killing off honest, hardworking Americans right now.

2) Education and learning are un-American. After all, if our children apply themselves to their studies, they might become too clever and knowledgeable to fall for lies and talking points, making them totally unsuitable as voters. Worse yet, they might even become so capable that they start taking job opportunities away from the people who should rightly inherit them!

Either way, Obama's insidious address is clearly a menace that must be stopped at all costs. Or at least get rebutted by Bobby Jindal.

Look, I didn't say it was a good explanation.

While Cons freak out over the POTUS telling kiddies to stay in school, perhaps they can explain why they're not freaking out over this blatant attempt at indoctrination. Could it have anything to do with the fact that they don't see the problem, here?

Perhaps that's because they're taking a paranoid delusional fucktard seriously:

The stupid, it hurts. From the LA Times- Glenn Beck and the Society for (In)sanity in Art:

Last night Fox News ranter Glenn Beck went off on the art made more than 70 years ago for Rockefeller Center, corporate headquarters of NBC and -- not coincidentally -- supposed arch-enemy of Rupert Murdoch's television empire. To the surprise of no one, but to the great amusement of the blogosphere (here, here and here) -- Beck donned his art critic's tin-foil conspiracy hat to find hidden evidence of "progressives, fascists and communists" in the carved reliefs and paintings of a landmark Manhattan building complex that was made a national historic monument in 1987. (Let's see; who was president that year? Oh, yeah: Commie-symp Ronald Reagan.)

If you think that's too whacky, just wait for the punchline:

Apparently, the "oligarh" is capable of influencing public art projects that were created before he was born. Yes, Glenn Beck now believes President Obama has the power to inspire through time.

[snip]

My favorite part: Beck shares his art-interpretation conspiracy theory and concludes, "This makes sense."

There are a lot of people languishing away in mental institutions who aren't quite as insane as Glenn Beck, my darlings.

While I know that mental illness isn't contagious, right-wing hysteria apparently is. And really, people, despite what you may think, you can overdo the Nazi references:

But the New Boston Tea Party hardly offers the kind of reasoned, respectable opposition that the Tea Party Patriots attempt to embody. Currently, the site's lead item -- about the president's planned speech to school kids next week -- is entitled "Dr. Barack Goebbels Obama, Chief Reichmaster Tuesday September 8, 2009." Another recent post, based on the false "death panel" rumor, discusses Nazi doctor Josef Megele's human experiments on concentration camp inmates, before declaring: "WE NOW HAVE ANOTHER DR. MENGELE, AKA BARACK HUSSEING (sic) BARACK MENGELE."

It's hard to take these folks seriously at the best of times. And this isn't the best of times.

Speaking of Godwin's Law, it appears that Rep. Mike Pence has no problem at all with comparing the President to Hitler:

Yesterday, Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN), who serves as chairman of the House Republican Conference, held a town hall-style meeting at Madison Park Church of God in Anderson, IN. During the event, an elderly woman stood to ask Pence a question, and in the midst of doing so, told the congressman that President Obama wants members of Congress to be treated as “a superior race.” “And we know who came up with the terminology of a superior race,” she continued, “it sounds a lot like Hilter.” Many in the crowd applauded. Rather than reject the questioner’s false assertion, Pence simply said, “Thank you.”

Wrong answer, but thank you for playing. It's always nice to see those true colors shining through.

In Michele Bachmann's case, those colors appear to be psychedelic:

Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) is aware of the fact that she's a controversial political figure. It's understanding why that seems to be giving her some trouble. Bachmann told a conservative radio talk show yesterday that she's certain she's become the target of criticism because Democrats fear her ... as a presidential candidate.

"Also with women politicians, they want to make sure no women, no woman becomes president before a Democrat woman, and so they're doing everything they can to, I think, sabotage women like Sarah Palin, perhaps women like myself, or similarly situated women, to make sure that we don't have a prominent national voice. But the thing is, the people in our country, they don't care who the voice is, they just want someone, they want to know that someone is speaking out for them against what will certainly bring about the destruction of our great country if we continue to go down the Obama path."

Well, that's one possibility. The other is that Bachmann is mad as a hatter, and she's frequently ridiculed because no one can find a nuttier member of Congress who says so many ridiculous things on a regular basis.

I'm somewhat certain a rep who tries to outdo Glenn Beck in the insanity department doesn't have too much chance at getting elected by that broad swath of Independents and other assorted swing voters who value sanity above entertainment value, and I know for certain that Dems would laugh themselves sick before plumping for the other candidate (any other candidate). But perhaps she has a chance at becoming Greater Wingnuttistan's first president if the dreams of the tenthers come to pass:

On Rush Limbaugh’s radio show today, his fill-in host, Walter E. Williams, pushed the idea to Limbaugh’s millions of listeners:

WILLIAMS: Look, Mark, I don’t know what we’re going to do. That is, one of the questions, one of the issues is that we may be like other great nations of the past. Other great nations like Rome and Great Britain and go down the tube. Now, there’s a group of people. There’s kind of a wild hope or a remote possibility. There’s a group of young people. They call themselves freestateproject.org. And these young people are trying to get 20,000 Americans to move to the state of New Hampshire and peacefully take over the political system, you know, through voting and things like that and elect their own congressmen and senators. And then having done so, they wish, they want to negotiate with the United States Congress to obey the United States Constitution. Now, some members of the group, not all of them, some members of the group say that if they can’t get Congress to obey the United States Constitution, they’re going to issue a unilateral declaration of independence, become a separate nation. Now, I don’t know whether that’s going to work. The last time it didn’t work, but the first time in 1776, it did work. And so, I think we’re batting 500 and I’d like to see whether we could break the tie. Whether we could have a sovereign nation.

I'm really starting to think we should find these folks some nice, isolated land somewhere and let them live their dream. Anybody have any islands in the middle of the ocean, far from the rest of us, they'd care to donate?