Happy Hour Discurso

Today's opining on the public discourse.

I've stopped asking if the right wing can get any more ridiculous. Of course they can.

For instance, they're on about dolls now:

Just when you think the right wing's ability to freak out over imaginary outrages can't possibly get any more ridiculous(death panels, Obama's fake birth certificate, census data being used to take our guns away and put us all in FEMA interment camps), they go and top themselves again:

An outraged Andrea Peyser writes in the NY Post today:

And while you were snoozing, the creators of American Girl, which is sold by Mattel, got bold. They engaged in all-out political indoctrination.

Snuck into the collection is a doll that comes with a biography that is weird and potentially offensive enough to keep Mom running to the Maalox. Gwen, you see, is harboring a terrible secret.

She is homeless. A homeless doll.

(...)

What message is being sent with Gwen?

For starters, men are bad. Fathers abandon women without cause. She's also telling me that women are helpless. And that children in this great country, where dolls sell for nearly 100 bucks a pop, are allowed to sleep in motor vehicles. But mothers don't lose custody over this injustice. Because, you see, they are victims, too.

ZOMG! Our poor innocent children could be exposed to the fact that there are homeless people! Where will this liberal perfidy end?

Horrible how we evil libruls acknowledge people the right would rather pretend didn't exist, innit?

And speaking of indoctrination, the right is also in hysterics over children having a sing-song about the President - despite the fact they had no hysterics when the sing-song was about Bush:

Conservatives have been up in arms over a tape showing schoolchildren in New Jersey singing a song in praise of President Obama. Glenn Beck said the tape showed “indoctrination that is going on.” Sean Hannity ranted, “This video makes me mad…Mao would be proud.” Typical of this overblown outrage was this statement from RNC Chairman Michael Steele:

Friend, this is the type of propaganda you would see in Stalin’s Russia or Kim Jong Il’s North Korea. I never thought the day would come when I’d see it here in America.

But as Huffington Post recalls, “back in 2006 children from Gulf Coast states serenaded First Lady Laura Bush with a song praising the President, Congress, and Federal Emergency Management Agency for their response to — of all things — Hurricane Katrina.”

IOKIYAR. Even taking the unprecedented step of naming a school full of kiddies after the President is fine - as long as it's Bush:

Attending a school named after a sitting president: patriotism.

Stockton school officials said they believe theirs will be the first school in the nation named for the president. The White House did not respond to requests for confirmation.

To one school board member, Clem Lee, a Republican, the Bush name is an expression of patriotism.

"It was an expression of the sentiment 'America Now' for me," Lee said. "There's probably some post-9/11 stuff mixed in there. We have a president who is facing really an unprecedented challenge. So my vote was informed by a culmination of all those things.

"I am the first person to admit that it might be premature to honor a sitting president," he said. "But it's quite defensible."

It always is.

It probably wouldn't be so annoying if these people showed any sign of self-awareness. Just something simple, like "I know I'm being a hypocrite, but..." Yet they don't. They seriously don't seem to see any disconnect between believing the praise and adulation of Bush was right and good, and any hint Obama's being given the same treatment is horrible and evil. Sometimes, I wonder if they have some mild form of Korsakoff's Syndrome, causing them to forget how they were all perfectly fine with the shit they're screaming about before a Democratic butt got to sit upon the Oval Office desk chair.

That Democrat, incidentally, has turned FEMA right around:

Many parts of Georgia have been devastated this week by what's been described as a "once in 500 years flood." It's affected 20 counties, killed at least nine people, and caused about $250 million in damages. Vice President Biden appeared alongside members of Congress and federal officials in an Atlanta suburb yesterday, where the American Red Cross had set up a shelter.

By all accounts, officials are responding effectively, and federal aid made available by the administration will be used for recovery programs, including temporary housing and low-cost loans. After a half-hour helicopter tour of the area, Biden vowed that there would be no "bureaucratic stalling and shuffling" as officials addressed the emergency.

I was also struck by the willingness of two very conservative Republican senators -- Johnny Isakson and Saxby Chambliss -- to credit "the White House's quick response" and commend the administration's efforts.

Chambliss praised the Obama Administration for a response that was both "magnificent" and "quick." Isakson said he had spent last night on the phone with local officials, all of whom reported FEMA workers on the ground.

Apparently, the response isn't "magnificent" or "quick" enough for the Teabaggers:

It's pretty much a given that Georgia is a red state, chock full of teabaggers and states rights foamers who fuss constantly about socialism, the intrusive federal government, and abolishing all taxes. The opinion blogs on the AJC are full of rants about how evil the Democrats are, Obama wasn't born in this country, and we're all going to hell in a handbasket because of the meddlers in Washington, DC.

Then we had a flood.

You guessed it.

The cry has changed from "Obama's a socialist!" to "Give me a FEMA check!!" and complaining that the federal disaster declarations didn't go out fast enough and don't cover a wide enough area.

Keep your guvmint hands off my FEMA check, eh? Nice. I can't wait to bring this up next time Georgia starts making noise about secession.

Cons will probably see nothing wrong with Georgia Cons screaming secession one minute and then screaming for federal disaster relief the next. After all, they can't see anything wrong with lending credence to the most unhinged elements of the right:

The radicals running the How To Take Back America Conference are so nutty, you'd think GOP lawmakers and leaders would want nothing to do with them.

Take Janet Folger Porter, for example, who's helping run the event. Porter, a leading right-wing activist and talk-show host, believes the United States is "cursed" for having elected President Obama, who took office as the result of a communist conspiracy. She's told her audience that the H1N1 flu vaccine is really a nefarious plot by the government to kill millions of Americans, and that the Obama administration is creating internment camps for conservatives.

Porter is just one of the truly unhinged conservatives who helped make this weekend's event a reality, along with other nutty activists like Phyllis Schlafly, Joseph Farah, Mat Staver, and Rick Scarborough.

Are Republicans keeping their distance? Some are, some aren't. Four sitting Republican members of Congress -- Reps. Michele Bachmann (Minn.), Steve King (Iowa), Tom Price (Ga.), and Tom McClintock (Calif.) -- will be addressing the conference today. Former presidential candidate and Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee (R) will headline the event this evening.

Once again, IOKIYAR. Faux News won't be howling non-stop about your extremist associations for the next several months because they, too, share your special kind of myopia.

And they're aided and abetted by people so busy panicking they forget how to think. Like TNR's Michael Crowley, who's apparently been watching way too much teevee lately:

If it were up to me, I don't know what I would do; I would need to know more facts. I am not a proponent of torture, which I think has done enormous harm to America's image abroad and moral fiber at home. But I ride the subways these guys may have been planning to attack and I would like to be quite sure we've found all of them. At a minimum, this is a good opportunity to stress-test the debate about interrogation techniques, because it may be that life can imitate 24 after all.

Oh yessss. It would be irresponsible not to.

Why do I increasingly feel like the last seven or eight years never happened and I've awakened sometime in early 2002? More 24 bullshit? Really? What, did Crowley miss out on the post 9/11 pants peeing extravaganza or is this is some kind of retro panic chic? (Can't you just feel the breathless, macho arousal in his words?) Jesus.

Somebody needs to tell Crowley that we've had the debate and we don't need any "stress testing." It was "tested" on quite a few subjects and it didn't work no matter how fast Dick Cheney dances on the head of a pin. Plus there's this.

24 has become the Godwin's Law of torture talk. And I'm sorry, but if you whip out 24 in all seriousness, you've just invalidated your own argument.

Better countrymen, please.