Happy Hour Discurso

Today's opining on the public discourse.

The Cons seem to know I was busy with other things in Seattle tonight, which you shall have a full report on for Sunday Sensational Science.  They've not been considerate at all - they unleashed a veritable tsunami of stupid today.  We'll do our best to tread water.

Nancy Pelosi isn't taking any sexist lip from the Cons:

Earlier this week, the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) went after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, arguing that Gen. Stanley McChrystal should put Pelosi "in her place."

The Speaker responded this morning.

"It's really sad they don't understand how inappropriate that is," Pelosi told reporters at her weekly press conference. "I'm in my place. I'm the Speaker of the House, the first woman Speaker of the House. And I'm in my place because the House voted me there. That language is something I hadn't heard in decades."

For the record, as of this afternoon, not one of the 17 House Republican women representatives has been willing to criticize the NRCC's claim that Pelosi should be put "in her place."

Perhaps it's because they know what comes next.  When Cons can't win an argument, they start screaming "terrorism!"

Okay, the battle over the NRCC’s claim that General Stanley McChrystal should put Nancy Pelosi “in her place” has taken a surreal turn.

The latest: After Pelosi hit back at the claim today, the NRCC responded by claiming her pushback is a sign that she’s … soft on terrorism.

At a presser this morning, Pelosi struck back at the NRCC, saying: “I’m in my place. I’m the Speaker of the House.” Here’s the response from NRCC spokesperson Joanna Burgos:

“Rather than deflecting from the real issue at hand and refocus on defeating terrorists, Nancy Pelosi would rather make party politics a higher priority than our national security. The fact of the matter is that most Americans agree with General McChrystal’s strategy on Afghanistan, but Pelosi self-righteously believes she is better suited to craft our country’s military policy. The last time Americans saw this type of outright contempt directed toward a four-star general is when this same San Francisco liberal attempted to undercut General David Petraeus by declaring his successful surge strategy a ‘failure.’”

It’s worth pondering why it is that the GOP is tripling-down on this strategy at a time when GOP strategists keep saying the party needs to broaden its appeal.

Not really.  They're misogynistic fucktards who like to play on people's fear and stupidity - that rather outweighs any consideration they have for little things like broadening their appeal.

These are, of course, the same fucktards who feel comfortable spouting shit like this:

At a town hall last week, Rep. Paul Broun (R-GA) continued his campaign to inject over the top, paranoid rhetoric into America’s political discourse. “I’m chairman of the Second Amendment Task Force fighting for Second Amendment rights. Those gun rights are actually critical to prevent treason in America,” said Broun, according to Athens Banner-Herald reporter Blake Aued, who provided a transcript of Broun’s remarks to TPM. Broun then said that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is one of the “domestic enemies of the Constitution” that he says he swore to defend against:

I’ve gotten to be good friends with Justice Antonin Scalia, who he and Justice Clarence Thomas are the only ones who have any concept of what the Constitution is supposed to be and, and do what they’re supposed to do as justices by upholding the Constitution. But, in fact every, when I was sworn into the Marine Corp, I was sworn to uphold the Constitution against every enemy, foreign and domestic. We’ve got a lot of domestic enemies of the Constitution (applause) and one of those sits in the speaker’s chair of the United States Congress, Nancy Pelosi.

Methinks they have a wee bit of an unhealthy obsession with Nancy Pelosi.  Not to mention the vast majority of them are batshit fucking insane, but we knew that already.

Con hypocrisy isn't really news, but we don't often get an opportunity to see so much as once.  They seem to be doing their best this week to prove how good they are at the old about-face.

Why, it seems like just last Presidency they so enjoyed playing the "hate the troops" card:

Throughout the better part of Bush's two terms, if Democrats opposed spending bills for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Republicans attacked. To vote against "funding the troops" during a time of war, the GOP said, was necessarily a betrayal. It was the basis for countless speeches, ad campaigns, and attacks.

Whether a lawmaker was fully satisfied with individual provisions in the spending bill was irrelevant -- the troops are fighting wars and they need the money. Excuses, Republicans said, won't give servicemen and women the resources they need. It became the single most frequently repeated GOP talking point when it came to national security: Dems voted against the troops during two wars.

In fact, just last year, House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) argued, "[T]here is a clear distinction between saying you support the troops and backing up those claims with genuine action. [Obama] once said 'we shouldn't play chicken with our troops' when it comes to funding our troops in harm's way, and [Hillary Clinton] urged General Petraeus at the start of the surge to request 'every possible piece of equipment and resource necessary' to keep our troops safe. These words turned into little more than empty rhetoric when both proceeded to vote against funding our troops last year."

Guess what.

House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) and House GOP Conference Chairman Mike Pence (R-Ind.) are voting against the House/Senate fiscal year 2010 defense authorization bill -- because it contains hate crimes provisions designed to protect gays and lesbians.

Well, this raises the obvious question: why do Cons hate our troops?

While we're at it, let's ask Inhofe what happened to "I cannot support any investigations that could have a chilling effect within the deliberative process of the Administration:"

Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK), who attacked investigations into the political interference on global warming regulation by the Bush White House, is now calling for probes into Obama’s “Presidential czars” who are taking action to crack down on greenhouse pollution.

My, how their little minds change when power's in Dem hands.

And wait 'till you hear Boehner's excuse for hypocrisy:

Last night on Fox News, House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) complained about the process of moving bills forward for a vote. “I’m going to introduce a resolution here in the House that would require all committees to post within 24 hours the actions taken by their committee,” he declared.

Host Greta Van Susteren piled on. “Why in the world don’t we have that?” After Boehner spent much of the segment calling on the Democratic majority to “let people read these bills,” Van Susteren turned the tables and asked Boehner what the standard practice was when the Republicans were in power:

VAN SUSTEREN: All right, when your party was in leadership in the House and there were issues about transparency, any recollection how you handled it? Did you guys resist it at all? I realize that different times, but did you resist it at all?

BOEHNER: Well, it was a different time.

Oh, well, gee, that settles that.  I mean, what a compelling argument.  Wow.  It must be, as I'm speechless.

But I do have one final question: why do Cons hate national security?

A growing number of officials recognize the national security implications of global climate change. The NYT recently ran a report noting the ways in which a warming planet "will pose profound strategic challenges to the United States in coming decades, raising the prospect of military intervention to deal with the effects of violent storms, drought, mass migration and pandemics.... Such climate-induced crises could topple governments, feed terrorist movements or destabilize entire regions."

With this in mind, the Central Intelligence Agency intends to develop a new division that would focus on intelligence gathering related to national security, unstable governments, and climate change. Sen. John Barrasso (R), a right-wing lawmaker from Wyoming, is working on making sure the new CIA office doesn't exist.

Senator John Barrasso, a conservative freshman Republican from Wyoming, said on Tuesday that he would try to stop the Central Intelligence Agency from opening a new climate change center by choking off its funding.

"The C.I.A. is responsible for gathering foreign intelligence information for the United States," Mr. Barrasso said in announcing an amendment to a 2010 spending bill to block any money being spent by the agency on the new office. "I don't believe creating a center on climate change is going to prevent terrorist attacks."

[snip]

As he sees it, a Center on Climate Change and National Security would spend its time "sitting in a dark room watching polar ice caps" and "spying on sea lions."

I get the distinct impression that John Barrasso is conspicuously unintelligent, and should probably speak less and read more.

I get that impression about all Cons, myself.