Happy Hour Discurso

Today's opining on the public discourse.

Way too much stupid for words today, my darlings.  Better pull on your hip waders and prepare for the worst.

Let us begin Sen. Thune's piss-poor excuse for denying justice to rape victims:

Earlier this month, Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) proposed an amendment to the 2010 Defense Appropriations bill to withhold defense contracts from companies which “restrict their employees from taking workplace sexual assault, battery and discrimination cases to court.”

[snip]

Although Franken’s amendment passed, it was opposed by 30 Republican Senators and by lobbyists of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Blogger-activist Mike Stark interviewed several of the GOP Senators who voted against the amendment, including Sen. John Thune (R-SD). Thune explained his vote by arguing that he was simply defending the sanctity of using binding arbitration to settle disputes between labor and management:

STARK: What it would have prevented, was the government from contracting with anyone who forces women who have been raped into arbitration instead of giving them their day in court. … It sounds to a lot of us that you sided with corporations over rape victims.

THUNE: It was clearly politically inspired amendment to make it appear that way. The issue has to do with whether or not arbitration is going to be something that continues to be a part of labor agreements.

STARK: Well this was narrowly defined to prevent arbitration in cases of rape.

THUNE: No, no it wasn’t. … It has to do with the broader issue about whether or not arbitration is going to be a tool available for labor and management to use when it comes to labor agreements.

[snip]

While Thune is committed to the principle that corporations have the right to use binding arbitration to muzzle victims of rape, he has long argued against the use of arbitrators in regards to reforming how unions sign labor contracts.

What a shitheel.

Moving on to media arseclowns, the White House speaking truth to Faux News certainly has had the clowns marching in.  Jeez.  Check out Dana Perino's latest bit of idiocy, guaranteed to make you laugh:

An amusing nugget from former White House flack Dana Perino, who complains that the White House shouldn’t aggressively target Obama’s Republican and conservative critics because it will foul up relations with them:

“They won — why don’t they act like it?” said Dana Perino, former White House press secretary to Bush. “The more they fight, the more defensive they look. It’s only been 10 months, and they’re burning bridges in a lot of different places.”

Not sure Perino is the ideal messenger for the line that the Obama administration is being too rough on its political opponents. After all, her administration tried to paint much of the opposition party — not to mention major journalistic institutions like The New York Times — as traitors who were actively encouraging terrorist attacks on our country.

Perino’s claim that Obama administration officials are “burning bridges” with critics seems debatable, too. After all, whether it’s powerful interests running multi-million-dollar ad campaigns attacking Obama’s agenda, or leading conservative media figures attacking Obama as a “racist” who wants to brainwash the nation’s schoolchildren, Obama’s foes never seemed all that interested in maintaining cordial relations with the White House to begin with.

As Steve Benen said, "And which 'bridges' would those be, exactly?"

Was wondering that meself.  And I'm definitely with Steve on this sentiment:

I do wish the establishment would pick a theme and go with it. President Obama can be a weak, risk-averse, overly-conciliatory neophyte, or he can be a ruthless, cut-throat, political-machine boss out to destroy anyone who gets in his way. But he can't be both.

Thank you.

One of those nice overpaid fucktards who nearly brought us Great Depression Mark II until the government threw them rafts of money wants us to know we all just need to suck it up and enjoy the inequality:

The New York-based investment bank Goldman Sachs has “set aside $16.7 billion for compensation and benefits in the first nine months of 2009,” which is a 46 percent increase from last year. But according to a Goldman adviser, Wall Street’s record pay is necessary “to achieve greater prosperity and opportunity for all”:

A Goldman Sachs International adviser defended compensation in the finance industry as his company plans a near-record year for pay, saying the spending will help boost the economy. “We have to tolerate the inequality as a way to achieve greater prosperity and opportunity for all,” Brian Griffiths, who was a special adviser to former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, said yesterday at a panel discussion hosted by St. Paul’s Cathedral in London.

At the same time that Wall Street’s pay has skyrocketed, pay cuts in other sectors “are occurring more frequently than at any time since the Great Depression.”

Um.  There's inequality - the kind that causes people to strive a little harder to better themselves, but doesn't leave gargantuan gaps between classes that have no possible basis in reality - and then there's fucking outrageous inequality - the kind that leaves gargantuan gaps between classes that have no possible basis in reality, and furthermore is artificially maintained by boatloads of taxpayer cash.  That last one is the one Goldman Sachs and friends advocates.  Methinks he's in the wrong damned century - what the fuck does he think this is, the Middle fucking ages?  Is he going to be stumping for serfdom next?  What a piece of shit.

And we're in to the hips and still rising.  There's so much stupidity today; we're going to have to just sum up. 

Remember how yesterday, I told you NJ gubernatorial hopeful Chris Christie was in deep fucking shit - mired in the Brown and sticky, as it were?  It gets worse.

Ladies and gentlemen, all the proof the White House could ever ask for: observe the communication arm of the GOP hard at work.  Funny how Faux News screeches "are not partisan propagandists!" whilst doing their level best to prove they are.

Newtie Gingrich is clenching his little fists and stomping his little feet over a WaPo/ABC News poll showing only one-fifth of the country's willing to admit it belongs to the Con party.  He's howling that's a lie!  To do so, he's had to ignore quite a few other polls all showing the same thing.  That seems to be a required skill for Cons, doesn't it?

Are you ready for Michelle Bachmann's recommendation for President?  She thinks Steve King would make a great POTUS.  Seriously.  This woman's beyond fucking insane.

At least she provided the opportunity for one of those great moments in Con hypocrisy.  Guess they shouldn't have screamed about SPAM SPAM SPAM when they, too, are engaging in the behavior they abhor.

There's a Teabagger civil war on.  I hope you've got plenty of popcorn popped.

And, finally, Judith Miller, ladies and gentlemen:

The interesting part of this report, though, came immediately after Herridge's report, when MacCallum hosted our old friend Judith Miller, the woman who helped bring you that six-years-and-running disaster on wheels known as the Iraq War. Miller decided that this Pentagon spokesman was in need of upbraiding:

MacCallum: What did you think of the Pentagon response there to Catherine's question?
Miller: You know, I thought, it's very combative. Excuse me, Mr. Pentagon Spokesman, for Fox doing our job. We're supposed to be there, we're supposed to be reporting on what the Pentagon is doing to and for these prisoners, or detainees, as they prefer to be called. And if he doesn't like our going back and back to look in on those people, well, maybe we should just believe everything they put out.
I found it completely combative, unnecessarily so.

So now we're being lectured on the relationship of reporters to official sources by the woman who was the faithful stenographer of Bush's Pentagon -- particularly Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld -- in selling the public on the notion that there were indeed weapons of mass destruction in the hands of Saddam Hussein. The woman who -- after the utter mendacity of her sources was revealed -- told an interviewer:

"[M]y job isn't to assess the government's information and be an independent intelligence analyst myself. My job is to tell readers of The New York Times what the government thought about Iraq's arsenal."

[snip]

If she had demonstrated even an ounce of this concern during the Bush years, the nation might not have been talked into an outrageous, costly, and wholly unnecessary war.

You just can't make this shit up.