Happy Hour Discurso

Today's opining on the public discourse.

Conservatives seem a bit confused about their message.  On the one hand, they want us shitting ourselves in terror over terrorists, because they have this bizarre belief that ignoring actionable intelligence, not catching the terrorists who murdered 3000+ Americans, invading a country that had nothing to do with it (thus creating a training ground and motivation for a whole new crop of terrorists), turning America into a nation of torturers, shitting all over the Constitution, and on top of all of this not managing to keep an idiot with explosives in his shoes off an airplane, means that Cons are the only people who can keep America safe.  So, goes their theory, if Americans are shit-scared of the terrorist boogeyman, then Con will get elected to save us.

On the other hand, they keep undercutting their own damned argument by doing dumbshit things like this:

Following the failed Christmas Day terrorist attack, many on the right have used the incident as a political football, trying to score partisan points on the issue of terrorism. Hate radio host Neal Boortz took this politicizing to a new level on his Twitter account yesterday, saying that the failed terrorist attack would have killed fewer people than the congressional health care bill if it is passed:

Now, this is ridiculous on its face - health care reform isn't going to kill people, while lack of health care reform is most certainly killing people.  But let's set that aside.  Steve Benen did some rummaging around, and discovered a whole passel of things that Cons seem to think are scarier than terrorists:

But I can't help but notice how frequently far-right voices compare terrorism to other policy developments, and consider terrorism less dangerous.

Terrorism is bad, conservatives say, but Democrats are worse.

Terrorism is bad, conservatives say, but health care reform is worse.

Terrorism is bad, conservatives say, but unionized TSA employees are worse.

Terrorism is bad, conservatives say, but liberal federal judges are worse.

There seems to be a disconnect within the right-wing worldview. On the one hand, the standard conservative line insists that the threat posed by violent religious extremists, determined to kill Americans through acts of terrorism, is the existential threat facing the West in the 21st century. On the other hand, it's surprisingly common to hear conservatives suggest terrorism isn't as threatening as whatever issue has Republicans worked up on a given day.

And this is where a person who hasn't stuffed their ears with teabags starts realizing that the screaming emanating from the Con camp sounds suspiciously like so much silly bullshit. Which, of course, it is.

Speaking of people with teabags stuffed in their ears, some complete idiot thinks that as long as we don't scare them away with icky cultural issues like teh gay marriage and stuff, we could get them on our side:

I've been sick for over a week so I haven't been posting or reading as much lately, but suddenly I'm hearing rumblings about the possibility that the left could win over the teabaggers because they are angry too.

This tea party movement, this seething anger, is being driven and co-opted by Republicans. But at its core, the outrage isn’t ideological. It isn’t even necessarily anti-government. It’s just anti-this-government.

Those caught up in tea party hysteria are the kind of voters Ross Perot captured in 1992. Two years later, without Perot, these foaming, vaguely culturally conservative, middle-income voters went Republican.

But these voters, unlike their tea party activist manipulators, don’t give a damn about Edmund Burke, Ludwig Von Mises or Ayn Rand. They want jobs and a government that makes sense to them — that’s it. As long as Democratic candidates don’t explicitly agitate their culturally conservative sensibilities and can deflect the appeals Republicans make on those hot-button social issues, these voters can be won over with economic arguments.

Can we dispel that notion forever please?

[snip]

They want jobs for sure, but they think that any government which is led by a Democratic politician wants to destroy their freedoms and as we see, take away their guns. The tea party crowds are a FOX News/corporatist-led movement. What comes out of their mouths is mostly gibberish promoted by right wing talkies and not based in reality.

Has President Obama even mentioned anything about guns in the last six months?

In other words, it doesn't matter how much we tiptoe around their - what was it? - "culturally conservative sensibilities."  They're not rational.  They've got their fantasies about the sociocommiemarxistpinkoislamofascist librul conspiracy, and ain't nothin's gonna convince them otherwise.

But our dear John Amato didn't ask the most important question: why the fuck would we want Teabaggers in our midst?


I certainly don't want the frothing fucktards around, so allow me to have a merry old time jabbing my finger in their hot-button social issues:

In something of a milestone, President Obama has named Amanda Simpson to be a senior technical advisor to the Commerce Department. That wouldn't be especially noteworthy were it not for the fact that Simpson is one of the first-ever transgender presidential appointees to the federal government, and is a member of the National Center for Transgender Equality's board of directors.

As far as I can tell, the news was largely ignored by Republicans, but Focus on the Family issued a report on this to its membership yesterday. The religious right isn't exactly pleased.

"Is there going to be a transgender quota now in the Obama administration?" asked Peter LaBarbera, president of Americans for Truth. "How far does this politics of gay and transgender activism go? Clearly this is an administration that is pandering to the gay lobby." [...]

"We should consider what transgender activism is about," he said," which is essentially recognizing civil rights based on gender confusion."

Matt Barber, associate dean at Liberty University, said the appointment "boggles the mind."

"This isn't like appointing an African-American in order to try to provide diversity and right some kind of discriminatory wrong," he said. "This is about political correctness."

As a substantive matter, this is almost comical. A qualified woman was hired to do a job in government. This woman used to be a man. From this, the religious right raises the specter of "a transgender quota." The notion that Amanda Simpson might actually be the best person for the job, and shouldn't face discrimination, never enters the equation.

Allow me to raise a glass to Amanda Simpson, who isn't just the most qualified woman for the job, but has done a wonderful job giving the frothing fundies apoplexy just by virtue of being who she is.  And allow me to take this opportunity to tell the moron who wants us to cozy up to the Teabaggers that no self-respecting liberal is going to shut up about equal rights for qualified women like Amanda Simpson just because their very existence, not to mention actually being treated as humans, incenses the dumbshits.  Do you really think we'd chuck our principles out the window, along with folks like Amanda, just on the off chance the Teabaggers might crowd into the tent with us?

Hell to the no.

And that's about all the stupidity I can take for the moment.  If you're hankering for more, though, here's Steve Benen, Greg Sargent and Ezra Klein having a merry old time thumping Mark Halperin for some of the most outrageously oblivious Villager stupidity ever spewed.

For the cherry on top, keep this one somewhere handy for the next time some idiot Con starts screaming about ACORN and voter fraud.  Who's da fraudster, eh?  Ha ha ha ha ha!