Happy Hour Discurso

Today's opining on the public discourse.

Hey, look, kids!  More fresh ideas from the Party of [failed] Ideas!  Yesterday, Privatizing Social Security!  Today, the Bush Energy Policy becomes the Con Energy Policy!  Viva la difference!

And here are more New Ideas!

Neoconservative scholar-activist Daniel Pipes has a new article on the leading conservative website National Review Online, in which he suggests that President Obama can “save” his presidency…by bombing Iran.

Writing that “Obama’s attempts to ‘reset’ his presidency will likely fail if he focuses on economics, where he is just one of many players,” Pipes claims that the president “needs a dramatic gesture to change the public perception of him… preferably in an arena where the stakes are high, where he can take charge, and where he can trump expectations”:

Such an opportunity does exist: Obama can give orders for the U.S. military to destroy the Iranian nuclear weapon capacity. [...]

Just as 9/11 caused voters to forget George W. Bush’s meandering early months, a strike on Iranian facilities would dispatch Obama’s feckless first year down the memory hole and transform the domestic political scene. It would sideline health care, prompt Republicans to work with Democrats, make netroots squeal, independents reconsider, and conservatives swoon.

I think I know what the Neocon slogan is: "There's a Bomb for That!"  How he thinks yet another war will get Cons on board with the Obama Agenda and make "conservatives swoon" is beyond me.  We could suffer a nuclear attack, and the Cons would still be obstructing utterly everything while Teabaggers howl.  The Yellowstone supervolcano could erupt, destroying 1/3 of the country, and Cons would be trampling each other on the way to proclaiming Dems responsible for the disaster - even if the disaster relief response was picture-perfect.  A little thing like bombing Iran isn't going to make any Con swoon, no matter what John McCain likes to sing.

Moving on to other Con stupidity... I hate to admit it, but Cons and I are outraged over the same thing: Crotchfire Bomber Abdulmutallab's Miranda Rights Fiasco.  It's rare I throw a fit on the same subject as Cons, but here were are.  Only, I'm pissed off because investigators didn't read the poor penis-igniting dumbfuck his rights before questioning him.  Cons, however, are outraged he got his rights read to him at all.  One problem with that:

And the closer we look at the similarities, the dumber Republican talking points appear.

Republicans may have a hard time keeping up their talking point about how reading Miranda rights to the Christmas Day bomber represented a dangerous new direction under President Barack Obama.

It turns out that that back in December 2001, Richard Reid -- the "shoe bomber" -- was read or reminded of his Miranda rights four times in two days, beginning five minutes after being taken into custody.

Furthermore, the Bush administration specifically rejected the idea of a military tribunal.

Just six weeks ago, law enforcement officials informed Abdulmutallab of his rights "only after ... Abdulmutallab had stopped talking to authorities." This, according to Republican attack dogs, is outrageous -- he shouldn't have been read his rights at all. The Obama administration, they argue, is treating Abdulmutallab like the criminal he is, rather than the Super Threat that Republicans prefer him to be.

But in 2001, law enforcement officials informed Reid of his rights five minutes after he was taken into custody. And then again two hours later. And then again three hour later.

I know this reality is all terribly inconvenient for Republicans. Facts just keep getting in the way of a perfectly misleading narrative.

And facts get in the way of their pants-pissing terror, but they piss their pants anyway:

But the bed-wetting Richard Cohen takes it to higher levels than almost anyone else:

There is almost nothing the Obama administration does regarding terrorism that makes me feel safer.

Because it's all about you, isn't it, Richard?

Whether it is guaranteeing captured terrorists that they will not be waterboarded, reciting terrorists their rights, or the legally meandering and confusing rule that some terrorists will be tried in military tribunals and some in civilian courts, what is missing is a firm recognition that what comes first is not the message sent to America's critics but the message sent to Americans themselves. When, oh when, will this administration wake up?

What, you mean the concept that we all have equal rights under the law? Yes, I can see where that idea might cause some problems.

Indeed.  And I'm sure that if Obama caved to their pressure and bombed Iran, we'd hear all about how he didn't bomb it hard enough.

After all, we're talking about the same group of idiots who think foreigners should be kept out of America - unless we're talking corporations, in which case they're great!

You'd think that if there were one Democratic initiative that Republicans in Congress might be bashful about opposing -- especially given the current anti-corporate climate in the country -- it would be a bid to stop foreign corporations from pouring money into our elections. 

You'd be wrong. In fact, they're willing to stand up in support of those foreign corporations' right to do so.

So.  No amnesty for illegals.  No European-style health care.  No international law considered in Supreme Court decisions.  All of those things would destroy America with it's horrible foreign influence.  But foreign corporations influencing American elections is fine by them.

These idiots never fail to fascinate me.