Happy Hour Discurso

Today's opining on the public discourse.

Ye gods.  Too much prime stupidity today - however shall I choose?

Let's start with Cons' credibility with women.  As in, they still have none.  Not with this tone:

To help address this, Republican National Committee co-chair Jan Larimer is committed to recruiting more women candidates to run under the party's banner. It seems, however, that Larimer is running into a little trouble.

"Women sometimes need a little more handholding, or they need their friends to help them make a decision. And by our going in and talking to them and recruiting and educating and training them to either get involved in a campaign or become a candidate, we're giving them the tools so that they can do that on their own," Larimer added [emphasis added].

How perfectly condescending.  I don't know if this dumbshit is married, or if he is how he managed to find the perfect doormat, but women with the cojones to run for public office generally aren't going to respond well to Larimer's hand-holding.  The ones who do aren't fit for public office in the first place.  And self-respecting women aren't going to flock to a party that treats women like people who can't make a decision without "a little more handholding."

Rush Limbaugh isn't exactly helping the GOP polish a women-friendly image:

Last week, hate radio host Rush Limbaugh judged the Miss America pageant. Today he went on Fox and Friends and spoke to host — and former Miss America winner — Gretchen Carlson to respond to the criticism he has been receiving. He insisted that he isn’t anti-women. But in the few sentences he used to make his case, he still managed to make a sexist joke:

CARLSON: So for those who were critics of you in judging this pageant, and saying that you haven’t been a supporter of women in the past —

LIMBAUGH: Oh, I’m a huge supporter of women. What I’m not a supporter of is liberalism. Feminism is what I oppose, and feminism has led women astray. I love women. I don’t know where all this got started. I love the women’s movement — especially when walking behind it. This idea that I don’t like women is absurd. This is Miss America. And if there’s a Mr. America out there, it’s me.

Yup, that'll sure get the ladies flocking to the GOP standard.  It's every woman's dream to be ogled by Mr. America, I'm sure.

Excuse me.  I need to go bleach my brain.  Back in a mo'.

Right, then, where were we?  Oh, right, the endless stupidity.

Following up on an item on Mitch McConnell, great defender of foreign cash in our elections, we now have a sense of why he's so eager to defend corporate "free speech" rights.  Hint: it has something to do with money.

Which leads me to the most disturbing moment of today, in which I found myself nodding in agreement with Teabaggers.  They're actually sensible on one subject (although we're approaching it from slightly different angles).  Whodathunkit?

Speaking of Teabaggers, I don't think Palin's going to be their darling much longer.  Not when she's thick-as-thieves with the thieving bunch of opportunists who are busy profiteering off the movement.  I almost feel sorry for the more grassroots Teabaggers, who just wanted a nice, populist movement that screams "Socialist!" every time Obama opens his mouth, and ended up getting hijacked by GOP operatives who see this as a prime opportunity to fill their vaults with cash.

Almost.

Moving on to other subjects, here's quite a sight: crazy little Cons attacking the military:

It was quite a sight yesterday when Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Joint Chiefs Chairman Mike Mullen, the nation's highest-ranking military officer, told the Senate Armed Services Committee that it's time to let gay servicemen and women serve openly in the U.S. military.

What I didn't realize was the extent of the pushback they received from conservative Republican senators. Dana Milbank had a good report on this.

On the dais, Sen. John McCain (Ariz.), the Republican Party's 2008 presidential standard-bearer, accused Mullen and the other witness, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, of trying to repeal the "don't ask, don't tell" law "by fiat." Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) accused the admiral of obeying "directives" from President Obama. Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) accused Mullen of "undue command influence."

As the challenges to his integrity continued, Mullen pursed his lips, then put his forearms on the table, displaying the admiral stripes on his sleeves. After Sessions's provocation, the Joint Chiefs chairman glared at the diminutive Alabamian. "This is not about command influence," Mullen said. "This is about leadership, and I take that very seriously."

[snip]

But now that the military establishment agrees with President Obama -- on everything from civilian trials to Gitmo to torture to service qualifications -- the GOP has no qualms about questioning not only the brass' judgment, but also its honesty.

I leave it to the readers' imaginations to determine what sort of uproar we might have heard had the Dems pulled shit like this.

Oh, and remember how McCain once said he was "especially guided" by the views of the top military commanders?  Chalk up yet another flip-flop. Apparently, Sen. John "Plane Crasher" McCain knows better than top military officials these days what should be done with those icky gays in uniform.

Don't miss Susan Collins' self-immolation.  Talk about your basic burning stupid.

And, finally, don't tell anyone, but I'm actually siding with a Con against some Dems:

Speaking to Senate Democrats this morning, President Obama singled out the tri-partisan energy bill being crafted by Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.), Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.). He praised them for "coming together to try to find a workable, bipartisan structure" for reforming the status quo.

"Don't give up on that," Obama urged senators. "I don't want us to just say the easy way out is for us to just give a bunch of tax credits to clean energy companies. The market works best when it responds to price. And if they start seeing that, you know what, dirty energy is a little pricier, clean energy is a little cheaper, they will innovate, and they will think things through in all kinds of innovative ways."

The opposition, however, remains diverse, and approving anything will be more difficult thanks to Massachusetts' recent lapse in judgment. There's growing talk among center-right Democrats that they kill the tri-partisan energy bill and replace it with a thinner, less meaningful package that ignores caps on greenhouse gas emissions.

It's hard to believe, but Lindsey Graham's take on this, criticizing the half-measure, has real merit.

"It's the 'kick the can down the road' approach," said Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. "It's putting off to another Congress what really needs to be done comprehensively. I don't think you'll ever have energy independence the way I want until you start dealing with carbon pollution and pricing carbon. The two are interconnected." [...]

"If the approach is to try to pass some half-assed energy bill and say that's moving the ball down the road, forget it with me," Graham said, adding that the energy-only proposal does not do enough to promote nuclear power and it ignores revenue sharing for states that agree to offshore oil and gas exploration. [...]

"We've done things on the energy side, we've got some buy-in from people on the left and the middle that I never dreamed of," he said. "I just hope we don't blow it. And from a Republican point of view, you've got the best chance you'll ever have to get meaningful energy independence. From the Democratic left point of view, you've got the best chance you'll ever have to have carbon pollution controls. Don't let [the opportunity] pass."

How does a Dem know when they've gotten too conservative?  When Lindsey Fucking Graham is to your left.

So, there's two sensible moments from the rabid right in a sea of frothing stupidity.  I wish I could believe it's not a fluke.  Alas, it's probably just one of those one-in-a-billion chance events, and tomorrow we shall be back to the never-ending dumbfuckery.