Happy Hour Discurso

Today's opining on the public discourse.

Are you liquored up enough for your daily dose of Republicon insanity? No? The bar's over there. I'd suggest you take the cap off a bottle and begin pouring now.

Let's start things off with the musings of the saner of McInsane's foreign policy advisers:

Speaking on the Russia-Georgia crisis at an American Enterprise Institute panel yesterday, John McCain foreign policy adviser/military fetishist Ralph Peters delivered this bit of straight talk:

The Russians, on whom I have wasted far too much of my life, are drink-sodden barbarians who occasionally puke up a genius.

As anyone who has read Peters’ work knows, Ralph’s world is full of barbarians who need killin’. In October 2006, as part of a column calling on the U.S. to withdraw from Iraq, he declared:

If we can’t leave a democracy behind, we should at least leave the corpses of our enemies. The holier-than-thou response to this proposal is predictable: ‘We can’t kill our way out of this situation!’ Well, boo-hoo. Friendly persuasion and billions of dollars haven’t done the job. Give therapeutic violence a chance.

We are all, of course, deeply impressed by pundits who bravely call for “therapeutic violence” from the safety of their home offices.

There's more of his frothing fuckery over at Think Progress. Remember, my darlings: this is the sane one. McCain's surrounded hisself with people even the Bush administration finds too extreme to associate with.

McCain is clearly the world's foremost foreign policy expert. He's surrounded himself with bleeding insane tough, bellicose fuckwits vocal advocates of suicidal tough approaches to difficult conflicts. He has a first grader's geographical IQ unique understanding of geopolitical realities. And he's not afraid to parade his ignorance knowledge:

Speaking at the Aspen Institute in Colorado yesterday, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) said that recent Russian aggression in Georgia is the “first…serious crisis internationally since the end of the Cold War.” McCain seemingly ignored the Gulf War, 9/11, and the Iraq War, to name a few:

My friends, we have reached a crisis, the first probably serious crisis internationally since the end of the Cold War. This is an act of aggression.

Not to get sarcastic or anything, but I think he's either been living in an alternate reality since 1989 or he's got a serious problem with the definition of "serious crisis." Carpetbagger would like to bring McCain's attention to a partial list of what the rest of us considered "serious crises:"

Since the fall of the Soviet Union, the U.S. has fought (or is fighting) two wars in Iraq, a war in Afghanistan, and two conflicts in the Balkans. There have been multiple crises in Israel. There was a burgeoning nuclear crisis with North Korea. There is, and has been, a crisis in Darfur. There have been multiple, shall we say, tense moments between Pakistan and India, nuclear powers both. One could make the argument that the attacks of Sept. 11 were, themselves, a serious international crisis.

And yet, there’s John McCain, describing a regional conflict between Russia and Georgia as the first “serious crisis internationally” since the end of the Cold War. Do the other crises simply not count? Or does McCain not remember them?

I myself would just like to point out to CB that it's a little useless to ask such questions of a man whose campaign spent this morning attacking Obama for taking his shirt off at the beach. This is how desperate they are that attention be drawn away from McCain's utter lack of sanity on foreign policy, health care, the economy, energy, technology, the environment, or anything else of any concern to citizens with two functioning brain cells. They have to attack their rival on his popularity (because McCain hasn't got any), his charisma (because McCain hasn't got any) and his removal of an encumbering piece of clothing at the beach (because if McCain stripped at the beach, people would think a butt-ugly Great White Shark had just entered the water and flee in a panic).

I'm wondering if Shirtgate will take on the same broken-record quality as current Republicon grandstanding on coastal drilling. Here's the new meme: Nancy Pelosi's a great big meanie:

Conservative members of the House have been frothing that Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) adjourned the lower chamber of Congress for its traditional August summer district work period — branding it a “five-week vacation” — instead of letting them dictate the agenda. They wish to pass their drilling-centric energy bill, after having blocked numerous other pieces of energy legislation in June and July. Their strategy is to brand Pelosi as a dictator, with pro-drilling conservatives representing the will of “average American people”:

– Rep. Thaddeus McCotter (R-MI): “This is the people’s House. This is not Pelosi’s politiburo.”

– Rep. John Boehner (R-OH): “She’s gonna bring us back and not deal with it? The American people are gonna hang her.”

– Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC): “When the people of France were starving, they went to the queen and said, ‘The people have no bread.’ The queen’s answer was, ‘Let them eat cake.’ That is not the kind of answer we expect from the leader of the people’s house in the United States of America.”

– Rep. John Shadegg (R-AZ): “There’s going to be a change in this policy, Nancy Pelosi notwithstanding. She can’t repress us forever.”

– Rep. Marilyn Musgrave (R-CO): “I can’t answer why she’s acting like a dictator.”

– Rep. Denny Rehlberg (R-MT): “Nancy Pelosi should not hold the American people hostage.”

– Rep. Kevin Brady (R-TX): “In your mind, do you believe America is a democracy or a dictatorship?”

Two points. One: Are these idiots robots? Because it sounds like some lazy fucker just programmed them to all say the exact same thing, looped it, and buggered off for a beer.

Two: This is a summer district work period. Why are these fools not back in their districts, working, rather than playing infantile games in D.C.? If I was one of their constituents, I'd be pissed. Especially in light of this:

In fact, when they are not crying in the dark, it is conservatives who are acting like dictators. Conservatives in the Senate have filibustered an energy agenda supported by the majority of the American people — and of the Congress — over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again. Bush has declared his intent to veto such legislation over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again.

Somebody fucked over the country on energy policy. Hint: they're sitting in a dark House pretending they're working.

And while the big fat lying liars play the victim on Capitol Hill, McLame's busy playing Preznit:

It was obviously a slip of the tongue, but it was a gaffe that underscored an important point: John McCain seems to think he’s already the president.

Standing behind a lectern in Michigan this week, with two trusted senators ready to do his bidding, John McCain seemed to forget for a moment that he was only running for president.

Asked about his tough rhetoric on the ongoing conflict in Georgia, McCain began: “If I may be so bold, there was another president …”

He caught himself and started again: “At one time, there was a president named Ronald Reagan who spoke very strongly about America’s advocacy for democracy and freedom.”

Another president? As in, President McCain harkening back to one of his presidential predecessors?

Now, truth be told, I don’t much care about a verbal slip-up like this. The point, however, is that, after weeks of palaver about Barack Obama being “presumptuous,” John McCain has taken this week to play Pretend President, in large part because he felt like the conflict in Georgia gave him a good excuse to do so.

In this case, it goes well beyond referring to himself as the president, and includes near-constant direct discussions with a foreign head of state during a military conflict, and dispatching campaign surrogates to a war zone.

“We talk about how there’s only one president at a time, so the idea that you would send your own emissaries and really interfere with the process is remarkable,” said Lawrence Korb, a Reagan Defense Department official who now acts as an informal adviser to the Obama campaign. “It’s very risky and can send mixed messages to foreign governments…. They accused Obama of being presumptuous, but he didn’t do anything close to this.”

No, he didn't. But McCain's a former POW, which according to his campaign excuses every last bit of stupidity, lying, mud-slinging, misogynistic, insane fuckery he demonstrates.

To my readers in other countries: if this man gets elected, please have a couch ready. There's just no fucking way I can live in a country stupid enough to put assclowns like this in charge.