Happy Hour Discurso

Today's opining on the public discourse.

It may be Christmas Eve, but stupid never takes a holiday. And Ann Coulter, the diva of Greater Wingnuttia, is attempting to take the crown:

The other day, my friend Ron Chusid had an item arguing that Ann Coulter's piece on Sarah Palin was clear evidence of "the wrong direction the conservative movement is moving in" and the dominance of "anti-intellectualism" on the right.

I finally read Coulter's piece, and I have to admit, it's even more inane than I expected. Coulter, heralded Palin's selection as "Conservative of the Year" and applauded the Alaska governor's role in politics. To hear Coulter tell it, Palin is a hero because she sent "the left into a tailspin of wanton despair."

Who cares if Palin was qualified to be President? She was running with John McCain! There was no chance that ticket was going to place her anywhere near the presidency. In fact, I can't think of a better place to put someone you wanted to keep away from the White House than on a ticket with McCain.

Palin was a kick in the pants, she energized conservatives, and she made liberal heads explode.

Got that? Palin is necessarily wonderful because liberals didn't like her. (That plenty of independents and Republicans found the thought of her vice presidency horrifying is irrelevant.)

Now, I realize that Coulter is a circus clown, and quite possibly a liberal plant meant to make conservatives look ridiculous as part of some kind of satirical performance art, but over the course of nearly 2,000 words, Coulter couldn't actually point to any of Palin's genuine strengths. Coulter blasted the media, Democrats, women she finds insufficiently attractive, and John McCain, but in applauding the greatness of Sarah Palin, she neglected to mention anything that makes Sarah Palin great, outside of Coulter's disdain for Palin's detractors.

I hope she is a liberal plant, because the idea of someone this fucking ridiculous actually being taken seriously, even by the Limbaugh lobotomites, is just depressing.

Karl Rove tries to be a close runner-up:

Yesterday, a water main break in Maryland trapped a dozen commuters in their cars and sent rescuers scrambling to pull motorists from frigid floodwaters. Despite the fact that officials had been warning for years of the dangers of the crumbling pipe system, Maryland did not have the money to make the necessary repairs. As ThinkProgress noted yesterday, the water main break is a wake-up call for the need for massive infrastructure spending by the federal government.

Just hours after the water main break, however, Karl Rove belittled the idea of infrastructure spending on Fox News, calling it “goofy, pie-in-the-sky spending ideas,” and agreed with host Rich Lowry that infrastructure spending doesn’t “make[] any economic sense”:

ROVE: What we’ve got to worry about some of these sort of goofy, pie-in-the-sky spending ideas in which this wisdom of the government is substituted for the wisdom of private individuals in the market, and there we have every right to question. For example, look, I’m in favor of infrastructure spending, but let’s be honest about it. It’s not stimulative. […]

Think Progress really has things too easy. Their blog is dedicated to refuting silly right-wing statements, and when people like Rove say that things like desperately-needed infrastructure spending is a "goofy, pie-in-the-sky" idea, it's altogether too simple for even a pressed-for-time unpaid blogger such as myself to shoot them down. Three words: Works Projects Administration.

Bush isn't a good enough dancer for the fancy footwork this little backtrack requires:

Only a day after issuing a presidential pardon to Isaac Robert Toussie, a real estate scammer from Brooklyn, President Bush decided to reverse the pardon, after it emerged that Toussie's father had contributed almost $30,000 to the Republican party.

Pardons are absolute. They can't be reviewed or reconsidered or overturned, even by the president who issued them. According to the White House press release, President Bush had sent a "Master Warrant of Clemency" with 19 names to the Pardon Attorney at DOJ to execute. But he hadn't executed it yet. In other words, the White House is claiming none of these folks had actually been pardoned yet. So the president can just send word now not to 'execute' that one pardon.

If you want to know who Toussie is, Steve Benen has a blistering rundown. Basically, the reason why Bush is trying to walk back this pardon is because it stinks even to those who think that pardons for cash are ordinary business.

Now, all of these folks have displayed stunning stupidity, but for sheer tone-deaf, misogynistic, idiotic, must-be-missing-a-brain fuckuppedness, you really can't beat Dennis Prager:

As Paul Krugman pointed out, if you're a right winger --no matter what crazy, f*&ked up thought you utter, it's A-OK.
Case in point is wingnut extraordinare Dennis Prager. Here's a sample:

The subject is one of the most common problems that besets marriages: the wife who is not in the mood and the consequently frustrated and hurt husband.

It gets more preposterous from there. In right-wing culture, it's always the ladies that are at fault.

This is a major reason many husbands clam up. A man whose wife frequently denies him sex will first be hurt, then sad, then angry, then quiet. And most men will never tell their wives why they have become quiet and distant. They are afraid to tell their wives. They are often made to feel ashamed of their male sexual nature, and they are humiliated (indeed emasculated) by feeling that they are reduced to having to beg for sex.

I think James Dobson has it wrong. It's right-wing freaks like Prager who want to destroy the institution of marriage. Yet this nut is a frequent guest on CNN. Why does he get the megaphone that he does?

Because our mainstream media is simultaneously dazzled by the brazen batshit insanity of the right, and terrified of getting hit in the face by them.

There's plenty more, but alas, I am out of time. A very merry Squidmas Eve to you all, my darlings.