Happy Hour Discurso

Today's opining on the public discourse.

The stupid's rather thick on the ground for a Sunday. Is it something they ate?

According to Cons, the rules that have served our country for well over 200 years are no longer adequate to needs now that Cons are in the minority:

This week, there was increased speculation that the Obama administration might pursue major healthcare and energy reforms through the budget reconciliation process. The point would be to make passage far easier -- Republicans can vote against reconciliation bills, but they can't filibuster them.

Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.) blasted the idea, calling it "the Chicago approach to governing." Gregg added, "You're talking about running over the minority, putting them in cement and throwing them in the Chicago River."

A couple of Fox News personalities went even further yesterday.

During the March 20 edition of Fox News' Hannity, host Sean Hannity falsely claimed that "a parliamentary procedure called reconciliation" would allow the Obama administration to pass legislation "without any Republicans even having an opportunity to vote." Guest and fellow Fox News host Mike Huckabee replied that this is "horribly dangerous because it really does bypass the entire system of the American government, where we're supposed to have an honest debate."

Look, the budget reconciliation process isn't complicated. Indeed, it's called "majority rule." It doesn't deny Republicans from "even having an opportunity to vote." Just the opposite is true -- every member in both chambers gets to vote, up or down, after a floor debate. When Hannity talks about having an "opportunity" to vote, he means protecting a system in which 41 votes defeat 58 votes.

Ah, the good old days. I remember them well. Did you know there was once a time in America when all the Senate needed was a simple majority to pass legislation? And Cons didn't stomp their feet and wail and cry that no one was listening to them. I certainly don't remember them sitting around snivelling that they won't get to vote at all just because their votes happened to be on the losing side.

But the hypocritical grandstanding, that's always been with us:

Last month, every single Republican House member and all but three Republican senators voted against the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Yet, as Thinkprogress noted at the time, as many as 22 Republicans who railed against the stimulus then touted the projects the stimulus would fund in their home districts. (A few Democrats who voted against the bill have done the same thing.)

Now, many of those same Republican lawmakers are pulling the same bait-and-switch with the FY2009 omnibus spending bill. The Wall Street Journal notes today that Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-MI) slammed the omnibus as wasteful spending, before putting out a press release touting a local harbor project the bill would fund. Similarly, Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart (R-FL) voted against the omnibus but then declared he was “proud to have secured these federal funds” for his district. Both insisted to the Journal there was no hypocrisy in their actions

Note to Rep. Diaz-Balart: you didn't do jack diddly shit to "secure these federal funds." You both did your level best to ensure those funds would never end up in your districts. You're trying to have things both ways, and while that's a time-honored Stupid Con Trick, it's just getting ridiculous.

So is the wingnut wailing over how nobody ever pays attention to their tantrums:

Wingnut bloggers -- still the biggest victimhood queens around.

The tea party movement continues to gain steam, as anti-tax increase, anti-bailout, anti-ballooning deficit citizens turned out around the country today...One emerging theme is the absence of press coverage, especially at the national level. For some reason, reporters and editors believe it is not news when thousands of people, all around the country, gather to protest the government's bailouts, trillions in debt, etc. And yet, when a mere forty people turned out in Connecticut for an ACORN-sponsored bus tour of homes owned by AIG executives, there were more media people covering the event than there were people on the bus. So let's see: conservative and libertarian opposition to the government's economic initiatives--not news. Far left opposition to the government's economic initiatives, no matter how few participate--that's news. But of course, not a single person reading this will be surprised.

Assrocket links to photos of Teabagging in Orlando, FL, Raleigh, NC and Ridgefield, CT -- the last of which drew a staggering 200 people.
You can see where this is going, can't you?

The Orlando Sentinel
ORLANDO 'TEA PARTY' PROTEST DRAWS MORE THAN 4,000

The Raleigh News & Observer
PORK FRIED AT CAPITOL PROTEST; STIMULUS WRONG, PROTESTORS SAY

The Ridgefield (CT) Press
HUNDREDS PROTEST ADMINISTRATION'S ACTIONS AT VILLAGE RALLY

I don't think "absence" means what Assrocket thinks it means.

It doesn't mean what he wants it to mean, which I suppose is the problem. They want their antics discussed on all the 24-hour news channels 24/7. Well, they ain't getting it. Poor babies.

And speaking of irrelevant hacks, check out lil Billy Kristol, snivelling that Obama's not bloodthirsty enough:

In his latest column for the Weekly Standard, super-hawk Bill Kristol addresses President Obama’s recent Persian New Year message to the Iran’s leaders and its people, calling it a “message of weakness.” He is upset that Obama didn’t use the words “liberty,” “freedom,” “democracy,” or “human rights” and chastises Obama for referring to Iran as the “Islamic Republic of Iran,” claiming that doing so means that Obama is “kowtowing” to Iran’s leaders.

On Fox News Sunday this morning, Kristol picked up where he left off in his column and continued to whine about Obama’s move, calling it “a weak and embarrassing statement by the President of the United States.” Fox News’s Brit Hume piled on, complaining that it “appears” that the U.S. has now “joined the rest of the world and practicing the diplomacy of talk.”

Assclowns all.