Happy Hour Discurso

Today's opining on the public discourse.

Today is a day filled with OMFG moments. It's a day when you risk shattering your skull, because there's only so many times your head can hit a desk before structural weaknesses emerge.

Let's begin with perhaps the biggest *headdesk* moment so we can just get it out of the way:

Seizing the opportunity to vilify a female, Hispanic Supreme Court nominee, noted bigot Tom Tancredo has emerged from obscurity to denounce Judge Sonia Sotomayor. Earlier this week, Tancredo declared her to be a “racist” who should be “disqualified” from serving on the bench.

This afternoon on CNN, he went further, attacking her affiliation with the National Council of La Raza as equivalent to being a member of the Ku Klux Klan:

TANCREDO: If you belong to an organization called La Raza, in this case, which is, from my point of view anyway, nothing more than a Latino — it’s a counterpart — a Latino KKK without the hoods or the nooses. If you belong to something like that in a way that’s going to convince me and a lot of other people that it’s got nothing to do with race. Even though the logo of La Raza is “All for the race. Nothing for the rest.”

[snip]

Of course, the characterizations are wildly false. La Raza is the nation’s largest Latino civil rights and advocacy organization that focuses on such nefarious issues as “civil rights/immigration, education, employment and economic status, and health.” Used to these attacks, La Raza has a long fact-sheet debunking the unhinged claims of the right, including pointing out that “La Raza” translates as “the people,” not “the race,” as the right wing suggests.

And, of course, he's got their slogan completely fucking wrong. What a disgusting douchebag.

Then we have Jon Kyl, Arizona's eternal shame, wanting to delay Sotomayor's confirmation because - well, just because he's a dumbshit Con:

Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl (R-AZ) is now saying the confirmation process for Sonia Sotomayor will likely have to wait much longer than President Obama wants -- going into September rather than happening before the August recess.

"My guess is that if you apply the same general standards as were applied to the Roberts and Alito nominations that probably it goes into the first part of September," Kyl told Fox News.

Simply put, this is baloney on multiple levels. For one thing, John Roberts was first nominated for the Supreme Court in late July 2005, then confirmed as Chief Justice in late September 2005 -- a period of just over two months. Alito took a bit longer, being nominated in late October 2005, and confirmed in late January 2006 -- a period of three months. Kyl is using these two examples to justify a period of nearly four months.

Sometimes, I'm tempted to move back to Arizona just so I can help vote his sorry ass out of the Senate.

Another major *headdesk* moment came when I caught wind of the latest and greatest right wing conspiracy theory about Obama:

A whole lot of right-wing blogs are worked up today over a report about the political affiliations of Chrysler dealers who've been shut down.

Evidence appears to be mounting that the Obama administration has systematically targeted for closing Chrysler dealers who contributed to Repubicans [sic]. What started earlier this week as mainly a rumbling on the Right side of the Blogosphere has gathered some steam today with revelations that among the dealers being shut down are a GOP congressman and closing of competitors to a dealership chain partly owned by former Clinton White House chief of staff Mack McLarty.

The basic issue raised here is this: How do we account for the fact millions of dollars were contributed to GOP candidates by Chrysler who are being closed by the government, but only one has been found so far that is being closed that contributed to the Obama campaign in 2008?

Rep. Vern Buchanan (R-Fla.), who has a dealership that will close, called this "an outrage." A variety of far-right bloggers chose more colorful language.

And what is the "evidence" of a partisan conspiracy that "appears to be mounting"? As you might have guessed, like most conservative theories, this one is extremely thin. The argument, in a nutshell, is that Chrysler dealers owned by a variety of Republican donors are being closed, the government is now involved with Chrysler's restructuring, so that points to "evidence" that the Obama administration is deliberately punishing GOP contributors.

As per usual with Cons, they haven't the slightest bloody clue how to evaluate "evidence." Nate Silver did them the favor, and discovered a possible reason. When looking at dealerships overall, he discovered that the vast majority of them donate to Cons. Let me put it this way, in simple words they might be able to understand: if you have 27,000 red apples and 4 green apples in a barrel, and you remove a bunch of bad apples, chances are most of the bad apples will be red, simply because you had more red apples to start with.

I know. I know. They probably won't get that analogy, either. Look, I tried.

By the way, the next time a Con tells you they have a health care policy position, tell them Republican Rob Portman's called them a bit fat bunch of fucking liars:

Whoops. Rob Portman, a Republican Senate candidate in Ohio, has now admitted in an interview that the GOP doesn’t have a position on health care. Worse, he says he came to that conclusion after multiple discussions with GOP Congressional leaders about the issue.
Check out this nugget buried in a National Journal article (subscription only) about Portman:

Republicans have also taken some heat nationally for not focusing on health care in their campaigns in recent years, but Portman already has been speaking on the issue frequently.“We have to have an alternative. … I will tell you, I don’t think there is a Republican alternative at this point,” he said. He said he reached that conclusion after talking to Senate leaders and lawmakers about the GOP’s position. “There isn’t one,” he said. “There’s a task force, and I applaud them for that.”

Oh, well, a task force. Well. That changes everything. They're thinking about thinking of maybe eventually coming up with some ideas. Wonder how new those will be?

And, finally, some kind soul needs to be dispatched to take Mark Krikorian's shovel away from him asap:

The National Review's Mark Krikorian received quite a bit of criticism yesterday (including some from me) following a couple of posts about the pronunciation of Sonia Sotomayor's name. Krikorian argued that the proper pronunciation, preferred by the judge and her family, is "unnatural in English," and "something we shouldn't be giving in to." It wasn't clear which group of people constituted "we."

[snip]

Today, after noting the variety of responses to his argument -- Olbermann labeled him the Worst Person in the World last night -- Krikorian thought it wise to return to the subject again today.

[F]or those actually interested in the point, here's what I was trying to get across: While in the past there may well have been too much social pressure for what sociologists call Anglo-conformity, now there isn't enough. I think that's a concern that most Americans share at some level, which is the root of the angst over excessive immigration, bilingual education, official English, etc.

I'm not sure how this helps.

I think it only helps if the poor fucker's trying to dig his way to China.

Excuse me, please, my darlings. It's time for my MRI to see how much permanent damage my skull's sustained.