Happy Hour Discurso

Today's opining on the public discourse.

Apologies to anyone who was breathlessly anticipating today's post. I got distracted with cooking and then unleashing the Smack-o-Matic upon Faux News host Brian Kilmeade. I'll have to get back to posting Happy Hour during lunch - once my lost badge is replaced in 3-6 weeks.

Grr. Argh.

We're going to have a slight change of pace. Usually, Happy Hour is spent happily bashing immensely stupid Cons. But today, we're going to begin with immensely stupid "centrist" Dems, who don't seem to understand what that D after their names stands for:

Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) told his colleagues yesterday, "Don't let the Republicans filibuster us into failure. We want to succeed, and to succeed, we need to stick together."

It sounds like a pretty simple, common sense concept. The electorate has given Democrats a chance to govern, and expect them to deliver. Members of the caucus "may vote against final passage on a bill," Durbin said, but like-minded colleagues should at least reject the idea of "allowing the filibuster to stop the whole Senate." He concluded, "We ought to control our own agenda."

Some "centrist" Dems don't see it that way.

Evan Bayh, a moderate from Indiana, said he would not be inclined to vote to cut off a filibuster on a bill if he opposed the substance of the underlying measure, and he predicted his colleagues would feel the same way.

"Most senators aren't sheep," he said. "They don't just go blindly along without thinking about things, and I don't think we want them to do that."

It's hard to overstate how absurd this is. If legislation Bayh doesn't like comes to the floor, he can vote against it. Before that, he can offer amendments, give speeches, and encourage others to agree with him. Senators, as he noted, aren't sheep. Some bills may enjoy the party's support, but not everyone in the party will see the issue the same way.

But that's not what Bayh is arguing here. He's saying he's inclined to help the failed, discredited minority block the Senate from even giving bills a vote in the first place. It's not enough for Bayh to vote with Republicans on key issues, he wants to help the GOP ensure there is no vote.

Joining him in the Fuck My Party caucus:

Centrist Dems Mary Landrieu and Ben Nelson have now given their answer: Stuff it.

Landrieu:

However, she flatly refused to rule out filibustering any bill, including health care and climate change legislation. “I’m going to keep an open mind, but I am not committing to any procedural straitjackets one way or another,” she said.

Nelson:

“I’m not a closed mind on cloture, but if it’s an abuse of procedure, if it’s somebody trying to put a poison pill into a bill, or if it’s something that would be pre-emptive of Nebraska law, or something that rises to extraordinary circumstances, then I’ve always reserved the right to vote against cloture,” Nelson said.

Obviously it would be a bit much for Dems to expect these Senators to rule out any votes in advance. But it’s striking how zealously they are guarding their right to enable a minority of Senators to prevent important initiatives from ever coming to a straight up or down vote.

You know, this shit's simple, people. If you want to help Cons filibuster anything and everything under the sun, become a Con.

While we're on the subject, here's another dumbfuck Dem who needs to examine her party affiliation:

Last month, the House of Representatives passed the American Clean Energy and Security Act, which aims to transition America to a clean energy economy while combating climate change. After the bill’s passage, Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO) tweeted that she wanted to “fix” the bill’s cap on carbon pollution because it would “unfairly punish” Missouri’s families and businesses.

Appearing on a conservative Missouri radio show this morning, McCaskill reiterated her belief that the House bill will “hurt a state like Missouri that is so coal dependent.” Asked where she was “on the cap-and-trade,” McCaskill said that her position would make her “friends on the left very unhappy“:

MCCASKILL: Well, I’m going to make people, my friends on the left, very unhappy and I’m going to make those who don’t think global warming is real very unhappy because I’m probably going to be working with a group of moderates in the middle to try to come up with a bill that doesn’t punish coal-dependent states like Missouri. We’ve got to be very careful with what we do with this legislation.

[snip]

As the Wonk Room’s Brad Johnson noted after McCaskill’s initial tweet, “the cap-and-trade system the House passed fully protects states now dependent on coal, with multi-billion-dollar programs for advanced coal technology.” In fact, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA), an architect of the bill, told WNYC’s Brian Lehrer on Monday that the House took the Senate’s regional concerns into consideration when they crafted the legislation...

[snip]

Rep. Rick Boucher (D-VA), who represents a coal district and was very influential on the bill, is confident that the legislation doesn’t disproportionately harm coal. “My focus in the shaping of the bill in the Energy and Commerce Committee was to keep electricity rates affordable and to enable utilities to continue using coal,” said Boucher. “Both of these goals have been achieved.”

It seems McCaskill has joined with the Cons is being absolutely fucking blind to reality.

As for that backbone Harry Reid discovered yesterday, well, he misplaced it awfully damned quick. I'm ashamed that these pathetic fucktards are considered Democrats. The only thing they've got that the Cons don't is a tenuous grip on sanity.

I've also run out of Dems to bash. But there's always an abundance of Cons, and Rep. Steve King delivers the dumbassitude in spades:

Rep. Steve King (R-IA) was the only congressman to vote against a resolution yesterday that acknowledges the role that slaves played in the construction of the U.S. Capitol Building, reports Ryan Grim of the Huffington Post. According to the text of the resolution, which passed 399-1, its simple goal is to recognize those who constructed the Capitol with a marker...

Wow. Can't even scrape together enough class to vote yes on something this simple. And his excuse is just simply beyond pathetic.

For those of you who've missed Bush-bashing, Jeb's trying to fill his brother's shoes and give you a worthy target:

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R), not surprisingly, isn't impressed with President Obama. More interesting, though, is the specific critique -- he's not just disappointed with the president's agenda, he also thinks Obama has changed his policy agenda.

"Barack Obama would not have gotten elected if he'd let us in on his secret plan prior to the election. He would not have gotten elected if he'd said, 'My idea is to create a $1.8 trillion deficit for the next fiscal year. My idea is to spend $750 billion [the president's budget estimate puts this figure at $630 billion] over the next ten years on a government-sponsored, government-subsidized health-care policy. My idea is to create a massive cap-and-trade system [based on the idea] that CO2 is [a] pollutant and we need to tax it in a massive way to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions.'"

[snip]

Was he watching a different presidential race last year? The former president's brother may not have liked Obama's agenda, but what we're seeing is pretty much what we were promised. Obama said he'd prioritize economic investment over reducing the $1.3 trillion deficit Jeb's brother left on the Oval Office desk, and that's what he's doing. Obama said he'd support a health care reform with a public option, and that's what he's doing. Obama touted the benefits of a cap-and-trade system, and he's standing behind it. The whole agenda was put online, talked about in speeches, and scrutinized in interviews and debates. Obama then won 365 electoral votes and the highest popular vote percentage of any Democratic candidate in 44 years.

Yup. That sure was a secret plan, there. Glad Jeb is so good at seeing through his nefarious schemes. No one could've seen all this coming. Gee. And whiz.

With leaders like this, perhaps poll results like these make a little more sense:

A new USA Today/Gallup poll has found that “Sarah Palin’s bombshell that she is resigning as Alaska governor actually has boosted her a bit among Republicans.” According to the poll, “two-thirds of Republicans want Palin…to be ‘a major national political figure‘ in the future” while three-quarters of Democrats “hope she won’t be.” Seventy-two percent of Republicans surveyed said they are “very likely” or “somewhat likely” to vote for her if she runs for president... [emphasis added]

On second thought, no. Still fucking insane. I guess you really can't be too corrupt, stupid and completely unfit for public duty for the Con base. In fact, as the "incompetent ass" factor goes up, so does their admiration.

No wonder the Cons decided there's no need to rebrand:

Seeing Jeb Bush pop up earlier reminds me, wasn't he one of the leaders of some Republican rebranding effort? Indeed, weren't there a variety of GOP factions with grand ideas about rebranding the entire party?

Whatever happened to that?

In the spring, this was a pretty big deal in Republican circles. The National Council for a New America, in particular, enjoyed the support of leading GOP voices -- Cantor, Romney, McCain, Bush, Gingrich, Palin, Jindal, and Barbour -- and even managed to organize an outside-the-Beltway event, which just happened to be inside the Beltway.

But since then, nothing. Nothing in the news, and nothing on the NCNA's website. Future events haven't been scheduled, and I can't find anyone in a position of power or authority talking about Republican rebranding at all anymore.

Either that, or they're just following Palin's lead, and quitting while they're behind.