Happy Hour Discurso

Today's opining on the public discourse.

I think we shall begin today by bashing media assclowns. Folks, there's a reason I don't watch teevee news shows, not even supposedly uber-librul MSNBC. It's because, salted in between the numbing mindless drivel, you get things like Pat Buchanan advocating murder:

Earlier today, conservative pundit Pat Buchanan suggested that Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s husband should murder his daughter’s ex-fiance, Levi Johnston, for saying Palin’s decision to resign came down to “money.” While appearing on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, Buchanan said:

BUCHANAN: “Well, first, with regard to Levi, I think First Dude up there in Alaska, Todd Palin, ought to take Levi down to the creek and hold his head underwater until the thrashing stops.“

Time’s Mark Halperin then quipped: “That’s a reality show, right there.”

And this, ladies and gentlemen, is Morning Joe's idea of political discourse. Why MSNBC keeps that bunch of Faux News Lite fuckers around, I'll never know.

Of course, to really get your incitement to violence on, you have to surf over to Faux News itself, where a bunch of clueless gits do stupid shit like this:

When Laura Ingraham filled in for Bill O'Reilly on Friday's night's O'Reilly Factor, she ran a segment on abortion that was ostensibly an "investigation" into Planned Parenthood. It featured a logo that placed a red set of crosshairs -- the kind you find on a rifle scope -- over PP's logo.

I'd just like to ask one question:

What the hell were these people thinking?

Now, presumably, Ingraham herself did not order up this graphic, or if she did, it at least went through the hands of the show's regular producers and overseers. These are the same people who just went through a well-deserved round of approbation for their role -- in the form of those 28 references to Dr. George Tiller as a "baby killer" -- in the murder of Tiller by an anti-abortion fanatic.

And now they're running a graphic suggestive of what Ann Coulter calls "a procedure with a rifle" -- something, in fact, that Coulter has actually encouraged on The O'Reilly Factor.

[snip]

And the same sort of anecdotal demonization that characterized O'Reilly's attacks on Tiller were similarly at play in this segment on Planned Parenthood. It essentially involved an ambush team using a youngish-seeming woman posing as a 14-year-old entering a variety of Planned Parenthood clinics and recording the responses -- most of which, as described by the fake teen here, actually fit the standard response of most properly run clinics in trying to make sure that younger patients feel at ease.

The overriding message, once again, is that these abortion providers are a pack of morally depraved sickos who deserve to be in the crosshairs. Lovely.

And then the clueless stupid gits wonder why we hand them a hefty chunk of responsibility when their viewers go bomb clinics and shoot abortion doctors. They'd easily see the connection if, say, Keith Olbermann ran a segment on The O'Reilly Factor complete with crosshairs and some unhinged fucktard proceeded to shoot the place up. But they remain blind to their own egregious stupidity.

While we're on the subject of stupidity in the media, why do so many news outlets think Liz Cheney's worth paying attention to?

Former Bush State Department official Liz Cheney chatted with the conservative Washington Times this morning, and addressed national security issues with the kind of honesty and seriousness we've come to expect from the former vice president's daughter.

"There's this big piece in the Wall Street Journal this morning that says that it was a number of different concepts for ways that we could capture or kill al Qaeda leaders in the days after 9/11. I am really surprised that the Democrats decide that that's what they want to fight over. I mean, if they want to go to the American people and say that they disagree with the notion that we ought to be capturing and killing al Qaeda leaders, I think it's just going to prove to the American people one more time why they can't trust the Democrats with our national security."

Transparent hackery like this is to be expected, but it's worth noting how badly Liz Cheney misstated reality. For one thing, according to the WSJ article she referenced, the program on "capturing and killing al Qaeda leaders" was never fully implemented wasn't "fully operational" eight years later. Does that mean, by Liz Cheney's reasoning, that her father's administration wasn't fully committed to going after terrorists?

She's always got the same things to say: the Bush administration only wanted to protect Amurka, the Dems want the terrorists to win, and then there's this dumbfuckery:

Cheney also responded to news that Attorney General Holder is considering appointing a special prosecutor to investigate “the Bush administration’s brutal interrogation practices,” calling it “shameful.” She added that her father is “very angry” about the development:

CHENEY: His reaction to the story that we may well be prosecuting folks, I’m happy to talk about that. … You know, he is very angry, as you’ve heard him say publicly. You know the notion that this administration is going to come into office and they’re going to prosecute the brave men and women who carried out this program that kept America safe. It is, it is un-American. It’s something that hasn’t happened before in this country, in terms of somebody taking office and then starting to prosecute people who carried out policies that they disagreed with, you know, in the previous administration. He’s been very public about that.

Straight from the horse's ass, my friends: investigating allegations of illegality and prosecuting people who broke the law is un-American. Oh, and torture is American as apple pie.

Let me just put it this way, Liz: no one in this Administration plans to "prosecute people who carried out policies that they disagreed with." If they get off their asses and prosecute at all, they will be prosecuting people responsible for carrying out policies that broke the fucking law. In fact, it looks like all we'll get out of this is a few slaps on the wrist for people who went beyond Bush's illegal bullshit and engaged in a little extra torture on the side, while the architects of those torture programs get off scot-free. That's un-American, you stupid fucking git.

But according to John McCain, we don't even need to do that much:

Coming from someone who was tortured as a prisoner of war himself, this is pretty astounding. Never mind any accountability for torture, it's good enough that someone has had their reputation ruined. Sadly, he can get away with this sort of talk since he's being enabled by the Obama administration with their refusal to go after Bush administration officials for torturing prisoners.

[snip]

GREGORY: But where's the accountability?

McCAIN: Well, the accountability, obviously, is that people's reputations have been harmed very badly.

Oh, well, that's all right, then. Equivalent to years in prison, that is. I mean, we all know how awful it is for all those folks who have to go on wingnut welfare because they ruined their own reputations.

I can't believe this dumbshit might have become President.

And I can't believe this dumbshit might be one of the GOP's great white hopes in 2012:

In an interview with Al Jazeera’s Fault Lines program, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich outlined his U.S. policy towards Iran. Gingrich said the U.S. should “sabotage” Iran’s oil and gas infrastructure as part of an effort to topple the Iranian government.

Al Jazeera’s Avi Lewis told Gingrich, “In the past, you’ve called for the bombing of Iran’s oil refineries.” Gingrich clarified, “I called for sabotage, not bombing. … Fundamental difference.” Gingrich explained that the U.S. should use “covert operations” against Iran’s refineries because they “have only one refinery that produces gasoline in the entire country.” (According to the Energy Information Administration, Iran has nine refineries operated by the National Iranian Oil Refining and Distribution Company.)

When Lewis pressed Gingrich on the likely disastrous consequences of “sabotaging” Iran’s oil refineries, the former Speaker responded by claiming his plan was highly “strategic”:

GINGRICH: The only purpose of sabotaging them would be to create a gasoline-led crisis to try to replace the regime. I’m against using tactics that don’t have any strategic meaning.

I'd love to see what our generals have to say about Newt's "strategy." I might not be able to publish it even on a blog as potty-mouthed as this one, though. This glimpse into the neocon mind does rather give one a good idea as to why Iraq and Afghanistan ended up being such enormous fuck-ups, though.

I'm starting to think we should maybe practice some of the traditions of the past. Specifically, the one about children being seen but not heard. These overgrown infants really just need to shut the fuck up and let the grown-ups get on with cleaning up after them.