Happy Hour Discurso

Today's opining on the public discourse.

I'm finding it difficult to focus tonight. It could be because it's gawdawful hot, or it could be because I'm still picking shards of my Irony Meter out of the furniture:

On Fox News last night, Rush Limbaugh noted Aug. 1 marks his 21st anniversary of being on air. When host Greta Van Susteren asked him what his “secret” is to his “amazing” “longevity,” Limbaugh replied that it’s his “positive” and “inspiring” messages:

[snip]

They want — people want to be inspired! People want to be motivated. They want their positive thoughts validated. They don’t want to hear every day how everything’s going to hell in a handbasket and there’s a shortage of handbaskets. They don’t want to hear this. That’s what gets ratings on television. I have shown you get ratings on radio being positive, respecting the audience, being inspiring and motivational at times, when it’s necessary.

Lack of self-awareness much, Rush?

Moving on to people who display the overall awareness of an amoeba, here's the latest Palinesque ignorance from Sen. Cornyn:

Senators have had to get pretty creative lately to defend spending more money on a fighter jet that doesn't work and that the Pentagon doesn't want. Sen. John Cornyn's (R-Texas) argument, however, might be my favorite.

"[The F-22 is] important to our national security because we're not just fighting wars in Afghanistan and Iraq," Cornyn says. "We're fighting -- we have graver threats and greater threats than that: From a rising India, with increased exercise of their military power; Russia; Iran, that's threatening to build a nuclear weapon; with North Korea, shooting intercontinental ballistic missiles, capable of hitting American soil." [emphasis added]

Wait, Cornyn thinks we should spend tax dollars on a fighter jet the Pentagon and the Air Force don't want because we should be worried about a "rising India"? Perhaps someone can take Cornyn aside and explain that that India is a close U.S. ally. If we need unnecessary fighter jets to prepare ourselves for a military conflict with India, the United States is in a much more precarious position that I realized.

Cornyn added that the F-22 is "one of our most innovative, strategic fighter planes." If by "innovative" and "strategic" Cornyn means, "planes that don't function properly," he's absolutely right.

The only thing that could make me laugh harder than that double-whammy of dumbfuckery is finding out that the tech support for the F-22's on board computer systems is provided by India. If so, we owe an enormous apology to our ally for expecting them to troubleshoot shit that never worked to begin with.

While we're on the subject of shit that never worked, check out Sen. Grassley, who apparently doesn't understand what "reasonable alternatives" means:

On Bloomberg’s Political Capital this weekend, host Al Hunt asked Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) what he thought of the “tone and substance” of President Obama’s press conference this week. Like he has said before, Grassley underscored his opposition to a public health insurance option.

In a call with progressive bloggers a day before the press conference, Obama said he continues to “believe that a robust public option would be the best way to go.” In the press conference itself, Obama said a public option is necessary “to keep the insurance companies honest” and his view that by taking “some of the profit motive out,” you can get a “better deal” for consumers.

But in his interview with Hunt, Grassley claimed that Obama has told him privately that he is willing to consider “reasonable alternatives” to a robust public option:

GRASSLEY: One of the most controversial things we are facing — and one that the House does and Senator Kennedy’s committee does — is bring a government health insurance program into existence. He still spoke highly about that. And that’s not going to get bipartisan support.

And it would have been good if he had said to the entire country what he said to me privately — that he would look to alternatives for that. And we have a very good alternative by going with cooperatives because we’ve known them for 150 years in America. And allowing them to sell health insurance for more competition.

HUNT: Do you think the President could support that?

GRASSLEY: All I can tell you is — but he didn’t say this that night and he should have said it — that he’s looking for reasonable alternatives. And I think we have a reasonable bipartisan alternative in co-ops.

[snip]

Carl McDonald and James Naklicki at Oppenheimer’s Equity Research department write, “As the co-ops are currently described, we think they would be a big positive for the managed care group, but it seems to us that they would be destined to fail from the moment of creation.” Co-ops would also take decades to set up, according to experts.

Let's see... throw over a public option that would be ready to go nearly instantly and would provide effective, robust competition that would force the insurance industry to provide better plans at a better cost for co-ops that wouldn't be ready to go for decades and would probably fail anyway. Sound like a "reasonable alternative" to you? Me, neither.

Then again, it's not like these assclowns are really reasonable:

Yesterday, The Conservative Women’s Network hosted Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) for a discussion on critical legislation before Congress. ThinkProgress attended the event and recorded Bachmann’s remarks.

Bachmann fed the crowd a predictable diet of fear-mongering right-wing rhetoric to warn of dire consequences if President Obama’s health care reform passes. “What the Obama administration will do with health care is make us like Havana in 1959 when Castro came in,” she told the young women in the audience.

She then argued that passing health reform will mean that, for the first time in our nation’s history, “we will have taxpayer-subsidized abortion.” The question becomes, continued Bachmann, “will this mandate now that we’ll have to build more abortion mills?”

No, but I sure as shit wish it mandated that you'd have to get intensive mental health intervention, Michele. Anyone who seems to think of abortion as a production line waiting to happen, as if the country's full of women who are just waiting for abortions to become free so they can indulge their fantasies of getting repeatedly pregnant in order to experience the joys of abortion, needs more than therapy. The only problem is that we may not have an anti-psychotic medication powerful enough to help this poor lunatic.

On top of her psychotic features, she and fellow Rep. Judy Biggert suffer from an extreme case of narcissitic personality disorder:

This is the GOP strategy? They're going to try to appeal to stressed-out soccer moms to stop healthcare reform? I'm stunned at the sheer brilliance - not to mention that smug attitude that some people's children are more important that others:

Why offer more people health insurance, Rep. Michelle Bachmann (R-Minn.) asked at a press conference Friday, if they might lengthen waits for doctors and otherwise increase the "hassle factor" for her?

"That's like having a mother bear protecting her little cubs, and she's seeing that she has to move heaven and earth to get her child what her child needs," Bachmann said, referring to the health care reforms being debated by Congress. "We'll do it if we have to, but why put ourselves in that situation?"

Near the end of a tumultuous week of delays for health care bills in both houses of Congress, Bachmann and a handful of other House Republican women said at a press conference that as far as they were concerned, any reform would just make things tougher for them.

"I think most all of us here have had the opportunity to take our kids to a fast-food restaurant," said Rep. Judy Biggert (R-Ill.). "We want to get a good dinner, and you walk in and there's 50 people there and it seems like everybody in line wants to buy food for their soccer team or whatever. The American people aren't particularly good at standing in line, but that's exactly what's going to happen if this health care plan goes through."

There it is, the women of the GOP explaining exactly why they're against health care reform: they want other mothers' kids denied health care to avoid the risk of a line at the doctor's office. Compassionate conservatism at your service, America.

Some of you may wonder what the Cons in Congress do when they're not spouting utter insanity on health care reform. They aren't idle! No, they pick up the latest non-scandal and run with it just as fast as their little legs can carry them:

President Obama's remarks yesterday in the White House briefing room about the arrest of Henry Louis Gates have received nearly universal applause, with one notable exception: Republicans, who are still up their same old tricks.

[snip]

...Congressman Thaddeus McCotter (R-MI) decided to make political hay out of the controversy and waste the time of Congress by appealing to racial disharmony:

Congress would demand that President Obama apologize to the officer the president said had "acted stupidly" in the arrest of a prominent Harvard professor under a resolution set to be introduced by one Michigan lawmaker.

Rep. Thaddeus McCotter (R-Mich.) will introduce a House resolution on Monday demanding Obama retract and apologize for remarks he has made about Cambridge Police Sergeant James Crowley this past week.

To recap:

1. In a show of reconciliation and unity, both Prof. Gates and Officer Crowley will meet with President Obama at the White House.

2. The Cambridge police union is happy.

3. A Republican representative wants Congress to debate a political resolution slamming President Obama and reigniting the controversy.

Obviously, the only reason McCotter is pushing this attack is to try to score political points, but it's such a transparent ploy, it's almost guaranteed to blow up in his face. Does he really think that nobody will notice that while everybody else is working to come together and reduce the heat, he is stepping forward to try to crank up the flame?

I'm sure he's counting on the attention. He knows the rabid right doesn't care how transparent he is as long as he's attempting to stick a thumb in Obama's eye - and he's probably over-estimated their numbers.

I certainly hope the majority of Americans aren't as stupid as the Cons think they are, anyway. Then again, pockets of America keep electing fucktards like Cornyn, Bachmann, and McCotter. One wonders if that's from stupidity, ignorance, or a desire for cheap entertainment.