Set to one side the fact that Con Reps Broun, Shadegg, Myrick, and Franks are paranoid delusional fucktards (or Muslim-hating, immoral, opportuntistic shitheels, take your pick) who are stupid enough to believe Worldnut Daily publications, and therefore their crusade against Muslim interns is patently foolish. Indulge in a hypothetical. Pretend there's some basis in reality for their hysteria. If you believed spies were infiltrating the nation's capitol, preparing to undermine our civilization and entire way of life, and you were in a position to stop the dastardly deeds from being done, would you dawdle?
Steve Benen said it best when he said:Four Republican lawmakers have not submitted a request to the House sergeant at arms to investigate a threat that one of the four described as a terrorist-linked group possibly "running influence operations or planting spies in key national security-related offices."
A spokesperson for the sergeant at arms told TPMmuckraker this morning that the office was aware of the charge by GOP members at a press conference Wednesday that the Council on American-Islamic Relations planted Muslim intern spies on the Hill for purposes of subversion. But, says spokesperson Kerri Hanley, the office hasn't received a request for an investigation, and it wouldn't launch any probe until such a request is made.
"We don't have any information to form any kind of opinion to decide whether an investigation is warranted," Hanley says.
Hmm. As far as Myrick, Shadegg, Broun, and Franks are concerned, a dangerous group with terrorist ties has surreptitiously placed covert spies in key congressional posts to shape policy and acquire sensitive information. (None of this is true, of course, but this is what they believe.)
Outraged, they call a press conference and proceed to do ... nothing? With American national security on the line, they can't send an intern to deliver a request for an investigation to the Sergeant at Arms office?
It would seem so. In fact, it appears to be an attitude related to Bush et al's. You know, the fuckwits who decided that, instead of going after the people who actually attacked the country on 9/11, they'd go spank Saddam instead.In other words, these far-right lawmakers are paranoid, bigoted, and lazy?
What winners they are.
Speaking of winners, someone really needs to explain to Cons that insulting whole ethnic groups is a bad idea:
Two points. First, it's perfectly possible to use that old saying without invoking ethnic stereotypes, so that was just gratuitous and unthinking idiocy. Secondly, adding insult to injury by comparing Jim DeMint to an entire ethnic group? That's beyond the pale.On Sunday in the Orangeburg, SC Times and Democrat newspaper, local Republican Party chairmen Edwin O. Merwin Jr. and James S. Ulmer Jr. wrote an editorial defending Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) from criticisms by Democrats. As the Huffington Post’s Rachel Weiner notes, “After a Democratic state senator wrote that DeMint didn’t bring enough money back to the state,” Merwin and Ulmer invoked an ethnic stereotype about Jewish people to defend DeMint’s penny-pinching:
There is a saying that the Jews who are wealthy got that way not by watching dollars, but instead by taking care of the pennies and the dollars taking care of themselves. By not using earmarks to fund projects for South Carolina and instead using actual bills, DeMint is watching our nation’s pennies and trying to preserve our country’s wealth and our economy’s viability to give all an opportunity to succeed.
The conservative Palmetto Scoop writes, “Umm… who in mainstream America thinks it’s a good idea to write something like that in a guest editorial?"
Of course, unthinking stupidity is the modern face of the GOP. I mean, just check out Michael Steele, who's invoking racist attacks in order to justify refusing to condemn racist attacks:
The one small problem with his defense, aside from the fact it's petty and stupid, is that it's also not based in reality:Here’s another measure of Glenn Beck’s growing Limbaugh-like power: In an interview with Univision yesterday, Michael Steele seemed unwilling to condemn Beck’s claim that Obama is a “racist,” though he did distance himself from it a bit by saying it was “one man’s opinion.”
Univision sends over a transcript, and here’s the relevant bit:
INTERVIEWER JORGE RAMOS: For instance, when you hear commentators like Glenn Beck saying that for him President Barack Obama is a racist, with a deep seated hatred for white people, how do you react?
STEELE: That’s one man’s opinion.
RAMOS: Yes, but…
STEELE: That’s one man’s opinion.
RAMOS: But should you defend Barack Obama against these types of comments? I don’t know, it’s just a question.
STEELE: No, no, look, the reality of it is when I ran for the United States Senate and I was called an Uncle Tom by leading Democrats in the country, when I was called a slave by Steny Hoyer who is now the majority leader in the House, no one came running to my defense, and no one seemed to think that that was racist at the time. I don’t play the race card, I don’t play the race game, the way some tend to want to do.
It becomes even harder to believe when you're confronted by the rest of his stupidity. Michael Steele on immigration: "[B]asically what we should be saying is that there are rules that you need to get into the country, go the right door, fill out the right form, have some apple pie, hum a few bars of the star spangle banner and get to work, God bless you, and I think that that begins to set us on the right road to dealing with this issue." Sheer genius, I'm telling you. And wait until we get to the daily dose of health care reform stupidity, where Steele's intellect truly gets a chance to shine.Except, that's not what happened. The grand total of "leading Democrats" who called Michael Steele an "Uncle Tom" during his campaign was zero. More important, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer never called Steele "a slave." In reality, Hoyer characterized Steele's record as "a career of slavishly supporting the Republican Party." Steele feigned outrage, and Hoyer walked it back, saying, "If Mr. Steele did in fact take offense let me assure him that none was intended."
Three years later, Steele is downplaying actual racially-motivated attacks against the president by powerful right-wing activists, and equating them with anecdotes from his own campaign that never occurred.
It's often hard to believe this guy is the chairman of a major American political party.
But maybe, after all, he's the perfect representative of the Con party. After all, here's what the Pennsylvania Con party thinks qualifies as damned clever advertising:
Those classy guys in the GOP. Will Bunch:
Some of 55 years after the vicious, Red-baiting tactics of Joseph McCarthy were repudiated by America's better angels, the state GOP is picking up the tattered banner of McCarthyism and running with it -- literally, in fact, with this banner ad (top) on a popular political Web site. In this case, it's hard to say what is more appalling -- equating the sitting president of the United States with the Soviet dictators who slaughtered their political enemies and sent others to brutal gulags, or the cause this ad is promoting: The election of a judge to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court.
[snip]
It's not the first time that the Pennsylvania Republican Party has used extreme rhetoric about Barack Obama. Last fall, when he was the Democratic nominee -- as reported here at Attytood -- the state GOP chairman Robert Gleason issued a press release that called Obama "a terrorist's best friend." This new ad also picks up a theme that gained attention earlier this fall in Kansas City, when an anti-Obama billboard placed on I-70 had the Soviet hammer-and-sickle emblem with the message: ""How do you like your change now? Obama Nation. They are coming for you! The Taxpayer. First and Second Amendments are in jeopardy. Live free or Die."
My god, these are the same party who destroyed CDs and sent death threats when the Dixie Chicks said they were embarrassed to be from the same state as GWB and demanded Congress react to MoveOn's ad "Gen. Betray-Us?". But yet they throw around loaded symbols and allusions to some of the most brutal regimes of the last century, and think nothing of it.
It's easy to think nothing of doing extremely stupid shit when you choose not to think at all.
After all this egregious dumbfuckery, I think it's time for a good laugh, don't you? And what's better than a couple of Con clowns nearly coming to blows over Sarah Palin:
This weekend, David Keene, chairman of the American Conservative Union, was confronted by conservative activist and filmmaker John Ziegler over his criticisms of Sarah Palin.
[snip]
Ziegler attended the Western Conservative Political Action Conference in California this weekend, where he sat down for a scheduled interview with Keene. Ziegler began by telling Keene that his criticisms of Palin “sound like Keith Olbermann.” Keene stood by his views, arguing that Palin’s decision to quit as governor has shown she cannot “handle leadership and responsibility.”
The interview grew heated as Ziegler began lobbing personal attacks at Keene, facetiously suggesting he was “being paid” to issue critical statements of Palin. (Ziegler was referencing the fact that Keene’s organization was revealed to have asked FedEx for a $2-3 million check in return for helping the shipping company in a legislative fight.) “So your influence is either for sale or by lobbying,” Ziegler said. Upset over the direction the interview had taken, Keene got up and walked away, which led to a public showdown at the conference:
KEENE: You are a liar! … [grabbing the microphone] I said this is over! You got it? Over! … Get out of my face! … I’m not going to hit you, but I’d like to. … I’m not answering anything to you because you’re a jerk. … You’re a scumbag. … You’re an asshole. Got that on the air? Asshole.
And the woman they're fighting over? Someone who can't even correct the typos on her resume.
They're so precious.
We're going to hit the rest o' the stoopid with some quick links, because Aunty Flow's starting to get rather enthusiastic on the pain front, and that makes wielding the Smack-o-Matic difficult.
Here's one for the annals of "hate to say we told you so": Joe "Everything but the War" Lieberman, who couldn't be bothered to investigate Bush administration lawbreaking, is all over the czar manufactroversy. He thinks he has a good reason for this. I believe he's just doing it because, while the Cons would've hit him, Dems won't, so now he gets to bang his gavel around for something more than seating charts.
The latest Con assclown in the stimulus stupidity parade is Rep. Jack Kingston, who's busy talking up local initiatives and bad-mouthing federal government while handing out federal cash for said local initiatives, all while leading folks to believe that money didn't come from the big bad feds.
Another corrupt Con is caught lying his ass off. Do try to contain your surprise.
And we all know that Sen. Cantor is a very stupid man, but it takes a special kind of stupidty to defend derivatives in this economic climate.
I wonder if America's Number One in stupid politicians yet? If not, it's certainly not for lack of trying...
You would have to be blind not to notice the eerie similarities between today's conservative talking points and plain old fashioned McCarthyism. This announcement that congress is being "infiltrated" by clandestine Muslim operatives reminded me IMMEDIATELY of a famous exchange during the Army-McCarthy Hearings, where McCarthy's counsel Roy Cohn was asked by Army counsel Joseph Welch to submit to the Attorney General "before the sun goes down" a list of 130 Communist subversives which he (Cohn) claimed to have infiltrated defense plants. Of course Cohn never submitted that list because it didn't exist, the same way the evidence for Muslim subversives in Congress doesn't exist today. This kind of "shoot-and-scoot" invective preys on a fairly primal, irrational fear of all things foreign - from religion to politics - and is rapidly marginalizing the whole Republican Party. What a pity.
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