Happy Hour Discurso

Today's opining on the public discourse.

I don't understand cats any better than I understand Cons.  At lunch, when all I was doing was reading, she wanted nothing to do with me.  Now that I have to type, she wants to be right in the way of the keyboard.

There's got to be something in the evolutionary history of the feline brain that explains this.  I'm afraid nothing much will ever explain Cons.

Today's election day, and there's several races around the country that might be worth a mention.  Oddly enough, Cons are focused on the races they're likely to win, not the ones where they're likely to get their arses handed to them on a platter, complete with parsley garnish:

While pundits have obsessed over the special election in New York, they’ve completely ignored another race that evidences a progressive resurgence. Today, voters in California’s 10th congressional district will go to the polls to elect a member of congress to replace former Rep. Ellen Tauscher (D-CA), who was brought into the Obama Administration to serve as the Under Secretary for Arms Control and International Security.

As The Nation’s John Nichols notes, CA-10 is a far more competitive district than NY-23...

[snip]

Despite the competitiveness of his district, Democrat John Garamendi leads Republican David Harmer by ten points in the latest polling.

What makes Garamendi’s lead all the more impressive is his progressive stances. While CA-10 was previously held by a Democrat, Tauscher legislated as a centrist.

[snip]

Garamendi, on the other hand, is an unabashed liberal. He is a strong supporter not only of a public option, but of a single-payer Medicare-for-all health care system, supports the creation of an exit strategy from Afghanistan, and actually defeated the hand-picked candidate for the Democratic endorsement.

If he is elected, and he likely will be, it will mark a dramatic leftward shift in CA-10. But with all the media coverage of NY-23, most Americans may never know that.

Funny how Cons and their media lapdogs only think it's newsworthy if they're not losing, innit?

They're apparently terrified, though, because they're resorting to intimidation to win:

The teabaggers are turning to threats and intimidation out there in NY-23 land.

Elizabeth Benjamin writes in the NY Daily News:

It's getting ugly out there.

I just got off the phone with former state Democratic Chairwoman June O'Neill, who informed me the police had been called to at least two polling sites in St. Lawrence County due to overzealous electioneering (O'Neill called it "voter intimidation") by Doug Hoffman supporters.

"We've gotten reports that people are standing there, covered with Hoffman stickers and yelling anti-choice stuff at voters," said O'Neill, a St. Lawrence native who has been running the party's GOTV effort for Bill Owens in NY-23.

"Apparently, there's some woman claiming to be a commissioner," O'Neill continued.

"Commissioner of what, I don't know. She's from Texas, I think, and she won't leave."
"This is not the way we roll in the North Country."'

O'Neill also said she had received anecdotal reports of problems at polling sites in Gouverneur, which is Assemblywoman Dede Scozzafava's hometown. But she couldn't immediately confirm this.

Stay classy, Teabaggers.  Stay classy. 

Of course, they're not relying on intimidation alone.  They're also investing heavily in the ol' right-wing lies:

Earlier today, the Hoffman campaign and conservative bloggers threw a fit over a very nefarious accusation: That somebody had slashed the tire of a Hoffman poll-watcher's pickup truck.

"Hoffman Poll Watcher Has Tires Slashed," blared Red State, with photos of the truck and its flat tire. And Hoffman himself chimed in.

"We just had a report that one of our pollsters in Clinton County just had their tires slashed," Hoffman said. "So I think the Democrats are doing everything they possibly can to steal this election away from the 23rd District."

However, the Wall Street Journal reports that the local police captain said there's another explanation: "This was not a tire slashing--this was some guy who drove over a bottle and cut his tire."

Isn't that just typical Con?  Fuck yourself up by being stupid and then blame it on Dems.  These are truly sad, sad people.

But, of course, they're not relying on intimidation and playing the victim, but resorting to the old ACORN zombie lie as well:

OK, here's what should be the nail in the coffin for conservative claims that ACORN is poised to steal the New Jersey governor's race through rampant voter fraud.

Brian Kettenring, an ACORN spokesman, tells TPMmuckraker that the much-maligned group has conducted absolutely no political or voter registration activity in the state during the 2009 cycle. And Kettenring added that ACORN had done very little such work during the 2008 cycle.

You know how pathetic these fucktards are?  Pathetic enough that they're getting spanked hard by an actual conservative:

I've read conservative blogger Rick Moran periodically over the years, and while he's very conservative, I tend to think he's someone I could at least have a reasonable conversation with. His blog is called "Right Wing Nuthouse" -- which doesn't exactly scream "sensible moderation" -- but Moran's content isn't as unhinged as the name might suggest.

A post he had yesterday on "anti-reason conservatives" was especially interesting. Moran sees his fellow conservatives throwing a fit about the Republican Party, and desperately trying to drag it sharply to the far-right, and he seems to think they're making a terrible mistake.

What is it that possesses certain conservatives to fool themselves so spectacularly into believing that they can create a majority out of a minority?

That kind of alchemy hasn't been seen since Nostradamus tried to turn lead into gold. In the case of far right conservatives who think that they can turn their meager numbers into a ruling majority all by themselves, the disconnect from reality would normally call for an intervention -- except they reject anything from anybody who doesn't agree with them 100%. [...]

The recent Gallup poll showing that 40% of Americans see themselves as "conservative" was leapt upon by these morons as "proof" that their brand of anarcho-conservatism dominates the political landscape. Would that it were true. The fact that there are a dozen different definitions of "conservative" depending on where you live doesn't seem to penetrate. And the pogrom they wish to carry out against "moderates" who agree with them on 90% of the issues they hold dear but fail their ever more spastic "litmus tests" guarantees Democratic dominance for the foreseeable future.

To clarify, Moran doesn't seem to be arguing for a more moderate GOP. Rather, I get the sense that he's simply opposed to the coordinated purge of anyone who isn't entirely right-wing on everything from the Republican ranks.

I hope more conservatives like Mr. Moran come out of the woodwork with paddles in hand.  But not too soon - I mean, it's nice that the Teabaggers are helping us win:

So, any chance the Tea Party crowd will feel satiated, content in knowing they proved their point? Fat chance.

In what could be a nightmare scenario for Republican Party officials, conservative activists are gearing up to challenge leading GOP candidates in more than a dozen key House and Senate races in 2010.

Conservatives and tea party activists had already set their sights on some of the GOP's top Senate recruits -- a list that includes Gov. Charlie Crist in Florida, former Rep. Rob Simmons in Connecticut and Rep. Mark Kirk in Illinois, among others.

But their success in Tuesday's upstate New York special election, where grass-roots efforts pushed GOP nominee Dede Scozzafava to drop out of the race and helped Conservative Party nominee Doug Hoffman surge into the lead on the eve of Election Day, has generated more money and enthusiasm than organizers ever imagined.

Activists predict a wave that could roll from California to Kentucky to New Hampshire and that could leave even some GOP incumbents -- Utah Sen. Bob Bennett is one -- facing unexpectedly fierce challenges from their right flank.

"I would say it's the tip of the spear," said Dick Armey, the former GOP House majority leader who now serves as chairman of FreedomWorks, an organization that has been closely aligned with the tea party movement. "We are the biggest source of energy in American politics today."

"What you're going to see," said Armey, "is moderates and conservatives across the country in primaries."

And there's not much party leaders can do about it.

After spectacular failures in 2006 and 2008, Republican officials resisted calls to move the party towards the middle, but they nevertheless recruited candidates intended to have fairly broad appeal. Now they're finding an enraged, uncompromising, right-wing base that will settle for nothing short of everything. If that means losing elections and driving moderates from the ranks, so be it.

I feel a letter coming on.

Dear Teabaggers: thank you for driving out all of the Cons that could in any way seem tempting to right-leaning moderates.  It might take a few election cycles, but once you've managed to turn the Con contingent in Congress into a mass of batshit frothing insane fucktards who appear to be nothing more than clowns in suits, voters with 28% brain function or better will come screaming to the Dems, or at worst moderate third-party candidates.  Without you, those same people might've been continued falling for Con con games.  And so, I wish to take this opportunity to thank you sincerely for all the work you've done to help ensure a Democratic majority for many years to come.  Sincerely, Dana Hunter.

And here's the sweetener for some already sweet tea:

This finding from the new CNN poll is buried deep in CNN’s article, but it’s striking. According to the network’s polling director, Keating Holland, the internals show that a majority of southerners thinks Obama has done a better job than native son Bush:

Fifty-seven percent say Obama has been a better president than George W. Bush; only a third say Bush’s track record was better.

“Compared to Obama, Bush does fairly well among southerners and rural voters. But even in those categories, a majority still says Obama has done a better job than Bush,” says Holland.

Obama’s numbers have generally been far worse among southerners: A recent Research 2000 poll for Daily Kos found that Obama’s favorability rating in the south is a meager 28%. Another recent survey found that a majority of southerners either don’t believe Obama was born in the United States or are not sure.

According to CNN, though, a majority of southerners still prefers Obama’s performance to that of Bush — yet another measure of how abysmally unpopular the former president remains.

Gorgeous.  Simply gorgeous.