Happy Hour Discurso

Today's opining on the public discourse.

Cons are united by many things: their paranoia, their fondness for calling their political opponents "socialists," their economic ignorance, and their hatred of Dick Cheney:

Former Vice President Dick Cheney has refused to stay out of the political spotlight since leaving office, giving high-profile interviews to CNN and Politico. Last night, The Hill reported that congressional Republicans are telling him “to go back to his undisclosed location and leave them alone to rebuild the Republican Party without his input”:

Rep. John Duncan Jr. (R-Tenn.) said, “He became so unpopular while he was in the White House that it would probably be better for us politically if he wouldn’t be so public…But he has the right to speak out since he’s a private citizen.”

Another House Republican lawmaker who requested anonymity said he wasn’t surprised that Cheney has strongly criticized Obama early in his term, but argued that it’s not helping the GOP cause.

[snip]

Cheney did “House Republicans no favors,” the lawmaker said, adding, “I could never understand him anyway.”

Yeah, well, neither could we. At last, something we can all agree on: Dick Cheney is a fucking arsehole, and it would be nice if he tripped and fell into a convenient black hole. Well, all of us except the DNC, who probably scream with joy every time he appears on teevee. The more he talks, the better 2010 looks for Democrats.

I'm wondering how the chances of a Dem takeover in Rep. Michele Bachman's district are looking. If she keeps opening her mouth, they should increase exponentially:

Watching Rep. Michele Bachman (R-Minn.) speak has a certain car-wreck quality. It's painful and disturbing, but it's just so difficult to look away.

Take Bachman's questioning today of Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and Federal Research Chairman Ben Bernanke. (via Karen Tumulty, who noted that Bachman seems confused about how a bill becomes a law)

It's a five-minute clip, but it's worth watching. Bachmann starts by asking Geithner if the United States is "jettisoning free-market capitalism."

From there, the Minnesotan asks where the Treasury Department received the legal authority to intervene in the financial markets. When Geithner explains that Congress gave the Treasury the authority, she pressed on, asking "where in the Constitution" Geithner is given the authority to act. (Apparently, she was making some kind of constitutional argument. It didn't make any sense.)

Congratulations, Minnesota. Your rep has no fucking idea how the federal government works, and yet you sent her to help govern. Can we please arrange for her to elope to an undisclosed location with Dick Cheney?

After all, we don't need her for the entertainment value. We've got plenty more where she comes from:

Today, Politico reported that Republican senators are prepared to go “nuclear” — essentially shutting down the Senate through the use of parliamentary maneuvers — if President Obama attempts to use budget reconciliation to pass key parts of his legislative agenda, such as health care reform and and cap-and-trade. Reconciliation allows some legislation to be protected from filibusters and passed by a simple majority. On NPR this morning, Sen. Kit Bond (R-MO) repeated a now familiar attack on budget reconciliation:

BOND: “In this post-partisan time of Barack Obama, we’re seeing a little Chicago politics. They steamroller those who disagree with them, then, I guess in Chicago, they coat them in cement and drop them in the river.” [NPR, 3/24/09]

Bond appears to be parroting his colleague Sen. Judd Gregg (R-NH), who said any use of budget reconciliation by President Obama would be “regarded as an act of violence” against Republicans, and likened it to “running over the minority, putting them in cement and throwing them in the Chicago River.” Other GOP senators have chimed in against reconciliation, with Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ) calling it a “purely partisan exercise” and Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) saying it “would be a mess.”

Despite their howls against Obama, Republicans employed the same procedure to pass major Bush agenda items (which were supported by all four aforementioned Senators):

– The 2001 Bush Tax Cuts [HR 1836, 3/26/01]
– The 2003 Bush Tax Cuts [HR 2, 3/23/03]
– Tax Increase Prevention and Reconciliation Act of 2005 [HR 4297, 5/11/06]
– The Deficit Reduction Act of 2005 [H. Con Res. 95, 12/21/05]

As ThinkProgress has noted, Gregg defended using the reconciliation procedure to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for domestic drilling in 2005, arguing, “The president asked for it, and we’re trying to do what the president asked for.” Evidently, Gregg has lost the same sense of patriotic duty.

Is it just me, or is Con stupidity actually increasing at exponential rates? We're beyond simple foaming at the mouth - they're getting more rabid by the day.

Not to mention more xenophobic:

Leave it to Pitchfork Pat Buchanan to take a seemingly rational discussion of America's relationship with Mexico on Andrea Mitchell's MSNBC show this morning and turn it into a Latino-bashing bigotfest:

Buchanan: Mexico is the greatest foreign-policy crisis I think America faces in the next 20-30 years. Who is gonna care, Andrea, thirty years from now whether a Sunni or a Shi'a is in Baghdad, or who's ruling in Kabul? We're going to have 135 million Hispanics living in the United States by 2050, heavily concentrated in the Southwest. The question is whether we're going to survive as a country.

Rrrrrright. I gather he's been listening to Glenn Beck.

Wassamatter, Pat? Are you scared the icky brown people might dish out a little of what you served 'em? As for your question, yes, we'll survive as a country (if we make it through the hell your buddies dumped us in), but in answer to your implied question, no, we won't survive as a white country.

Myself, I can't wait. One of the things I miss the most about the Southwest is all of the Latino culture. The only people terrified of changing demographics are those who suspect they're fundamentally useless and only have their positions of power and authority because they happen to be in the majority for the moment. People like, y'know, Pat Buchanan.

There's far more stupid - too much for me to relate in one small post. But I did want to let you know the media's doing a bang-up job on their watchdog duties:

ABC News reports on the sordid past of Obama's Chief Information Officer, Vivek Kundra:

When Kundra was 21 years old, records show, he was caught stealing four shirts from a J.C. Penney store.

...."Thirteen years ago, Vivek committed a youthful indiscretion. He performed community service, and we are satisfied that he fully resolved the matter."

What's going on here? The new administration has a lot of work to do, but it keeps being sideswiped by issues in its appointees' pasts. Police records provided to ABC News show that those shirts from Penney's were worth less than $140. Kundra was fined $100 plus $55 in court costs, and ordered to do 80 hours of community service. He reportedly told the White House about the incident while he was being vetted for his current job.

Seriously. And if you think that was ridiculous enough, read to the end of the article:

But reporters, watchdog groups and information-technology specialists still ask about that perplexing 1996 shoplifting charge from Penney's.

And you know where they picked up this information on Kundra's nefarious criminal past? Michelle Malkin's blog.

With a media like this, it's no wonder dumbshits keep getting elected, good people are kept out of government, and sociopaths are allowed to pillage Wall Street at will.

The Sociopaths of Wall Street

The cluelessness from Wall Street just gets worser and worser:

Via TPM, a Wall Street Journal article that says, basically, that at first the Obama administration did not particularly seek out Wall Street's advice:

"In late January, as Treasury Secretary Geithner prepared his proposal for handling the banking crisis, administration officials avoiding seeking input from Wall Street. "Those people are tainted," said one aide at the time. "Why would we consult the very executives who got us into this mess?" (...)

[snip]

But then Obama decided that it was important to reach out more to Wall Street, and did. More Wall Street people were consulted; the administration worked harder to win them over.

Here are the passages from the article that really got to me. (Emphases added.) First:

"Meanwhile, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and his colleagues worked the phones to try to line up support on Wall Street for the plan announced Monday. (...) Some bankers say they turned the conversations into complaints about the antibonus crusade consuming Capitol Hill. Some have begun "slow-walking" the information previously sought by Treasury for stress-testing financial institutions, three bankers say, and considered seeking capital from hedge funds and private-equity funds so they could return federal bailout money, thereby escaping federal restrictions."

Second:

"But as the furor intensified, Mr. Obama's words to Congress -- "we cannot govern out of anger" -- seemed to take on less importance. Last week, he was asked by reporters on the White House South Lawn whether anger was getting in the way of pushing through banking reforms. "I don't want to quell anger," he replied. "I think people are right to be angry. I'm angry."

Bankers were shell-shocked, especially when Congress moved to heavily tax bonuses. When administration officials began calling them to talk about the next phase of the bailout, the bankers turned the tables. They used the calls to lobby against the antibonus legislation, Wall Street executives say. Several big firms called Treasury and White House officials to urge a more reasonable approach, both sides say. The banks' message: If you want our help to get credit flowing again to consumers and businesses, stop the rush to penalize our bonuses."

I think it's important to be really, really clear about what this article claims. Both the stress tests and the attempts to get credit flowing again are essential parts of our attempt to solve the enormous economic problems we now face, problems that these very firms are largely responsible for. If the banks are "slow-walking" the stress tests and threatening not to help get credit flowing, that just is threatening not to help get the country out of the economic crisis.

That would be an absolutely appalling thing to do under any circumstances. It would be doubly appalling since these very people bear a lot of responsibility for that crisis. But the fact that they are making these threats not over some large issue of principle, but over their bonuses -- that's just breathtaking.

As if that wasn't enough chutzpah, we also learn this:

Last month, ThinkProgress reported that in a House hearing, seven out of eight bailed-out bank CEOs said their companies still “own or lease” private planes. ABC News provides more details today, reporting that JPMorgan Chase — which received $25 billion in TARP funds — “is going ahead with a $138 million plan to buy two new luxury corporate jets,” complete with “the premiere corporate aircraft hangar on the eastern seaboard...”

But they think it's okay, because they'll wait until they've paid back the TARP money. They don't seem to comprehend that Americans don't expect them to return to their same old habits after we're done saving their asses from their own bad decisions and cooked books.

As I was reading this, it occurred to me that their behavior fits the definition of sociopathy to a T:

Imagine - if you can - not having a conscience, none at all, no feelings of guilt or remorse no matter what you do, no limiting sense of concern of the well-being of strangers, friends, or even family members. Imagine no struggles with shame, not a single one in your whole life, no matter what kind of selfish, lazy, harmful, or immoral action you had taken. And pretend that the concept of responsibility is unknown to you, except as a burden others seem to accept without question, like gullible fools. Now add to this strange fantasy the ability to conceal from other people that your psychological makeup is radically different from theirs. Since everyone simply assumes that conscience is universal among human beings, hiding the fact that you are conscience-free is nearly effortless. You are not held back from any of your desires by guilt or shame, and you are never confronted by others for your cold-bloodedness. The ice water in your veins is so bizarre, so completely outside of their personal experience that they seldom even guess at your condition.

[snip]

Maybe you are someone who craves money and power, and though you have no vestige of conscience, you do have a magnificent IQ. You have the driving nature and the intellectual capacity to pursue tremendous wealth and influence, and you are in no way moved by the nagging voice of conscience that prevents other people from doing everything and anything they have to do to succeed. You choose business, politics, the law, banking or international development, or any of a broad array of other power professions, and you pursue your career with a cold passion that tolerates none of the usual moral or legal encumbrances. When it is expedient, you doctor the accounting and shred the evidence, you stab your employees and your clients (or your constituency) in the back, marry for money, tell lethal premeditated lies to people who trust you, attempt to ruin colleagues who are powerful or eloquent, and simply steamroll over groups who are dependent and voiceless. And all of this you do with the exquisite freedom that results from having no conscience whatsoever.

We're not dealing with normal people. We're letting sociopaths dictate the terms of their own rescue. I somehow doubt that will go well.

Vermont On Fast Track to Marriage Equality - With Republican Support

Every once in a while, Republicans surprise me:

This afternoon (Monday, March 23) the Vermont State Senate passed S. 115, legislation for civil marriage equality by a vote of 26 to 4.

The 23 Democrats in the Senate voted for the bill by a 22 to 1 margin, while the 7 Republicans split 4 to 3 in favour of the bill. (In how many states would a majority of Republicans vote for marriage equality?)

Mind you, it's a wafer-thin majority, but that's still four Republicans who did the right thing. The bill now goes to the House, where it's expected to pass. As long as Vermont's Republican governor doesn't get an itchy veto pen, same-sex couples in Vermont will enjoy the right to destroy their lives get married just like the rest of us.

My deepest condolences congratulations to you!

Volcano Erupts, Destroys Jindal and Palin

Unfortunately, the bugger blew in the middle of the night, so we'll have to content ourselves with this image from Mt. Redoubt's 1990 eruption, which more accurately reflects its effect on Jindal and Palin's talking points.

I do so hope you lot can watch videos online. This one gets it in one:



Paul Krugman's Parthian shot is a sheer delight:

Volcano monitoring - why would you want to monitor a volcano? 'Cause it might erupt and kill a lot of people.

And this, ladies and gentlemen, is one of the 10,000,000,001 reasons why one should never trust Cons to run the government.

Happy Hour Discurso

Today's opining on the public discourse.

It occurs to me that electing batshit insane paranoid freaks to higher office is probably a rather bad idea:

But when Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) casually refers to elected Democratic officials as the "enemy," and nonchalantly refers to keeping her supporters "armed and dangerous," it's probably a good time to remind Republican lawmakers to turn down the temperature a bit. (via the University of Minnesota and the Dump Bachmann blog.)

Bachmann appeared over the weekend on the First Team radio show with John Hinderaker and Brian Ward, speaking about the horrible stuff that the Democrats are doing: "I'm a foreign correspondent on enemy lines and I try to let everyone back here in Minnesota know exactly the nefarious activities that are taking place in Washington."

Bachmann also spoke out against the cap-and-trade proposals currently making their way through Washington, and how she'll be distributing information against it at an upcoming event in the district. "I want people in Minnesota armed and dangerous on this issue of the energy tax, because we need to fight back," said Bachmann. "Thomas Jefferson told us, having a revolution every now and then is a good thing. And the people -- we the people -- are going to have to fight back hard if we're not going to lose our country."

On the one hand, it seems clear that Bachmann was speaking figuratively. On the other hand, is it appropriate for a member of Congress to speak in any context about being armed for revolution?

No, probably not. But this seems to fit in with a larger trend. We have one GOP lawmaker saying the party should emulate the insurgency tactics of the Taliban. We have another arguing the party should position itself as "freedom fighters" taking on the "slide toward socialism."

Is it just me, or do these fuckwits sound mentally deranged?

Michelle Bachmann is also (surprise, surprise) confused about global warming:

During a Saturday interview with WWTC 1280 AM flagged by Smart Politics, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) slammed President Obama’s cap and trade plan, warning that it would have “the impact of forever changing our country.” She was particularly incensed that the bill was meant to address global warming, which she flatly denied was a human-caused problem:

BACHMANN: And actually, we want this debate because the science is on our side on this one. And the science indicates that human activity is not the cause of all this global warming. And that in fact, nature is the cause, with solar flares, etc.

What "science" are you referencing, Michelle? Cuz that's not what I'm hearing from scientists. Methinks possibly it's time to vote out dumbshits who can't tell the difference between genuine science and pseudo-science.

While we're on the subject of faulty premises, this is truly precious:

From Politico via Yahoo, we find that Gary Bauer is still out there acting as if anyone gives a rat's buttock what he thinks. Today's Gospel According to Gary: It's not seizing, jailing, and torturing innocent Muslims in the Levant that turns them into Western-hatin' terrorists, but letting them pray to Mecca.

Just in case you think I'm kidding, here's his closing spiel: "Whatever Obama decides to do, it is likely that some detainees will be released and, after years of radicalization at Gitmo, some may take up arms or suicide belts and join the jihad. If they do, it will be the accommodation, not suppression, of religious freedom at Guantanamo that’s to blame."

See, according to Gary, all we need to do is make sure these people can't pray to that icky Muslim god, and then everything'll be sunshine and roses. Despite the abuse they suffered at our hands. Because, of course, people of other religious faiths never do terrorist stuff.

Let's ask him to explain Timothy McVeigh, shall we? Should be fun.

While we're at it, let's have Politico explain why they've become patsies for right-wing hysteria:

For a while, the lead story from Politico last night was the idea that President Obama chuckled a little too much during his interview with Steve Kroft on "60 Minutes." The headline on the piece read, "Kroft to Obama: Are you punch-drunk?"

[snip]

When Politico started promoting the piece at 7:04 p.m., I hadn't seen the interview. Reading the headline and these paragraphs, I started wondering if the president had somehow laughed inappropriately at economic suffering. I imagined extensive discussion of "Laugh-Gate" on "Morning Joe" today. Drudge, naturally, ran with this, and far-right blogs pounced.

But then I saw the interview and realized the Politico's piece didn't exactly capture the context.

For most of the interview, Obama is dead serious. Occasionally, he'd chuckle at some absurdity -- hardly an unusual reaction for, you know, humans -- but for the most part, the president was hardly jocular.

About half-way through, Kroft brings up aid to the auto industry, and public opposition to additional government investment. The two share a laugh at the one-sided polling numbers, which led to Kroft's question about "laughing."

This is the kind of inane bullshit the right wing gets all excited about these days. On a scale of pathetic from 0 - infinity, they're way past the point where their rate of pathetic can be measured without scientific notation, and they're accelerating.

Are there funds in the stimulus for the psychotropics these fucktards so desperately need?

Right-Wingers Don't Speak French

Je parle un peu du Français, très mal. Still, it's enough to recognize when Red State's brightest bulb's making an utter imbécile of himself:

I know that Erick Erickson is very rarely wrong, but check this out:

Obama Hacks Off France In Latest Foreign Policy Blunder

Someone forgot to tell Barack Obama that Jacque Chirac is no longer the President of France.

Obama, y'see, wrote a letter to former French president Jacques Chirac. A French newspaper wrote about it. Erick, being a red-blooded Amurkin, can't speak French. Hilarity ensues, especially when one of his own commenters spanks him for being un enfant terrible:

Before you go any further with this...
nod90 Sunday, March 22nd at 11:19PM EDT (link)
...you need a good French to English translation of the original article from Le Figaro. I ran it through Google Translate (I’m not claiming this is a good translation) and this is what I got:

Barack Obama wrote to Jacques Chirac

The U.S. President has just sent a letter "very sympathetic" to Jacques Chirac, in the words of the latter. "I am confident that we can over the next four years working together in a spirit of peace and friendship to build a safer world," writes the successor to George W. Bush’s predecessor Nicolas Sarkozy. In mentioning the word "peace," Obama makes implicit tribute to the action of the former French president who opposed the war in Iraq. A U.S. intervention against which the future U.S. president had opposed as a senator, in a vote in Congress.

Some of the comments on the article say that Obama sent the letter to the Chirac Foundation as a reply to a letter that he recieved from them. For example:

Two birds with one stone?
21/03/2009 at 16:08

In writing to the Foundation Chirac, Obama may have had two objectives in mind: to allow the future by keeping open the option to use the services of the former president, who, like himself, had opposed the war in Iraq, .........

Apologies to Erick if you have already checked this out, but I just want to be sure that Redstate isn’t getting hold of the wrong end of the stick.

He's not only got hold of the wrong end of the stick, he's running with it. And all because he can't read French. Here's what the pertinent bit says when translated by a human (moi):

...writes George Bush's successor to the predecessor of Nicolas Sarkozy. [écrit le successeur de George W. Bush au prédécesseur de Nicolas Sarkozy.]

Rather seems like everyone's aware who's current and who's former, doesn't it?

This, my darlings, is why American schoolchildren should be taught a second language, évidemment!

Satanists Everywhere!

Delusional people would be a lot more fun if they weren't getting elected to school boards and other public offices.

Texas has a shining example of greater wingnuttia. Observe:

To show you just how ridiculous Texas Board of Education chairman Don McLeroy is, take a look at this report from the Texas Freedom Network on a book he recently endorsed.

[snip]

Dr. McLeroy - noting his position as board chair - recently wrote a glowing recommendation of Sowing Atheism: The National Academy of Sciences' Sinister Scheme to Teach Our Children They're Descended from Reptiles by Robert Bowie Johnson, Jr. (The new book is self-published.)

I'm sure it is. After all, most Christian publishing houses want to retain at least one small scrap of credibility. John Pieret was kind enough to skim the screed so we don't have to. Here's what Don McLeroy is so very excited about:

You can download Sowing Atheism here. As the blurb at the download site says:

Robert Bowie Johnson, Jr., who holds a general science degree from West Point, wrote SOWING ATHEISM in response to the book published by the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) in January of this year, Science, Evolution, and Creationism. The NAS sent its book to educators, school boards, and science teachers throughout the United States, falsely affirming that molecules-to-man evolution is a "fact" when in reality it does not even meet the minimum conditions for a valid theory.

Science, Evolution, and Creationism was the NAS's attempt to address the relationship between science and religion that has been criticized by some atheists for being too conciliatory to the latter. Be that as it may, if this "report" (more of a marketing ploy, I suspect) is true, it says much about the nature of McLeroy's position on the Texas science standards and his claim that he isn't seeking to have religion taught in the state's public schools. If he has recommended the book, it may well bear on any court challenge later on. Some quotes from Johnson's book:

[T]he NAS hierarchy, in order to bolster and "prove" its atheism, has constructed a closed, sacrosanct, counterfeit philosophy of science which completely eliminates the valid God hypothesis, along with any possibility of bringing it up again. (p. 12)

Science, Evolution, and Creationism is anything but an appeal to open-minded readers to use their powers of discernment to carefully consider the evidence. It is a cleverly disguised all-out, direct attack on the authority of the Word of God, and on all other challenges to their philosophical and religious dogma of evo-atheism (evolutionist atheism). (p. 13)

It continues, as far as a very quick skim reveals, in the same vein for another hundred pages or more. Included are the usual creationist talking points: the elitism of scientists, argumentums ad populum, and presuppositionalism.

Now, people with a tenuous grip on reality would realize that recommending such a book might be somewhat akin to wearing a billboard, complete with glowing neon lettering and a blaring loudspeaker, proclaiming "Frothing Fundie Freak! Too stupid to even be an IDiot!" But McLeroy isn't one of those people:

You can see McLeroy's glowing recommendation here.

In the current culture war over science education and the teaching of evolution, Bob Johnson's Sowing Atheism provides a unique and insightful perspective. In critiquing the National Academy of Science's (NAS) missionary evolution tract--Science, Evolution and Creationism, 2008, he identifies their theft of true science by their intentional neglect of other valid scientific possibilities. Then, using NAS's own statements, he demonstrates that the great "process" of evolution--natural selection--is nothing more than a figure of speech. These chapters alone are worth the reading of this book.

Next he shows how the NAS attempts to seduce the unwitting reader by providing scanty empirical evidence but presented with great intellectual bullying--both secular and religious. He actually embarrasses the NAS with a long list of their quotes where they make the obvious claim that evolutionists believe in evolution. He then shines light on the Clergy Letter Project, again showing the obvious--theistic evolutionists believe in evolution.

I'm not even sure what that last bit is supposed to mean. It's somehow a bad thing that advocates for evolution believe in evolution? It is, of course, precious how he defines as "scanty" the massive edifice of evidence which has convinced the overwhelming majority of scientists that evolution is a fact. By his standards, of course, the evidence is scanty - as it is bound to be when you rely solely upon the scribblings of ancient goat herders.

All of this, however, is merely a sampling of the stupid supreme McLeroy's serving up. This is the intellectual caliber of the man whose book he so enthusiastically endorses:

The Texas Freedom Network blog has more on the guy whose book Don McLeroy endorsed. He appears to be a real wingnut's wingnut. This is from a press release the guy sent out last fall:

In a series of essays published at www.solvinglight.com/blog/, author Robert Bowie Johnson Jr. presents evidence that Barack Obama is directly linked to Satanic teachings through his close association with Oprah Winfrey, who parrots and relentlessly promotes, worldwide, the anti-Christian doctrine of her guru, Eckhart Tolle.

This calls for a very special Dramatic Chipmunk moment:

That's right. Oprah Winfrey is a big ol' satanist!

It's a very sad, paranoid, utterly pathetic life these people lead. They see Satan everywhere. Especially in mushy-gushy woo-woo sorts like Eckhart Tolle, who apparantly is in cahoots with Winfrey to satanize the whole wide world.

This is the sort of shit that keeps them awake at night. And they're overheating their brains trying to figure out a way to get it into our classrooms. Methinks it is time to take more interest in schoolboard elections.

Brethren, let us parody:

Webster's Dictionary? That Damned Liberal Rag!

Page Bernard Goldberg! Evidence the dictionary's "written by some liberal person!" They're changing the definition of marriage - civilization will end!

Conservatives have their tidy whiteys all twisted because (ZOMG) the nation's most popular dictionary updated the definition of marriage. Guess what, language gets updated all the time, that's why there are new editions of dictionaries. *facepalm jpg*

Merriam Webster added a new definition of marriage in 2003

the state of being united to a person of the same sex in a relationship like that of a traditional marriage

but as Andrew Sullivan points out, conservatives seem to have just noticed it. One guy got so upset about the "homosexual agenda" he made a video about it (above).

Two things, here. It took them six years to crack open a dictionary and discover this "outrage." That's fucking pathetic even by wingnut standards. And that video's as pathetic as they are. They'd better pretend it's a Poe.

How long do you think it'll be before some absolute idiot in Congress or a state legislature tries to push a bill defending marriage against dictionaries?

Happy Hour Discurso

Today's opining on the public discourse.

The stupid's rather thick on the ground for a Sunday. Is it something they ate?

According to Cons, the rules that have served our country for well over 200 years are no longer adequate to needs now that Cons are in the minority:

This week, there was increased speculation that the Obama administration might pursue major healthcare and energy reforms through the budget reconciliation process. The point would be to make passage far easier -- Republicans can vote against reconciliation bills, but they can't filibuster them.

Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.) blasted the idea, calling it "the Chicago approach to governing." Gregg added, "You're talking about running over the minority, putting them in cement and throwing them in the Chicago River."

A couple of Fox News personalities went even further yesterday.

During the March 20 edition of Fox News' Hannity, host Sean Hannity falsely claimed that "a parliamentary procedure called reconciliation" would allow the Obama administration to pass legislation "without any Republicans even having an opportunity to vote." Guest and fellow Fox News host Mike Huckabee replied that this is "horribly dangerous because it really does bypass the entire system of the American government, where we're supposed to have an honest debate."

Look, the budget reconciliation process isn't complicated. Indeed, it's called "majority rule." It doesn't deny Republicans from "even having an opportunity to vote." Just the opposite is true -- every member in both chambers gets to vote, up or down, after a floor debate. When Hannity talks about having an "opportunity" to vote, he means protecting a system in which 41 votes defeat 58 votes.

Ah, the good old days. I remember them well. Did you know there was once a time in America when all the Senate needed was a simple majority to pass legislation? And Cons didn't stomp their feet and wail and cry that no one was listening to them. I certainly don't remember them sitting around snivelling that they won't get to vote at all just because their votes happened to be on the losing side.

But the hypocritical grandstanding, that's always been with us:

Last month, every single Republican House member and all but three Republican senators voted against the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Yet, as Thinkprogress noted at the time, as many as 22 Republicans who railed against the stimulus then touted the projects the stimulus would fund in their home districts. (A few Democrats who voted against the bill have done the same thing.)

Now, many of those same Republican lawmakers are pulling the same bait-and-switch with the FY2009 omnibus spending bill. The Wall Street Journal notes today that Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-MI) slammed the omnibus as wasteful spending, before putting out a press release touting a local harbor project the bill would fund. Similarly, Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart (R-FL) voted against the omnibus but then declared he was “proud to have secured these federal funds” for his district. Both insisted to the Journal there was no hypocrisy in their actions

Note to Rep. Diaz-Balart: you didn't do jack diddly shit to "secure these federal funds." You both did your level best to ensure those funds would never end up in your districts. You're trying to have things both ways, and while that's a time-honored Stupid Con Trick, it's just getting ridiculous.

So is the wingnut wailing over how nobody ever pays attention to their tantrums:

Wingnut bloggers -- still the biggest victimhood queens around.

The tea party movement continues to gain steam, as anti-tax increase, anti-bailout, anti-ballooning deficit citizens turned out around the country today...One emerging theme is the absence of press coverage, especially at the national level. For some reason, reporters and editors believe it is not news when thousands of people, all around the country, gather to protest the government's bailouts, trillions in debt, etc. And yet, when a mere forty people turned out in Connecticut for an ACORN-sponsored bus tour of homes owned by AIG executives, there were more media people covering the event than there were people on the bus. So let's see: conservative and libertarian opposition to the government's economic initiatives--not news. Far left opposition to the government's economic initiatives, no matter how few participate--that's news. But of course, not a single person reading this will be surprised.

Assrocket links to photos of Teabagging in Orlando, FL, Raleigh, NC and Ridgefield, CT -- the last of which drew a staggering 200 people.
You can see where this is going, can't you?

The Orlando Sentinel
ORLANDO 'TEA PARTY' PROTEST DRAWS MORE THAN 4,000

The Raleigh News & Observer
PORK FRIED AT CAPITOL PROTEST; STIMULUS WRONG, PROTESTORS SAY

The Ridgefield (CT) Press
HUNDREDS PROTEST ADMINISTRATION'S ACTIONS AT VILLAGE RALLY

I don't think "absence" means what Assrocket thinks it means.

It doesn't mean what he wants it to mean, which I suppose is the problem. They want their antics discussed on all the 24-hour news channels 24/7. Well, they ain't getting it. Poor babies.

And speaking of irrelevant hacks, check out lil Billy Kristol, snivelling that Obama's not bloodthirsty enough:

In his latest column for the Weekly Standard, super-hawk Bill Kristol addresses President Obama’s recent Persian New Year message to the Iran’s leaders and its people, calling it a “message of weakness.” He is upset that Obama didn’t use the words “liberty,” “freedom,” “democracy,” or “human rights” and chastises Obama for referring to Iran as the “Islamic Republic of Iran,” claiming that doing so means that Obama is “kowtowing” to Iran’s leaders.

On Fox News Sunday this morning, Kristol picked up where he left off in his column and continued to whine about Obama’s move, calling it “a weak and embarrassing statement by the President of the United States.” Fox News’s Brit Hume piled on, complaining that it “appears” that the U.S. has now “joined the rest of the world and practicing the diplomacy of talk.”

Assclowns all.

Sunday Sensational Science

Evolution as Mountaineering

I haven't forgotten Neil DeGrasse Tyson, I promise. We'll get back to him. Right now, though, I'm on a Richard Dawkins spree.

There are two books anyone who's confused about evolution should read: The Blind Watchmaker and Climbing Mount Improbable. The poster below sums up the result rather well:


Most of us probably have moments when we wonder just how the hell we made it from bacteria to enormously complex multi-celled entities. Evolution is elegantly simple - almost unbelievably simple. I think that's why people have such a hard time with it. We're used to complex things being created by other complex things. It's hard to imagine simplicity giving rise to mind-boggling complexity.

Well, until you've read these two books, it might be.

In Climbing Mount Improbable, Dawkins presents an excellent metaphor. Seen from one side, the mountain seems impassible. There seems to be no way up to the summit. But go round the back, and you find a nice, easy slope that you can amble along. It'll take a long time, but evolution has bags of it. Three billion years, in fact.

And no one had to make any leaps.

Two things stand out in my mind from these books, because they helped me understand just how we climbed the mountain.

We've probably all heard of the sneer that something random like mutation has the same chance of assembling a living creature that a hurricane has of assembling a Boeing 747 while blowing through a junkyard. Dawkins takes off on this theme in The Blind Watchmaker, and introduces the metaphor of the Stretched DC8:

Stretched DC8 macromutations are mutations that, although they may be large in the magnitude of their effects, turn out not to be in terms of their complexity. The Stretched DC8 is an airliner that was made by modifying an earlier airliner, the DC8. It is like a DC8, but with an elongated fuselage. It was an improvement at least from one point of view, in that it could carry more passengers than the original DC8. The stretching is a large increase in length, and in that sense is analogous to a macromutation. More interestingly, the increase in length is, at first sight, a complex one. To elongate the fuselage of an airliner, it is not enough just to insert an extra length of cabin tube. You also have to elongate countless ducts, cables, air tubes and electric wires. You have to put in lots more seats, ashtrays, reading lights, 12-channel music selection and fresh-air nozzles. At first sight there seems to be much more complexity in a Stretched DC8 than there is in an ordinary DC8, but is there really? The answer is no, at least to the extent that the 'new' things in the stretched plane are just 'more of the same.'

Dawkins follows with snakes as his example. Creating a longer snake is a lot like creating a longer DC8 - you just have to duplicate a segment. Big change on the surface, dead easy once you understand what's going on. And since genes are more a recipe than a blueprint, it's not surprising that they might sometimes cook up a body with a little more than what the recipe called for. Three eggs rather than two. It might make for a rather sticky cake - or it might be delightfully rich, in which case three eggs will become incorporated into the recipe. Natural selection works with mutations like this all the time, selecting the good and discarding the bad. And after a long time, and many more random changes to the recipe, you'll end up with something completely different. Trace the recipe back through its various incarnations, though, and you'll have no trouble seeing how things got from cake to, say, fondue. None of those changes, even the big ones, are any more complicated than duplicating a bit of an airliner to make a longer one.

But what about random mutation? People get hung up on that word, "random." In Climbing Mount Improbable, Dawkins gets them unhooked:

Even mutations are, as a matter of fact, non-random in various senses, although these senses aren't relevant to our discussion because they don't contribute constructively to the improbable perfection of organisms. For example, mutations have well-understood physical causes, and to this extent they are non-random. The reason X-ray machine operators take a step back before pressing the trigger, or wear lead aprons, is that X-rays cause mutations. Mutations are also more likely to occur in some genes than in others. There are 'hot spots' on chromosomes where mutation rates are markedly higher than the average. This is another kind of non-randomness. Mutations can be reversed ('back mutations'). For most genes, mutation in one direction is equally probable. For some, mutation in one direction is more frequent than back mutation in the reverse direction. This gives rise to so-called 'mutation pressure' - a tendency to evolve in a particular direction regardless of natural selection. This is yet another sense in which mutation can be described as non-random. Notice that mutation pressure does not systematically drive in the direction of improvement. Nor do X-rays.

So the "random" part of evolution isn't quite so random as it seems. We don't have to sit around waiting for a stray mutation to come out of nowhere. All sorts of things cause mutations. Some mutations are more likely than others. And there's plenty of them available to provide variations for natural selection to choose from. Most of them will be discarded or corrected. A few lucky mutations will be allowed to stay around. And evolution happens.

There's plenty more where that comes from. Both books together take care of lingering confusions - unless, of course, you're one of the willfully confused.

Once you've read both books, the climb up Mount Improbable seems like no more than a casual summer stroll.

Turning the Tables

More accurately, turning Faux News's own tables over so we can rip off a leg and spank them soundly with it:

In response to a post about how Fox News falsely claimed the Dow dropped 56 points during a speech by President Obama, an e-mailer offers up a snarky question (subject line Fauxviating):

So what has the DOW done since Faux came into existence?

Obviously, the question mocks Fox's favorite sport, highlighting (or inventing) drops in the Dow while a Democrat speaks.

Just for the record, Fox Business News had its first broadcast on October 15, 2007. The previous close was 14,093.08.

In other words, since Fox Business News came into existence, the Dow has dropped nearly 50%.

This is fun. I may have to start watching Faux News just so I can find further opportunities to paddle them with their own faulty logic.

Distractions for the Easily Distracted

Some people really need therapy:

I just heard some jerk on the radio making fun of the Obamas for growing a kitchen garden at the White House and complaining that doing it is a "distraction" from fixing the financial crisis. I'm not kidding. Charlie Cook on Hardball explained today that it is some kind of cynical, political outreach "to the gardeners." Still not kidding.

It's a fucking garden. Criminy. And who the fuck assumes that, because Michelle Obama's planting a garden with the help of a lot of kids and folks who keep the White House in good repair, President Obama's somehow neglecting his duties? What sane person thinks a fucking vegetable garden is that much of a distraction?

I think "distraction" is their way of saying, "We hate everything any Democrat's doing." These shallow, pathetic little fuckwits want things to stay exactly the same as before, so they're reaching for a bludgeon that might force the President to stop changing things. If his wife buys a new set of pillows next week, we shall surely be hearing about how that's "distracting" them from fixing the financial crisis. And I'm sure it'll be seen as icky political outreach to Bed, Bath and Beyond. Who knows what'll happen if they decide on linens created from bamboo. That will probably prove a scandal on the order of getting blown by interns.

I'm pretty sure all of the people currently screaming about various and sundry distractions are deficient in the self-awareness department. If they weren't, they'd surely notice that the only ones getting distracted are themselves.

Happy Hour Discurso

Today's opining on the public discourse.

I just want to state for the record that moving sucks. And repair shops suck just as much. Well, some repair shops - I still swear by Willy down in Prescott, AZ. If he's still running The Carport, and you live in Prescott, consider this a not-so-subtle hint to give him a ring next time your car needs some TLC.

Now, on with the rest of the stupid.

For once, I'm going to lead with the Obama administration, because it appears that they're completely bungling their attempts to rescue the economy:

The trick, at this point, is finding someone -- anyone, really -- who thinks the Geithner plan is a wise, prudent approach to the problem.

Paul Krugman argues that "zombie ideas have won," and described what we know of the Geithner proposal as an "awful mess."

The Obama administration is now completely wedded to the idea that there's nothing fundamentally wrong with the financial system -- that what we're facing is the equivalent of a run on an essentially sound bank. As Tim Duy put it, there are no bad assets, only misunderstood assets. And if we get investors to understand that toxic waste is really, truly worth much more than anyone is willing to pay for it, all our problems will be solved.

[snip] In effect, Treasury will be creating -- deliberately! -- the functional equivalent of Texas S&Ls in the 1980s: financial operations with very little capital but lots of government-guaranteed liabilities. For the private investors, this is an open invitation to play heads I win, tails the taxpayers lose. [snip]

Dean Baker is discouraged. Calculated Risk isn't happy. And John Cole summarized the big picture this way:

The Illness- reckless and irresponsible betting led to huge losses
The Diagnosis- Insufficient gambling.
The Cure- a Trillion dollar stack of chips provided by the house.
The Prognosis- We are so screwed.

Oh my.

I see Steve Benen's "oh my" and raise him a "d'oh, shit."

At this point, the only thing to do is get my CDL, drive a bus to D.C., and invite Obama to throw Geithner under it. It would appear we need a fresh new beginning with people who know what the fuck they're doing.

While we're chucking people under buses, we might as well include the entirety of CNBC:

CNBC’s Mark Haines — who yesterday made waves by suggesting that Wall Street companies can’t “be run well” by those making under $250,000 and compared Wall Street executives to Nazis and Baathists while defending their bonuses — was at it again today.

While debating Rep. Brad Sherman (D-CA), Haines said those who think bailed-out executives shouldn’t receive bonuses are engaged in “witch-huntery.” He also expressed dismay at the thought of Wall Streeters working for a $100,000 salary:

This is witch-huntery. I’ll be perfectly honest with you. You and people who share your opinion seem to feel that, you know, let’s hold salaries on Wall Street to $100,000. Do you have any idea what Wall Street would look like if you did that?

Yes. It would look just a little bit more like Main Street, where people generally don't get obscene salaries and XXX bonuses for fucking their companies, their country, and the entire world right up the back passage. How's about we cap salaries at a comfortable (by normal people's standards, mind) sum, and make bonuses dependent upon the quality of their work? I know that's a shocking idea to many of them, but it's time they joined us here in reality.

Rep. Sherman, in case you were wondering, ripped Haines a new one. Possibly several new ones. Ouchies.

It's getting rather crowded under our bus, but there's always room for one more:

Conservative Republican Govs. Sanford, Perry, Jindal, and Palin have already taken steps to reject federal stimulus aid. Apparently, Nevada Gov. Jim Gibbons (R), arguably the nation's least popular and most scandal-plagued governor, wants to join the club.

With Nevada suffering from some of the nation's highest unemployment and foreclosure rates, no one seems to understand what Gibbons is thinking rejecting funds for extended unemployment assistance. If the governor assumed taking an uncompromising conservative stand might rally the Republican base to his defense, he badly miscalculated -- GOP lawmakers and the state's Chamber of Commerce want him to cut the nonsense and accept the money.

[snip] The governor's finance team hasn't been able to defend Gibbons' position. The state's Democratic Assembly speaker called Gibbons's position "incoherent."

That just about sums it up right there. But, of course, Steve takes the Parthian shot and nails it. Go have a look.

When you're back, you might wish to peruse an interesting chart:

In just their latest posturing for the 2012 Republican presidential race, governors Sarah Palin (R-AK) and Mark Sanford (R-SC) joined Texas' Rick Perry, Mississippi's Haley Barbour and Louisiana's Bobby Jindal in announcing they would reject some of the federal stimulus funds allocated to their states. But as the steady one-way flow of tax dollars and earmarks spreading the wealth from Washington to their states shows, de facto red state socialism is alive and well.

As a 2007 analysis (above) of federal spending per tax dollar received by state shows, the reddest states generally reaped the most green. Eight of the top 10 beneficiaries of federal largesse voted for John McCain for President. Unsurprisingly, all 10 states at the bottom of the list - those whose outflow of tax revenue is funding programs elsewhere in the country - all voted for Barack Obama in 2008.

Strange. They always told me it was the liberals who were leeching off conservatives, not the other way round.

But that's not the point of that chart and post. The point is to show that posturing by the likes of Palin, Jindal et al doesn't mean jack fucking shit - it's all for show. Of course, they're taking the bits of the stimulus they like. What they're leaving out are the bits they can't stomach, y'know, the parts that might actually help ordinary people:

Of the $288 million that Palin doesn't want, $170 million would go to education, including money that "would go for programs to help economically disadvantaged and special needs students." Other programs affected include "weatherization, energy efficiency grants, immunizations, air quality grants, emergency food assistance, homeless grants, senior meals, child care development grants, nutrition programs, homeless grants, arts, unemployment services, air quality, and justice assistance grants."

Words fail me at this point.

What Was That About Voter Fraud Again?

I think we have a bigger problem than a few bogus voter registration forms:

From Lexington, Kentucky's NBC affiliate this afternoon:

Five Clay County officials, including the circuit court judge, the county clerk, and election officers were arrested Thursday after they were indicted on federal charges accusing them of using corrupt tactics to obtain political power and personal gain.

The 10-count indictment, unsealed Thursday, accused the defendants of a conspiracy from March 2002 until November 2006 that violated the Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO). RICO is a federal statute that prosecutors use to combat organized crime. The defendants were also indicted for extortion, mail fraud, obstruction of justice, conspiracy to injure voters' rights and conspiracy to commit voter fraud.

According to the indictment, these alleged criminal actions affected the outcome of federal, local, and state primary and general elections in 2002, 2004, and 2006.

My oh my. Smells like election fraud.

Having now reviewed the indictment, as linked above, here are some additional details on the alleged conspiracy which included election fraud though the buying and selling of votes to be cast in a certain way, with the aid of one of the defendants who served as a poll worker during the Early Voting period. Also, at the polling place on Election Day with aid of poll workers, drafted as both Democratic and Republican judges, to elect a slate of candidates --- some of them bribed --- the conspirators would manipulate the votes of "qualified voters" at the voting machines themselves.

Many of the voters, it seems, had no idea that their votes were manipulated after they'd left the touch-screen voting machine. While the Early Voting scheme involved finding voters who might wish to be paid to have their vote cast a certain way, the Election Day scheme, carried out in primary and general elections in at least 2004 and 2006, was accomplished by taking advantage of a "feature" on all DRE (usually touch-screen) voting systems and "voter unfamiliarity with new voting machines."

Essentially, they tricked voters into leaving the 'booth' after pressing the "Vote" button on the ES&S iVotronic. That button, does not actually cast the vote, as one might think (and as these voters were told), but instead, it brings up a review screen of the voter's "ballot."

Instructing the voters that they were done, the conspirators then, after the voter had left, would change the voters' votes as they saw fit, before finally pressing the "Cast Ballot" button.

They also appear to have done a considerable amount of buying votes. And they've done this for several elections.

I can't get clear information on which politicians were on the "slates" these fuckers worked from. One of the officials indicted was a Democrat. But I discovered that this county's represented by Cons on both the state and national levels. And here's a bit of interesting food for thought:

Early this morning CNN was making the point that there was scant interest in today's election in Clay County. Today 649 Democrats voted (32%) and 2,569 Republicans voted (19.6%). Hillary took 85% of the Democratic vote and McCain took 74% of the Republican vote. On the Senate side Lunsford got 48.5% of the Democratic vote and Greg Fischer got 26.2%.

[snip]

That said, Kentucky Democrats gave a corrupt Zell Miller type quasi-Democrat, Bruce Lunsford, their nomination for the U.S. Senate, virtually guaranteeing another term for an even more reactionary and more corrupt Mitch McConnell.

If that Dem was attempting to help get Dems elected, he did a piss-poor job. He was probably in it for the money more than the power - it's hard to believe a deep-red county could muster enough Dem candidates with the requisite power, money and questionable ethics to make it worth his while otherwise.

The point isn't so much partisan anyway. It's the fact that this was so easily done, and for so long. Cons can scream about Acorn all they like, but the real danger to democracy comes from election officials pulling these sorts of breathtaking dirty tricks, not a few nobodies who turn in fake applications so they can get paid without having to work, or the occasional dumbshit who votes twice. Those things are fairly easily caught, and they're too small-scale to make much difference.

This kind of systemic fraud, on the other hand, is some serious shit indeed. And it's something to remember the next time Cons dismiss election fraud as a non-starter while screaming to high heaven about voter fraud.

Encouraging Developments

I might as well just tip the shot glass to Steve Benen right here - he finds the bestest stuff. Both of these links came from him. Thanks for some good news floating happily in a sea of stupidity, Steve!

First up, science gets some champions in the Obama administration:

The Senate on Thursday confirmed an expert on global climate change as President Obama's top adviser on science and technology policy.

John Holdren became the president’s science adviser as director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. He has advocated sharp government action on climate change policy and is a former president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the nation’s largest science organization.

[snip]

The Senate also confirmed former Oregon State University marine biologist Jane Lubchenco to head the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which oversees ocean and atmospheric research and the National Weather Service.

Lubchenco, who specialized in overfishing and climate change at Oregon State University, is the first woman to head NOAA. A member of the Pew Oceans Commission, Lubchenco has recommended steps to overcome crippling damage to the world’s oceans from overfishing and pollution and had expressed optimism for change after George W. Bush’s presidency.

Don't know about you, but I'm feeling pretty optimistic just now meself. These two folks were spectacular choices, and I'm glad to see they're now able to get to work.

And Attorney General Eric Holder's taking a step very much in the right direction:

The Obama administration advised federal agencies yesterday to release their records and information to the public unless foreseeable harm would result.

Attorney General Eric Holder issued new guidelines fleshing out President Obama's Jan. 21 order to reveal more government records to the public under the Freedom of Information Act, whenever another law doesn't prohibit release.

The new standard essentially returned to one Attorney General Janet Reno issued during the Clinton administration. It replaced a more restrictive policy imposed by the Bush administration under which the Justice Department defended any sound legal argument for withholding records.

"We are making a critical change that will restore the public's ability to access information in a timely manner," Holder said in a written statement.

And Holder did it in a timely manner himself - Obama said he had until May to get this done. Here's hoping this is a sign of even better things to come. I wouldn't mind a bit if the woodshed fell into disuse.

Not that it's likely to with so many Cons clamoring to get in, alas. But you know what I mean.