The Epic Ballad of Eric Massa

The Massa debacle is unfolding in an increasingly hilarious way. Having already invoked the names of Limbaugh and Beck in my post earlier today I think I’ll use them again now- they do a great job of exemplifying the Old School of Crazy Conservatism and the New School of Crazier Conservatism, respectively.

To recap where Massa has been: Last Friday, New York Representative Eric Massa announced that he was stepping down. His initial justification was that health issues required him to vacate the seat, but that then changed to something about vulgar language and an unusual episode where he made some inappropriate comments towards some of his male roommates. Then it changed again, to a claim that the White House and Democratic leaders were forcing him out. Then it changed once more to ethics charges related to the alleged groping of the aforementioned male roommates. There was also something in there about Rahm Emanual threatening Massa whilst he was naked in the House showers, which if true would absolutely redeem Emanual in my eyes because everything about that is hilarious.

You would assume it’s perfectly obvious that Massa is a bizarre mess, and that it would be hard for anyone to score political points off of this train wreck other than in the most general ‘hey look, another Democratic screw up’ kind of way. You would assume incorrectly.

Limbaugh and Beck, opportunists that they are, dove in the moment Massa claimed that he was forced out by a vicious cabal of corrupt Democrats. Limbaugh got right on it:

LIMBAUGH: “He was asked in this appearance: "Well, why don't you rescind your resignation?" He said, "The only way I can do that is if this becomes a national story." So Congressman Massa, we're doing our part here to make it a national story. But he then said, "But you have to understand something, if I don't quit, the ethics investigation continues and they're going to ruin me that way." They're going to ruin him anyway. He sounds ticked off enough that I would stay. This guy is as fired up as anybody I've ever heard anywhere opposed this, and the process and how they're getting it done. This guy is going to have so much support from people.”

Gotta help the guy out, make it a national story! He's just doing his job and he's being attacked by these evil Democrats. Beck scored an interview with Massa, and claimed that it was going to be a very important moment in the anti-Obama campaign:

“Tomorrow at five: congressman Massa for the full hour. I just spoke with him off air. All Americans need To hear him. Exclusive 2morrow fox”

Formatted stupidly because it was on twitter, naturally. So there you have it: this Massa guy is going to bring down the entire Obama administration with his earth-shattering revelations. Except then his story continued to evolve, and by today no element of it remained the same. Forced out? Massa proudly claims he ‘forced himself out.’ Haha ok, whatever. Cue the damage control brigade!

"LIMBAUGH: Yesterday, I had never heard of this guy. All I knew was this guy was telling great stories about Rahm Emanuel. Here we have a legitimate kook, anybody who embraces this guy is going to get caught. He's not a media hero and he's not a conservative. This guy is a loose cannon and he's a risk."

The man is backpedaling so furiously he's going to throw off the rotation of the Earth and make the Sun rise in the west! Beck was burned even worse by his interview, which featured a bizarre photo album from Massa and saw the former Representative recant pretty much every element of the story that Beck initially found attractive.

Just seven minutes into Glenn Beck's hour-long interview of Eric Massa on Tuesday evening, things had already gone very wrong.

Conservatives had hopes that the now-former Democratic congressman from Upstate New York, who resigned abruptly under an ethics cloud, would deliver the goods about corruption and strong-arm tactics in the Obama White House and Congress. But instead, Massa served up an icky new confession.

"Now they're saying I groped a male staffer," he volunteered. "Yeah, I did. Not only did I grope him, I tickled him until he couldn't breathe and then four guys jumped on top of me. It was my 50th birthday."

Hahah this is literally the opposite of what Beck wanted to hear from the man he wanted to make into an icon.

Massa... had nothing to support his hints that Democratic leaders had made corrupt bargains and used thuggish tactics. "Name names," Beck pleaded. "Show us where to throw the dirt."

But no matter how many times he was asked -- Anything new? Actionable stuff? Anything specific? -- Massa came up empty. "I don't know how to be specific," he said.

Good lord, Massa just trolled Beck harder than anything Beck has ever pulled off on anyone. So much so, in fact, that Beck cut Massa off at the end and apologized to his audience for ‘wasting their time’ over the previous hour. 

If any news story will ever top the Falcon Heene/ electric space balloon/ farting and puking at Wolf Blitzer saga for pure comedic value, this is it.

Omnipotent Republican Staffer Strikes Again

A few years ago someone (I think it was Franken?) noticed that the ever offensive, gaffe-ridden documents that periodically leak from the GOP are always blamed on an anonymous 'staffer.' These leaks always line up with the actual strategies that Republicans use, but instead of owning up to it we always get these pathetic excuses about how those damn staffers are up to no good again!

So now the GOP has accidentally released yet another document, detailing their attempt to cry socialism and apparently comparing Obama to the Joker? I don't know, it's pretty stupid, but my first thoughts on reading it were 'ah, that staffer is back!' But Michael Steele surprised me:

"You don't defend it," Republican National Committee Chairman Michael S. Steele said Thursday in an interview on Fox News.

Whoa! That's huge! No lame attempt to pass the buck, just a clear admission of guilt and a nice dash of personal responsibility-

"A staffer was putting together a presentation for a small group of nine or 10 folks and thought they would intersperse their presentation with humorous shots. They're inappropriate."

Augh, damn you Republican staffer! Your ability to function as a scapegoat, while potentially not even existing at all, knows no bounds!

CPAC Highlight Reel

If you have the stomach for it, check out Glenn Beck giving the keynote speech on Saturday.  It's Beck at his best- there's a chalkboard, he does unfunny voices, there's disconnected lunacy and moments of inexplicably extreme emotion.  It's so cringe-worthy even I had trouble making it through.  The audience, incredibly, eats it all up.

In light of what had happened hours earlier, though, one part sticks out. Beck does a sneering impression of people who say the GOP ought to be a 'big tent.' Apparently he's in agreement with this guy, who had a similar message:



I'm having a hard time deciding which part was funnier- his pseudo-philosophical rant about how allowing gay people to marry each other is a violation of natural law, or his reaction to being booed. "Bring it, bring it... I love it! You have made an enemy here tonight." God forbid they make an enemy of Captain Homophobe and the 'Failed Philosophy 101' Gang.

It's nice that even CPAC attendees weren't having any of it, although I'd bet that's due to how Sorba violated a key rule of modern conservatism- never directly antagonize the groups you're looking to oppress. He's supposed to frame it within slippery slope arguments or as defense against an assault on "traditional values," not as an attack on gay and lesbian men and women. Better luck next time, guy!

This Is The Opposition?! February 2010 Edition

From the Washington Post- “Democrats' plan: Force GOP to go on the record.”

The Daily Show also has a good montage of various Republican politicians and pundits talking about how being asked to explain their health care reform ideas is a trap. The crazy thing here is that it absolutely is. Every single person involved, from Obama to Limbaugh to John Boehner, knows full well that the Republicans have nothing. Absolutely nothing.

If asked, they give a quick talking point about tort reform and change the subject. The first anniversary of the march towards HCR is coming up, and all the Republicans have managed to do in that time is wave empty packets of paper at Obama during his speech and get their preliminary proposal torn to shreds by the CBO. Crying about how Democrats have locked them out of the process scores some points on TV news, but being told to put up or shut up clearly scares the shit out of them.

Still, it would be nice if we had a killer alternative bill to push, instead of the watered-down trainwreck we’re left with after months of compromising with the worst senators in America.

More on O'Keefe and Race

In the wake of the news about O'Keefe attending a white nationalist forum in 2004, a few more things have appeared giving even more background on this guy. The more people come up with, the less his racially-charged antics seem like a coincidence. Take some posts made on his blog in college:

My freshman year of college I was placed in a triple room on the second floor of Campbell. One of my roomates was gay. The other was just bizarre. Two months in I volunteered to leave and was put on an all-black, floor, the Paul Robeson floor, on Mettler 3 in November. I was placed with, no joke, an Indian midget named "Hashish" who smelled like shit. Then he transfered. I had a single. For the month of January, I never left my room. Then on Valentines day, the one year anniversary of James/Arielle, in came a greek kid named Paul. Paul was an absolute nightmare.

[To] my horror, he actually said to the all-black RAs that I called everyone on the floor "niggers." - a complete lie. It was my word against his. I was lead out of the room crying and screaming at him and my situation, no friends, no one one to talk to., forced to go in front of a black man, Dean Tolbert, to defend myself and help explain that I did not call anyone any names.

Hahahahaha, right, why is it that I'm not at all inclined to take his word on this? Dude attacks ACORN, "pretends" to be a racist at Planned Parenthood, attends a white supremacist forum, and apparently takes note of every interaction he has with black people, and we're supposed to believe that he got along well with his black hallmates? He seems to have specifically left one room because of a gay roommate, but he claims to have been fine with landing in Robeson hall? Sure thing, buddy.

Race and Conservatism: Where's Waldo Edition

Picture this if you will: It’s August 2006. You’ve made the drive down to Richmond to catch a forum entitled "Race and Conservatism," a fascinating topic to be sure. Let’s take a look at the featured speaker and some of the guests present for this panel discussion:

-Jared Taylor, a white supremacist conservative thinker praised by David “former leader of the Ku Klux Klan” Duke and defended by Stormfront after demonstrators prevented him from delivering a speech in Canada.

-Marcus Epstein. Yep, that Marcus Epstein, the one who “encountered an African American woman on the street after a night of drinking, struck her on the head, and uttered the word "nigger" before fleeing.” Here are a series of interviews he conducted on the behalf of VDARE, an organization which has been labeled a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

-Willis Carto, prominent anti-Semite and Holocaust denier. Sample Carto money quote: “How could the West [have] been so blind. It was the Jews and their lies that blinded the West as to what Germany was doing. Hitler's defeat was the defeat of Europe and America.” In his spare time Carto ran a third party called the Populist Party, which was “little more than an electoral vehicle for current and former Ku Klux Klan and Christian Identity members,” as Wikipedia puts it.

-Michael Hart, who advised a panel organized by white supremacist magazine “American Renaissance” that racial partitioning is the only hope for our future. He arranged a conference in Baltimore last year which elaborated on the need “to defend America’s Judeo-Christian heritage and European identity from immigrants, Muslims, and African Americans.”

Wow, cool stuff! With these guys behind the wheel I’m sure that conservatism will finally have its big breakthrough on race any moment now. By the way, “I don’t understand why minorities don’t vote Republican” is actually a thing that Freepers unironically ponder quite frequently.

But if you were there on that warm summer night you would have recognized another face among the crowd of forty or so people. A representative from One People’s Project was there and took a fateful picture, documenting the presence of someone we’ve seen on the news a few times over the last few months:



James O’Keefe! Apparently we can conclude that as early as 2004 James O’Keefe was already really fuckin’ stupid. It does make you take a second look at his recent accomplishments, too- O’Keefe pulled off a ridiculous smear job on ACORN, a group which delivers a lot of assistance to African-American communities? Interesting. O’Keefe attacked Planned Parenthood by purporting to be a donor who wanted his gift to specifically fund minority abortions because "the less black kids out there the better"? Intriguing. I’m not a scientist or anything, but I’m starting to notice a common thread through a lot of his work.

Oh and by the way, 31 House Republicans passed a resolution honoring him. Just saying.

Manning Up - It's Called Being a President

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

On Friday Morning, President Obama travelled to Baltimore for the Republican Caucus's annual retreat, and submitted himself to questioning from the opposition. Here is the video via MSNBC; and be on the lookout for replays in primetime via CSPAN.

Now, could you imagine Bush doing this? Or even Clinton for that matter? And on camera?

Mind you, we may disagree with some of his answers and proposals - especially regarding Energy Policy (What the hell is "Clean Coal"?), Health Insurance Reform and his initial economic policies, but Obama finally appears to have recaptured some of his Campaign Trail Swagger.

Be sure to check out the question from Tom Price at 39:20 (GA), where he asks "You have stated that Republicans have repeatedly offered no ideas and no solutions...In spite of the fact that we have offered postive solutions for health care...that would provide health care for all Americans...What should we tell our constituents when who know that Republicans have offered positive answers to the challenges that Americans Face?"

Obama's Response at 42:30 - "It's not enough that you say we've offered a health care plan, and I look up the section you've provided me 'Summary of GOP Health Care Reform Bill' [which says] 'The GOP Plan will lower health care premiums for American Families and Small Businesses, addressing America's number One priority for health reform.' That's an idea we all embrace, but specifically it must work. There must be a mechanism that will actually work."

"This Is The Opposition?" Afghanistan Edition

JJ wrote an excellent post yesterday about the decision to escalate the Vie- er, Afghanistan war. The only upside is that there's now a definitive date for when Americans start to leave Afghanistan, as long as Obama doesn't pull an Obama and weasel out of the 18 month limit. Like JJ noted, Obama never said he would end our Afghan debacle immediately.

If the left is unhappy about this, the right must be ecstatic, right? More sacrifices for their blood god, more opportunities for military contractors to rake it in, more time to continue the "Support Our Troops!" car magnet contest. Oh wait:





Conservative pundits on FOX complained that he didn't sound sufficiently enthusiastic about throwing more Americans into the meat grinder, Limbaugh wailed about how Obama "surrendered" Afghanistan, and O'Reilly said some more dumb stuff.

Conservatives aren't unhappy about seeing more Americans put in harms way in a war their president left to rot for 8 years- they're mad because 18 months from now the war is going to end. They're beyond parody. If anyone has ever jokingly used a bit of exaggeration and referred to the Republicans as the party of endless war, well, your joke just became obsolete. For these guys, Americans needlessly killing and being killed by various foreigners across the world isn't a side effect of foreign policy- it's the goal.

“Going Rogue” Arrives

Two days ago I posted a field trip to Free Republic where one poster commended Sarah Palin for her strategic masterstroke: the release of her book. Incredibly, Republicans still don’t seem to have gotten the message about how the rest of the country sees her:

Most - 60 percent - in the new poll say the former Alaska governor is not qualified to serve as president, and her favorability rating remains stuck well below what it was when she first emerged on the national scene at last year's Republican convention.

The 53 percent who say they would definitely not vote for Palin now is nearly twice the percentage who said so of her 2008 running mate John McCain in the spring of 2006 (28 percent).

Women tend to be more critical of Palin than are men, with female Democrats and independents more apt than their male counterparts to view her unfavorably, see her as not qualified for the presidency and say they would not support her candidacy.

The far right may want another Bush, but the rest of the country has no interest. For some reason this just seems to further endear her to her supporters, though. Jon Zliegar, a man we’ve mentioned once or twice here in the past, has just posted his review of Going Rogue:

I was simply blown away by Going Rogue on almost every level. For many reasons, this is by far the best book and greatest literary achievement by a political figure in my lifetime.

Oh great, off to a good start. Zilger goes on to recap what Palin has been up to for the last year:

[She has] given birth to a child with Down Syndrome, had her teenage daughter’s unwed pregnancy become world wide news, had her first son sent to Iraq, was picked as a VP candidate and was the target of the most inaccurate media coverage in modern history, got blamed for losing the race to a man whose election she rightly believes is horrible for our country, had rape jokes made about her fourteen-year-old daughter on national television, and was forced to resign from the governorship of the state she loves because a bunch of losers made it impossible for her to do her job productively.

Züelger is spinning it so hard, that paragraph has developed its own gravity with satellites and an asteroid belt and everything. Ok, so what if half that list bears no resemblance to what happened in reality? Moving on:

Going Rogue is actually several books in one. It is a compelling biography, a gripping campaign tell-all, an expose on the sad state of our news media, a substantive outline of a political philosophy and even a comprehensive refutation of juicy tabloid rumors.

Crazy woman speaks in tongues at local church, pursues personal vendettas during time as mayor of tiny Alaskan town, becomes governor just in time to get lifted up as a VP candidate by a campaign that immediately regrets choosing her, succeeds because she manages to get geriatric conservatives all hot and bothered despite throwing the race, goes on to write political facebook updates that would embarrass even the worst columnists: a compelling life story if I’ve ever heard one. Throw in the stuff about her terrifying campaign rallies and getting outfoxed by Katie Couric and you just might have a bestseller! Hold on, Zglassere actually mentions Couric:

Katie Couric is rightfully eviscerated for her conduct during her numerous interviews with Palin (for which Couric was laughably given a Walter Cronkite Journalism Award from USC). This was not done (as it has been portrayed in the news media) out of spite or revenge, but rather, as Palin proves in the book, because Couric’s agenda was as clear as it was inappropriate.

This is what the conservative persecution complex has led to: interviewers can’t ask Republican politicians the simplest questions without being accused of having an “inappropriate” agenda. I’m honestly amazed that after eight years of George Bush they still haven’t accepted that some politicians aren’t that great at using the English language: every botched interview has to be the fault of some shadowy, overarching liberal conspiracy to make Palin look dumb by asking her what newspaper she reads. Finally, Zarglar looks forward:

I believe that if this book is the success that it could and should be, there will be a groundswell among the Republican base demanding that she run. I strongly believe that if every Republican primary voter reads this book, Sarah Palin will win the 2012 nomination in a landslide, whether she wants it or not.

Today the Republican base is good at exactly one thing: grabbing the wheel and driving the GOP off a cliff. The idea of them strong-arming the rest of the party into rallying behind Palin is too great for words. Let us hope that Z-gizzy is right about this one- and by the way, good luck winning a national election with less than 47% of the vote.

(Ed's note: John Ziegler, seen here crossing the Delaware)

Republican Representatives: “We have no idea what’s going on.”

Overhauling the American healthcare system is an enormous task, which has a very real risk of either being insufficiently helpful or even overtly harmful. The bill which passed in the House yesterday is imperfect- due to the difficulties inherent in trying to fix such a badly broken system, and also due to the fact that your average Representative (from either party) is a terrible human being. A combination of greed, stupidity, and blind partisanship conspires against every piece of legislation that is passed. Democrats are by no means immune to these forces.

But it’s worth noting once more that Republicans are a complete non-entity in the reform debate. Health care legislation has been a central topic for months now, but the Republicans literally didn’t have a substantive plan until last week- and even that was quickly torn to pieces by the CBO for being “fucking disastrous” (my words, not theirs). The signal-to-noise ratio from conservative thinkers and activists has been absurd, with no meaningful thoughts on how to solve real problems emerging from the din. The only thoughts Republicans have had about health care reform concern how to best utilize it to attack Obama and improve their chances in 2010. If Democrats hadn’t made this the centerpiece of this year, the Republicans would have sunk comprehensive reform entirely like they have before.

That’s what makes this video so unbelievable:



I don’t care if these guys don’t know the exact numbers. Even percentages aren’t really important. The fact that none of them can even put forward an estimate is appalling. The concerns of their constituents are apparently beneath their contempt- they know damn well that their districts have uninsured citizens. How many, though? Who cares, whatever, too busy putting together an attack ad to run against the socialist Kenyan. If they had their own plan, with different ideas on how to tackle reform, this video would just be a bit of gotcha journalism. They don’t, though. For Republicans this entire debate is about how to hurt Democrats, not about how to best insure their constituents or repair the system. It leaves them in an awkward place when people start asking questions- witness the man who literally runs away rather than try to weasel out of it like the others.

The Democrats are far from perfect as a party. Plenty of them have been serving their corporate masters and doing their best to shit up reform. But ultimately they’re the only ones with a real chance to deliver something that’ll actually help Americans. The Republicans today call to mind part of a cartoon by Tim Kreider, on the cases made by the political parties for why they deserve your vote:

What They're Up Against

I can understand that some people are too uncomfortable with gay marriage to vote for it. The mostly elderly bloc that reliably votes against it must have plenty of people who do so not out of a sense of malice but instead out of respect to tradition. I wish they would change their minds, but there's only so much we can do about that.

The movement that mobilized to support Proposition 8 last year and to defeat gay marriage again in Maine last night also relies on a very different group, though. People who organized and fought against marriage equality, who managed to tip the scales against tolerance yet again, who cheered when the results came in last night. Some of the pictures from their campaign party as the votes piled up against gay marriage:

Can you imagine being ecstatic about seeing civil rights being denied to your friends and neighbors?

The silver lining here is that they can't keep this up forever. They narrowly won it today, where it wouldn't have even been considered in the past. Demographics and changing attitudes should make each future win more costly, until the entire fight becomes unsustainable for cultural conservatives. Young people today support marriage equality 58 to 42- this is an issue that will keep coming up until the bigots lose.

"What Up" - Michael Steele

The GOP has completed its digital pièce de résistance- GOP Faces, their new homepage. The odd name comes from one page where they ask you to upload your picture and tell them "why you are a Republican." I guess it's as puzzling to them as it is to us.

Another highlight is a new blog written by Chairman Steele, where the first entry was titled:

Haha yes, "what up" to you as well Mr. Steele. I guess they rejected this early piece of concept art for the site:

Expect to see blog posts from more GOP insiders over the next few days, such as:

"Sup? -- by John Boehner"

"How you doin'? -- by Mitch McConnell"

"Eeeeeyyyyy! -- by Dick Cheney"

"Yo. -- by Jim DeMint"

"Aw yeah buddy! -- by John McCain"

One Out Of Three Americans...

... believe that the Republican Party is negotiating in good faith on health care reform.

From Quinnipiac:

Voters trust Obama more than Republicans 47 - 31 percent to handle health care;
Voters 53 - 25 percent have an unfavorable opinion of the Republican Party;
Only 29 percent think Republicans on Capitol Hill are acting in good faith

Who are these people?! Republicans are openly gloating about their efforts to stall and delay this legislation. The much-vaunted "Republican Plan"- copies of which were waved at President Obama during his address to Congress- turned out to be stacks of blank paper. Other Republicans have been very honest about who's pulling the strings: Michael Steele, Paul Ryan, and Bobby Jindal have all admitted that they oppose a public option because private insurers couldn't possibly compete with a model which isn't designed to take all your money while giving you as little as possible in return. They aren't going to negotiate with Democrats on any meaningful level, because useful reform is by necessity going to have a good chance of cutting into corporate profits somewhere along the line.

By the end of his term, George Bush was pulling in numbers in the low twenties. How is it that there are more people who think Republicans are actually engaging the Democrats?! I would think that even the TeaBagging set would say no to that one, although clearly they would approve of Republican using bullshitting tactics to delay our 'march into socialism' or whatever they think is happening.

Who?!

We Were Right!

During the 9/12 Nutcase Rally our friend T carried a sign warning the reader about the grave threat posed by gay marxism. Now Iowa Republican Representative Steve King echoes our warning:

So in the end this is something that has to come
with a, if there’s a push for a socialist society,
a society where the foundations of individual
rights and liberties are undermined and everybody
is thrown together, living collectively off of one
pot of resources earned by everyone. That is, this
is one of the goals they have to go to is same-sex
marriage because it has to plow through marriage in
order to get to their goal. They want public
affirmation. They want access to public funds and
resources. Eventually all those resources will be
pooled because that’s the direction we’re going.
And not only is it a radical social idea, it is a
purely socialist concept in the final analysis.

It's just one small step from gay socialism to gay marxism. Besides, if it's all about pooling resources, then isn't straight marriage also socialist? I just took a quick look at wikipedia, and guess who has a wife... Steve King. Steve King is a radical socialist!

DC Welcomes the Values Voters Summit!

Here, take a look at this list of workshops they're holding tomorrow- please note that I didn't make up any of these:

-TRUE TOLERANCE: COUNTERING THE HOMOSEXUAL AGENDA IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS
THE THREAT OF ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION

-OBAMACARE: RATIONING YOUR LIFE AWAY

-MARRIAGE: WHY IT'S WORTH DEFENDING AND HOW REDEFINING IT THREATENS RELIGIOUS LIBERTY

-GLOBAL WARMING HYSTERIA: THE NEW FACE OF THE "PRO-DEATH" AGENDA -
Ultimately, climate change hysteria rests on an unbiblical view of God, mankind, and the environment.

-SPEECHLESS - SILENCING THE CHRISTIANS

-THE NEW MASCULINITY - Feminism has wreaked havoc on marriage, women, children and men.

-THUGOCRACY - FIGHTING THE VAST LEFT WING CONSPIRACY

-DEFUNDING PLANNED PARENTHOOD

-ACTIVISM AND CONSERVATISM: FIT TO A TEA (PARTY)

Seriously, they couldn't find one real problem to work on? Not a single challenge facing our nation appealed to them, so they came up with all that instead? I wonder how many people went home after the tea parties last weekend just in time to jump back into the bus and triumphantly return to DC for this crap.

Ownage in the Age of Twitter

I'm still holding to the opinion that Twitter is a mostly useless addition to the internet, but this is pretty awesome.

For some quick background: a few months ago during the height of the Iranian protests Pete Hoekstra took it upon himself to compare their uprising with the predicament Republicans found themselves in after the Bush era. Here's his original tweet:

"Iranian twitter activity similar to what we did in House last year when Republicans were shut down in the House."

Hahahahahaha right. Luckily I don't need to tell Hoekstra to go fuck himself, because since then other people have started using the magical power of twitter to tweet some red-hot mockery right at him. The page I linked to up there has a long list, but here are some of the highlights:

mike_bosworth @petehoekstra: I got a sunburn last weekend. Makes me think of Hiroshima.

netw3rk @petehoekstra: Someone walked in on me while I was in the bathroom. Reminded me of Pearl Harbor.

trisloth @petehoekstra: Just got into a snowball fight. Reminded me of the Hundred Years' War

paganmist @petehoekstra: Had to move all my stuff to a new office w/o a corner view. Now i know what the Trail of Tears was like.

A little bit more along these lines and Twitter might just win me over.

Republican Protest Attempt #2: Avenging Sarah Palin

The Train Recap: A few days ago David Letterman unleashed his scathing wit on Sarah Palin with this hilarious zinger:

“One awkward moment for Sarah Palin at the Yankee game, during the seventh inning, her daughter was knocked up by Alex Rodriguez.”

Haha, because Palin’s daughter got pregnant before, remember? It’s a thing that happened, and mentioning it in a vaguely out-of-context manner is comical. Now to be serious for a moment, that’s an impressively unfunny joke. Before we even get into anything else just take a moment and appreciate how damn hard that one falls on its face. I think the best description of the joke comes from Letterman himself, who called it "ugly," "cheap," and "in poor taste” during his apology the next day. Seven months after the election I still schedule a few minutes every day for chuckling about how awful Palin is, but that humor should come from her being a terrible politician and not from her messed up family or the exciting escapades of her daughter.

Still, the outrage from the right has this forced quality that I still can’t quite believe. Jokes about Chelsea Clinton weren’t entirely unheard of during the 90’s, and a quick review of the usual suspects on the conservative forum lineup confirms that some people are already going at Malia and Sasha Obama. The Tea Parties* have given some people a newfound appreciation for protesting, though, and someone sensed an opportunity. That person? None other than John Ziegler, the man we last saw during our first MSPaint For The Needy (no, by the way- he never responded to our generous artistic donation). That MSPaint drive was kicked off after I noticed some appalling web design on his site- a theme we’re about to see repeated!

Behold the glory of Fire David Letterman, a new site by Mr. Ziegler that somehow manages to look even crappier than The Drudge Report. I’m not joking- look at both sites, and then try to explain to me how anyone could ever come up with something that looks worse than Drudge in the year 2009. The content is even funnier- the impact of Ziegler’s claim of 47,000 petition signatories is somewhat lessened by the results from his first real-life protest: 15 protestors in New York City, a group outnumbered 2-1 by members of the media there to cover them. I’m hoping Time Magazine’s next Person of the Year will be The Underwhelming Conservative Protest, because they’re really going all out this year. Credit where credit’s due, right?

All of this got me thinking: maybe all Ziegler needs is some more artwork to help get people fired up. Look at all that white space on Fire David Letterman: isn’t there a better use for that? I’m going to create a starter image and some guidelines, and get back on here in a day or two to begin our second MSPaint For The Needy.

*Sadly the Letterman protest didn’t even draw enough people for it to get infiltrated and trolled by Laissez's Fair. Some of their excellent work from the recent protests, both of which were displayed at real Tea Parties near real deranged Tea Partiers:

Limbaugh weighs in on the Holocaust Museum Shooting

“This guy, is a leftist, if anything. This guy's beliefs, this guy's hate stems from influence that you find on the left, not on the right."

Welp, guess it’s time for another round of “Is he lying, or is he just ignorant?” Both seem equally plausible here: Goldberg-style “liberals are the real fascists” arguments are in vogue right now on the right, but on the other hand this isn’t any greater of a spin than Limbaugh has knowingly put on issues before. Will the average dittohead realize that Von Brunn was criticizing Bush and the Republicans from the right, not from the left? He was disappointed that Republican Party racism knows some bounds, and that their ardent support of the Israeli military (in his opinion) benefits Jews.

Many of the same conservative pundits that howled with outrage when they saw the DHS report warning about the possibility of right-wing extremists engaging in acts of terrorism are now trying to reconcile their yowling with a string of examples of right-wing extremists engaging in acts of terrorism. Limbaugh is taking a rather unimaginative route with this one- remember, he and his peers also claim that Hitler was a leftist (because he was a member of the National Socialist party, and apparently names trump literally everything else). What does reality say about Von Brunn’s record?

To start with the most obvious one, he was a white supremacist who decried multiracial America. His user page on Wikipedia mentions that he said that “Marxism-Multiculturalism-Judaism is the Enemy of Mankind.” The Guardian reports that “Von Brunn was a member of the American Friends of the British National Party, a group that raised funds in the United States for the far-right and whites-only British National Party.” Wow, really sounds like a leftist to me! Perhaps the most damning evidence is right here, though: When his articles were reposted on Free Republic (funny how this site keeps coming up, huh?) they were met with glowing praise and hundreds of overwhelmingly positive responses.

It should go without saying that the vast majority of Republicans don’t support terrorism. It’s baffling that conservative pundits refuse to admit that conditions are ripe for a surge in right-wing extremism, however, and going out on a limb like this to try to pin it on the left is pretty pathetic. Clearly Limbaugh has very little respect for his listeners- feeding them something so blatantly untrue even by his own standards is pretty shocking. In case it’s somehow unclear, I choose “lying” as my answer for this round of the Limbaugh game. What do you think?

The One Time Torture is OK

Charles Krauthammer, who still somehow magically draws a paycheck from various well-respected journalistic enterprises, has a new column up over here talking about the whole “torture” thing that the kids are all into these days. Check it out:

“Torture is an impermissible evil.”

Well, great! Column is over, we can all go home, finally in agreement for once, etc.

but wait…

You can feel it too, can’t you? He isn’t done yet, there’s something else on the way: an exception (or two, as it turns out!):

“Except under two circumstances. The first is the
ticking time bomb. An innocent's life is at stake.
The bad guy you have captured possesses information
that could save this life. He refuses to divulge.”

Wonderful, so the first of the two exceptions is the made-up fantasy exception. Never mind that the ticking time bomb scenario is a work of fiction, something pulled from 24 (where would conservatives be today if that show hadn’t aired?) and other unreal sources. Don’t even worry about the fact that if such a scenario were to occur, there’s a good chance that torture wouldn’t even be of use. Krauthammer wants Jack Bauer to have the right to beat up Muslims, so just back off, real world!

So the first exception can be entirely ignored. What’s up next?

“The second exception to the no-torture rule is the
extraction of information from a high-value enemy
in possession of high-value information likely to save
lives.”

Even better! This is like the ticking time bomb scenario, minus all specificity. It can be used to justify torturing anyone, anywhere, for any reason. Who determines exactly how valuable the enemy and/or information has to be before torture can be employed? Keep in mind Krauthammer is envisioning this being used on people who haven’t been given a chance to prove their innocence in a court of law, so this is basically his way of saying that torturing random goat herders without any proof of anything at all is perfectly acceptable. Maybe they know something! After all, who knows what they know? They do, but we don’t trust them, so get ready for torture-fest 2009!

Pathetic acts of apologetics aside, there actually may be one time when torture is OK. Enthusiastic torture-fan Sean Hannity volunteered to be waterboarded during his program last week, saying that he would do it as an act of charity for American troops. His guest, Charles Grodin, declined his invitation- but Keith Olbermann started loudly trying to take him up on it, offering $1000 to charity for every second of waterboarding Hannity endures.

So far Hannity hasn’t responded- nothing but uncharacteristic silence from this perpetual gasbag. It’s almost as if someone who was perfectly comfortable with having plenty of other (potentially innocent) people being tortured is afraid to have a taste of his own torturous medicine! I for one am completely shocked. Do you think that Rush Limbaugh would stop sneering at Gitmo and Abu Ghraib if the alternative was to go there* as an inmate?

Christopher Hitchens said that waterboarding was less than torture, until he was waterboarded himself. His next article was entitled “Believe Me, it’s Torture” and displayed a perfect 180 on the question of whether or not America has any business waterboarding people. As he said:

“Here is the most chilling way I can find of
stating the matter. Until recently, “waterboarding”
was something that Americans did to other Americans.
It was inflicted, and endured, by those members of
the Special Forces who underwent the advanced form
of training known as SERE (Survival, Evasion,
Resistance, Escape). In these harsh exercises, brave
men and women were introduced to the sorts of
barbarism that they might expect to meet at the
hands of a lawless foe who disregarded the
Geneva Conventions. But it was something
that Americans were being trained to resist, not to
inflict.”

Emphasis mine. I bring up Hitchens merely to suggest that if Hannity finds the guts to back up all of his talk, there may still be a happy ending here when a committed torture apologist has a dramatic conversion. There’s a good chance Hannity will continue to ignore Olbermann** (and even if he does eventually agree there’s still a huge difference between being waterboarded in a room full of people cheering you on and being waterboarded by your hostile captors), but I’d be content with him merely being unable to mention waterboarding ever again because of extreme shame. Here’s to having one less person arguing in defense of "the sort of barbarism" one might meet at the hands of "a lawless foe who disregards the Geneva Conventions."


*THIS QUESTION IS RHETORICAL: DO NOT ANSWER.
** While we're waiting, check out Waterboard Hannity for Charity, a new site made by some people from Laissez's Fair for the express purpose of keeping track of the whole situation and raising more money for charity in the event that Hannity should ever suddenly find himself in the possession of scruples.

This is the Opposition?

“$140 million for something called ‘volcano monitoring’? Instead of monitoring volcanoes, what Congress should be monitoring is the eruption of spending in Washington, D.C.”
-Bobby Jindal, Republican governor of Louisiana.

“On January 30, 2009, scientists from the Alaska Volcano Observatory (AVO) warned that an eruption was imminent, sending experienced Alaskans shopping for protection against a dusty shower of volcanic ash that could descend on south-central Alaska.

Mount Redoubt erupted explosively late in the evening of March 22, 2009.”
-The real world.

“Does it belong in this bill, should we have $870 million [for flu pandemic preparedness] in this bill? No we should not.”
-Susan Collins, R-ME

"What makes this so difficult is we may be somewhere between an important but yet still uneventful public health occurrence here — with something that could literally die out over the next couple of weeks and never show up again — or this could be the opening act of a full-fledged influenza pandemic," said Michael Osterholm, a prominent expert on global flu outbreaks with the University of Minnesota. "We have no clue right now where we are between those two extremes. That's the problem," he said.
-The real world.

"I believe the federal government has become oppressive. I believe it's become oppressive in its size, its intrusion into the lives of its citizens, and its interference with the affairs of our state."
-Rick Perry, Republican governor of Texas (who later went on to say that Texans might consider leaving the union).

“Gov. Rick Perry today in a precautionary measure requested the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) provide 37,430 courses of antiviral medications from the Strategic National Stockpile to Texas to prevent the spread of swine flu.”
-The real world.

Yeah, damn the oppressive federal government, intruding into the affairs of his state! As a gesture he should consider not using any of the antiviral medications provided by the National Stockpile- those fascists! Also he should probably consider trying to establish a solely Texan version of the CDC- I’m sure Texas could easily fund its own agency with the same level of resources and capabilities as the CDC, right? I think having each state create their own would be way more efficient than having one large one, if ongoing Republican yowling about states rights and the oppressive federal government is to be believed.

And how about Bobby Jindal? I was also confused by money going towards ‘volcano monitoring’- what does that even mean?! He was right to be confused by that term, it’s not like the state of Louisiana has ever had problems with natural disasters, perhaps ones whose aftermath could have been averted if people had received (and acted on) more advanced warning. If you have a moment, check out this nifty map of places that would have to deal with the fallout of a volcanic eruption in the United States, and ask yourself, Jindal-style, why anyone would ever want to ‘monitor’ these ‘volcanoes’:

(Hint: the answer has something to do with the fact that millions of people live in that area. If any of you see Mr. Jindal please let him know about this.)

Which leaves us with Susan Collins. There’s a good chance that the swine flu will fizzle out and end up quickly being forgotten- but if she knows what flu viruses have done in the past and the extent to which modern transportation would aid their spread in the present, I’m really curious as to how she would justify calling that money a waste. As The Political Carnival pointed out: “Even now, Collins continues to use her official website to highlight the fact that she led the fight to strip the pandemic preparedness money out of the Senate's version of the stimulus measure.”

Last week I made fun of the Teabaggers for being unable to grapple with the real world on any level- their complaints were by and large purely fantasy, wild claims that at no point intersected with reality. It’s good to take a moment and remember that plenty of their politicians are just as far gone. The 2010 elections are still a long way off, but if this is the best the Republicans can do as an opposition party it looks like the Democrats just might be able to pull off a hat trick. That itself is all the more reason for progressives to lean on Obama and make him live up to the expectations- if he doesn’t have to worry about a realistic threat from the right, maybe the left can get his attention for just a few minutes?