Five Before Chaos

… with bonus points for being an Oklahoma Republican. Get this, from TPM:

Oklahoma State Senator Rex Duncan (R) is pushing for a ballot measure that would prohibit courts from considering international or sharia law when deciding cases. He says the measure is a “preemptive strike” against “liberal judges” who want to “undermine those founding principles” of America….

When asked if there was a danger of judges doing this, Duncan maintained that though it hasn’t happened yet, “it’s not just a danger. It’s a reality.”

“This is a war for the survival of America,” he said.

J’ever get the impression that a requirement of being a Republican is that you continuously need to out-crazy and out-stupid your fellow GOP colleagues? If there’s a big corporation that makes tinfoil hats, there’s no question where most of their campaign donations go.

This is great, from TP. RNC head and token hire Michael Steele, who loves spending him some RNC money, has been apparently having quite a bit of business-related fun:

Once on the ground, FEC filings suggest, Steele travels in style. A February RNC trip to California, for example, included a $9,099 stop at the Beverly Hills Hotel, $6,596 dropped at the nearby Four Seasons, and $1,620.71 spent [update: the amount is actually $1,946.25] at Voyeur West Hollywood, a bondage-themed nightclub featuring topless women dancers imitating lesbian sex.

Bonus - a video of Steele standing up for faith and family. You can get away with this shit when your party faithful primarily consists of people who grunt and never change their minds once they’re set on something, and view “evidence” as akin to “herpes” or “ebola”.

(UPDATE, 4 PM) – TPM reports Steele is denying it, blaming it on a staffer. Perhaps some LGBT outreach?

I’ve been spending Vermont mud season in SW Florida. Works for me. Biking, kayaking, tacos, beachin’ and cheap Mexican beer.

Been keeping an eye on the HCR thing. As much as there’s a lot wrong with it, I figure if it’s making Republicans go ballistic and it’s making my dad more cranky than usual, there must be something good in it.

The big thing I’ve taken from all this is that it’s finally come to the point where the teabaggers finally took the mask off. Yelling racial epithets at black and Latino congressspersons has finally made it so even the MSM can’t polish this vile turd anymore.

No, not that it’s fun watching the Prez shoot down the usual GOP bullshit – I knew that. It’s that, even in the face of contradiction of the above said b.s. (not talking points, actual demonstrable facts), Republicans simply cannot stop lying, as evidenced by a typical GOP congressdouche Twitter feed:

RepTomPrice: Takeaway from summit so far–Dems push govt takeover of HC! Bureaucrats deciding coverage, everyone forced to buy it, cant keep what you have

See, the prez, to his credit, explained quite clearly why this is anything but true. But facts don’t matter when you’re catering to idiots who walk around with teabags tied to their hats. Good thing the GOP put on those jumbo clown shoes before they showed up.

UPDATE: Rep. Mike Spence is the king of stupid. Twitter is the perfect medium for him:

Boehner brings the Dems’ massive gov’t takeover of #hc to the summit for all Americans to see

I said yesterday that this #summit looked like a
taxpayer funded media event, looks like I was right

Pence doesn’t like the fact that all the typical GOP talking points that work with the teabaggers don’t look so hot when they’re easily smacked down. The GOP doesn’t do too well in a reality-based format.

Please, this guy must be getting pretty old, right now. How much longer is he gonna stick around and torture us with this crap? The de facto guru of “Washington villager conventional wisdom footsie” knocks this one out of the park in terms of sheer vacuousness:

The snows that obliterated Washington in the past week interfered with many scheduled meetings, but they did not prevent the delivery of one important political message: Take Sarah Palin seriously…

This was not the first time that Palin has impressed me…

Blessed with an enthusiastic audience of conservative activists, Palin used the Tea Party gathering and coverage on the cable networks to display the full repertoire she possesses, touching on national security, economics, fiscal and social policy, and every other area where she could draw a contrast with Barack Obama and point up what Republicans see as vulnerabilities in Washington…

Methinks Broder would also be “impressed” by a shiny new penny dangling on a string, or perhaps a July 4th sparkler, given the bar he’s set here. Funny how he failed to notice how those things in Caribou Barbie’s “full repertoire” are all things she doesn’t have a fucking clue about, even with crib notes.

Sweet merciful crap. He’s like that neighbor you used to live next to who would stop you on the porch and talk about just about everything he doesn’t have a friggin’ clue about.

… in which we learn the real motivations behind the military’s lame-brained Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy, courtesy of Republican nutter congressdouche Duncan Hunter:

And I think the folks who have been in the military that have been in these very close situations with each other, there has to be a special bond there. And I think that bond is broken if you open up the military to transgenders, to hermaphrodites, to gays and lesbians.

Methinks that Hunter’s still struggling with some thoughts he might have had while looking at all those wee-wees in the shower while in the Marines. Either that, or he has a vagina.

The Rude One’s got a good one about how the Dems need some sack:

If Republicans had wanted universal health care, you would have seen commercials with heartless insurance agents stabbing babies and drinking their blood. You would have seen ads with desperate, laid-off old men offering to blow people for quarters so they could afford their insulin. You would have seen ads about how sad it is that a depressed middle-aged woman with a dream of a scrapbooking store is now suicidal over not being able to follow her small business dream because if she left her shitty office job, she’d lose her health care. The ad would have ended with a gunshot in darkness. People would have been begging for health care reform because Republicans would have made it seem like the world would fall apart without it.

As much as I wanted to keep quiet, I can’t.

At first, I thought I’d freak out, but then a few things occurred to me. First off, Scott Brown’s got three years. He’s a friggin’ wingnut teabagger, something, to his credit, he kept pretty well hidden during this campaign. When he actually starts opening his mouth, other than the angry white guy demographic, he’s not going to be too thrilling.

Second, as to this “Dems losing their supermajority” stuff. It’s not like they’ve been able to accomplish shit with 60 votes, so what the hell’s the difference? Bush got just about everything he wanted, even with a minority, fer chrissake.

What’s scary is that Dems will continue not to learn from this, completely misreading this as “we need to be more conservative” instead of “we need to actually take off the gloves, grow some sack and accomplish something good”.

I think there’s a silver lining in those teabaggers who now smell blood in the water. As I said, Brown, due to both Coakley sitting around with her thumb up her ass, and the relatively brief nature of the campaign, (not to mention him being dismissive or denying the teabaggery), was able to conceal how batshit insane he really is. In next year’s elections, they’ll be of the more normal variety, which gives people a better chance to look at the records of who they might be voting for.

The Dems are gonna get their asses kicked, regardless. In my almost 39 years of life, I can’t think of a bigger example of such deep, prolonged incompetence demonstrated by an organization.

And so the outrage fatigue continues. Peter Daou has an excellent bit on all of this at HuffPo that you should take a look at, too.

Republicans often refer to the mostly empty parts of the country as the “heartland” of America. Does that make the coasts the “brainland”?

Like many of you, I’ve been less than thrilled with Obama, especially recently, in particular, his reluctance or outright refusal to fight for anything. That said, I have always liked the fact that he’s a smart guy (no, not just because he can speak in multisyllabic sentences, unlike the last guy).

And so, after that Christmas Day foiled terrorist attempt, as expected, the browntrouser brigade is out in full force, selling fear! fear! fear!, with Darth Cheney recently opening up the Gates of Hell to come out and say the usual warmongering, lie-inflicted bullshit.

Now although, more often than not, even though he doesn’t do the things that need to be done, Obama does at least, on occasion say things that need to be said. So naturally, I was pleased with his statement today in response to Cheney’s latest bout of verbal diarrhea:

To put it simply: this President is not interested in bellicose rhetoric, he is focused on action. Seven years of bellicose rhetoric failed to reduce the threat from al Qaeda and succeeded in dividing this country. And it seems strangely off-key now, at a time when our country is under attack, for the architect of those policies to be attacking the President…

The difference is this: President Obama doesn’t need to beat his chest to prove it, and – unlike the last Administration – we are not at war with a tactic (“terrorism”), we at war with something that is tangible: al Qaeda and its violent extremist allies.

Only way it could’ve been better was if he threw in a “And let me remind you that the worst attack on American soil occurred on Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney’s administration.” Because Republicans, in all their little-dicked tough talk, need to be reminded of that on a regular basis. And, mind you, I’m not defending any of this war nonsense, moreso making a point of the ridiculous expectation of cowboy/Rambo talk that the wingers have.

I knew the wingers would be pouncing on the fact that Obama didn’t fly back from his vacation right away, and issue some macho-ass statement about kicking ass and maybe bombing Yemen, as though the terrorists would quake and shake and change course due to a sternly worded press conference. But they’re not working with too much brain matter to begin with, so it’s why they feel that way.

They’re all still on that perpetual pants-poop since 9-11, and all they’ve got left is to tap into those who are also still diaper-dumping (see also, “teabaggers”). Problem is, I don’t think there’s as many of ‘em as there used to be.

President Obama doesn’t need to beat his chest to prove it, and – unlike the last Administration – we are not at war with a tactic (“terrorism”), we at war with something that is tangible: al Qaeda and its violent extremist allies.