Music to my ears...

The Daily Beast

Romney and Gingrich Set the GOP on a Path Toward Self-Destruction

The solution to the puzzle may be to admit that the GOP has forfeited 2012 before the general election even starts. How did this happen so suddenly?

“That’s the great mystery of 2012,” a senior Republican journalist told me while watching the brouhaha in Florida. “We have the weakest incumbent president in 32 years, running on the weakest record in 32 years… and who’s taking the stage in South Carolina and Florida? It has to be the weakest field I can remember. Each of these candidates has in his character, in his history, in his idea set—never mind disqualifying—a guarantee for self-destruction. If Newt is the candidate, he’ll lose badly. If Mitt is the candidate, he’ll lose slightly less badly … So what you have is an almost complete guarantee that if these are the candidates, Barack Obama will be reelected.”

No mystery. First, Obama's not near as weak as these clowns have to say he is to satisfy the Dead End Quarter and they know it. I think they made the right choice to run the weakest candidates they could find this time to clear out the deadwood before '16. And boy was there some deadwood! Heh.

Bill O'Reilly takes on ...

The Muppets! Really, Bill?

Heh ...

The Virginia Senate, for years a firewall against efforts to restrict abortion, today is poised to pass a bill to require that pregnant women undergo an ultrasound and get a chance to see the image before having an abortion.

...

Not that I expect any state below the Mason-Dixon Line to be pro-woman, but this is good:

...

Sen. Janet Howell, D-Fairfax County, was dismayed enough by the bill's progress that she tried to amend it so men seeking prescriptions for erectile dysfunction medication such as Viagra would be required to undergo a rectal exam and cardiac stress test.

She said that's "only fair, that if we're going to subject women to unnecessary procedures, and we're going to subject doctors to having to do things that they don't think is medically advisory." [my em]

...

The amendment didn't pass, but I'm glad she put all the men in fear of getting reamed .060" over, even for a little while.

Thanks to DU for the link

Neutie's Moon Mission

And he dare not say "Abort!". Heh.

Thanks to YubaNet.

A good reason to keep Gitmo open

Think Progress

Norquist: Republicans Will Impeach Obama If He Doesn’t Extend Bush Tax Cuts

But when asked what Republicans should do if faced with a Democratic majority that won’t keep the tax cuts, Norquist had a simple answer: “impeach” Obama.

NJ: What if the Democrats still have control? What’s your scenario then?

NORQUIST: Obama can sit there and let all the tax [cuts] lapse, and then the Republicans will have enough votes in the Senate in 2014 to impeach. The last year, he’s gone into this huddle where he does everything by executive order. He’s made no effort to work with Congress.

Norquist certainly revels in his power, but suggesting Republicans impeach the president over tax cuts is wildly outlandish. According to the constitution, the president, vice president, or public officials can only be impeached for “treason, bribery, and other high crimes and misdemeanors.” Preserving a tax cut that gives more to the top 1 percent than the average income of the 99 percent hardly qualifies. But if Norquist’s only goal is to “crush the other team,” it seems he’ll stop at nothing to do so.

When I'm Emperor (EOTUS), Gruber will stop at the wire mesh a few feet from him in every direction. Yo, dude, there's a leftover Koran over there for you to read, and there's some more nice mutton stew coming along later. Rest up, big day tomorrow - pillowcase exchange!

Flash! The Repugs have TWO Dead End Quarters!

I'm glad Daddy Frank has a good gig, but monthly sucks compared to weekly. It's worth the wait, though. A "recommended read" about "Who's Willard?".

[...] The morning after Newt shut Mitt down in South Carolina, Rich Lowry, the editor of the pro-Mitt, anti-Newt National Review, channeled the horror of GOP grandees everywhere. “If Romney can’t right himself,” he wrote, then “every major elected Republican in the country will panic” and “every unlikely scenario to get another candidate in the race will be explored.” The names once again being floated — Mitch Daniels! Jeb Bush! Paul Ryan! Bobby Jindal! — have not been known to raise the pulse rate of anyone beyond the 25 percent of the GOP embodied by elite conservative pundits in Washington and New York (my em).

What’s more likely is that the party’s panicked Establishment, and its Wall Street empire, will succeed in their push to crush Gingrich and prop up Romney in any way they can. They still see Mitt as the best available front man for the radical party the Republicans have become — the dutiful Eagle Scout who can hold down the fort as the right’s self-styled revolutionary rabble threaten to overwhelm today’s GOP elites the way the Goldwater insurgents once did Nelson Rockefeller and Romney’s father, George. Some of the same Beltway types who have reinforced Mitt’s presumed victory march since last summer believe he can be rebooted for the fall merely with some stern course correction.

Good luck. Willard self-reboots with every change in the wind. To complete the seagoing analogy, he's tacked so far to the right he's sailing up his own ass. The bowsprit's no problem but I do wonder about the mainmast...

There are simply too many good quotes in Pop's piece to post here. Go discover them for yourself. You'll be glad you did.

The GOP Deserves to Lose

I don't post very much from the WSJ Opinion page for obvious reasons, but this piece by an Obamaphobe who can see through the mist is the rare exception.

Let's just say right now what voters will be saying in November, once Barack Obama has been re-elected: Republicans deserve to lose.

That's my theory for why South Carolina gave Newt Gingrich his big primary win on Saturday: Voters instinctively prefer the idea of an entertaining Newt-Obama contest—the aspiring Caesar versus the failed Redeemer—over a dreary Mitt-Obama one. The problem is that voters also know that Gaius Gingrich is liable to deliver his prime-time speeches in purple toga while holding tight to darling Messalina's* — sorry, Callista's — bejeweled fingers. A primary ballot for Mr. Gingrich is a vote for an entertaining election, not a Republican in the White House.

*Excellent reference. There are two - Valeria, wife of Claudius and known to some as the "Empress Whore", and Statilia, Nero's third wife. In the case of Callista "Can-Opener Hair", take your pick. Or both. Heh. But I digress...

Then there is Mitt Romney, even now the presumptive nominee. If Mr. Gingrich demonstrated his unfitness to be a serious Republican nominee with his destructive attacks on private equity (a prime legacy of the Reagan years), Mr. Romney has demonstrated his unfitness by — where to start?

[...] But Messrs. Santorum and Paul are two tedious men, deep in conversation with some country that's not quite America...

Finally, there are the men not in the field: Mitch Daniels, Paul Ryan, Chris Christie, Jeb Bush, Haley Barbour. This was the GOP A-Team, the guys who should have showed up to the first debate but didn't ... If Mr. Obama wins in November — or, rather, when he does — the failure will lie as heavily on their shoulders as it will with the nominee.

Blaming the guys who saw the handwriting on the wall, which was, quite simply, "The rest of these clowns have lost already and rightly so. '16.". Amazing.

What should readers who despair of a second Obama term make of all this? Hope ObamaCare is repealed by the High Court, the Iranian bomb is repealed by the Israeli Air Force, and the Senate switches hands, giving America a healthy spell of Hippocratic government.

Dude, turn yer spellcheck on, and we've already got a Hypocritic government and your scenario would only make it worse.

All perfectly plausible. And the U.S. will surely survive four more years. Who knows? By then maybe Republicans will have figured out that if they don't want to lose, they shouldn't run with losers.

A mirror image of the way I felt about surviving the Bush years, which we did barely. The Repugs started to lose when they couldn't steal enough votes to steal the '08 election. They're working on that. Hey, if they rig it so Democrats can't vote, no matter what disenfranchising and illegal bullshit it takes, then they win, right?

The GOP deserves more than just to lose the upcoming election, which they will and hopefully for the House and Senate as well, although I'm not holding my breath for that one.

They need to be ground to dust and scattered to the winds where they can't hurt this country for a while. The beauty of it is that they're doing it from within.

The upshot is that Obama's biggest problem is getting the shit-eatin' grin off his face before he goes out in public and then keeping a straight face during important matters of state. Heh.

Oh, the irony...

Ironic Times

Castro: GOP Race “Greatest Competition of Idiocy and Ignorance” World Has Ever Seen
Guinness confirms it.

Republicans Looking for Candidate Who's Most Reaganesque
Someone who is both inattentive to affairs of state and a good storyteller.

U.S. in Upper Ranks of Latest Press Freedom Index
Only Finland, Norway, Estonia, Netherlands, Austria, Iceland, Luxembourg, Switzerland, Cape Verde, Canada, Denmark, Sweden, New Zealand, Czech Republic, Ireland, Cyprus, Jamaica, Germany, Costa Rica, Belgium, Namibia, Japan, Surinam, Poland, Mali, OECS, Slovakia, United Kingdom, Niger, Australia, Lithuania, Uruguay, Portugal, Tanzania, Papua New Guinea, Slovenia, El Salvador, France, Spain, Hungary, Ghana, South Africa, Botswana, South Korea, Comoros and Taiwan rank higher.

Just sayin' ...

So, after this idiot hit the pole in front of the neighbor's house at 5:30 yesterday morning, the Long Island Power Authority had to come and replace said pole.

Now, our power wasn't affected when the guy hit the pole. LIPA on the other hand had different ideas. By 5:00 yesterday afternoon, I would have sworn my house was possessed.

Let me just say here that last year, some genius in a stolen car sheared the pole directly in front of my house in half and the power stayed on, even during the pole replacement process.

So, yesterday, the power goes on and off all day. Fine, I can live with that, they're fixing shit. Then, in the afternoon (as I'm watching the last 15 minutes of the Olympique de Marseilles v. Stade Rennais match of course) as the Mrs. is making dinner (Chicken Cordon Bleu I was waiting for all day) the power goes out again (we have an electric oven and electric range) for a second and comes back on. Fine.

Thing is, only half the house came back on (not the oven where my Chicken Cordon Bleu was cooking). Not my TV in the bar or the lights, but the lights in the next room. Not the refrigerator or the microwave, but the TV in the kitchen. Not the Mrs. freezer in the garage but the lights in the garage. Not the TV in my office but the computer on the desk. See where I'm going here?

So of course, I open the electric box and start resetting breakers (though none of them were blown) just for my own peace of mind. I checked the GFCIs in the bathrooms and reset them too, just for shits and giggles. Nothing. By this point, I'm figuring it's a low voltage thing created by the guys working on the pole. I've seen modern cars get screwy with voltage quality problems so I chalked it up to that. Fine.

I go back upstairs and the Mrs. is cursing up a storm (nobody screws with her while she's cooking). I tell her I'm gonna walk the dogs (she has sharp knives and I figured we'd be better off outside) and she says she's gonna make us sandwiches.

So me and the girls head out to take a leak (them, not me) and I hear yelling coming from the street. What is it? 4 LIPA guys on the ground yelling at each other about how they fucked something up. Then they start yelling at the guy hanging up in the bucket on the pole. They all shut up when they saw me and the girls watching them in disbelief. Really?

With what we pay for electric around here, I expect:

A) Repair crews who know what they are doing.

B) Repair crews who are professional and don't fight in the streets.

About 10 years ago, I lost a lot of electronics in this house because of some idiot hitting a pole and sending a power surge through my shit. I don't need the guys who are fixing the problem doing more damage to my shit than the original accident. LIPA doesn't like paying, regardless of the cause.

So me and the girls head back in and the Mrs. had some great sandwiches put together (she was a little calmer too) and I tell her what goes on outside. We sit down and have a nice, albeit off-the-cuff, dinner.

Wouldn't you know it though, just as we're finishing up with dinner, everything comes back on and the house is functioning normally. At least I'm getting Chicken Cordon Bleu tonight ...

Didja hear?

Newt's the new Jesus:

...

As if Newt Gingrich couldn’t get a bigger ego, Sarah Palin is apparently crowning Newt Gingrich as the new Lord and savior. During an interview on Fox Business, Palin complained about the way people have been treating Newt Gingrich. You know, because they’ve been attacking him with facts about his record and views. So, Palin compared the treatment of Gingrich to how the Roman Empire treated Jesus.

...

So, hopefully, they're gonna nail him to something soon?

Heh ...

Stolen from the Being Liberal FB page.

Believe me ...

If the Republicans win majorities this November, I will:

Alan West, a tea party-backed congressman from Florida raised questions about his mental stability with comments he made on Saturday arguing that President Obama and other top Democrats should “get the hell out of the United States of America.”

...

There are some nice little towns in southern France where me, the wife, and the girls could live quite well and let the world pass us by. Makes no difference to me if I do it now or in 5 years when we planned. If the Republicans win this fall, this country will cease to be America anyway.

Why do people call you names?

Because you're a lying asshole:

Back in 2010 as she defended her state’s harsh immigration law, Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer (R) told a newspaper reporter that she was deeply hurt by the terrible names people were calling her. The worst, she said, were the comparisons to the Nazis.

“They are awful,” she said. “Knowing that my father died fighting the Nazi regime in Germany, that I lost him when I was 11 because of that…and then to have them call me Hitler’s daughter. It hurts. It’s ugliness beyond anything I’ve ever experienced.”

...

Of course, her old man died 10 years after the war ended. Under Brewer and the other wingnuts out there, Alabama is another state on our southern frontier that has turned into a national embarrassment.

"Google Santorum"

Get some, Old Fart!

A little light entertainment...

Thanks to ve2claude.

Low IQ behind some conservative beliefs

Following up on Fixer's post "Conservative = Stupid". EssEffChron:

“As suspected, low intelligence in childhood corresponded with racism in adulthood. But the factor that explained the relationship between these two variables was political: When researchers included social conservatism in the analysis, those ideologies accounted for much of the link between brains and bias,” LifeScience wrote.

Lead researcher Gordon Hodson, of Brock University in Ontario, concluded that people with low IQs are attracted to the hierarchy and structure in socially conservative institutions.

Two things that were conspicuous to me by their absence although they may not be in the direct scope of the study:

1. Stupid parents teach their stupid children stupid things, mainly hate, and

2. Stupid people are easily led by those who then use them against their own best interests and who clamor for more no matter how badly they're getting screwed. Seems to me that "us v them" works a lot better than "we" on the room-temperature IQ crowd.

There are a lot of very intelligent people who are way stupid too. Has more to do with outlook than with brains. Needs a separate study.

“They’ve pulled off the trifecta of controversial topics,” said Brian Nosek, a social and cognitive psychologist at the University of Virginia who was not involved in the study. “When one selects intelligence, political ideology and racism and looks at any of the relationships between those three variables, it’s bound to upset somebody.”

Fuck 'em. Doesn't upset me a bit. Heh.

A Gingrich presidency

Doyle McManus

It would be just like its chief: Noisy, combative and prone to self-generated crises.

Last 2 ¶:

A President Gingrich couldn't rewrite the nation's healthcare law or tax law on his own; he would need Congress for those. Nor could he universally abolish child labor laws or, sadly, build lunar colonies. But he can issue executive orders, and he can do it on Day 1.

With most presidential candidates, voters worry that campaign promises are empty words that will never be carried out. But in the case of Newt Gingrich, the worry will be that he means exactly what he says.

Shorter: Neutie'd fuck the joint up but good.

If we weren't still in the hole the Chimp dug us into, I'd say elect the sonofabitch. Painful, yes, but it would mean the end of the Repuglican't party for all time.

Which is exactly why Wall St. and establishment Repugs will never permit him to be their nominee.

Headline of the Day

Scientists: 'Look, One-Third Of The Human Race Has To Die For Civilization To Be Sustainable, So How Do We Want To Do This?'

Something with plausible deniability.

Quote of the Day

Driftglass:

...
More than enough years of Conservative treachery and treason clearly visible as far as the eye can see for anyone with a functional cerebral cortex and a conscience to figure that the GOP is an irredeemable shitpile of bigots, Christopaths and plutocrats, who will never stop hag-riding this country from one disaster to another until they are driven to political extinction.
...

Heh ...

Stolen from God.