I Know Republicans Hate America . . .

. . . but this is starting to get a little ridiculous (via The New Republic):

Faced with mounting scientific evidence that humans are causing climate change, Republicans are having an increasingly hard time denying the facts. Those denials became even more laughable Tuesday, when one of the party's favorite agencies, the Department of Defense, told Congress that climate change is hurting military operations.

At a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing, a Department of Defense representative laid out how climate change is exposing its infrastructure in coastal and Arctic regions to rising sea levels and extreme weather, and that it's even impacting decisions like which types of weapons the Pentagon buys. This is only the latest in a series of recent warnings from the military, which raised the issue as far back as George W. Bush’s second term. In March, the Pentagon warned,in its Quadrennial Defense Review, that the effects of climate change “are threat multipliers that will aggravate stressors abroad such as poverty, environmental degradation, political instability, and social tensions—conditions that can enable terrorist activity and other forms of violence.” In other words, increased drought and water shortages are likely to trigger fighting over limited resources.

The GOP, however, apparently doesn't give a fuck about the security of our country: "On Tuesday, The Hill reported that Republican Senator John Barasso called the military’s efforts to combat climate change 'wasteful and irresponsible at best, especially as our friends and allies struggle with violent, deadly crises that have real implications for our security.'"

Look, I get it: Most Republicans no longer accept the fact that humans are causing global climate change, no doubt because America's first Black president actually wants to do something about it.  The New Republic piece also notes that "[w]hen the House of Representatives passed the Pentagon’s budget in June, it included an amendment, passed mostly along partly lines, barring the department from implementing its climate change initiatives."

Think about that for a second -- even if the Radicalized Right doesn't think that climate change is caused by human activity, can't these nut jobs at least accept that the climate is changing and that these changes will affect national security?  Apparently not.

According to USLegal.com, Article 3, Section 3, Clause 1 of the U.S. Constitution declares "that adhering to the enemies of the United States, giving them aid and comfort, shall be treason," and that "any act that deliberately strengthens or tends to strengthen enemies of United States or that weakens or tends to weaken the power of United States to resist and attack such enemies is characterized as aid and comfort."

Barasso and all those other America-hating GOP motherfuckers would be screaming the word "treason" at the top of their lungs if a Democrat intentionally tried to thwart the Pentagon's ability to defend this country from a clear threat to our national security.  I think the time has come for Democrats to start pointing out the obvious, namely, that Barasso and the rest of these climate-change deniers are traitors and should be executed (after a fair trial, of course).

And I would fully support that these bastards be put to death by the most barbaric means possible, which at the present time appears to be lethal injection.

Michele Bachmann's Question And My Answer

Michele Bachmann's Question (via Real Clear Politics): “The only thing that the media has speculated on is that it’s going to be various men that are running [for president]. They haven’t speculated, for instance, that I’m going to run. What if I decide to run? And there’s a chance I could run.”

My Answer: Fuck yeah you should run.  Please run.  I'm begging you to run.  If you run for president, I will gladly contribute to your campaign -- that's how much I want you to run.

Please run.

And Rick "I'm Such a Coward That Small Children Make Me Shit Myself In Fear" Perry also needs to run for president.  I have no doubt that such an endeavor on his part would be as successful as his run in 2012.

Radicalized Right Loosens Up A Bit On the Obama Blame Game

From Business Insider:

Former Congressman Allen West (R-Florida) thinks President Barack Obama is "indirectly responsible" for Thursday's Malaysian Airlines plane crash in Ukraine, which U.S. officials say could have been caused by an anti-aircraft missile from pro-Russian separatists.

"Indirectly" responsible and not directly responsible? Wow, that's quite a concession. If this had happened a year ago, the Republicans would have claimed that Obama fired the missile himself and then pissed all over the dead bodies in the wreckage.

The times they are a-changin' . . .

Quote of the Week

Congress cannot sit idly by while the President rewrites their laws. They have to sit idly by while they not write laws. And Obama's overuse of executive orders is unprecedented in a modern American history, in that he has issued fewer than any President since FDR. And don't tell me that every President issued executive orders. Because William Henry Harrison did not sign a single executive order. Instead, this good man chose to die of pneumonia 30 days into office! That's called leadership!

- Stephen Colbert, commenting on the the House GOP's lawsuit against President Obama with regard to executive orders.

I Love Hate

Don't get me wrong -- hate causes a lot of problems in the world and is overwhelmingly a bad thing.  But it can also lead to hilarious shit like this:

Adding to unfounded worries that immigrant children attempting to enter the U.S. are reintroducing a panoply of diseases such as Ebola and dengue fever, conservatives grew more agitated yesterday after “American security contractors”  found what they believed to be a Muslim prayer rug” abandoned near the Arizona border.

According to Adam Weinstein at Gawker, the “rug” is actually a diamond-patterned Adidas soccer jersey. A spokesperson for American Patriot, Three Percent — a self-styled militia patrolling the Mexican/U.S. border — contacted Breitbart.com  and relayed the discovery of the ‘rug’ Monday night, just south of Sierra Vista in Coronado national forest.

According to the spokesman, Matthew Leber, the “patrol” was walking through a wash when he spied something on the ground. “That’s when I saw this thing laying around. And I was like, ‘What the hell is that?’ We walked over there and I didn’t really want to pull at it not knowing what was on it, ” Leber said.  “I poked a bit at it with a stick and noticed some of the Arabic writing and was just like, ‘Oh boy.’ I snapped a couple of photos and then went on our patrol.”

Leber did not indicate whether he considered picking up the ‘rug’ and turning it over to Homeland Security. As Weinstein notes, a quick glance at the picture sent to Breitbart by Leber clearly shows a sleeve and the distinctive Adidas three-stripe logo.

Of course, conservatives really hate soccer as well, so at least they have something to fall back on with regard to this discovery at the border.

Ever Heard of Birth Control?

Oh wait. I'm sorry -- they're Republicans.  I briefly forgot that Republicans hate birth control:

The Bill Cassidy Senate campaign announced Thursday that the candidate's unmarried 17-year-old daughter is pregnant as she prepares for her senior year at a Baton Rouge high school.

Cassidy, a Republican congressman from Baton Rouge, said in a statement provided NOLA.com/The Times-Picayune that his daughter faces "a more challenging future" and that she has his and his wife Laura's unconditional support. The baby is expected later this summer.

Well, Cassidy is in good company, extremist-wise: I seem to remember that Sarah Palin had a similar problem.

Boehner Takes The Bait

When John Boehner announced his plan to sue President Obama for exceeding executive authority, I was disappointed because I really wanted to see the House impeach Obama.  There are certainly a lot of Baggers out there who want to go that route, and I would have loved to see the do-nothing House impeach the President for trying to do something when congressional Republicans refuse to act legislatively on anything.

Of course, the act of impeaching Obama would have called even more attention to the fact that the Republicans in the House are refusing to do their jobs, and one would think this would be the last thing the GOP would want. I mean, if an employee of a business comes into work and decides he wasn't actually going to do any work that day, the last thing this employee would want to do is call attention to that fact, right?

Perhaps that is why Boehner decided to appease the radicalized elements within his party by merely suing Obama -- actually, so far it is only the threat of a suit.  And how did the President respond to this threat? Well, instead of backing down, Obama announced even more executive action -- this time on immigration, which is the absolute last thing Boehner wants Obama to act on.

Needless to say, I can't get enough of this, and neither can the White House (from First Read):

Of course, yesterday’s back-and-forth over immigration comes just a week after Boehner announced that the House would vote later this month to authorize a lawsuit against President Obama’s executive actions. And here is something that shouldn’t be ignored: The White House LOVES the lawsuit. For one thing, it gives meaning to the White House’s various executive actions. Earlier this year during the State of the Union, many of us proclaimed them simply playing “small ball.” But given this lawsuit, Republicans certainly don’t see them being small. In addition, the lawsuit only emphasizes the contrast that one branch of government is doing SOMETHING while the other branch is doing NOTHING. Bottom line: The White House sees a political opportunity here -- an opportunity that Republicans might not have seen coming.

The First Read piece ends with this question: "Would it surprise many if House Republicans quietly decide before the August recess that this lawsuit gambit is actually too politically risky for them in an election year?"  My answer to that question is -- hell yes it would surprise me.

Don't forget -- we're dealing with Baggers here. They are basically running the show in the House right now, and these are the very same nutjobs who shut down our government over Obamacare and then threatened to bring down the US economy by not allowing an increase in the debt ceiling.  It was obvious to pretty much everyone back then that such actions would hurt the Republican brand, but the Baggers did it anyway.

And why did they do it?  They did it because their intense hatred for our first Black president overwhelms all other considerations, and Obama knows that this over-the-top hostility toward him is the Achilles' heel of the GOP.  That's why he is raising the pot instead of folding his hand -- I can't imagine anything that would infuriate a Bagger more than Obama taking executive action on immigration.

So I fully expect that Boehner will follow through on his threat to sue Obama.  He really has no other choice now that he has announced this plan, because there is no way in hell that the tea people will let him back down.