Tuesday, September 23, 2014

God Help Us All

Remember: These questions are being asked by GOP members of the House Committee On Science, Space, and Technology (the relevant part of the video starts at about 2:48):


It occurred to me as I was watching the video that nobody could possibly be that stupid, not even radical right-wing Republicans.

I think what is happening here is that these House GOPers know they are on the wrong side of this climate change issue and they are intentionally acting as stupid as possible in order to provide themselves some cover while they do the bidding of Big Oil. Then -- when the whole thing goes to shit -- they can simply say that they aren't scientist so it could not possibly be their fault.

Indeed, some Republicans are already using this "I'm No Scientist" defense.

Thursday, September 18, 2014

Depend Undergarments Announces New Spokesperson

Continually soiling oneself in fear would be considered a negative thing for most people. But such is not the case with Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC), whose uncanny tendency toward uncontrolled terror-based defecation has paid off big time.

Depend Undergarments announced today that Senator Graham has been hired as its new spokesperson.

"I'm so excited by my partnership with Depend that I am literally shitting myself," said Graham. "Whomever said that extreme cowardice doesn't pay off doesn't know crap."

Even though Graham is best known for losing control of his bowels due to his over-the-top fear of the Terrorizers, he also says that wearing the adult diaper has other benefits.

"What most people don't know is that I also piss myself in fear at the mere mention of the terror group ISIS," admitted Graham. "As the old saying goes, after the thunder comes the rain, but Depend Undergarments has always come through for me in a pinch."

Kimberly-Clark Corporation, the undergarment's manufacturer, refused to discuss how much it is paying the senator except to say: "It's a butt-load." 

Wednesday, September 17, 2014

It's Back, Baby!!!

And by "it," I mean (of course) . . . Benghazi!!!!! -- my all-time favorite fake scandal:
A Tweet by Fox & Friends host Elisabeth Hasselbeck on Tuesday attempted to tie the ongoing investigations into domestic abuse by a growing number of National Football League players to the 2012 attacks on a U.S. consulate in Benghazi.

The move came a day before House Republicans begin their eighth investigation into the two-year-old tragedy. Hasselbeck, whose husband Tim played 12 games in the NFL, tweeted:

 "Imagine if everyone that asked for transparency in the #nfl @nfl Demanded that same #transparency in our #government #Benghazi #IRS"
And if you are wondering why Benghazi!!!! has returned with a vengeance, I can sum it up in one word --  Hillary!
Anti-Hillary Clinton groups are already going up with television ads centered on Benghazi, the same week that House Republicans' select committee is holding its first hearing on the attacks.

The Stop Hillary PAC, one of the various groups that has cropped up to fight the Hillary 2016 momentum, will start airing an ad in key primary states on Thursday, MSNBC reported. The PAC is spending $100,000 for the advertising campaign in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina.
Benghazi!!!!

Sunday, September 14, 2014

Lindsey Graham Needs To Grow A Pair (With Update)

“This president needs to rise to the occasion before we all get killed back here at home.”
- Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) -- critical of Obama for not sending combat troops back to Iraq.

Why is it that the biggest warmongers also seem to be the biggest cowards?

UPDATE: Tom Tomorrow weighs in:


[click to enlarge]

Thursday, September 11, 2014

There He Goes Again

Dick Cheney is -- once again -- criticizing the President on his approach to the War on Terror.

Look, I understand why Cheney is saying crap like this.  What the fuck else is he going to say?  But what I can't believe is that Republicans are stupid enough to actually listen to this idiot.

If someone had led me down the primrose path and got me to support a war with Iraq -- and that war quickly became the biggest foreign policy blunder in U.S. history -- I would have little interest in getting more advice from this guy (unless, of course, it was for the purpose of listening to what he had to say and then doing the exact opposite).

And his role in creating this on-going cluster-fuck in Iraq was just the tip of the iceberg with regard to Cheney's over-the-top incompetence. Don't forget: the 9/11 Attacks happened on his watch -- even though the outgoing Clinton people told Cheney and his administration eight months prior to September 11, 2001 that Al Qaeda would be their top national security priority. And who could forget that his administration was warned a month before 9/11 that bin Laden was "determined to strike within the U.S."

Al Qaeda wasn't even on Cheney's radar in September of 2001, despite the admonitions from the bipartisan-authorized Hart-Rudman Commission earlier that year, which predicted a 9-11-type of attack where Americans would die on American soil, "possibly in large numbers." Indeed, the Bush people basically scrapped the Hart-Rudman recommendations and turned the whole terrorism deal over to (you guessed it) Dick Cheney, who then proceeded to not do a goddamned thing.  And 3000 Americans died as a result.

Now, if Cheney were to come out and say that he'd made some big mistakes during the run-up to the 9-11 Attacks and then compounded his errors by pushing a silly war with Iraq -- and then acknowledged that he had learned something from those colossal fuck-ups -- well, that might be different.  But this asshole thinks he made the right decisions all along and has nothing to apologize for.

To paraphrase Bill Maher, Dick Cheney is akin to some dude who dumps shit all over you and then tries to sell you relief from the flies. Cheney never learned from his mistakes, but that doesn't mean other Republicans can't learn from theirs.  And one of the GOP's biggest mistakes was listening to Dick Cheney in the first place.

Go Back To Canada, Ted

This video shows Sen. Ted Cruz getting booed off the stage last night by a crowd of Middle Eastern Christians after he stated they had “no greater ally than Israel.”



Perhaps the rules are different up in Canada, Ted -- but down here, the first rule of public speaking is "know your audience."

Wednesday, September 10, 2014

Correction of the Week

"An earlier version of a summary with this article misstated the former title of Dick Cheney. He was vice president, not president."
- from a New York Times on-line article.

The article in question reported on Cheney's recent meeting with House Republicans on Middle East issues.  Harry Reid perfectly summed up my feeling with regard to Dick Cheney advising anyone on foreign policy: "Taking advice from Dick Cheney on foreign policy? That's a terrifying prospect. We should be learning from our past mistakes, not repeating them."  

Monday, September 08, 2014

Obama Needs To Call Horseshit on GOP's ISIS Fuckery

I'm getting so very tired of these people:
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) said in an interview on Sunday that President Obama hasn't demonstrated that he takes the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) seriously.

"[Obama] has not demonstrated that he's taking ISIS seriously," Cruz said in an interview with ABC's "This Week."Cruz, who is considering a 2016 White House bid, criticized Obama for his response to ISIS terrorists.  What we ought to have is a directed, concerted, overwhelming campaign to take them out. The focus should be Iraq but the real focus should be taking out ISIS," Cruz said.
The GOP senator from Canada isn't the only Republican pulling this crap. Ten days ago, Washington DC's most famous married couple -- John McCain and Lindsey Graham -- published an op/ed titled "Stop Dithering, Confront ISIS." Even Mitt Romney is getting into the act. All of these assholes want the President to act immediately and not take any time to form a coalition to confront the ISIS threat.

Interestingly enough, this is exactly what ISIS wants as well.  The whole point of the be-headings of American journalists was to goad the U.S. into acting rashly and unilaterally.  The last thing ISIS wants is Obama to form a coalition to combat the threat because that would increase the chances that the terrorist group will be crushed.  And the Republicans certainly don't want ISIS to be defeated because such a result would be a victory for President Blackenstein.

Over the last few weeks, I've repeatedly thought that Obama should simply respond to the GOP attacks by asking Republicans to refrain from criticizing his administration during on ongoing foreign policy crisis.  Indeed, there used to be a time when these kinds of attacks were frowned upon in this country. Even Ronald Reagan, immediately after Jimmy Carter's attempt to rescue the Iranian hostages ended in disaster, refused to use that failure as part of his campaign in 1980, and instead stated that "this is the time for us as a nation and a people to stand united" and to pray.

But now I think that Obama should follow the advice of David Mamet and put in a big raise instead of merely calling the GOP bet.  Mamet was critical of John Kerry for not responding more forcefully to the Swift Boat attacks during the 2004 presidential campaign, and suggested that a better response to these attacks would have been to state that George W. Bush "was a deserter" for abandoning his National Guard post during the Vietnam War.  Mamet pointed out:
This would have been a raise. Here the initiative has been seized, and the opponent must now fume and bluster and scream unfair. In combat, in politics, in poker, there is no certainty; there is only likelihood, and the likelihood is that aggression will prevail.
Fucking-A.

I think that Obama should put the turd squarely in the GOP's pocket and attack the Republican Party for being on the same page as the Terrorizers and wanting the same thing as ISIS, namely, an American foreign policy failure. Time to put in a raise, Mr. President.

Monday, September 01, 2014

Happy Labor Day, Everybody!

From the Seattle Times:
Just when it seemed the right wing couldn’t get any more divorced from reality around here, a local conservative group has launched a protest against what it sees as a pernicious cultural touchstone.

Labor Day. Yes, bittersweet old Labor Day — the first Monday in September, the holiday that’s been around for generations and is known to most non-ideologically blinkered Americans as an end-of-summer free day honoring all the hard work you put in the rest of the year. But to the Freedom Foundation, a business-backed Olympia think tank, the day is evidence of the power of unions, which to them equals the decline of America. Rather than stoop to taking a union-backed day off, they plan to fight the power by ... working all day Monday instead!
This reminded me of a boss I had in the late 1980s -- when I was working in Longview, Washington -- who refused to close the office on MLK Day due to his intense hatred for Black people. When I asked if the office took that holiday off, his response was, "Hell No! We work twice as hard that day."