And In Other News: GOP Finds New Ways To Say “Its Your Money and We’ll Burn It If We Feel Like It.”

I ran across news of a minor skirmish in the war to save/destroy America, but I guess it’s worth transmitting, since this time the good guys won.

Believe it or not, a united House Republican caucus failed in their bid to save ordinary Americans from the tyranny of efficient light bulbs.  With this vote, the GOP stalwarts hoped to roll back new standards for light bulb energy use:

The first stage of the standards, which will be phased in from Jan. 1 through 2014, requires bulbs to be 25 to 30 percent more efficient. The second stage could require bulbs to be 60 percent more efficient by 2020. The law includes exceptions for specialty lights, like candelabra lamps, three-way bulbs and black lights.

Republicans seem to object mostly to the idea that energy efficiency is a proper object for government policy, which they mask by declaring that this new standard means the death of the older incandescent technology.  Reality’s well known liberal bias strikes again:

When Congress acted in 2007, many people assumed the incandescent bulb was on its way out. But electric companies have since invested in new technologies that increase bulb efficiency.

So:  the GOP is now on record favoring an increase in energy costs for American households—call it a hidden tax—to the tune of $6 billion—an estimated $50 per household—  by 2015. Not to mention a reduction in energy usage equal to the output of approximately 30 power plants.

The good news, though, is that today’s vote allows me to use a phrase I just learned in connection with the Murdoch scandal:  17 Republicans who voted to repeal these standards have pulled the classic reverse ferret manouver made famous in British tabloid newsrooms.

Most egregiously, Fred Upton, R-Shameless, current chairman of the  House Energy and Commerce Committee, issued the following statement after his original vote in favor of the standards:

“This common-sense, bipartisan approach partners with American industry to save energy as well as help foster the creation of new domestic manufacturing jobs,”

Now, not so much:

Mr. Upton has removed the old statement from his Web site and posted a new one that says, “The public response on this issue is a clear signal that markets — not governments — should be driving technological advancements.”

Uh, Mr. Upton?  Please see that quote above.  You know, the one about electric companies investing in efficient technologies in the context of these new standards.

This would ordinarily be the point at which I shout “Moron!”—except there’s a peculiar elegance to Upton’s utterly unapologetic  volte face. It takes a particular skill, or quality of self loathing, to shed one’s cloak so swiftly and so utterly.  Even the East German judge would have to give the man a 9.3.

But I do think moronic describes this next speaker:

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Mental Wounds Still Screaming, Driving Me Insane

Looks like the Iowa GOP is going for a ride on the crazy train:

Rep. Michele Bachmann has been gunning for the support of Iowa voters, the first in the nation to vote for their party’s presidential nominees, and it looks like her efforts may be paying off.

The conservative congresswoman finished first among the GOP presidential candidates in a poll released today by The Iowa Republican, a blog which bill itself as News for Republicans, by Republicans. Bachmann received support from 25 percent of likely Iowa caucus-goers. Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney received 21 percent, putting Bachmann’s lead within the poll’s 4.4 percent margin of error.

It’s too god damned early for me to start drinking heavily, so I’m going to go back outside and carry mulch around until hopefully I die of sun stroke and will no longer need to suffer this shit. It’s either that or smash my computer and tv.

(via the GOS)

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Shorter Bachmann: “Sure slavery sucked, but at least black kids had two parents back then.”

Whtpplbtrppn

Michele Bachmann signed a conservative pledge called “The Marriage Vow – A Declaration of Dependence upon Marriage and Family.” That pledge contained the following dumbass-edness:

Slavery had a disastrous impact on African-American families, yet sadly a child born into slavery in 1860 was more likely to be raised by his mother and father in a two-parent household than was an African-American baby born after the election of the USA’s first African-American President.

Yep. WTF, is right.

From Jack and Jill Politics:

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Dog Bites Man…Social Security Emo update

Per John and ABL yesterday, this:

Rep. Barney Frank says Minority Leader Pelosi reassured House Democrats that the COLA change (which amounts to escalating cuts to Social Security over time) floated in the press will not happen.

Democrats are far from perfect, still waaay to naive about GOPer feral behavior, and all that, but they aren’t bone stupid—certainly not of the balanced budget amendment/weeks-wages-in-wine-swilling variety.  They know (from recent, bitter experience—remember that 1/2 trillion buck Medicare “cut” that was actually simply an end to the transfer payments to private insurers) that there is a reason entitlement support, and especially Social Security, is called the “third rail” of politics.  One that the Republicans seem determined to lick.

I’m coming to something of an eleven dimensional chess explanation for Obama’s current behavior—which is to me very scary, because even if you win the game, when you play with clout-foreheaded louts, the inevitable smashing of the board is a real loss.  And maybe I’m wrong, and this isn’t clever strategy at all, and Obama really is trying to solve a problem I don’t think is the one we actually face in his global attempt to reframe the US budget.  But I’m with ABL and John:  there’s enough to be angry about in the world before blowing skull shrapnel all over the ceiling about some disaster that hasn’t happened yet.

Oh—and it looks like one of the most cynical and disastrous politicians of my lifetime is finally waking up and smelling the coffee.  Too late, I fear.

Image:  J. M. W. Turner, Rain, Steam and Speed-The Great Western Railway, 1844

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There’s a New Sheriff In Town

We now have a new frontrunner for the dumbest person in Washington:

Today, I introduced a unique bill that goes in a completely different direction than everything else we’ve been hearing out of Washington. It would force politicians to start practicing what they’ve been preaching by lowering the debt ceiling from $14.3 trillion back down to $13 trillion. Admittedly, this is not your run-of-the-mill kind of law, but it would make it imperative for Congress to think outside of the box and come up with ways to pay off a portion of our debt while drastically cutting back spending. Since 1996, the national debt has increased by an inexcusable $8.79 trillion. I firmly believe that this calls for emergency measures to reduce the debt.

I’m going to introduce legislation to make myself fifteen years younger. Prettier, too.

Every time I get pissed off at Obama for not doing what I want the way I want it when I want it, I remember who he is dealing with.

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I was watching TV

I haven’t watched a bobblehead show in at least three years, but the other night I had access to HBO so I caught Bill Maher. His guests were Tweety, Russ Douthat and one of the interchangable blondes from some GOP front group who go on teevee to parrot the latest con talking points. Never saw Russ live before. Good Lord. He’s infinitely more irritating in person than he is in print. That pudgy little smug grin is so George W. Bush-x11.

But Tweety was hilarious. He was slurring so much, I thought he might be drunk. An impression reinforced by his admission that Michele is his hero. He boldly predicted she’s going to win the GOP nod. His theory is even though she’s batshit crazy, her authenticity will win over the base and she’ll tromp all over Mittens.

Not sure I’d bet money on that. Romney raised $18.25 million in the last quarter while Minnesota’s favorite regressive won’t be releasing her numbers until the last possible moment.

Suppose it’s possible they’re so good she’s releasing them last to get the most juice from the news cycle, but the blitz of fundraising emails I’m finding in my inbox from “Gun Alerts” sound a little desperate. They all lead with the heading, “Finally, a Constitutional Conservative Announces Candidacy for President!”

Funny. I had no idea she was the only one. I thought they were all “constitutional conservatives.”

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Pretty Much This

This comment at Gawker made me very upset because it is true:

Let’s say there’s this person called America. Now, there’s a person standing next to America named Gop. Gop is holding a loaded gun to the side of America’s head, and is demanding that you hand over fifty puppies, or he’s going to shoot America in the head.

Like any sensible person, you hand over fifty puppies, because you don’t want to see America get shot in the head. Gop takes the puppies and America lives.

Now, a couple months later, Gop and America are at it again. I guess America is Gop’s mistress or something, I don’t really know. The difference is that this time, Gop has put all the puppies in a cage and wired it with explosives.

Gop is now demanding five hundred puppies. If Gop doesn’t get five hundred puppies, he’s going to shoot America in the head, and blow up the fifty puppies you already gave him.

Now let’s say you get all five hundred puppies and deliver them to Gop, and tell Gop that in exchange for these five hundred puppies, you would really appreciate it if Gop would hand over the detonator for the fifty puppies wired with explosives, and the gun he’s holding to the head of America.

Gop refuses. Gop now has a gun against America’s temple, the hammer is cocked, and he has fifty puppies wired with explosives, with an offer for five hundred more if he’ll just put down the gun and detonator.

The problem is that Gop can’t do that, because Teaparty, his former partner, is holding his wife, Reelection, hostage too. If Gop doesn’t get all the puppies, and keeps the gun and detonator, Teaparty is going to shoot Gop’s wife Reelection in the head.

Now, for this to untangle itself, someone has to die. Either Gop blows up the puppies and shoots America in the head because you won’t give in to their completely unreasonable demands, or America and the puppies live because Gop gave you the gun and detonator, but Teaparty killed Gop’s wife, Reelection.

There is a third and fourth way. Gop turns around and shoots Teaparty, sparing his wife, mistress, and puppies, or Gop shoots himself, thus freeing America and the puppies and leaving Teaparty out in the cold.

So really, it’s a double hostage situation. The Democrats are offering the world to the GOP to keep them from blowing it all up, but the GOP can’t take the deal because if they do, the Tea Party will go fucking nuts and everyone that votes for it will face a primary challenge.

The insane people are running the party, and now morons like David Brooks and the “reasonable Republicans” are like “WTF happened” when they were the ones fluffing the nutters for years. Even assuming there are Republicans left in the house that really are not insane enough to default the government, an assumption I am simply not willing to make, they are terrified they will lose their job like the other tens of millions of people suffering from Republican policies, because the teahadists will primary them.

And anyone who still calls themselves a Republican is just an asshole. Really, you’ve had ample time to figure out your party is run by maniacs. If you’re still sticking around because the “Democrats are worse” or you think the party can turn it around or because you fancy yourself a small “c” conservative or you are a glibertarian or because you hate taxes or you think Dennis Kucinich is weird (he is), you’re just an asshole. And incredibly stupid.

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Here’s The Problem

I hate quoting Cohen, but here:

Excuse me if I skip over other pledges and move to other matters. The hallmark of a cult is to replace reason with feverish belief. This the GOP has done when it comes to the government’s ability to stimulate the economy. History proves this works — it’s how the Great Depression ended — but Republicans will not acknowledge it.

The Depression in fact deepened in 1937 when Franklin D. Roosevelt tried to balance the budget and was ended entirely by World War II, which, besides being a noble cause, was also a huge stimulus program. Here, though, is Sen. Richard Shelby mouthing GOP dogma: Stimulus programs “did not bring us out of the Depression,” he recently told ABC’s Christiane Amanpour, but “the war did.” In other words, a really huge stimulus program hugely worked. Might not a more modest one succeed modestly? Shelby ought to follow his own logic.

Here is the problem with wingnuts. If we convinced them that the stimulative effect of war did bring us out of the depression, they would then agitate for invading Russia or China. Not for job creation.

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Killing them softly

He’s talking about Christie here, but you could say the same about any of the GOP leaders.

NJ New Jersey Senate President Stephen Sweeney: “He’s a rotten prick.”

Also. Too.

“He’s just a rotten bastard to do what he did.”

Hard to feel any sympathy for Sweeney. For reasons unclear to me, he sold out his constituency on pensions and health reforms, apparently expecting Christie to give him something in return in the budget. You’ll be shocked to learn that in return for Sweeney’s bipartisan comity, Governor Blowhard screwed him. Or rather, Christie screwed the most vulnerable among us.

He mowed down a series of Democratic add-ons, including $45 million in tax credits for the working poor, $9 million in health care for the working poor, $8 million for women’s health care, another $8 million in AIDS funding and $9 million in mental-health services.

Wondering when we start calling the GOP death by spending cuts agenda what it really is—virtual genocide.

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Ironic License, Please

One of the Ohio Republicans who pushed a state law to toughen voter ID restrictions to “prevent fraud” because there’s no reason why “citizens wouldn’t have a driver’s license” would himself lose the right to vote under the law because his license may be revoked for an Indiana DUI.

 

On April 23, an Indiana state trooper pulled Rep. Robert Mecklenborg over for a burned out headlight on a 2004 Lexus he was driving. After failing three separate field sobriety tests, Mecklenborg allegedly refused to take a breath test and was placed under arrest. A blood test later revealed that he had recently taken a Viagra.

“Given that he likely is not in possession of his own drivers license (it should have been confiscated and suspended in accordance with Indiana DUI law and procedure), perhaps he will opt to arrest his drive to repress voting rights,” the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee’s Carolyn Fiddler wrote in a blog post.

Mecklenborg’s arrest was first reported by local news station WLWT. His arrest report has been posted online. It shows that Mecklenborg was accompanied by a 26-year-old woman, who a local blogger claims has “personal connections” with Concepts Show Girls strip club, which is right near where Mecklenborg was arrested.

 

Republican stupidity really cannot be demonstrated in the real world any better than this.  In their zeal to make voting as hard as possible for students, the elderly, minorities, and the poor, this asshole caught drunk and on Viagra with a 26-year old girl near a strip club would in fact revoke his own right to vote, on top of being a criminal douchebag while proclaiming to the world that only bad, evil people would be against a voter ID law.  They can’t even take over the country when the means to take over the country are literally handed to them, because they’re too busy thinking with the wrong head and getting arrested for breaking laws they are supposed to be writing in the first place.  Joss Whedon could not pen better material for any medium.

The irony, it forms myriad threads that interweave on so many different levels, it creates a 17-dimensional sweater.  I understand that yes, Republicans are still dangerously crooked bastards who will destroy the country given the first opportunity to enrich themselves (and proceed to do so on a daily basis) but the Darwinian elimination of the ones who are just too stupid to get that simple process down?  Why, that’s the only moment of levity we have on this ginormous wallowing dirigible bound for the lower planes.

And yes, there are strip clubs in Indiana.

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The Big(ger) Payback

Looks like Wisconsin Republican Sen. Ron Johnson, the man who took down Russ Feingold last year, has yet to answer some extremely interesting questions as to how he did it and with what money.

Last week the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel started asking uncomfortable questions about $10 million in deferred compensation Johnson received from his former company, Pacur, weeks after his $9 million self-financed successful 2010 campaign came to an end.

For those of you playing the home version, even in a post Citizens United world, direct corporate contributions to a candidate is a no-no, especially when the corporation in question employs the candidate.  The $10 million just happened to cover the cost of Johnson’s campaign, which Johnson says is a complete coincidence.  If that’s true, then Johnson surely has a written agreement with the company covering the deferred compensation, yes?

So far Johnson has not produced a written deferred compensation agreement that was signed and dated before he launched his campaign. Absent such an agreement, Johnson could face serious charges that he violated campaign-finance laws barring direct corporate funding of federal candidates, election law experts tell TPM.

Arent Fox’s Brett Kappel, an election law attorney, said evidence of a written agreement before Johnson ran for the Senate is critical to prove he did not rely on corporate funds for his campaign.

Well then, that might be a problem if the FEC takes a look at…

Even though watchdogs are raising serious red flags over Johnson’s deferred compensation, they’re not counting on the FEC, a broken agency that either deadlocks over critical and controversial decisions or fails to take up cases at all.

Never the hell mind.  This ledger domain legerdemain is just how the Galt’s Gulch Bandits operate. Any of them will tell you the real problem would be the FEC existing at all.  Smaller government means there’s nobody to complain to…well, unless a Democrat gave the appearance of conflict of interest, that is.

Best part is the guy who had $9 mil to spend on his own Senate seat and getting $10 mil payback is a real salt-of-the-earth, Real ‘Murican hero.

[UPDATE 12:30 PM]  Didn’t Blago just get convicted of trying to sell a Senate seat?  Buying one seems to be pretty okay by comparison, IOKIYAR.

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A Rare Moment of Truth From Michelle Bachman

Win:

Michele Bachmann (R-MN) has a thing for John Wayne. In an interview yesterday with Newsmax, she said she wants to live in “John Wayne’s America.” And in the Iowa town of Waterloo today, where she announced her presidential candidacy, Bachmann told Fox News, “John Wayne was from Waterloo, Iowa. That’s the kind of spirit that I have, too.” But unfortunately for historically challenged Bachmann, as the Washington Times points out, the John Wayne born in Waterloo is John Wayne Gacy, the notorious serial killer who murdered 33 teenage boys and young men, not the iconic Western actor.

I hope you people of Minnesota are proud of yourselves.

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Because There’s Been a Yawning Clown Gap in the GOP Field Since Trump and Palin Took a Pass

This was odd yesterday:

Representatives of Republican candidates are meeting today in Ames, Iowa for what is essentially a real estate auction, buying up the best pieces of the Hilton Coliseum at Iowa State University, where Augusts’ Ames Straw Poll will be held.

The presence of operatives who refuse to identify which candidate they work for, however, has led the representatives of the declared candidates to threaten to walk….

Sources tell ABC News, the mystery candidate is Rep. Thad McCotter, R- Mich., an undeclared candidate….

McCotter’s been hinting at a run for a while, and if he does run, I’m jazzed. When the general public begins to take a look at the Republican Party, I want one of the faces of the party to be a guy who writes prose like this, from 2008:

...No starker episode exhibits our anile need for a moral hospice before we slither into the dust bin of history than the one playing out before Americans’ astonished eyes. Legacy building with the urgency of a dying Pharaoh staring at an unfinished Sphinx, George Walker Bush is bent upon being the first U.S. President to attend a foreign nation’s Olympics. The nation in question is communist China, the shock troops of which are presently bludgeoning Tibetan Monks as if they were orange bathrobed baby seals. (One shudders at the prospect this Tibetan repression is the Chi-coms’ sedulous sally into Olympic demonstration sports.)

Notwithstanding the Global Generation’s remaining misanthropes’ unsophisticated quibbling (i.e., me and mine), our Compassionate Conservative-in-Chief has eagerly RSVP’ed to the communist dictatorship’s dramatic recreation of the Berlin Olympics. Given “The Decider’s” resolve, hope dims we might disabuse his whimsy that watching a wobbling discus with the wanton butchers of Tiananmen Square can advance the sacred cause of human freedom….

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Not Ready For Prime Time…an Update

Mistermix already today brought up Mitt Romney’s gift for odd, awkward delusional gaffes.  It’s a kind of community-access-cable talent for saying something that’s not merely weird or wrong, but that actually makes the listener wonder if the speaker isn’t really dropping in from Planet Ten, if  you know what I mean.*

Now we’ve got this, in which the ridiculously wealthy Romney attempts to persuade the common clay that he is just like the least among us:

“I should tell my story,” Romney told a group of unemployed people in Florida. “I’m also unemployed.” (via TPM)

 

This, from a guy who dropped in the neighborhood of $45 million of his own cash on his last campaign, which still left him with a fortune estimated at around $200 mill.

Best of all, as the TPM snark points out, Romney made this startling confession in the middle of a speech trying to persuade his unemployed audience that he gets their plight better than Obama, whose “bump in the road” malapropism Romney sought to exploit.

Ah, eloquence, thy name is Romney .  As is “sociopathic levels of self obsession,” though that’s a little harder to say when you want to get little Mittens back in the house for dinner.

Image:  Michaelangelo Caravaggio, Narcissus, 1594-1596.

[Update] *I tried to post the linked video here, but it broke the site.  So now you have to head off to Youtube for one of John Lithgow’s finer moments, if you dare.

 

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It Came Out of the Blue

No one could have predicted that Breitbart would find a way to accidentally release an x-rated picture of Anthony Wiener. I, for one, am shocked at the lack of integrity displayed by Opie and Anthony and Breitbart. It’s a mystery how it got out, what with Breitbart going to bars and leaving his laptop open with pictures of Weiner’s component parts on full display for everyone. He was so carefully guarding that picture! For “insurance!”

Seriously, if CNN and MSNBC and the rest of these assholes do not realize who they are dealing with now, they simply do not care.

And on a more serious note, how many straight men out there carry around pictures of some other male’s erect penis on their phone? That’s just plain weird, regardless of the circumstances.

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