David Vitter watch, day 2137, give or take

Today is a great day in the annals (two Ns, so shut up!) of Republican lying adulterers. Mark Sanford (R-only a sin to be a Democrat) will never again be seriously challenged by a Democratic candidate.

According to those exit polls, Mr. Sanford held a three-to-one lead among voters who described themselves as liars, cheaters, or sleazebags.

Once again, the majority of a conservative electorate has proven more committed to ideology than to the personal virtue they bullshit about whenever Ted Kennedy is the topic of conversation.

No big loss, really. Colbert Busch was never going to hold that seat past 2014. Now the Republicans are stuck with Sanford.

Maybe he, Vitter, and their role model, Newt Gingrich, should rent a limo with the up-suspension package and triple date. Oh, the stories they could tell to entertain their dates!

Rush for the exits

It's probably too much to hope for to dream that Rush Limbaugh, founder of the no-bigger-asshole school of conservative bullying, will change his bigoted behavior.  But it would be lovely if he got paid ever less to give cover to wingnut assholes as they pollute our national discourse with hatred and ignorance.

[O]n the one hand, we have multiple radio companies reporting losses directly attributable to Limbaugh's show as well as Limbaugh himself complaining about media buyers. On the other hand, we have an unnamed source close to Limbaugh's show denying reality about Limbaugh's advertiser woes and attacking one of the host's biggest affiliates.

For when you really have to suck

GOP helps al Qaeda get guns right here in the USA

Really? If the shoe were on the other foot, that's what Republicans would claim.

Even al-Qaida gloats about what's possible under U.S. gun laws. In June 2011, a senior al-Qaida operative, Adam Gadahn, released rallying people to take advantage of opportunities those laws provide.

"America is absolutely awash with easily obtainable firearms," Gadahn says, explaining that "you can go down to a gun show at the local convention center" and buy a gun without a background check.

Then a faint smile crosses Gadahn's face. "So what are you waiting for?" he asks.

Under current laws, if a background check reveals that your name is on the national terrorism watch list, you're still free to walk out of a gun dealership with a firearm in your hands — as long as you don't have a criminal or mental health record.

Republicans in the Senate really did block any tightening of background checks - including measures obvious to anyone who actually wants to keep deadly weapons away from violent people. Read the whole (short) NPR story from Ailsa Chang. It's really effing unbelievable.

The honest truth is that nearly all Republican legislators are willing to allow felons and people who are dangerously mentally ill to own guns. Why should potential terrorists be any different?

The Republican Party's leaders think the only point at which we can stop violence is once it has already started - every school, every theater, every political rally an O.K. Corral.

Even rank and file Republican voters know that this is utter madness. You'd think they might do something about it.

That's not funny!

I can well imagine schlerotic wingnuts railing against the President's sense of humor.

Walking in to “All I Do Is Win,” President Obama joked “Rush Limbaugh warned you about this. Second term, baby. We’re changing things around here a little bit.”

Or maybe they'll wax wroth about teleprompters and other bullshit.

Anyhow, I'm laughing.

What Krugman doesn't say

For Paul Krugman, the role of Cassandra has to weigh like a curse he didn't earn.

look at the predictions the two sides in this debate have made. People like me predicted right from the start that large budget deficits would have little effect on interest rates, that large-scale “money printing” by the Fed (not a good description of actual Fed policy, but never mind) wouldn’t be inflationary, that austerity policies would lead to terrible economic downturns. The other side jeered, insisting that interest rates would skyrocket and that austerity would actually lead to economic expansion. Ask bond traders, or the suffering populations of Spain, Portugal and so on, how it actually turned out.

Of course, Cassandra didn't earn hers, either.

The people who oppose stimulus aren't all ignoramuses. Sure, they've bought the fealty of the Republican Party, and it's filled with ignoramuses who are so unprincipled they'll say anything to keep the Koch up their nose. But the billionaires aren't foolish men.

It's clear that a stimulated economy is a bigger economy. The plutocrats don't care. They have plenty, and they want more, but there's something they want more than larger fortunes.

They want a docile, servile, and inexpensive workforce (that's us) whom they can dispose of on whim. They want to run everything.

Extreme inequality of income and wealth is not an accidental outcome of their policy preferences. It's their underlying goal. With the rest of us in penury or afraid of it, their lives become much simpler. That's what they want.

Compare your tax bill

We simply cannot have a healthy economy when nearly all the rewards flow to the few.

Then, too, there's the immorality of a society that privileges greed above all else.

Sweet talk won't cover bullshit

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Too bad he never served his convictions. In federal prison.

Bill of attainder

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Indecision Political Humor,The Daily Show on Facebook

No, not working corruption of blood, as fascist ninny Ann Coulter would.

Fox - whatever its bullshit lip service to the contrary - is tainted with its hatred of the liberal work that is the U.S. Constitution.

Semper Fi

(h/t Boston Globe)

Sore losers

... and I do mean losers:

[W]e learned last week that three disgruntled Republican lawmakers – including two from Greater Nashua – actually thought it was a good idea to file a formal petition of removal and criminal complaints against 189 of their fellow representatives.

Specifically, Londonderry Rep. Al Baldasaro, Goffstown Rep. John Hikel and Merrimack Rep. Lenette Peterson filed an “emergency petition for redress,” calling for removing the 189 from office for “breaching their oath” and for their criminal prosecution for “violating federal law.”

The offense?

Voting for legislation that would reset the standard for self-defense to what had existed with little fanfare for more than three decades. They claim any change would violate their right to bear arms to protect themselves and their property.

Republicans used to whine - pathetically and without justification - that Democrats were "criminalizing policy differences." They made this fantastic claim in defense of Tom DeLay (R-screw campaign finance laws), only appropriate in the sense that DeLay himself made the phrase popular.

Now, these New Hampshire gun-toting wingnuts want criminal complaints because, in the exercise of their representation of their constituents, their political opponents voted in a way that made them cry.

Crocodile tears from fantastically ridiculous infantile crazies...

They prove yet again that many Republicans oppose the idea of democracy every time it goes against them.

Department of duh

There's a "sweeping" new report that '“it is indisputable that the United States engaged in the practice of torture” and that the nation’s highest officials bore ultimate responsibility for it.'

Ho hum. The only aspect of this that's really newsworthy is that a Republican signed onto it.

The Bushists chose to torture.

They wrote memos to exculpate their choice to torture, covering their asses with a thin tissue of lies that redefined the word torture. Torturously redefined the word. (Tortuously, too.)

They have escaped all legal responsibility for their actions. (Like bankers!)

Note that the New York Times is still too chickenshit to call torture torture outside of direct quotes. Instead, they continue to adopt the weaselly newspeak of the Bushists:  "coercive interrogation methods used by the administration of President George W. Bush."

Until we restore truth-telling to a position of actual respect, not mere lip service, our cultural decline will continue.

Keeping guns away from bad actors

Cold Dead Hand with Jim Carrey from Jim Carrey

We'll see if any morons continue to try to argue with comedy.

Media performance after the Boston Marathon bombing

Or, should I say, non-performance?

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Indecision Political Humor,The Daily Show on Facebook

My observations:

• CNN really truly sucks at journalism.  cnn.com, though, is still a useful source of breaking news.
• Fox I avoid on general principles, but they can manage breaking stories in between the toxic bigotry of their opinion personalities. I watched a little Shepard Smith on Monday while the story was still news and not yet another opportunity to push invidious delusions into the puke funnel of the VRWC.
• MSNBC's Rachel Maddow is vital for background. Her competitors who lean backward into infotainment breathlessly reported on pressure cooker bombs, as if everyone knew what that meant. She actually reported it.
• Both the Boston Globe and the New York Times web sites failed. To judge by the Globe's subsequent removal of access controls, they may lack enough oomph in their user authentication servers.
• NECN was o.k. for a while, but then reported that Boston was being evacuated on the strength of one cop with a bullhorn. Panic, people, panic! But keep watching!
• Any media outlet that gives Alex Jones a platform cannot be trusted.
• Infotainment is the norm:

So hard to understand

Eight-year-olds like Martin Richard know that "no more hurting people" is where morality starts. Somewhere along the way, adults forget that.

Run 26 miles on their day off until their nipples are raw - for fun

The Colbert Report
Get More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,Indecision Political Humor,Video Archive

Don't tread on me.

Puncturing a gasbag

Rush is defensive about greenhouse gases in general, since he puts out so much bullshit. But of course that's methane-producing, more than carbon dioxide, so maybe we can excuse his buffoonish ignorance.

No, no we can't.

(h/t MediaMatters)

Derangement, plain and simple

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

We used to mock wingnuts for Clinton Derangement Syndrome. Because they noticed that tag stung, they accused us of Bush Derangement Syndrome, even though CDS (Hillary murdered Vince Foster!) was mainstream in the GOP and BDS (Darth Cheney did controlled demolition of WTC4!) was only in the wacko fringe left.

The truth is that many wingnuts are simply deranged. They can't tell obvious bullshit from something that's in range of plausible. There are plenty of them, too, which is why our politics is so screwed up that a centrist like Barack Obama (bank rescue, Heritage Foundation health insurance reform, chained CPI, no accountability for financial crimes, gradualist war policy, weak on environment) has crazy teabaggers screaming "socialist commie fascist" at him.

Imagine

Americans favor working background checks, but the NRA opposes them, so we're not likely to take any concrete step to keep guns out of the hands of criminals and unstable people.

That means we have to imagine this happening to other families:

In addition to the tragic loss of her playmates, friends, and teachers, my first grader suffers from PTSD. She was in the first room by the entrance to the school. Her teacher was able to gather the children into the tiny bathroom inside the classroom. There she stood, with 14 of her classmates and her teacher, all of them crying. You see, she heard what was happening on the other side of the wall. She heard everything. Shooting. Screaming. Pleading. She was sure she was going to die that day and did not want to die for Christmas. Imagine what this must have been like. With PTSD comes fear – all kinds of fear. Each time she hears a loud or unfamiliar noise, she experiences the fear she had in that bathroom. She is not alone. All of her classmates have PTSD. She struggles nightly with nightmares, difficulty falling asleep, and being afraid to go anywhere in her own home. At school she becomes withdrawn, crying daily, covering her ears when it gets too loud and waiting for this to happen again. She is 6.

Imagine being this age and living like this. My children face their fears every day by getting on the bus and going to school. Would you be able to do the same? How would you feel if these were your children?

It's obvious from events since the Newtown massacre that Wayne LaPierre and his merry band of sociopathic fucks are so opposed to any measures against guns that they are willing to accept mass murder of children as collateral damage in the name of something they believe to be more important.

Imagine a world in which that obscenity were not possible.

Gasbag deflation

How clueless do you have to be to imagine that Bill O'Reilly has a clue?