No More Animal Videos, I Promise

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Just stuff to read —

See “John Boehner: the latest Tea Party stooge ” by Gary Younge:

The Republican party’s internal division and public humiliation this week felt like a moment that was such a long time coming it seemed as though it would never arrive. But the ramifications are not limited to Congress. The very mayhem that has been evident in Washington DC this week has been playing out in Iowa and New Hampshire these past few months, and will continue through the coming presidential year. Adrenalin could keep the Tea Party going only so long outside the fetid ecosystem of Fox News, talk radio and the internet, before reality intervened and forced some kind of reckoning. They can’t have everything they want, and won’t take the considerable amount they can get. So they cast around from crisis to crisis and candidate to candidate exploding with rage and imploding with contradictions until there’s very little left but the venom.

See also Ezra Klein, “‘No Labels’ Stops Whining.”

Update: I’m not posting this, notice. I’m just linking to it. It doesn’t count.

Paul Krugman, “Springtime for Toxics”

7 thoughts on “No More Animal Videos, I Promise”

  1. Did anyone else notice that whenever our nations poor, poor Orange Othello came up to talk during this fiasco, his Iago, Cantor, was conspicuously out of camera range?
    Usually, if the Speaker is anywhere near a camera, Cantor’s buzzing right next to him like a particularly obnoxious fly near some freshly laid sh*t.
    But not THIS time!
    Hmm, I wonder why?
    And I wonder, why does Orange Othello tolerate this blatant egomaniac who so clearly wants his job, and hasn’t somehow taken away some of the boys powers? You know, maybe by take him off powerful committees and moving him to be the 5th co-chair of the committee that handles education on Indian reservations, or something else the boy will hate?
    Speaker Boehner is bad enough, but can you imagine this self-impressed and self-satisfied little rooster, Cantor, crowing in front of the camera’s every day as Speaker?
    Well, they should have known better than to have let the racist, misogynistic, xenophobic, and homophobic Bircher bastards known as the Teabaggers out of the bottle, because it’s pretty damn hard to stuff the angry and insane maniacs back in.
    If this just affected the Republican Party, I’d be passing around the popcorn and chortling heartily.
    But, these nasty ‘idjits’ can’t stop at their own party. No, they have their eyes set on on their own damn prize and that’s ruining the whole nation with their noxious nonsense.

  2. Barabara – The Krugman post on the EPA mercury standards is good news. The other news worthy of a post is the Justice department struck down photo ID requirements in S. Carolina? This might be extended to the 11 states who have passed similar (if not identical) legislation which works to disenfranchise the poor, thus minorities. The reason is simply that people without drivers licenses are significantly more likely to be low-income. The defense that minorities are not specified in the bill does not mitigate the result (keeping blacks & Hispanics from voting), which the intent anyway. I expect this to be appealed, because voter suppression is central (IMO) to the long term strategy of a rich white male minority keeping power in a democracy that is changing color and getting desperately poorer. This demographic fact hasn’t escaped the notice of the Kotch bros or Norquest, but we can only guess the overall intent after-the-fact from the product submitted by their puppets in state government and the House. But voter suppression is a major component, and Obama and Justice are threatening that ploy. Can this reach the USSC by November?

  4. Gulag – thanks for that link. An insightful bit of writing, backed by polls and critical thinking. What I wouldn’t give to be able to listen in on some conversations among the power brokers who created the monster they can’t control.

    The one factor that Rich didn’t include – I suspect he thought it premature – is that there is a good chance that if Romney is the nominee by default, and the 75% who have rejected him feel he was forced on them, a 3rd party bid by Paul or Trump or even Sarah Palin is likely.

    This looks like heresy to the GOP who is normally so disciplined, but that was the GOP that existed before the monster. This disjointed. uncoordinated beast is committed to being against, and they don’t agree what they oppose. The architects that forced moderates, compromise, leadership and dialogue from the GOP now have at the gates, the ‘rabble’ they despise, a conservative rabble who might do anything in the revolutionary spirit of irrational opposition.

  5. Kevin Drum has an interesting item on how the financial gap between Americans and their representatives in Congress has widened. Bottom line, none of the guys and gals know or understand us middle class Americans.

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