ThinkingMeat

CNN is reporting that Rep. John Murtha (D-PA) has died at age 77.

Murtha was “one of Congress’s loudest anti-war voices”. Anyone want to make book on how long before the wingnuts start the celebration?

UPDATE 02/08/10 3:20 PM EDT: Gee, here’s a surprise, Andrew “Gribbit the Dipshit” Richardson stepped up to offer the usual mean-spirited jackassery for which it has become justly notorious, snarling that Murtha has “been nothing short of a cancer on this country”. Stay classy, Dipshit.

Jesus’ General:

Sarah Palin differs from her son in that she suffers from Mental Retardation which for her is a plus. She is able to condemn the usage of the word “retard” if the person using it has different politics than she does, but can actually defend its usage if the person uttering the word is important on her side of the aisle.

To sum up: Sarah Palin’s son Trig has Down Syndrome. Sarah Palin herself has gone Full Retard. Rahm Emanuel should be fired for using the word “retarded” and Rush Limbaugh is just okey-dokey-peachy-keen, no matter what he does. Rush is that good.

For all their shrieking about unproven, hyped-up allegations of “voter fraud”, the Republicans appear quite willing to make serious attempts to suppress and intimidate minority voters:

Between the 1980s and 1990s, minority voters were specifically targeted by the Republican National Committee in caging and voter intimidation efforts in several states. In 1981, the RNC and the New Jersey Republican Party sent a mass mailing to voters in predominantly African American and Latino neighborhoods, from which a caging list of 45,000 voters were compiled based on returned mail. The RNC attempted to have the listed voters purged before the election. When the request was denied, the RNC announced plans to challenge those voters at the polls instead and used intimidation tactics, including the posting of off-duty law enforcement officials at polls in targeted areas and the placement of posters in heavily African American neighborhoods, warning that violating elections laws is a crime. Subsequently, the Democratic National Committee filed suit in the New Jersey court, contending that the RNC program harassed and intimidated African American and Latino voters, in violation of the VRA. In a settlement to the suit, the RNC entered into a consent decree, in which it agreed to refrain from discriminatory activities in their “ballot security” efforts.

more…

(hat tip: Open Left)

Susie Madrak:

But it’s the continued hypocrisy of conservative figures that irks me. I mean, [Sarah Palin is] disparaging Obama’s teleprompter use in the same speech in which she’s using cheat notes? Does her brain even have the function that would note that as a contradiction?

The real problem isn’t that conservatives are hypocrites. It’s that they’re such shameless, proud hypocrites – and that they’re so willing to exploit worried Americans who can’t figure that out.

Matt Yglesias:

…[C]onservatives think that any constraint on the state security apparatus is too much. They believe, contrary to all of the evidence, that the rule-bound criminal justice system can’t or doesn’t function and that things would be better if we scrapped all the rules. And, indeed, in the civilian context they’ve worked steadily and systematically over a period of decades to weaken the constitutional protections as much as possible, and bring us as close as possible to their dream scenario of limitless state-sponsored violence. The desire to push certain categories of people (non-citizens) or certain categories of suspects (terrorists) out of the constitutionally protected realm is just part-and-parcel of that broad-based assault on the idea of a rule-bound justice system.

A favorite wingnut meme is that the current deficit can be blamed largely on the fiscal policies of the Obama administration. Alas, reality refuses to cooperate, as shown in a recent report from the nonpartisan Center on Budget and Policy Priorities:

President Obama Largely Inherited Today’s Huge Deficits:

Some critics charge that the new policies pursued by President Obama and the 111th Congress generated the huge federal budget deficits that the nation now faces. In fact, the tax cuts enacted under President George W. Bush, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the economic downturn together explain virtually the entire deficit over the next ten years (see Figure 1).

…

Just two policies dating from the Bush Administration —tax cuts and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan— accounted for over $500 billion of the deficit in 2009 and $7.1 trillion in 2009 through 2019, including the associated debt-service costs. These impacts easily dwarf the stimulus and financial rescues. Furthermore, unlike those temporary costs, these inherited policies (especially the tax cuts) do not fade away as the economy recovers (see Figure 1).

Without the economic downturn and the fiscal policies of the previous Administration, the budget would be roughly in balance over the next decade. That would put the nation on a much sounder footing to address the demographic challenges and the cost pressures in health care that darken the long-run fiscal outlook.

The report also notes that the steps proposed in the administration’s budget “represent a commendable first step, though they are hardly sufficient to address our long-term fiscal imbalance”.

Wingnuts, of course, live in their own carefully distorted reality. When faced with facts that contradict their fantasy world, they simply ignore those facts.

Given all the evidence we have that “Big Dog” is a drooling cretin, it’s hard to imagine what else he could say that would further cement his reputation as an imbecile. Nevertheless, the Moronic Mutt has come up with another doozy:

Interestingly, [underwear bomber Umar Abdulmutallab] must have had more to say because he is now talking. In other words, information was lost because of the Miranda warning.

Did you get that, folks? Because Abdulmutallab is talking, it proves absolutely beyond any shadow of a doubt that we lost information.

Conversely, if Abdulmutallab had clammed up from the start and refused to say anything at all, “Big Dog” would tell us that this proves we had gotten a metric shitload of useful intelligence from him.

“Big Dog”, of course, utterly misses the point: Abdulmutallab started out talking to investigators. Then he stopped talking — until he was Mirandized and given access to a lawyer. After that, he started talking again. The entire concept of “cause and effect” is clearly something that is beyond the comprehension of a blinkered wingnut like “Big Dog”.

How does someone this fucking STOOOPID even manage to wipe his own ass, much less find the keyboard on his computer? I’d really like an explanation.

Shorter Bob Owens (aka ‘Confederate Yankee’):

• Using the word “retarded” is a terrible thing to do… unless I do it. Anyone who doesn’t understand that the rules I pull out of my ass don’t apply to me is retarded.

‘Shorter’ concept created by Daniel Davies and perfected by Elton Beard, and shamelessly pilfered from Sadly, No.

Is Cat going soft? In a post regarding some medical problems that Rep. John Murtha has been sealing with, she says:

Am I going to wish him dead, like the loony lefties did with Rush and so many other conservative figures when they were ill?

Nope.

Gee, Cat, why so mellow? You didn’t have any problem agitating for the murder of Supreme Court justices, after all.

I think Cat is losing her edge.