Stupid is as stupid does

Politico chief political analyst Roger Simon reports that the Republican National Committee is holding a special session next week so they can vote on -- and approve -- a resolution renaming the Democratic Party. After next week, according to the RNC, it will be called the Democrat Socialist Party.

Simon doesn't talk about that, though. His article is about Michael Steele, the black guy the RNC put in charge to make it look like they aren't a bunch of racist assholes but whom they don't give a shit about and regularly kick in the teeth. Steele opposed the special session, which will include passing a couple more idiotic resolutions, and opposes the renaming resolution too, although he does agree that the Democrats “are indeed marching America toward European-style socialism.”

Referring to the Democrats officially as the Democat Socialist Party "will accomplish little than to give the media and our opponents the opportunity to mischaracterize Republicans."

Now there's an understatement. And that's really about all that needs to be said about Steele, but Simon goes on for two pages about how the Republicans don't like him and all. If you'd like to see what he said, click here. Or stick around and let's talk about the real issue.

Simon quotes an RNC member saying the Steele "has a tin ear when it comes to the building (i.e., the RNC staff), the RNC and the party,” but don't you really think it's the GOP that has the tin ear when it comes to the American people?

So, they may be winning on the torture debate, for now. But what else? Those teabaggeries went over like the proverbial lead balloons. Their nemesis, Barack Obama, is still polling unwaveringly high, meaning that folks are kinda liking the president with the funny name. They're latest Big Issue is whether Wanda Sykes went too far at the White House Correspondents dinner, about as big an issue for the average American as the price of a loaf of bread in a London food market. And if Darth Cheney running all over the place bitching about Obama wasn't enough, now his little girl Liz is out doing the same, most recently saying the president is siding with terrorists or some such nonsense.

Somehow, I'm not expecting the Other Daughter, the Lesbian One Mary, to follow Liz's footsteps. I think she's got a Cheney grandchild to be worrying about right now.

Meanwhile, the GOP's still sticking to extremist social issues and name-calling as it's big strategy. GW and John Boehner and Tom Delay and all those truly stalwart individuals have been using "Democrat party" when they should be using "Democratic Party" for some time. It's a perjorative thing, you see, that actually got started more than 100 years ago and comes and goes, depending on how little leg the Republicans have to stand on at any given point in time.

This latest swing of its use began during the 2006 midterm elections, which was just about when folks were starting to wake up to Republican bullshit and shift Congress to the Democratic side.

Saying "Democrat party" is a purposely perjorative thing, though, on account of grammar. Democratic Party, you see, is what's called a proper noun. That's the name of the party -- calling it anything else is wrong, and it's intended to be a slight, an insult.

Add that to "socialist," which the Republicans have decided resonates with people outside their base with no evidence showing that to be true, and you got yourself one humdinger of a throwdown.

So here comes the Republican National Committee with its fancy resolution to make it official -- as if one party can officially change the name of the other paraty -- that will actually serve two purposes -- it will insult the Democrats and jab at Michael Steele.

There's just one teensy weensy little problem. Nobody gives a rodent's derriere. And all it does it make the Republicans look exactly like what they've become -- petty, vindictive little dictators with no ideas and no sense of decency.

Well done, gentlemen. I look forward to your resolution next week. When you keep doing stupid things like this, you make it impossible for my colleagues to present you in any kind of decent light. It's just too much of a stretch. Kind of like reporting that the fire department responded to a call about an intoxicated group of men not only threw empty paint cans into their 55-gallon drum fire, but then added not one, but three 20-pound propane cylinders when they ran out of paint cans. There's just no way you can make that look like a good idea.

As Bertrand Russell once said, "Most people would die rather than think. In fact, they do."

Sadly, the Republicans appear headed rapidly in that direction.

But maybe that's for the best. Then we could split the Democratic Party into two and have a real opposition party, with both parties focused on what's good for the American people instead of what's good for their personal fortunes.

You know, that little thing known as "the greater good."


AWOP Political Contributing Editor
Author of Stop the Press!

Cross-posted at Stop the Press!

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The spectre of change

Call me confused. While Senate Minority Leader Mitch "Dr. No" McConnell was alarming the base by telling them that Arlen Specter's defection was "a threat to the country," the RNC was sending out a fund-raising letter declaring "Good riddance." Only thing I can think of is that they think Pat "I'm bitter and I cling to my guns and religion" Toomey actually has a chance to win a general election in Pennsylvania.

Specter said that he jumped ship because of the hard right turn the Republicans have made recently -- and that is, technically, the reason -- but we all know, of course, that he made the switch to the president's party because that hard right turn means there's no way in hell he'll get the Republican nomination in 2010. And now that Harry "Don't rock the boat" Reid has declared the Democrats won't field a challenger to Mr. Specter in their primary, he's a shoo-in to return to the Senate.

This despite Specter opposition to quite a few actual Democrat policies and ideals. I don't know about you, but I'm betting Pennsylvanians, who already have pro-life Bob Casey in the Senate, might be interested in a real Democrat about now. And Joe Torsella, who had been the frontrunner for the Dem nomination, said he wasn't about to step aside.

And then there's Maine. What's gonna happen to the girls from the Pine Tree State? Sue Collins sounded pretty adamant about sticking with the GOP, but Olympia Snowe -- actually, I expected her to jump first. Snowe said that she has been asked to switch sides "but not recently" and noted that the party apparently didn't learn jack when Jim Jeffords famously switched from Republican to Independent, caucusing with the Dems, a few years ago.

For me personally and then for the party, it's devastating. I've always been concerned about the Republican party nationally, about their exclusionary policies towards moderate Republicans. That's not a secretly held view on my part.

We are heading to having the smallest political tent in history for any political party the way things are unfolding.

So maybe it's still possible she'll give up hoping that the GOP will realized it's proverbially shooting itself in its proverbial foot by pandering to the most backward troglodytes on the planet, and that's probably insulting to actual troglodytes.

But alas, not all of the right sees things the way Senator Snowe does. How 'bout that Sean "I know I said I'd be waterboarded for charity but if I don't mention it again y'all will forget" Hannity, "I think if anything, the Republican Party is moved to the left in recent years."

Just in case y'all thought that Republican Bizarro World wasn't still in full effect.

Then there was Jim "I don't need a stupid quote for my middle name" Deminted of South Carolina, who makes fellow South Carolinian Lindsay Graham look gay ... oh, never mind. But anyway, Jim Deminted said that "I feel that Republicans are starting to get the message of the last two elections -- that the American people don't want a lukewarm agenda. They don't want a liberal light agenda"

That's right, Jim. They want a solidly liberal agenda. Remember November when y'all painted Barack Obama as more liberal than Russ Feingold and Paul Wellstone put together? Yeah. That guy won.

And the party's Supreme Leader, the Ayatollah Limbaugh, is calling for John McCain to follow Specter overboard. Like that's gonna happen. And Michael Steele, the bizarro world head of the Republican Party, continued to sound like a throwback to some bad 70s cop show.

If Sen. Specter survives in the fall — get ready to go to the mat, baby, because we're coming after you and taking you out,

he said. Actually. Steele really had quite a day yesterday. Asked about the GOP's removal of $870 million for pandemic preparedness from the stimulus bill earlier this year (led by Maine's Collins, by the way) on CNN, Steele shot back "Did we know this was gonna happen?"

Well, um, no, Michael, but then, that's what preparedness is about. The rest of his comment, in which it appears that he links pandemic preparedness a part of the stimulus bill that was meant to figure out what to do with the incredible stench of hog farms in Iowa, is maybe even more bizarre.

When this package of spending was presented to the Congress and the American people, what was the presentation that was given by this administration? This was to create jobs. This was to restore our economy. It had nothing to do with why pigs stink. It had nothing to do with any of the stuff we spent money on,

he said, thus proving once again that Steele and the rest of the Republicans really have no idea what a stimulus is let alone what it's supposed to do. Not to be outdone, Chuck Shumer, the senior Democratic senator from New York, also inexplicably lumped pandemic preparedness in the stimulus bill with "all those little porky things" he said had been added to the bill by the House of Representatives, thus proving that stupidity knows no party lines.


And speaking of stupidity, get this. A team at Ohio State University conducted an experiment using The Colbert Report to see how satire is viewed along ideological lines. Oddly enough, both liberals and conservatives found Stephen Colbert to be equally funny, but conservatives, oddly enough, tended to think he actually believes the things he says, that he is only pretending to be joking and that he actually dislikes liberals.

The liberals got the joke. And guess who the joke's on?


News Writer
AWOP Political Contributing Editor
Author of Stop the Press!

Cross-posted at Stop the Press!

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Peace Y'all