Sunday Morning Comin' Down

While autopsying this week's Mouse Circus, there are many things we could be focusing on.

For example, it might be useful to discuss subtle nuances of the gentle, hot oil and eucalyptus massage David Gregory administered to lapsed-human Paul Ryan today on the most watched public affairs show in America.

Paul Ryan: We would have fixed our fiscal mess under Bill Clinton

Posted by Sean Sullivan on January 27, 2013 at 11:54 am

The nation’s most pressing fiscal issues would likely have been solved if Bill Clinton were president, House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) said Sunday in a swipe at President Obama

“Look, if we had [a] Clinton presidency, if we had Erskine Bowles, chief of staff of the White House or president of the United States, I think we would have fixed this fiscal mess by now. That’s not the kind of presidency we’re dealing with right now,” Ryan said on NBC News’s “Meet The Press.”

Ryan also said he feels that Obama hasn’t signaled a desire to compromise. ”All of the statements and all of the comments lead me to believe that he’s thinking more of a political conquest than political compromise,” said Ryan.
...

It might also be instructive to take a close look at why Jim DeMint is $till allowed on the mo$t watched public affair$ $how in America de$pite giving up hiS "Mo$t Indi$putably Bat$hit In$ane Member of the United $tate$ $enate" title in favor of a much better paying gig a$ the head of one of the mo$t indi$putable bat$hit in$ane Conservative  crack houses "think tank$" in America.  Equally interesting would be a healthy discussion of why the aforementioned Mr. Gregory reflexively treats the very real, howling Conservative dementia on public display right in front of him as something icky to be skirted gingerly around



on the way to his next bout of imaginary hippie punching (from Crooks and Liars):

...

NAACP president Ben Jealous, however, argued that Republicans would be better off "if they're willing to give up on the gasoline that's been the old Dixiecrat rhetoric they've indulged in for the last 40 years."

"They need to stop," Jealous explained. "They need to say, 'We have an old brand as the Grand Old Party, the party of Lincoln, the party of Kemp, the party of people who united this country again and again. Let's be that and let's stop trying to be these Dixiecrats because it just doesn't work for anybody anymore.'"

Pressing DeMint, Gregory asked if he regretted "some of the comments about abortion in this last cycle, about rape, about, again, what Colin Powell thought were veiled racist comments from the party?" The former South Carolina senator ignored the reference to "racist comments," instead responding with a rant about fetal personhood.

"The fact that we are losing over 3,000 unborn children a day is an important issue," DeMint opined. "But Republicans or conservatives should not engage in a wish list about exceptions for abortion when the other side will not even agree that we have real people, real human beings. And we need to fight the battle where it should be fought. Life is important. We know from all the new technology and improved sonograms that we do have a baby."

"Instead of just offering my opinion on some hypothetical debate about exceptions for abortions, we need to move it back and particularly work with the states that are fighting just for the personhood of the child. And if we can start there, I think America will move with us."

"Little different than the question about rhetoric and how it reaches voters," Gregory noted as he moved on to the next topic.

Because Mr. Gregory is a positive wizard at moving on.

Or we could add one more exciting installment to America's teevee's longest running mystery serial, "What in the Name of Holy Fucking Fuck Cakes is Newton Leroy Gingrich Still Doing on TeeVee?", because that is a perennial and simple enough to write, provided you give yourself enough time to refill your outraged incredulity ink-well.

We could talk about Secretary of State Clinton sawing off Senator Ron Johnson's ass and serving it up on the Spode china in front of an international teevee audience.  We could talk about why Harry Reid doesn't give a fuck about what we think.  We could talk about the eight hours of whip-smart smart, funny, rambunctiousness fare served up by Chris Hayes and Melissa Harris-Perry every weekend that comes into our homes like manna from the Better Universe, or about the Scintilla from Wasilla's sudden exile from Roger Ailes' good graces.

Hell, given what a knee-walking, self-nut-punching case of the public stupids the GOP has come down with, we could even spend a fruitful hour riffing on James Carville's maxim (via the late Steve Gilliard) about anvils and drowning:

Jim Carville once said that when your opponent was losing, toss him an anvil, yet some Democrats persist in refusing to see the basic logic in that.

But if I had a spare dollar to plunk down at the pari-mutuel betting parlor, I would wager that none of this is what will dominate the coverage of what came out of the Sunday shows because, instead if throwing the bad guys anvils, the very bright and very capable Ms. Harris-Perry tossed them a rope:





Melissa Harris-Perry:

"...U.S. military, despised as an engine of war by many progressives..."

First, let me be clear that while I choose my words carefully, I don't temper them based on how some hypothetical future reader may choose to interpret them and I would never advise anyone else to do so.

Second, I do not disagree with the characterization of the military as an "engine of war". In fact, just the opposite:  describing a  military as an engine of war is a tautology; a simple, functional definition.

As for hating war generally, you know who hates it more than almost anyone?  The people we ask to do the fighting for us:

I'm fed up to the ears with old men dreaming up wars for young men to die in. 

-- George McGovern

They wrote in the old days that it is sweet and fitting to die for one's country. But in modern war there is nothing sweet nor fitting in your dying. You will die like a dog for no good reason.   

-- Ernest Hemingway 

I know war as few other men now living know it, and nothing to me is more revolting. I have long advocated its complete abolition, as its very destructiveness on both friend and foe has rendered it useless as a method of settling international disputes.

-- General Douglas MacArthur

In fact, I don't know anyone outside of armchair heroes and Neocon Yellow Elephants who doesn't think the dogs of war invariably demand such a terrible sacrifice of blood and treasure that they should only be unleashed as the very last resort.

All that being said, over here in the Reality-Based Community we just spent the better part of a decade being bludgeoned by the massed media and political might of the 101st Chairborne douchebags -- by the people who lied us into war and then fucked that war up -- for being delusional, fifth columnist, freedom-hating Commies who hate this country and the people who volunteer to defend it.

And while it is terribly unfair to snip a 30 second byte out of a longer, nuanced argument,
it is also terribly predictable:

These people are outrage camels who can survive for months on nothing more than a sip of Kenyan Koolaid and can spin a single lie about Benghazi into enough wingnut taffeta to clothe millions.

That is all