Wednesday, August 19, 2009

A Damn Good Question

Jason Rosenhouse of EvolutionBlog poses the (damn good) question "Why Isn't Barney Frank Speaker of the House?"

I echo Rosenhouse's question. Frank would make a fantastic, common sense bull to head the Democratic party in the House of Representatives. His handling of a Hitlerizer was absolutely the correct way of handling a lunatic. And he has on other occassions called bullshit when bullshit was flying, remained rational as Bill O'Reilly spewed stupidity, and actually walked out of interviews rather than suffer fools. Not a bad approach at all IMHO.

Barney Frank would be a better leader than Nancy Pelosi.

Tuesday, August 18, 2009

Dissent or Stupidity

The right wing talking points about the jackasses disrupting town hall meetings are that (1) this is just Americans dissenting and speaking out like our forefathers did and (2) that the Democrats are calling this unpatriotic.

Both assertions are absurd. Dissent is welcome. Compare what is happening in town hall meetings to the previous administration who interviewed people and kept dissenters out of W's events. Seems to me that the Democrats are inviting discussion. What they are not inviting is the insipid, putrid, obnoxious behavior of many of these "dissenters." Since when is yelling "Heil Hitler" at a Jew patriotic dissent? And who actually thinks it is a good idea to allow weapons to be allowed into a meeting where emotions will undoubtedly run high? Republicans!

Then we get to the stupid claim that Democrats, and even President Obama, are calling dissent unpatriotic. This is a lie. Republicans seem to believe that if you tell a lie often enough, people will believe it. Unfortunately, they seem to be correct about that. Truth is, no Democrat has called voicing dissent or displeasure at town hall meetings (or anywhere else for that matter) unpatriotic. Oh, some have called screaming and shouting and lying and Hitlerizing (this is what I call non-Internet examples of Godwin's Law) unpatriotic... and they're right... err, I mean, correct!

By the way, it is quite likely that the Hitlerizing was adopted as a popular right wing tactic after that blowhard pig-boy Rush Limbaugh did it (although there are examples of it occuring before Rush, it kinda blew up after he oinked it out on the radio).