What are they, a bunch of four-year-olds?

Last month Amanda had a bang-up post on Rush Limbaugh kicking and screaming about how he won't, he won't, he WON'T eat his vegetables:

There’s something kind of awesome about listening to Rush Limbaugh kick and scream like a 4-year-old child being told to eat his spinach instead of shovel cookies into his face. This entire bit is hilarious, listening to him whine and cry about how terrible and disgusting it is to put OMG actual plant matter in your mouth. While it’s funny listening to him be a little baby about this, though, there’s more to be concerned about here. Limbaugh has taken to suggesting that the advice to eat fruits and vegetables (and to exercise) is conspiracy organized by scientists that are hiding the truth, for nefarious purposes. It’s hard not to wonder if he’s trying to kill his listeners by ranting at them about how their diet should be nothing but junk food and their physical activity levels shouldn’t exceed picking up the remote control and pressing buttons.

[snip]

My feeling about this is that one of Limbaugh’s talents is to take his own psychological issues and to project them out into political rants that rationalize himself to himself, and this tends to work because a lot of what makes him such a pathetic figure affects members of his audience. 

There's been a petulant child aspect to Republicans that goes back decades. I remember George H.W. Bush ranting about broccoli. The fears and resentments of childhood are part and parcel of right-wing talk radio. The way they talk about terrorists, the resentment of those who are prettier -- it's all part of a very primal mindset that they have that most of us outgrow by the time we reach adulthood. I don't know if people on the right really HAVE stopped developing emotionally at the age of four, or if it's just what you have to do in order to tap into that reptilian brain.

We all know that right-wing Republicans have a serious problem with anything that smacks of conservation or of trying to leave a smaller footprint. It seems to offend their sense of manhood, which demands big gas-guzzling vehicles, big consumption of big food, and leaving huge piles of garbage behind. So it's hardly surprising that as part of the Giant Republican Tantrum that's been thrown ever since January 20, 2010, one of the first things the Republican House is doing is restoring non-biodegradable styrofoam cups to the Capitol cafeteria:

In the first move toward phasing out part of Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi's (D-Calif.) "Green the Capitol" program, polystyrene cups were reintroduced this week as an option for coffee drinkers in the Capitol Carry-Out, the building's mini-cafeteria.

The basement eatery had been part of Pelosi's "Greening" program since 2007, when Democrats took control of the House. The program brought climate-friendly vending machines and compact fluorescent lightbulbs to the Capitol; caused the Capitol Power Plant to switch from burning coal to natural gas; and reduced energy and water consumption in Capitol buildings by 23 percent and 32 percent, respectively, according to an April 2010 report.

But it was the $475,000 composting program in the House-side cafeterias that stirred the most controversy. Designed to cut down on waste, the program instituted the use of biodegradable utensils and trays made of cornstarch -- an idea that may have worked better in theory than in practice, as it led to take-away boxes that leaked, spoons that melted and forks that broke when stuck into so much as a chicken tender.

Bullshit. The company I work for also uses these biodegradable utensils and trays. Yes, the forks can bend if you jab a piece of chicken too hard, but they don't break. But I've eaten chili and stew and some pretty wet foods out of the degradable cardboard containers and they do NOT leak through. Most places that have these things also offer cardboard take-out trays that protect the container even further. The larger picture, though, is that this is a relatively minor inconvenience compared to adding to the massive piles of non-degradable garbage that we produce every year.

I have the sense that this is less about outrage over bent forks and damp food containers than it is about just sticking one of these forks metaphorically into Nancy Pelosi's eye.

And somehow I'll bet that not one Republican puts so much as a pea into those containers -- because Rush Limbaugh thinks vegetables are for sissies.

Wonkette puts it all into perspective:

“Foamed polystyrene” is a miraculous invention that manages to be completely awful through every step of its near-eternal “life cycle” — it is manufactured with petroleum that must be imported from Middle East dictatorships, toxic “styrene oligomers” migrate into the food it holds, it’s highly flammable and produces black poisonous smoke, and most of the 25 billion polystyrene cups tossed every year will take more than half a millennium to degrade. And that’s why the Republican-led House of Representatives made it an immediate priority to cancel the House cafeteria’s four years of biodegradable food and beverage packaging. It’s part of the GOP leadership’s “return to the mid-1990s” program. Nancy Pelosi sure was a yucky woman trying to do some sane environmentally-minded things, wasn’t she? Thank the American Jesus that woman is no longer in charge of anything.

Go read the whole rant.

Hey Chris Christie -- you fucked up! Admit it!

As my state of residence reels from the draconian cuts ordered by our Bully-in-Chief, Chris Christie, it seems that a fuckup on the part of the office of former GOP Wonderboy Bret Schundler has cost us $400 million in education funding:

After making a high-profile bid for hundreds of millions of dollars in federal education reform money, New Jersey fell three points short of receiving "Race to the Top" funding, in part because of an error by the Christie administration in the state’s application, records obtained by The Star-Ledger show.

One five-point question on the application asked for budget information comparing the 2008 and 2009 school years. However, the state submitted information comparing the current year to 2011.

That mistake cost the state 4.8 points. The state lost points in other areas as well, the records show.

In the end, New Jersey received 437.8 out of a possible 500 points, placing it 11th in the competition, just behind Ohio, which received $400 million and was the last state to receive funding. The winners of the $4.35 billion competition were announced today in Washington, D.C.

"New Jersey did not supply the 2008-2009 data as required and therefore forfeits the points," said the report from one of the federal reviewers scoring the competition.

But is either Chris Christie or Bret Schundler accepting responsibility for the error? Are they acknowledging that "The Buck Stops Here"? Hardly. In true Republican fashion, it's not the fault of those who submitted the application. No, it's Barack Obama's fault:

Gov. Chris Christie this morning acknowledged the state made a clerical error that blew its chance at winning $400 million in federal money for schools, but he blamed Obama administration bureaucrats for not giving New Jersey a chance to correct the mistake.

“This is the stuff, candidly, that drives people crazy about government and crazy about Washington,” Christie said at a news conference after an unrelated bill signing.

Christie slapped two thick three-ringed binders on the podium containing more than 1,000 pages of the state's “Race to the Top” application and appendices, noting that just one piece of paper contained the error.

“The first part of it is the mistake of putting the wrong piece of paper in," Christie said. "It drives people crazy and, believe me, I’m not thrilled about it. But the second part is, does anybody in Washington, D.C. have a lick of common sense? Pick up the phone and ask us for the number.”

[snip]

“That’s the stuff the Obama administration should answer for. Are you guys just down there checking boxes like mindless drones, or are you thinking?” said Christie. “When the president comes back to New Jersey, he’s going to have to explain to the people of the state of New Jersey why he’s depriving them of $400 million that this application earned.”

Obviously Chris Christie has never had to fill out a job application, or a grant application, or any other paperwork that gets fed into a giant maw of bureaucracy. When dealing with a large number of submissions, both government agencies AND corporations require absolute adherence to instructions. You don't get a pass because the dog peed on your application, or you got a flat tire, or any other lameass excuse. Do clerical mistakes help organizations evaluating funding applications of ANY kind weed out for elimination those that have them? Absolutely. But this is nothing new, and it's no Great Conspiracy by Barack Obama to deprive New Jersey of much-needed funding. It's just how these things work. At one point years ago I helped pack copies of a federal grant application into a cardboard box for shipping, knowing full well that for a variety of reasons having to do with the content, preparation, and finishing of the application, we were not going to get the grant. I turned out to be right, and I'm sure that the problems I saw with it had at least something to do with it.

The Republican Party likes to paint itself as the party of grownups, but let a Republican fuck up, and it's always point-the-finger-elsewhere time. Chris Christie's Education Department fucked up. It may have been an honest mistake. But it's a mistake just the same, and a costly one. An adult would stand up before the citizenry of his state and acknowledge that. But Chris Christie is not an adult. He is a schoolyard bully who just got tripped up by the dweeby kid whose lunch money he steals every day. And he doesn't like it one bit.

Fortunately, a press that has been in love with him since his inauguration isn't buying it.

Meanwhile, a state Senate that's been bullied around by this pantload since the beginning of the year wants to know what happened, whether this fuckup was somehow deliberate -- a way to keep money from flowing into New Jersey's education coffers so that Christie could continue his full-scale assault on the teachers' union:

Questions have been piling up all day, not the least of which is this: Is this incompetence on the part of Education Commissioner Bret Schundler's office - either by an individual or individuals, or as a culture of the way his office works? Or, did Governor Christie's administration treat this program and its opportunities as a political football, punting because they didn't get everything they wanted, throwing the game? Did they give this effort their best, or send in people with poor qualifications in leading public schooling?

Date and time has not yet been set but the hearing will be via the Assembly Appropriations Committee. Christie administration officials who will be called to appear before the panel include Education Commissioner Bret Schundler.

This isn't just conspiracy theorizing. Apparently there was an earlier draft, that Bret Schundler had in his possession, that had the correct information. So the question of whether the Christie Administration deliberately sabotaged the state's chance of obtaining funding that would water down his fatwa against the NJEA is a valid one.

Confederacy of Dunces, continued

You know, if these Republicans hate government so much, why do they accept a government paycheck? And government health insurance. And a government guaranteed pension.

Hmmmmmmmmm??

Here is what passes for Republican governance in response to the passage of health care reform:

Vitter amendment: Prohibiting use of funds to fund the Associate of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN). (#3554)

Someone ought to tell Vitter that ACORN is closing up shop.

Grassley amendment: To make sure the President, Cabinet Members, all White House Senior staff and Congressional Committee and Leadership Staff are purchasing health insurance through the health insurance exchanges established by the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. (#3564)

Mr. Grassley, you too.

Inhofe amendment: To exclude devices for persons with disabilities from the medical device tax. (#3565)

Grassley amendment: To amend title XVIII of the Social Security Act to ensure Medicare beneficiary access to physicians, eliminate sweetheart deals for frontier States, and ensure equitable reimbursement under the Medicare program for all rural states. (#3569)

Et tu, Mr. Nelson?

McCain Amendment: To eliminate the sweetheart deals for Tennessee, Hawaii, Louisiana, Montana, Connecticut, and frontier States. (#3570)

And here I thought the frontier represented "the real America."

Oh, and let's not forget this greatest hit from Tom "Lesbians Are Overruning the School Bathrooms in Oklahoma" Coburn:

1. No Erectile Dysfunction Drugs To Sex Offenders – This amendment would enact recommendations from the Government Accountability Office to stop fraudulent payments for prescription drugs prescribed by dead providers or to dead patients. This amendment also prohibits coverage of Viagra and other ED medications to convicted child molesters, rapists, and sex offenders, and prohibits coverage of abortion drugs. (Note: the creation of exchanges could allow sex offenders to receive taxpayer-funded Viagra and other ED drugs unless Congress expressly prohibits this action)

I would not want to understand the minds of these people. There isn't enough Mop 'n' Glo in the world to clean up the filth off the floors of their brains.

This is the kind of petty bullshit that our tax dollars are paying these Republicans for. You know what they are? They sure as hell aren't leaders, or statesmen.

What they are is....

There is no more denying that the Republican Party is the Party of Hate

It's the party of hate, the party of bigots, the party of fear and loathing. As the dust settles from the health care marathon, what is revealed is the ugly gargoyles that constitute not just the fringe nutballs of the teabag movement, but the mainstream Republican Party that spouts the vitriol of the reptilian brain in the halls of Congress.

This kind of head has been around for as long as I've been alive. It was there at Bowcraft, an amusement park in Scotch Plains, NJ that when I was a kid was just a miniature golf course and archery center -- and John Birch Society bookstore. It was there in 1968 when Martin Luther King, Jr. was murdered. It was there when Carroll O'Connor as Archie Bunker played racism for laughs. It was there in the late sixties and early 1970's when the right wing slapped "America: Love it or Leave It" bumper stickers on their cars -- stickers that translated really meant "Nixon: He's the President so Shut the Fuck Up." It was there at Kent State in 1970 when four kids on their way to class were shot dead by National Guardsmen at the behest of said Nixon for the crime of being young at a school where protests were going on. It was there when Ronald Reagan, the saint of the Republican Party, announced his candidacy for president in the very town where civil rights workers James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner were murdered and when he twisted a minor case of a wealthy woman who defrauded the welfare system into an image of black poverty.

I am 55 years old, and for my entire life, the Republicans have stood for nothing but fear and loathing and hate. They give lip service to "free markets", but they only care about how such markets benefit the wealthiest among them. What the understand is fear -- raw, pee-in-your-pants, heart-palpitation terror. The the terror of death that drives people to believe in a giant alpha male in the sky. The terror of losing what one has to people who look different. The terror of the unknown. The 9/11 attacks handed the Republicans a giant gift-wrapped box o'fear that they've been tapping ever since, and the bellowing of John Boehner the other night was just a manifestation of just what mean, small, frightened people they are.

Bob Herbert pulls aside the curtain today and shows us, as if we didn't know already, who these people are:

At some point, we have to decide as a country that we just can’t have this: We can’t allow ourselves to remain silent as foaming-at-the-mouth protesters scream the vilest of epithets at members of Congress — epithets that The Times will not allow me to repeat here.

It is 2010, which means it is way past time for decent Americans to rise up against this kind of garbage, to fight it aggressively wherever it appears. And it is time for every American of good will to hold the Republican Party accountable for its role in tolerating, shielding and encouraging foul, mean-spirited and bigoted behavior in its ranks and among its strongest supporters.

For decades the G.O.P. has been the party of fear, ignorance and divisiveness. All you have to do is look around to see what it has done to the country. The greatest economic inequality since the Gilded Age was followed by a near-total collapse of the overall economy. As a country, we have a monumental mess on our hands and still the Republicans have nothing to offer in the way of a remedy except more tax cuts for the rich.

This is the party of trickle down and weapons of mass destruction, the party of birthers and death-panel lunatics. This is the party that genuflects at the altar of right-wing talk radio, with its insane, nauseating, nonstop commitment to hatred and bigotry.

Glenn Beck of Fox News has called President Obama a “racist” and asserted that he “has exposed himself as a guy, over and over and over again, who has a deep-seated hatred for white people or the white culture.”

Mike Huckabee, a former Republican presidential candidate, has said of Mr. Obama’s economic policies: “Lenin and Stalin would love this stuff.”

The G.O.P. poisons the political atmosphere and then has the gall to complain about an absence of bipartisanship.

The toxic clouds that are the inevitable result of the fear and the bitter conflicts so relentlessly stoked by the Republican Party — think blacks against whites, gays versus straights, and a whole range of folks against immigrants — tend to obscure the tremendous damage that the party’s policies have inflicted on the country. If people are arguing over immigrants or abortion or whether gays should be allowed to marry, they’re not calling the G.O.P. to account for (to take just one example) the horribly destructive policy of cutting taxes while the nation was fighting two wars.

If you’re all fired up about Republican-inspired tales of Democrats planning to send grandma to some death chamber, you’ll never get to the G.O.P.’s war against the right of ordinary workers to organize and negotiate in their own best interests — a war that has diminished living standards for working people for decades.

A party that promotes ignorance (“Just say no to global warming”) and provides a safe house for bigotry cannot serve the best interests of our country.

Because if anyone believes that this country is well-served by catering to people who scream racial epithets at a hero of the Civil Rights movement and anti-gay slurs at a Congressman who has absolutely no interest in touching their little pee-pees, then it's time to stop praising this country. Because like Claudius' mother, we no longer live in a country, we live in a pack of mad dogs.

Chief WATB of the Supreme Court

The Holocaust dead, the people of Haiti, and the unemployed of America have nothing on poor, put-upon John Roberts, a.k.a. Percy Dovetonsils, who had to endure the tortures of the damned at the hands of that upstart in the White House last month:

U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts said Tuesday the scene at President Obama's State of the Union address was "very troubling" and the annual speech has "degenerated to a political pep rally."

Obama chided the court, with the justices seated before him in their black robes, for its decision on a campaign finance case.

Responding to a University of Alabama law student's question, Roberts said anyone was free to criticize the court, and some have an obligation to do so because of their positions.

"So I have no problems with that," he said. "On the other hand, there is the issue of the setting, the circumstances and the decorum.

"The image of having the members of one branch of government standing up, literally surrounding the Supreme Court, cheering and hollering while the court — according the requirements of protocol — has to sit there expressionless, I think is very troubling."

Breaking from tradition, Obama criticized the court's decision that allows corporations and unions to freely spend money to run political ads for or against specific candidates.

"With all due deference to the separation of powers the Supreme Court reversed a century of law to open the floodgates for special interests — including foreign corporations — to spend without limit in our elections," Obama said in January.

Justice Samuel Alito was the only justice to respond at the time, shaking his head and mouthing the words "not true" as Obama continued.

Roberts told the students he wonders whether justices should attend the speeches.

"I'm not sure why we're there," said Roberts, a Republican nominee who joined the court in 2005.

Even the hacktacular Nina Totenberg, who has been known to often carry water for the wingnuttiest of the wingnuts, said on NPR tonight that Roberts is full of shit, citing Teddy Roosevelt and Saint Ronnie himself, both of whom chastised the Supreme Court at State of the Union addresses.

Jonathan Weiler thinks Roberts' snit fit says something about his relationship to and views on authoritarianism, while DougJ pretty much expresses my sentiment about this whiny, elitist, corrupt sack of shit.

Remember that rumor a few weeks ago about John Roberts quitting? Maybe he should. Heat, kitchen, etc.

Another Thought for the Day

If I were a space traveler from another galaxy, and my communications device picked up the health care debate to debate on CSPAN-2, I would think that the totality of health care in the U.S. was abortions -- and nothing else.

Alan Grayson apologizes....

...just not to the Republicans:

I simply LURVE this guy. We need more Democrats like this. You know what to do.