RIGHT-WING RANTS AGAINST SOTOMAYOR; STORMY GETS SERIOUS

Earlier this week, President Obama was still addressing the media and others with Judge Sonia Sotomayor at his side. Before the two could even walk off stage, the right wing lunatics were already screaming about her being nominated to the U.S. Supreme Court.

You'd have to stay reading this until the Fourth of July if I were to detail every crackpot utterance made by these people over the past few days. As in all cases like this, there are some which are so outrageous that they deserve repeating. Doing so convinces anyone with a clear head and a modicum of sensibility that the Republicans, namely the crazies who currently monopolize the party, are on a fast track to third party status. The Sotomayor matter is just another pathetic situation in which the right wingers find themselves. The vast majority of Americans have already pinned the economic crisis squarely on their over-inflated chests and letting Cheney, Limbaugh and Gingrich roll out into the spotlight has been nothing short of a disaster. Could we be witnessing the very early phases of persons like Colin Powell starting to wrestle back control of the party? Or will he and other moderate Republicans jump ship and become Democrats or, perhaps, sign up with the Independence Party so that in another decade that becomes the second major party in America.

Back to Sotomayor. Where to begin on all of the stupid comments made about her and the nomination is not easy. Just when we think we heard the dumbest (and most entertaining) comment possible, another one comes right behind it. And it's only three days since she was nominated!

OK, here goes:

Up until a couple of days ago, I never heard of Mark Krikorian who works for the right-wing Center for Immigration Studies. In a blog a couple of days ago, Krikorian bitched about the “unnatural pronunciation” of Sotomayor’s name. He said "deferring to people’s own pronunciation of their names should obviously be our first inclination, but there ought to be limits. Putting the emphasis on the final syllable of Sotomayor is unnatural in English."

As I said, I didn't know who Krikorian was. Now I do, thanks to his blatant ignorance.

Then there is Karl Rove, who said in referring to Sotomayor’s earning her undergraduate degree from Princeton and her J.D from the Yale Law School that he wasn't that impressed because "I know some rather dumb people who went to Ivy League schools." No shit, Sherlock! You must be referring to the dumb-ass you worked for when he was Governor of Texas and then the President of the United States!!

Speaking of the Ivies, several conservatives tied her attending Princeton and Yale to getting an education at two of the citadels of liberalism. Hmm, that's interesting. There's this guy named Samuel Alito (I think he presently sits on the Supreme Court and is viewed as a conservative jurist) and if I remember correctly, he is an alum of Princeton and Yale Law School. Oh well, never let those things get in the way of good ol' mud slinging.

Then there is our old, dumb-as-a-bag-of-hair friend, Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Oklahoma.) Just to make certain he wasn't left out when it came to idiotic Republican reactions to the nomination, he sent out a statement indicating he feared that Judge Sotomayor would be unable to prove her legal decisions have not been based upon her race and gender. Inhofe said the Senate will "weigh her qualifications and character as well as her ability to rule fairly without undo influence from her own race or gender."

Let's return to Justice Alito. Back in 2006 during his confirmation hearing he remarked, "Because when a case comes before me involving, let's say, someone who is an immigrant -- and we get an awful lot of immigration cases and naturalization cases -- I can't help but think of my own ancestors, because it wasn't that long ago when they were in that position.

"When I get a case about discrimination, I have to think about people in my own family who suffered discrimination because of their ethnic background or because of religion or because of gender. And I do take that into account."

OK, enough of that. If you can't hang her on where she went to school and on her referencing of her ethnic makeup and that' she's a woman, how about that she is a racist.

Who better to make that charge than former U. S. Congressman Tom Tancredo, a Republican from Colorado. This schmuck made a career whining about immigration (by Hispanics, not Europeans or people fleeing the Muslim Mideast.) It turns out Sotomayor is a member of the National Council of La Raza, a l national organization that is "the largest national Hispanic civil rights and advocacy organization in the United States." Appearing on CNN to lambaste Sotomayor for belonging to a group whose name would translate as "The Race," Tancredo made the false claim that La Raza has the motto, "All for the race, nothing for the rest," and bashed it as being "a Latino KKK without the hoods or the nooses."

To add to the piling on, Americans for Legal Immigration PAC (ALIPAC) accused her of belonging to "a racist organization called 'The Race.'" Said ALIPAC president William Gheen: "The US Supreme Court is no place for brown or Hispanic supremacists like Sonia Sotomayor."

Damn right! Only white, male supremacists can sit on our Supreme Court!

All this reminds me of something Harry Truman once said:

"I remember when I first came to Washington. For the first six months you wonder how the hell you ever got here. For the next six months you wonder how the hell the rest of them ever got here."

Enough of all this nastiness. Let's turn to something more serene, gentle and pure....like Stormy Daniels' candidacy for the U.S. Senate from Louisiana. A week ago Thursday, she announced the formation of an exploratory committee to look into the possibility of her running against
"Diaper Dave" Vitter, the hooker-loving incumbent.

An exploratory committee is always a sign someone is serious. Heretofore, Stormy, when she wasn't performing exotic dances at some of the more popular clubs in Louisiana, was simply on "a listening tour." The step from a listening tour to an exploratory committee means things could get really interesting.

I hope by next week to have more details to post. In fact, I am going to push for some direct quotes from Stormy herself. After all, I am the self-appointed chair of Minnesotans for Stormy.

MORE DONOHUE CRITICISM

I thought I took it to Bill Donohue pretty good in my latest post when I blasted his response to last week's report released by the Irish Commission investigating decades of abuse by Catholic priests, nuns, monks and lay people against children. Well I have to take a second place to Michael Rosch. To learn more, visit www.buzzflash.com and then scroll down and look on the left side for Report: Catholic Leaders in Ireland Downplaying Abuse Report 5/26.

Well worth the read

ANTI SCIENCE REPUBLICANS

The earth is flat. That's the conclusion that needs to be reached if you listen to enough of the anti-science Republicans in the U.S. Congress.

The latest hobbyhorse they seem to be riding is CO2, you know, carbon dioxide. Because CO2 is a routine, day-to-day element in the environment, they defend it. They do so, however, because CO2's overabundance resulting from man-made activities, is a major factor in creating the greenhouse effect, which according to the vast majority of us who now believe the earth circles the sun and not the other way around, is resulting in global warming.

The Grand Obstructionist Party is filled with knuckleheads who dispel global warming for no other reason than it would require them take a stand not in the best economic interests of their big capitalist supporters.

Of the real crackpots sitting on the right side of the aisle in both houses, three stand out for their continuing display of brainless blathering...Jim Inhofe, Joe Barton and, of course, Michele Bachmann.

A closer look at all three is both comical and frightening.

Let's start with Inhofe. The tonnage of this man's ignorance is astounding. A very good source of mine who is an Oklahoman and, therefore, a constituent by default of the senior U.S. Senator from the Sooner State. Anyway, he tells the story of Inhofe, who has a private pilot's license, getting ready to take off a few years ago in a twin engine prop plane to head to D.C. Just prior to takeoff, it was pointed out to the senator, that one of his engine gauges registered no oil pressure. Let me repeat that...no oil pressure!! In a blatant act of complete irresponsibility, Inhofe announced he wasn't concerned, was in a hurry and would take care of it once in Washington.

Somehow he made it which, depending upon your perspective, may or may not be a good thing.

Big Jim has taken a major stand against global warming or, more precisely, its causes. One thing for sure, he's convinced it is not man-made.

Inhofe once claimed Global Warming is "the second-largest hoax ever played on the American people, after the separation of church and state"

He has claimed that the threat of global warming was exaggerated by "the media, Hollywood elites and pop culture" Boy, those poor folks in Hollywood. Bill Donohue claims they like anal sex and sodomy with their mothers. I can't understand how they can possible produce and release a single film, what with all that ass fucking and motherfucking going on while at the same time haranguing against global warming. I know I simply couldn't constantly fit that into an average day.

Oh, yes, only Texas senator John Coryn received more campaign donations from the oil and gas industry than Inhofe in the 2002 election cycle. The contributions Inhofe has received from the energy and natural resource sector since taking office have exceeded one million dollars.
Now shift from the Senate to the House of Representatives and begin with Texas Congressman Joe Barton. Barton, you may recall, claimed a few weeks back that college football's Bowl Championship Series, which is currently used to determine the annual national championship, is "communism." In an email at the time to many of you, I said I went through Marx's Das Kapital and, indeed, found that Marx (along with the assistance of Engels) wrote extensively back in the middle of the Nineteenth Century about the need for an uprising in college football to overthrow the BCS and replace it with a much more proletariat-friendly playoff system.

Last week, Barton (who looks like he could have fathered the retarded banjo playing hillbilly kid in "Deliverance") was on C-Span. According to the Huffington Post and the replay from C-Span, Barton said about CO2, " I'm creating it as I talk to you. It's in your Coca-Cola, your Dr. Pepper and your Perrier water. It's necessary for human life. It's odorless, colorless, tasteless, doesn't cause cancer, doesn't cause asthma. There's nobody that's ever been admitted to a hospital because of CO2 poisoning."

He was condemned later that day in the Economist for his stance, which profiled him in its "Profiles In Stupidity" column:

"We've chronicled Mr. Barton's stupidity (there really is no other word for it) before. Anyone looking for exhibit A in what's wrong with the Republican Party should start with the good congressman...

"Please don't get me wrong, it's not simply that Mr. Barton is a climate-change skeptic. There are plenty of those and some make decent arguments against moving ahead with measures to control emissions. The problem with Mr. Barton is that he is wholly uninterested in the science and statistics of the global warming debate. He is about as curious as a dead cat, as is his colleague in the Senate, James Inhofe."

Then there is Michele Bachmann who is so goddamn stupid on so many fronts it is a challenge to know where to begin. But since we are focusing on global warming, let's stick to her comments (well, "comments" is being kind) on CO2.

Last month, Brainless Bachmann took the floor one evening (she does that a lot, almost always when there are only less than 10 other members present) and said, "Carbon dioxide, Mister Speaker, is a natural byproduct of nature. Carbon dioxide is natural. It occurs in Earth. It is a part of the regular life cycle of Earth. In fact, life on planet Earth can’t even exist without carbon dioxide. So necessary is it to human life, to animal life, to plant life, to the oceans, to the vegetation that’s on the Earth, to the, to the fowl that — that flies in the air, we need to have carbon dioxide as part of the fundamental life cycle of Earth."

Talk about three ignoramuses that need to "suck the pipe." Now, that would be a good use of gas.