Cuppacafe

These days from watching the news, it seems to me that if the perfect Health Care plan were proposed (and everyone agreed that it was perfect and would solve all the problems inherent in whatever we had), or a tax and budget plan, or a clean air, or a whatever, and it was proposed by a Democrat, the Republicans would unilaterally denounce it.

Needless to say, I likewise feel that if the same were true, only the Republicans proposed it the Democrats would denounce it.

This blogger's post convinces me that yep, I'm not far off the mark.

Dear Conservative Americans,

The years have not been kind to you. I grew up in a profoundly Republican home, so I can remember when you wore a very different face than the one we see now. You've lost me and you've lost most of America. Because I believe having responsible choices is important to democracy, I'd like to give you some advice and an invitation.

First, the invitation: Come back to us.

Now the advice. You're going to have to come up with a platform that isn't built on a foundation of cowardice: fear of people with colors, religions, cultures and sex lives that differ from your own; fear of reform in banking, health care, energy; fantasy fears of America being transformed into an Islamic nation, into social/commun/fasc-ism, into a disarmed populace put in internment camps; and more. But you have work to do even before you take on that task.

Your party -- the GOP -- and the conservative end of the American political spectrum has become irrepsonsible and irrational. Worse, it's tolerating, promoting and celebrating prejudice and hatred. Let me provide some expamples -- by no means an exhaustive list -- of where the Right as gotten itself stuck in a swamp of hypocrisy, hyperbole, historical inaccuracy and hatred.

If you're going to regain your stature as a party of rational, responsible people, you'll have to start by draining this swamp:

The guy then goes on (at great length), to point out what hypocritical asshats the Republican Party is. I strongly suggest you read it. I did, and glad I am no longer a member of that party.

The Perfessor

Well, we all know what a media whore that Sarah Palin is, and while none of us like negative publicity, she is especially sensitive to it (especially if she was the one who caused the bad press). Well, you have to know that these days she is apparently in something of a rage because there’s plenty of bad press swirling around her in the news these days.

Not is there the whole reading off her hand thing, and the not Gibbs-smacking Rush Limbaugh over his use of the "R" word. Well on Sunday it seems as if she wants the President to invade Iran.

“Say he decided to declare war on Iran or decided really to come out and do whatever he could to support Israel, which I would like him to do,” Palin told Fox News’ Chris Wallace Sunday. “That changes the dynamics in what we can assume is going to happen between now and three years.”

Yeah, I’m so totally gonna vote for this one.

Not!

Oh yeah, and then there is also this.

Arianna appeared on "Countdown with Keith Olbermann" Friday and explained that Sarah Palin's refusal to call out Rush Limbaugh for his use of the word "retard" proves that she is afraid that offending the radio host and arbiter of the conservative movement could hurt her image.

Earlier this week, Palin called for Rahm Emanuel to be fired after he used the same word.

Arianna argued that Palin's decision to go after Emanuel, but not Limbaugh is all part of Palin's "cost-benefit analysis" operating procedure:

Link to Huffington Post video

The Perfessor

Probably 10 or 15 years ago my good friend John Carbonaro told me to watch this TV political Pundit named Rush Limbaugh, as he was very good. I had never heard heard of Limbaugh, so I watched his show. The one I watched had Limbaugh railing against Jimmy Carter for the rise of the Ayatollah in Iran.

Now I always liked John, but I clearly remember cocking my head to one side and saying to myself that was an interesting comment, because I knew, well, hardly anything about Mid-East politics, but I did know that the Ayatollah came into power because US Republican leadership kept a dictatorial Shah in power for like 50 years oppressing his people so that the US could get preferential treatment from Iran in regards to Oil.

The religious rise of the Ayatollah was a backlash to the Shah, who (as I said) was kept in power by the right-wing conservative branch of US political machine. It was just Jimmy Carter’s bad luck that it happened on his watch.

Needless to say, this was the only time I ever watched Limbaugh, because if I knew that he was full of it over this bit of intel, then he couldn’t be someone that I was interested in listening to (you simply can’t isolate a snippet in time and view it out of historical context to get any proper analysis out of it).

Anyway, you can imagine my growing disdain with the right that it apparently has pinned it’s future on the ramblings of this drug-addled fool. Thus you can imagine how entertained I was to learn the following:

On MSNBC’s Morning Joe today, host and Republican Joe Scarborough drilled Rush Limbaugh for cheering Chicago’s failed 2016 Olympic bid. Scarborough said, “I will tell you middle Americans that swing elections see that and go oh my God Republicans have gone off the deep end.”

Yep, the right has begun to feed on itself.

The Perfessor

*At least that is what Al Franken told me.