My Unsolicited Opinion on the "Mosque" at "Ground Zero."

Shame on us for making Olympus Mons out of a grain of sugar. This is a country founded on the notion that all present are free to worship as they choose. Debating the legitimacy of building an interfaith center -- not a Mosque, mind you -- a few blocks away from the latest in a long, long, loooong line of apparently unnoticed reminders of what happens when assholes hijack the core principles of any belief system is pure folly.

It's also unconstitutional. There are two synagogues and three churches within the same radius. Also, there has been an actual mosque four blocks away from the site since before the World Trade Centers were even built. The largest private landowner in the City of New York is the Catholic Church, for, if you'll permit a small pun, Christ's sake.

This is a non-issue being exploited by hack politicians, many of whom have never set foot in our city, for cheap political gain in an election year. And that's fine. After all, the Republicans have a shot at taking back the House and you can set your watch by how politicians of all stripes will prey upon our base inclinations simply to win an election.

My point is this: Those indignantly humping the flag over the renovation of a vacant Burlington Coat Factory building are the same people who ritualistically demonize this city's allegedly godless, loony, elitist liberal way of going about things. Basically, we're a convenient talking point.

An argument against this project going forward lacks any legal, moral, or ethical legitimacy. So please don't tell us we should in any way restrict the freedom to worship afforded all of us by that document you so very apparently revere, but don't seem to have read, the Constitution of The United States of America.

Also, you don't live here. I do. Fuck off.

When in doubt, quit.

There's been a well worn pattern for legislation over the past few years. Democrats attempt to address a pressing issue. Republicans, seeing that the successful addressing of said issue could make Democrats popular, throw all their weight into opposing it and filibustering it. In the mad dash to get 60 votes to overcome a filibuster, Democrats water the bill down to the point where all neutral observers are angered and disappointed. Bill that addresses tragically little of the original idea they meant to fix eventually passes to overblown fanfare. Wash, rinse, repeat.

Anyone want to guess how that pattern worked out for climate change legislation and energy policy? Surprise!!!! They just ended up quitting.

Light it on fire, and let its carbon pollution soar into the sky unrestricted: climate change legislation is dead.

At a press conference this afternoon, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, and Sen. John Kerry (D-MA), the Democrats' top climate and energy negotiator, acknowledged officially, and with obvious disappointment, that they lack the votes to pass legislation limiting carbon pollution, and that forthcoming energy legislation will be extremely narrow, in a bid to overcome a GOP filibuster.
...
In the meantime, Reid said, the Senate will proceed imminently with a much smaller bill that will tackle four goals:

It will deal with BP and oil spill liability, invest in the manufacturing of natural gas vehicles, create a jobs program -- formerly called Cash for Caulkers, now called Home Star -- aimed at increasing home efficiency, and put money back in the Land and Water Conservation Fund.

Well done! Round of applause. I'm sure this problem will fix itself. Mother Earth will look at this inaction and no longer wait for the government to fix things. She'll decide to pull herself up by her own bootstraps and become self-reliant. Plus, who needs a new energy policy? We're fine right now depending on the most volatile region in the world to supply us with underground dinosaur blood.

Is their a comic addendum that sounds tin eared in its naivete?

"President Obama called me before this meeting and said, point blank, he is committed to working in these next days at a more intensive pace...to help bring together the ability to find 60 votes for that comprehensive legislation," Kerry said.

Yeah, I'm sure Republicans will be real eager to jump on board with that one. I mean sure, they wanted no part of this bill now, but a week or two from now, closer to the elections, is when they'll all stop making political hay out of this, get serious, start believing science and scientists, and get serious about governing.

Hmm, I wonder if there's a recent scientific report with charts that comically underlines the depth of failure and inaction by our elected betters?

According to NASA, 2010 is on course to be the planet’s hottest year since records started in 1880. The current top 10, in descending order, are: 2005, 2007, 2009, 1998, 2002, 2003, 2006, 2004, 2001 and 2008.

Hot is the new normal.

Hah! It's funny because we'll all be dead of heat stroke soon. Bang up job, Senate!

Stay classy, Eric and the rest of the GOP

As Sean referenced in his post yesterday, the dead-enders of the teabagging spectrum of American politics are not taking the prospect of cheaper, more accessible health care well. In no small part egged on by the litany of right wing commentators and politicians calling majority enacting of broadly popular legislation tyranny, the end of civilization, the end of America, Armageddon, and calling for revolution or at least an armed insurrection, there has been an uptick in violence towards Democratic lawmakers who voted for the bill. Everything from bricks through windows, to phoned in death threats, to faxing nooses to lawmakers, to cutting the gas lines of the brother of Congressman Perriello, to mailing white powder to Anthony Weiner, it's really a cavalcade of dangerous low level right wing terrorism by petulant children. Catalog the ongoing stupidity at TPM.

And so the response from Democrats has been to condemn the attacks and ask that Republicans maybe tone down the insanity juuust a few notches, maybe stop the calls for a new American revolution, and downgrade the danger to society from complete apocalypse to minor Armageddon. So in turn John Boenher went out and released a statement affirming that bad things were bad and good things were good, but wanted you to understand that he knew bad things were bad. Thus the response from Democrats was "Uhhh... Ok" and they knew in their hearts that this was as much of an apology as they were going to get.

But apparently some memo has been going around the halls of Congress and the GOP has decided that they aren't coming across as big enough assholes during this run of violence, so Eric Cantor immediately followed up Boehner's vague speech with one placing the blame on where it truly lied: with Democrats.

"I've never blamed anyone in this body for that. Period. Any suggestion that a leader in this body that would incite threats or acts against other members is akin to saying that I would endanger myself, my wife or my children."

Cantor said a bullet was shot through the window of his Richmond, Va., campaign office this week, and that he's gotten threatening emails.
...
"It is reckless to use these incidents as media vehicles for political gain," he said. He called out DCCC Chair Chris Van Hollen and DNC Chair Tim Kaine by name as those who are "dangerously fanning the flames by suggesting that these incidents be used as a political weapon."

"To use such threats against members of congress is not a partisan issue," he said. "By ratcheting up the rhetoric some will only inflame these situations to dangerous levels."

There's video, so you can see that he actually said that with a straight face. Yes, it is not the people who are calling for revolution and heralding the end of all things that are to blame for violence, it's people who point out that the violence is politically motivated after the fact that are clearly to blame. And he's been subject to violence too! Not that he would ever stoop to politicizing it by politicizing it in a political speech about politicizing violence. Sure, police called bullshit on his claims and said that his "bullet attack" was just random and the result of a bullet, fired into the air, randomly coming down and striking his office. Don't you see how that's worse? Gravity is attacking Eric Cantor!

Soon, other Republicans were taking Cantor's ideas to heart and were out in full force blaming Democrats for this. Reps Price and Bachmann hit the airwaves to decry Democratic politicization of right wing fueled attacks. In the case of Tom Perriello, where a Tea Party activist deliberately posted up the address of Perriello's brother and told fellow teabaggers to "drop by", thinking it was Rep Perriello's house, and then, magically, a gas line got cut, the NRCC not only downplayed the violence but excused it and claimed that the real victims were those in Periello's district who would be harmed by cheaper health care. It should be noted that Periello's brother has a wife and 4 small children.

Way to keep it classy, GOP. I thought there wasn't a lower place you could go, but the inciting of violence and then tacitly endorsing it and excusing it when it happens, only stopping to blame victims, was something I didn't see coming. It was my mistake for thinking some shred of human decency existed when things like gas lines being cut, children being endangers, and anthrax threats were being made and you'd have some sort of discernibly human reaction. Guess not. Whatever, keep calling for revolution, uprisings, and coded statements about "showing lawmakers the will of the people... wink wink", I'm sure it has no connection to any of these attacks. Keep it classy. Maybe there will be an actual death soon for you to blame on the victim.

Lazy poors

Jim Bunning is a crotchety old man. Really crotchety. He might be all crotch. He of course is the man singlehandedly holding up an uncontroversial vote on a bundle of several measures in the Senate. Because he's refusing to consent to a unanimous consent and voice vote and has forced a cloture vote, several days will have to pass before a vote can be taken and in that time several things will expire: unemployment insurance benefits and COBRA health care for laid off workers, highway funds that resulted in the unpaid furloughing of thousands of employees, a Medicare reimbursement rate that will result in a 21% cut for doctors, and provision that allows people to watch local TV on satellites. That last one isn't that important.

It's a small bill, around $10 billion, and it's passage was so obvious and necessary that even Senate GOP leaders were going to let it pass on a voice vote. Bunning had other ideas, gummed up the works, all these programs expired, and his response to the overwhelming negative reaction and demonization of his bullshit has been, alternately, to whine about how he had to miss a basketball game in order to fuck people over who lost their jobs, yell out "tough shit", and flip off reporters. Because he's an adult.

But because he's a Republican and Republicans can only be criticized for being too liberal and not too conservative, GOP Senators can't quite bring themselves to criticize this politically disastrous and unpopular move. John Kyl is one of those people.

Sen. Jon Kyl of Arizona, the Republican whip, argued that unemployment benefits dissuade people from job-hunting "because people are being paid even though they're not working."

Unemployment insurance "doesn't create new jobs. In fact, if anything, continuing to pay people unemployment compensation is a disincentive for them to seek new work," Kyl said during debate over whether unemployment insurance and other benefits that expired amid GOP objections Sunday should be extended.

Yes, life is grand on unemployment. Who wouldn't want to live on the king's ransom that is a sub-poverty level stipend that you will invariably use to buy cheap government COBRA health insurance to cover the health insurance you just lost. Or would, if Bunning didn't also block that. Plus in this economy, we all know the reason unemployment is at 10% is because people just don't want to take jobs. "Life's too good on unemployment," they say, "I'll just wait until something catches my eye." It's not so much an economic and jobs crisis in this country as it is a lazy poor people and socialism crisis.

Just when you think Demcorats have annoyed and pissed off enough people to make their loss in November all but ensured, the GOP roars back and yells at the top its lungs "Don't forget, we're massive uncaring assholes. Here, watch us spitefully hurt you for no reason!" Perhaps next time, head Crazy Uncle Jim off at the pass and explain to him why what he's about to do is a bad idea, and after he flips you off and ignores you, at least have the common sense not to publicly support it and claim that what he's doing is good, because in the long run it'll help with the self-esteem issues of the long-term unemployed. Just a suggestion.

Why couldn't this be the Boehner that went missing in Vancouver?

Of all the complaints about the health care bill (socialism~!, it'll murder the fuck out of my grandma, liberal tyranny) one of my favorites was "this bill is just too long, too incomprehensibly long." Because what is a more valid complaint against health reform and for continued inaction than that? Bills comprised of laws, rules, regulations, and new agencies governing the health care for Americans should be short! Why all the unneeded complexity when dealing with the entirety of the health care system? Shouldn't a simple problem like our broken health care system have a solution that is one, maybe two pages tops?

It's logical. And boy was that health care bill long. So yesterday when Obama released his 11 page health care plan, you'd think conservatives would be jumping for joy, right? I think you know where this is going.

A spokesman for House Minority Leader John Boehner today ridiculed President Obama's health care proposal because it's too short.

"The White House's 'plan' consists of an 11-page outline, which has not been scored by the Congressional Budget Office or posted online as legislative text. So they want to reorganize one-sixth of the United States' economy with a document shorter than a comic book, and they're complaining that they can't find our plan on their own website? C'mon," said the spokesman, Michael Steel, in an email to reporters.

C'mon, this is serious business! Something as important and all encompassing as health care shouldn't be relegated to a minuscule 11 pages. Try taking government seriously for once, Barry. Serious governance involves no more than 230 pages, no less than seven uses of the phrase "fuckin' liberals", includes two plugs for glennbeck.com, refers negatively to either the "shambling golem of European socialism" or "the icy black hand of government sponsored kill squads", and doesn't in any way address the health care needs of Americans.

Sure, the Obama "plan" wasn't so much a plan as it was several, easy tweaks to the Senate bill to improve it, but.... shortness... bad! Longness... also bad! Goldilocks would not eat this health care porridge, for it is not just right and she is in imminent danger of bear attack.

So thank you Boehner, for proving once again that there is literally no way any Democrat can ever win with you. Thank God that health care summit is still on, because I'm sure you have lots of useful ideas on page length, margins, double spacing, and font choice that are absolutely integral to this health reform debate.

One more health care jerk around

The President today finally announced his health care plan. Why? Who the fuck knows. Sadly the plan wasn't "the House passes the Senate bill, the Senate passes the conference committee fixes through reconciliation." No, this is what the White House is calling the "opening bid for the health meeting". You know the one: where Democrats play school marm scold telling Republicans that they really, really need to help out on a health care bill for the good of the country and the Republicans tell the Democrats to cram it with walnuts, ugly. Except on TV this time, while they're all in the same room. You know, productive shit.

What is his "bill"? Well, it's not so much a bill as it is 11 pages of fixes to the Senate and House bills largely built on the framework of the Senate bill. The only new thing, I think, is a proposal federal oversight on the amount of money insurance companies can jack people for in rate hikes. It's all part of the plan.

"This package is designed to help us [use reconciliation] if the Republican party decides to filibuster health care reform," said White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer. "That was certainly a factor that went in to how we put this proposal together."

Pfeiffer said the White House views this as "the opening bid," for the bipartisan health care summit scheduled for this Thursday. The hope--a long shot--is that one or more Republicans can agree to support this proposal, allowing Dems to pass it via more standard legislative channels. But if that fails, reconciliation can be used as a backstop.

"The president expects, and thinks the American people deserve, an up or down vote on health care reform," Pfeiffer said.

I don't want to claim to be able to read minds or see the future (not over the internet without you being able to see my professional tarot setup and crystal ball), but I don't think the Republicans are going to sign on. I think they're going to filibuster. You know, like they do on everything. I think you're going to have to get the House to pass the Senate bill, and have the Senate pass these fixes, some other fixes, that "no seriously, we'll do a public option through reconciliation" thing that I know is just going to be a big, fuck-off joke, or kidnap the family members of the GOP leadership and force them to conduct themselves as responsible leaders.

You might know this as stuff that people have been screaming at you to do since you all decided you had a 41-59 minority. So why do we have to go through this pathetic theater to come to an obvious conclusion everyone saw coming over a year ago? Why couldn't this have happened a month ago? Ah yes, there was that jobs bill to get to that still hasn't been passed and your frantic search for spines. Oh well.

So, the Democrats have a plan of action. The country just has to wait until the meaningless summit where nothing will be accomplished happens. But they have a plan and Harry Reid is promising reconciliation action within 60 days. It's time to get your minuscule hopes for timidly moderate reforms up. I'll see you again when 10 Democrats decide that they aren't able to support the drastic, unprecedented action of using reconciliation and vote to kill the bill. You all know that's where this is going, right?

Headline of the day

Scott Brown Wins Mass. Race, Giving GOP 41-59 Majority in the Senate

Yeah, that seems about right. It helps when all elected Democrats seem to agree that they're in the minority now.

Awwwwwwww

Citizens, several GOP Senators are steaming mad about something. No, it's not that we didn't escalate the war in Afghanistan enough or the fact that our health care system is about become socialist, far from it. It's that they're mad at Sen. Al Franken, because they voted against his little "rape is bad, people should be allowed to file charges over it" bill and some nasty people have used that to imply that they don't have sufficient consciences or functioning human souls. Also: that they love rape. So they've pushed back as best they can, crying as hard they can that mean Mr. Franken is hurting their feelings with his rape legislation.

The Republicans are steamed at Franken because partisans on the left are using a measure he sponsored to paint them as rapist sympathizers — and because Franken isn’t doing much to stop them.

“Trying to tap into the natural sympathy that we have for this victim of this rape —and use that as a justification to frankly misrepresent and embarrass his colleagues, I don’t think it’s a very constructive thing,” Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) said in an interview.
...
In a chamber where relationship-building is seen as critical, some GOP senators question whether Franken’s handling of the amendment could damage his ability to work across the aisle.

Yeah, John, I know how it is. I feel for you. I mean I would feel pretty bent out of shape if people thought I was for rape just because I voted against a law that made it so that people who were raped while serving for a government contractor could sue to prosecute it in civil court. I mean rape is bad, but we can't go around allowing people to attempt to receive legal justice for it just because it happened. How anyone could try to turn your opposition into a view that you're somehow callous and uncaring towards rape victims is beyond me. It's like Franken took that bill and violated you with it against your will. There should be a law against something like that.

Really though, I just want to chastise all of you who think that this is just a bunch of petty, crybaby whining from the GOP. Clearly Franken is responsible for the court of public opinion deeming them scumbags just because they're trying to defend the indefensible. He should do what they want: apologize for trying to further criminalize rape and come out vigorously defending the 30 Senators who think prosecuting rape is a bridge too far. It's really the only logical solution.

Guh?

It's no real secret around here that we at These Bastards aren't fond of elected Republicans. Or most Democrats, robots, Cleveland, the TV media, talk radio, pundits, the moon, all people, religion, Fritz Haber, God, and ourselves. That's besides the point. I mean how can one like the GOP when all they do is stuff like freaking out over Obama bowing to a Japanese guy...even though the rest of America doesn't care or trying to convince everyone that the health care bill makes everyone pay a monthly abortion fee? It's real pathetic scumbag shit that's worthy of scorn.

Maybe we need to save a little of that scorn for Republican voters as a whole. Maybe the John Boehner's of the world are just following the deranged whims of their voters, who apparently are all birth certificate conspiracy theorizing, concentration camp photo waving teabaggers. I mean just look at this shit:

The new national poll from Public Policy Polling (D) has an astonishing number about paranoia among the GOP base: Republicans do not think President Obama actually won the 2008 election -- instead, ACORN stole it.
...
The poll asked this question: "Do you think that Barack Obama legitimately won the Presidential election last year, or do you think that ACORN stole it for him?" The overall top-line is legitimately won 62%, ACORN stole it 26%.

Among Republicans, however, only 27% say Obama actually won the race, with 52% -- an outright majority -- saying that ACORN stole it, and 21% are undecided. Among McCain voters, the breakdown is 31%-49%-20%. By comparison, independents weigh in at 72%-18%-10%, and Democrats are 86%-9%-4%.

I don't think even Glenn Beck has been flogging this one or trying to claim it's true.

Wow...just....wow. You know America, I'm done with you today.
//throws hands up and walks away

Cheap Blogging Crutch 11.18

Renouncing Islamism: To the brink and back again
The Independent recounts an epic story of several British Islamist jihadists who were trained in Afghanistan to fight against the West, but have since had a change of heart and are now trying to speak out about why they believed what they believed and have begun outreach work with other Islamic youth. That all sounds like a misprint. If we've learned anything over the past few days, its that once someone has come into contact with Islam, we must not allow them to come within contact of our judicial and legal system and preferably not even our soil. Shunning them plus a few bombing runs on their own country is the only way to beat back this menace.

In House, Many Spoke With One Voice: Lobbyists’
What? You mean to tell me that intellectual titans and honest brokers like Blaine Luetkemeyer of Missouri and the "You Lie" jackass are having their health care speeches and public statements crafted by lobbyists opposed to health care reform? And that they aren't the only ones? It's almost as if they aren't concerned with the plight of Americans without health care and are instead only looking out for corporations and their donations. The international community still has the nerve to say we're only 19th in corruption? I just hope the lobbyists write them some extra good "freedom is dead" material for when health care reform does pass.

Cost of happiness discovered by Australian economist
Yes, a man has spent the time calculating the monetary equivalent of various milestones in life and the effect of money on happiness. For instance: a marriage makes a woman feel as if she has gained the equivalent of £8, 726.25, while it makes a man feel like he has gained the equivalent of £17, 675.68. Dr. Sean and I have conducted our own study in conjunction with the These Bastards Institute of Scientific Discovery and we have found that the cost of happiness is equal to that of the cost of the cheapest alcohol with the highest percentage of alcohol by volume and the cheapest hooker within walking distance. Take that, Australia.

Celebrating Revolution With Roots in a Rumor
A story that recounts the events that sparked the Czech revolution, and how it turns out that some of those events that inspired a nation to march and overthrow it's communist overlords was based on a lie. That's all well and good and even a little funny, but don't you think the honest thing to do would be to turn the country back over to the Politburo with a written apology? To continue on as is just strikes me as dishonest.

Civilian Supercomputer Shatters Nuke Simulator’s Speed Record
For the first time ever a civilian supercomputer, the Jaguar, is the fastest supercomputer in the world. It's speed is 1.759 petaflops or 1,759 trillion calculations per second. What is a petaflop? Well, it's sort of like a gigabyte, but it's bigger and likes to touch children in their bathing suit areas. As this computer is 69% faster than the previous record holder and twice as fast as the 3rd fastest supercomputer, it is now the frontrunner to lead the machine intelligence against its human oppressors that house it in the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Forget Skynet, Jaguar is our new master.

Required Viewing: Health Care Edition

Olbermann pistol whipping the Republican (and Blue Dog) opposition to health care reform last night:

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Quotes of the weekend

Not content to just let right wing critiques of Sonia Sotomayor completely scrape the bottom of the barrel, Rush Limbaugh and G. Gordon Liddy decided to lift up that barrel and look for another barrel underneath it, so that they might scrape that one too.

El Rushbo:

LIMBAUGH: Not only does she lack the often discussed appropriate judicial temperament, it's worse than that. She brings a form of bigotry and racism to the court. I don't care, we're not supposed to say it, we're supposed to pretend it didn't happen, we're supposed to look at other things but it's the elephant in the room. The real question here that needs to be asked and nobody on our side from a columnist to a TV commentator to anybody in our party has the guts to ask, how can a president nominate such a candidate? And how can a party get behind such a candidate? That's what would be asked if somebody were foolish enough to nominate David Duke or pick somebody even less offensive.

The felon who wanted to have his political enemies murdered:

LIDDY: I understand that they found out today that Miss Sotomayor is a member of La Raza, which means in illegal alien, “the race.” And that should not surprise anyone because she’s already on record with a number of racist comments.
...
LIDDY: Let’s hope that the key conferences aren’t when she’s menstruating or something, or just before she’s going to menstruate. That would really be bad. Lord knows what we would get then.

It's hard to know why this party is out of power when it has such stunning intellectual lights as these two. Sotomayor=David Duke/menstruation will destroy the legal foundation of this country. If the debate is already this degraded three days after her nomination, imagine where we'll be when her conformation hearings start up. I can hardly wait.

Uh-oh, find a better plan thean "No!"

Seems that the Obama Administration has taken a look at the Republican strategy of "filibuster everything, find out what it is we're opposing later" and deemed it an obstruction to their agenda. Fortunately they unleashed their number master, OMB Director Pete Orszag, on the problem. His radical solution is to make it so that a simple majority of votes will secure passage and that legislation will actually get voted on. Guh? In the Senate? What type of witchcraft is this?

A top White House official threatened Tuesday to use a congressional rule to force some controversial proposals through the Senate by eliminating the Republicans' power to block legislation.

Peter Orszag, the director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, said the Obama administration would prefer not to use the budget "reconciliation" process that allows measures to pass the Senate on simple majority votes.

Orszag said he wouldn't rule it out, however. The legislative tactic is being considered to push through Obama's global warming and health care programs, and perhaps his proposals to raise taxes on the wealthy.

"We'd like to avoid it if possible," Orszag told reporters at a luncheon in Washington. "But we're not taking it off the table."

Can you start doing this two months ago? Perhaps you should have used it on those bailout measures that were large parts of the budget that needed reconciled. Seriously, just use it all the time. "Uhhh...this requires...money...and thus...needs to be...reconciled. Majority rule!" Then hand out drinks and party. It's no secret that the filibuster process has been increasingly abused, why keep fucking around with people who have no other ideas and are uninterested in debate or doing anything?

Why announce you want to avoid it either? Are Senate Republicans going to get less unreasonable, play less hardball, filibuster less? No. If you announce you're going to do it can they even possibly obstruct and filibuster more? I doubt it. Don't hamper health care passage because Mitch McConnell is going to whine because he can't block it or because you need to water it down bad enough to get Arlen Specter or Olympia Snowe to jump over and keep Ben Nelson and Evan Bayh from jumping ship. Don't take any guff from these fucking swine. Do it.

Rooting for failure

If the stimulus doesn't work, which it might not because it isn't fucking big enough, I suggest you all prepare yourselves for perhaps the biggest onslaught of "I told you so" in recent memory.

The vote was 246 to 183, reflecting the Democrats’ considerable majority in the House and the Republicans’ deep dissatisfaction with the measure, whose estimated price tag has fluctuated daily and was finally placed at $787 billion on Friday. Not a single Republican voted in favor of the bill.

Not that cutting taxes on the virtually unregulated companies that essentially cause this mess wasn't a good idea as well.

In further news, fuck the Republicans

This is almost too good. Apparently one of the front-runners to fill Hillary Clinton's potentially vacant Senate seat is Christine Quinn, New York City Council Speaker and the second most powerful city politician behind the mayor:

The top contender for Clinton's seat is New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, O'Halloran said. Other names in the mix, O'Halloran said, include New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a moderate Republican, as well as Christine Quinn, the first female and openly gay speaker of the New York City Council.

Now, I'm in no way attempting to marginalize Quinn's record on the City Council, which has been stellar since her election in January 2006. So pardon me the schadenfreude as I ponder a blind, black, Democratic Governor of one of the bluest states in the nation replacing "Secretary of State Hillary-fucking-Clinton" with a brilliant, young, gay, liberal female who cut her teeth hammering out legislation mandating equal health care benefits for both married couples and same-sex partnerships.

Seriously, what else can we add to this equation that will further infuriate the right? Can Quinn take her senate oath on a stack of Nation back issues, wrapped in the Drapeau tricolore and standing atop the rubble of a freshly bombed Liberty University? Maybe something involving "Happy Kwanzaa" banners with a special appearance by Paul Krugman and Kanye West? Can Barney Frank be somehow involved?

By the way, that sound you hear is Jerry Falwell turning in his sulfur cave.