Dumbest excuse of the Week part 2

Ok i gotta stop doing the "craziest/dumbest comment of the week" early. I miss out on a lot of gems. So with all due respect to this weeks previous winner Stuart Stevens (from this post ) I gotta rescind that award.

So our first new nominee, proving math really isnt part of the Republican Party, Senate Minority leader Mitch McConnell, who was explaining why the President is going to have to listen to the demands of the Senate Republicans in the fiscal cliff talks. McConnell said: "Three-quarters of our members come from states he didn't carry, Public opinion in those states probably is not helpful to him."


Ok so if the President doesn't listen to you he's going to be opposed by 3/4ths of your Caucus? Well see here's the problem....your caucus only has 47 members. 3/4ths of that is 35. In order to stop a democratic bill from passing the senate you need 51 votes. And 35 < 51. Unless you filibuster of course, in which case you only need 40, but again 35 < 40. The good news is 35 votes is enough to stop a veto from being overridden, but yea that's all you got, you wont override a bill the president vetoed.

So basically Mr. McConnell you just admitted your irrelevant if all you got is 3/4ths of your caucus. Oh and thats your present caucus, the one your getting next month? that only has 45 senators......just saying.

And our second nominee is actually also Mitch McConnell, who again trying to prove why he has any relevance in this fiscal cliff talk proved geography and scale arnt his strong suits either when he said to the president on a phone call that "You won only four out of 120 Kentucky counties and lost many senators’ home states."

Now I just dealt with the home states issue so I'll quickly deal with the Kentucky one. Mitch I know your from Kentucky, but you do know their are 49 other states right? and that because of that, no one gives a flying  fuck how many counties Obama won in Kentucky or Oklahoma or California or any other state, since the counties really arnt large enough to matter comparatively right?

Our third Nominee is Neil Newhouse, the man who ran the internal polls for the Romney Campaign, which were released today and were kinda hilariously wrong. For example the Romney polls said Romney was up 3.5 points in New Hampshire....but the truth is Obama was up by 6. Or that Iowa was a tie.....again Obama was really up 6. Or Colorado which they said was 2.5 points in favor of Romney...was really 5 points in favor of Obama. So at least that explains why Romney was so confident he would win he didnt write a concession speech.

But see its not being incredibly bad at his job (for which he was likely paid millions of dollars) that got Mr. Newhouse this nomination, it was his excuse for why they were so wrong “I’m not sure what the answer is,”.

Points for honesty at least. But really, man you SUCK at your job.

The 4th nominee is kinda  Nth way split, which I guess I will just give to the Right Wing Media. Ok so again on the fisical cliff thing the Democratic position is "let the bush tax cuts on the top two % expire and also cut defense spending" and the GOP position is "no". Now if we do nothing and go over the cliff the bush tax cuts on EVERYBODY expire and defense spending is cut.

Now with that in mind, what is the right wing advice for the GOP (picking just several examples)?

Well lets start with the intellectual leader of the GOP, Rush Limbaugh: “The way to handle that, the way to call his bluff on this is to not negotiate with him and leave it up to him what happens, Very publicly walk away from the talks so that whatever happens vis-à-vis the cliff is perceived to happen"

Redstate blogger and CNN contributor Erick Ericson: "They [the GOP] might as well give it [Cliff negotiations up. They’re going to get the blame no matter what happens. They are disjointed with bad spokesmen. One is orange and the other . . . well . . . .
They might as well dive." (the link is from the original text by the way and not my doing...)


And Fox News and allegedly well respected commentator Charles Krauthammer: "The Republicans are going to walk on this."

Now again keep in mind, if we do nothing (as walking away would cause) the defense cuts and Bush Tax cuts end. Which means the Democrats win everything they want.

Now admittedly we cant stay off the cliff that would be bad, so we will have to find a way to negotiation a way back "up" once we go over, but every single poll suggests if we go over the GOP will take the blame. And they will have just lost everything they want, and the only way they will get it back would be to deal with the Dem's (who will then have a stronger house minority and senate majority) or keep absorbing the blame. So while I personally am in favor of going over the fiscal cliff, it certainly wont help the GOP no matter what the right wing talking heads say.

And finally our 5th nominee, and new winner (in my opinion at least) is John Boehner, who admittedly got nominated not for something he said but for something he did (hey it's my contest I can bend the rules as I see fit :P ). And actually to be fair, I should take some of the heat for this, since the speaker clearly reads my blog, and part of this was my suggestion.

Ok so everyone I'm sure has seen the picture (and read the rant ) of the 19 all white all male GOP committee chairmen right? well see it turned out their were still two committee chairmanships left to announce ...not that it would have made a difference since those committees were all male. But see Speaker John Boehner followed my advise and just appointed a women to one of those committee's just to chair it. Now what I didnt know when I suggested that was that that's never been done before, and now Boehner is taking heat for it as it appears to be a blatant and transparent ploy to get a woman in charge of something. So yea, sorry Mr. Speaker, that one's on me. But the rest is totally on you.

See the committee John Boehner just named a woman to chair is the House Administration Committee. And what are the duties of the Administration Committee? Well they include jurisdiction over the Library of congress and the House library, including buying books for the latter. Jurisdiction over the Botanical Gardens, buying art and statues for the capital, management of the parking lot for the House, the disposition of various executive papers, printing the congressional record, managing and maintaining the office space of the House and my personal favorite, Managing and running the House cafeteria.

Like does that sound like the stereotypical description of the duties of a stay at home mom, a secretary and a librarian (who are usually stereotyped as a female) to anyone else?  And that's really the committee you wanted to put THE ONLY FEMALE CHAIR on?

Oh by the way, did I mention the woman he selected, Rep. Candice Miller was up for the chairmanship of another committee but lost out to one of the 19 white guys? And did I mention that committee was HOMELAND F@CKING SECURITY (where she already chairs a few subcommittees) ? and again John Boehner given that choice was like "eh whatever, put her on the housekeeping committee". 

You know I thought not having any women was bad optics....turns out on occasion having 1 woman is worse.....