Thursday, November 04, 2010

Lame Ducks Can Still Quack.

He called for the upcoming lame-duck session of Congress, in which Democrats will still hold majorities in both chambers until the end of the year, to address significant issues such as extending Bush-era tax cuts for most Americans, extending unemployment benefits for jobless Americans and repealing the "don't ask, don't tell" policy that bans openly gay and lesbian soldiers.
Oh, please, Shiva, let them get all bogged down in what is, ultimately, an irrelevant sideshow like DADT.

I know it's a divisive topic. Personally, I think that gay people should be able to get all blowed up for their country just like anybody else and get visited in the hospital by whoever they want, but ultimately, that's not the kind of issue that's going to break the republic in the next fifteen minutes no matter which way it gets decided.

There are lots of really, really horrible things a bitter, defeated bunch of ideologues with access to the controls could do to trash this place before leaving to go work as lobbyists, so let's all hope they find something to occupy their time that won't have us using Ben Franklins for toilet paper...

32 comments:

Buzz said...

Not only can they quack, but they also are more likely to bury land mines and leave flaming bags of shit on the porch.
Once an interloper has been outed, he tends to show his true nature on the way out the door.

Fuzzy Curmudgeon said...

In this modern day and age of instant communication and rapid transportation, there is no excuse for the existence of a lame duck session; the 112th Congress should begin immediately and the losers should be dumped on the street with their belongings in cardboard boxes.

Perhaps this is something the new Congress can take up when it convenes in January.

Stuart the Viking said...

When "W" was elected the first time, the turn over of the white house was horrible. The outgoing Clinton staff vandalized and destroyed computer equiptment, furnature, etc. In a word, they acted like unruly children. I hope that the turnover of offices from Democrats to Republicans do not see a repeat of that behavior.

As far as the lame duck congress goes. I agree with Tam. DADT is the perfect thing for them to waste time on. Quite frankly, if they did repeal DADT, it would just be another Y2K thing, a lot of hype and panic, with little to no actual negative effect.

s

Lawyer said...

This is a real concern for me. I plan to stay on the horn with my representatives. They may not have much to lose, but they'll hear from me.

Boat Guy said...

Let's indeed hope DADT proves all-CONSUMING for the quackers and they don't have time for anything else. God knows they've done enough damage to date.
If they really had actually burned all the Franklins they've gone through then "Global Warming" might have become fact.
I'm less than confident the fiscal damage these looters have done to our economy can be undone.

Anonymous said...

I'm just curious if the new regime believes this to be an approval of their methods vs. a disapproval of the previous regime's methods. I hope they understand that if they play the way they always have, the next round of elections will be a flip-flop of this one, no matter how the end of this session goes.

Anonymous said...

I've been preaching the dangers of this time for over a year now.

They can do whatever they want without facing legal recourse. That's scary as hell.

Who knows what they will really do, all I know is we sure as hell can't take them at their word, even when they are speaking about screwing us.

Bubblehead Les. said...

Too late. Helicopter Ben and Gollum Geithner have decided to start "Weimar Republic, the Sequel" to please their true Master George Soros. Wonder if I can buy a wheelbarrow in Rare Dark Earth when I need to take my cash to the Mall?

McVee said...

What B/H Les said. The real problem is the FED and Ben Bernanke. He is propping up the stock market in the irrational defense that a performing dow is equal to an improving economy. It's not. Sure, short term gains for His banker buddies but long term His policies are going to be devastating.

og said...

"let's all hope they find something to occupy their time that won't have us using Ben Franklins for toilet paper... "

I vote "looking over their shoulders"

Joanna said...

I'm choosing to ignore all y'all naysayers and just enjoy my coffee this fine mornin'. Plenty of time for my day to be ruined this afternoon.

Beaumont said...

@Les & McVee -- absolutely right. Our country's "Weimar moment" may have already come, with the decision to print billions of dollars of worthless greenbacks which will be used to artificially inflate stock prices and reward the Regime's friends. Very little that the lame ducks might do will ultimately cause as much damage as that action.

theirritablearchitect said...

"...so let's all hope they find something to occupy their time that won't have us using Ben Franklins for toilet paper..."

No, that's exactly what we need.

NotClauswitz said...

They buried the Franklins in coffee cans all around the back yard and are busy making a secret map so their union buddies will know where to dig.

Boat Guy said...

"They can do whatever they want without facing legal recourse."

Beg to differ. Unless you want to quibble over what constitutes "legal recourse".
It's just possible that rope and lamposts might qualify as "legal recourse" under some circumstances

Joanna said...

It's just possible that rope and lamposts might qualify as "legal recourse" under some circumstances

Allow me to say, just this once, that when you talk like that you're speculating about killing some mother's son.

It bothers me how casually such allusions get tossed around.

And don't give me grief about not caring enough or something like that; if things really were as bad as all that already, people wouldn't be talking about it. They'd be doing it. They're not yet; that tells me all I need to know about the situation so far. I pray it never gets to that point.

(Whaddya know, I made it to the afternoon.)

Boat Guy said...

"I pray it never gets to that point."
AS DO I.

Dirt Sailor said...

2 things:

This is one of a very few blogs I read that doesn't turn into a messy argument over the inherent morality of "the Gays" whenever DADT comes up. I like that. I like that a hell of a lot.

Totally off topic, but my wife bought her first gun yesterday: A Springfield 1911 "Loaded" and is EXTREMELY excited to go pick it up, come the end of the PR of California's waiting period. Apparently her first taste of the 1911 at the range sold her. I'm rather proud; I wish my taste in first firearms had been as good (mine being a Russian Surplus Mosin).

And one more, on topic: Please, let them sit and argue. I like nothing better in the U.S. Congress than unproductive arguing.

Anonymous said...

"Allow me to say, just this once, that when you talk like that you're speculating about killing some mother's son."

If they didn't plan to enslave and make helpless the sons of others mothers, the topic would never be breached.

When despots do as despots will, the answer is sometimes ropes or fire. It's not as if they didn't have the same opportunity to study history. No one forced them to pay attention to the wrong part of the lessons.

That nothing has happened is perhaps more a product of social programing than the lack of action by the despots.

No, I'm not volunteering to do anything, but if we do not discuss such things openly, they will be planned in private.

NotClauswitz said...

If you catch a whiff of the pizza stomach rumbling coming from the lizards at Kos it sounds like some mother's son is going to come screaming out of the basement and do a Laddie Borden on the family.

Stuart the Viking said...

Them there gays can be just as immoral as everyone else! Don't try to take away their right to be immoral just cause you don't like their beddy bie choices!

Folks is just folks! Nobody has a monopoly on immorality, not even politicians.

s

Anonymous said...

Spent 14 months in a country where rope and lampposts (bombs and AKs) were the norm. Spent a couple of months in a country where a stack of tires was the mob's choice of revenge. Spent 3 years in a country where probable cause and the 4th Amendment were verboten. No thanks, quite happy here. The constitution is what I swore to support and defend. Not mob rules.

Al T.

Tam said...

DirtCrashr,

Wow.

What color is the sky in his world?

Joanna said...

When despots do as despots will, the answer is sometimes ropes or fire. It's not as if they didn't have the same opportunity to study history. No one forced them to pay attention to the wrong part of the lessons.

And until our despots do the things that call for ropes and fire, then we'll see what we shall see. History has lessons for both sides of any revolution, and one of them is "whatever you do, don't jump the gun."

Anonymous said...

History also says you die if you act too late; eyeglass-wearers in Cambodia, for instance.

Anonymous said...

They will just remove all of the "Q"'s from their key boards so the incoming reps will have to type "We hate teh Kweers" in their emails.

Ted Bundy was some mother's son. My mother-in-law knew her. She knew Teddy wouldn't have done any of those "things'

NotClauswitz said...

It scares me to think he lives in a sky-puke world. That's some bad meth he's on.

One of my wife's aunt's sons (great big kid) worked as an orderly up in Vacaville where the extra-chromosome guys are "installed." Charles Manson was another somebody's mother's son and a resident there back in the Mid 70's, and he got to interact with him somewhat.
They sent Manson around between Vacaville, Folsom and San Quentin a few times before '85 when they finally transferred him to San Quentin for good.

og said...

No mother's son was ever born who didn't occasionally earn an asswhipping, ever. Including Jesus Christ, who at hos 12th passover stayed behind in jerusalem and scared the shit out of his parents, no doubt pissing them off in the process.

Many a mother's son walks the earth these days who should be beneath it.


WV: hairlog. As God is my witness.

Robin said...

Obama made a big deal of promising the repeal of DADT during his campaign to gay rights groups.

Since then, he's done nothing about it.

That's the kind of leadership his friends get ...

Brad K. said...

You have to watch this Congress - with Malice Aforethought - the Senate scheduled S.510, the Food Safety Administration (Food Safety Enhancement Act or some such). They want every farmer, trucker, farmers market, and truck farm listed and inspected by the feds - including mandated testing of foods and stuff that *could* be used in food for people *or animals*.

Gack.
http://bradsworldview.blogspot.com/2010/11/vftp-lame-duck-congress-fsa-s510-and.html

Kristophr said...

Stuart the Viking:

The Bush admin dealt with Clinton's trashing of the Whitehouse computers by having a data recovery firm leach any useful data off them before disposing of them, and by giving each staffer an allowance to buy a personally owned computer to use at work.

When the Bush admin left, everyone took their PCs home with them.

Obama inherited a computerless Whitehouse, and a plain manila envelope containing information Bush felt needed to be passed on to Obama to properly transition Command Authority during the war.

bob r said...

TJ said: "... Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. ..."

What some mother's sons have done already morally justifies hanging them. That they haven't been hung (yet) isn't saying anything about _them_; it is saying something about those who might end up doing the hanging.