Sunday Funnies

"Today House Speaker John Boehner struck back with his plan to cut spending by demanding Obama come up with Boehner's plan to cut spending."

-- Stephen Colbert

"The U.S. Census Bureau says that by the year 2043 white people will be in the minority in the United States. By that time, the country will be 15 percent black, 31 percent Hispanic, and 1 percent Republican." 

-- Jay Leno

The powerful delusions of Wayne LaPierre

As I suspected, he didn't disappoint. I'm now convinced that the head of the NRA couldn't pass a mental health background check to purchase a firearm.

Wayne LaPierre of the National Rifle Association will forever now be known as America’s maddest gunman.

 In style and substance, his performance Friday in delivering his organization’s response to the Newtown massacre revealed the obsessive, lunatic paranoia behind its worship of firearms.

A week after a gunman armed with an assault rifle murdered 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut, and ever so shortly after the bells there tolled for the dead, LaPierre lashed out at everyone and everything but the weapons that were used to kill.

Still worse, in his arrogance and in his sense that terrible forces are out to get him, LaPierre was callous to the raw agony of the families of the slain. The hell with them — he made clear that he will fight to maintain the easy availability of assault weaponry of the kind that killed their kids.

He said at least four things that could easily be applied to himself and the NRA members and anybody else that agrees with him.

1. "[O]ur society is populated by an unknown number of genuine monsters — people so deranged, so evil, so possessed by voices and driven by demons that no sane person can possibly ever comprehend them."

2. "How many more copycats are waiting in the wings for their moment of fame — from a national media machine that rewards them with the wall-to-wall attention and sense of identity that they crave."

3. "There exists in this country a callous, corrupt and corrupting shadow industry that sells, and sows, violence against its own people."

4. "Isn't fantasizing about killing people as away to get your kicks really the filthiest form of pornography?"

Even people who grew up with guns -- a West Texas Girl, in this case -- understand what the problem is. The polling bears this out. Americans want calm, serious regulations on firearms. Hyperventilating about the second half of the Second Amendment is stunted psychologically and thus increasingly threatening and dangerous -- a description that sadly fits the Sandy Hook shooter, Adam Lanza.

Let's disregard the ludicrousness of LaPierre's call for armed guards in schools. Unless the NRA will be funding the mandate -- or Grover Norquist concedes a tax increase -- there's no money for it; we can't even afford enough teachers as it is (we're broke, remember?). Houston ISD already has police in schools here, and a small town in North Texas has been arming its teachers for the last five years. Columbine had an armed guard; it's obvious how effective that turned out to be. Evidence also indicates that children don't feel safe as a result and the crime deterrent is negligible.

That fever dream onstage yesterday was the result of a week spent in self-imposed isolation. LaPierre blamed everything he could think of (video games, Oliver Stone movies, the media) for the carnage in Newtown -- but not the mall shooting a few days before, and not the gun deaths since. We got an unwelcome glimpse into the mind of the man who has more Congresscritters by the short hairs than Norquist. The mind of a lunatic.

The only person's guns I want taken away right this instant are Wayne LaPierre's. He's clearly unstable.

Update: LaPierre a "lobbyist for mass murderers" and "a desperate, cornered rat".

And I feel fine.

My-Wayan Apocalypse

Cry it out, bitch.

In a stinging setback for Republican House Speaker John Boehner, a lack of support from inside his own party for his “fiscal cliff” fall-back plan forced him late Thursday to cancel a much-trumpeted vote on the measure.

“The House did not take up the tax measure today because it did not have sufficient support from our members to pass,” Boehner said in a written statement released after an emergency meeting of House Republicans.

The measure, dubbed “Plan B,” would have let Bush-era tax cuts expire on income above $1 million annually, while extending them for everyone else. It appeared that Boehner faced a rebellion from conservatives opposed to any tax hike, while House Democrats starved the bill of their support, making passage impossible.

Dude's probably up to four packs a day. Fiscal Slip-n-Slide, here we come!

Boehner’s dramatic defeat cast fresh doubt on efforts to avert the “fiscal cliff” and spare Americans across-the-board income tax hikes come Jan. 1. Those increases, coupled with deep automatic spending cuts scheduled to take effect the same day, could plunge the fragile economy into a new recession. Talks between the speaker and President Barack Obama were at a stalemate, according to aides on both sides.

After the cancellation of the vote, Republican House Majority Leader Eric Cantor announced on Twitter the House "has concluded legislative business for the week. The House will return after the Christmas holiday when needed."

Merry Christmas Happy Holidays, Republicans. Hope Santa drops a lump of coal in your stocking.

Update: Upon further review, this might be the rending asunder of the GOTP we've all been waiting for...

Plan B fiasco leaves GOP lost, divided, and weak

As a simple matter of arithmetic, if House Republicans aren't prepared to follow their own leadership and support a list of right-wing goodies, Boehner and the rest of the GOP leadership must realize that the road to 218 votes runs through the Democratic caucus -- if the Speaker can't pass a bill with his own side's support, he's going to need Nancy Pelosi's help.

Since Boehner has already deliberately blown up his talks with the White House, it will be very tough for the Speaker to give Obama a sheepish call, saying, "Maybe we can give this another shot?" The more likely scenario is that the president will have to quickly begin a very different set of discussions: finding a bill that can generate bipartisan support in the Senate, satisfies Pelosi and House Dems, and can generate the support of a couple dozen House Republicans.

All of this will have to happen, of course, over the course of about 10 days -- two of which are Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.

Last night, House GOP leaders also announced they're leaving town, possibly to return next week. After last night, there was no real point in them sticking around, anyway.

Scarborough chides fellow GOPers: ‘Extreme’ stances led to worst ‘disarray’ since Nixon resignation

“I want my Republican brothers and sisters who have taken exception to some of the things I’ve said over the past year about us going in the wrong direction as a party — offending swing voters, offending the middle class — I want you to look at those numbers and just breathe them in,” Scarborough said. The party is in a “sorry state,” he added.

He then went on to hit Republican leaders for their “complete, utter silence” on key issues following the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School. He asked: Is this the party of assault weapons or lower taxes? Contraception wars or balanced budgets?

“This party has painted itself into an extreme corner by going down all these various rabbit trails that have nothing to do with our core of who we are as a party of small government,” Scarborough argued. “I can’t think of any time the Republican Party, my Republican Party, has been in such disarray — since 1974 after Richard Nixon resigned.”