The Annual Conservative Cattle Call: CPAC 2014

by Sunnyjane

What, you can't choose ONE amongst that large group of racist, homophobic, misogynistic, gun-worshiping, pro-life, far-right Christianistas who is suitable?

Like cattle they are, but All Things Bright and Beautiful they are not.  Eleven thousand politicos and their wanna-rub-elbows-with followers gathered together a week or so ago to play Let's Bash Obama! and see if they could increase their popularity with a bunch of mindless supporters by so doing.  (Note to the Republican Tea Party: You don't have to try so hard to make Barack Obama a two-term president;  he's decided not to run for a third term in 2016.)

Absent an actual unified message of their own, the speakers trotted out every old and ineffectual catchphrase in their far-right arsenal of grief with the current administration.  It was, for all intents and purposes, a typical GOP get-together -- only more obnoxious.

While most of the regular podium-pounders were in attendance, who was not there may be as significant.  Not one of the GOP's current women in the House or Senate was invited to speak, including State-of-the-Union responder Cathy McMorris Rodgers.  Of course, considering the horrific reaction to her little homily, that may be for the best.  OK, there was Michele Bachmann (see below), but she was not invited by CPAC itself; she was the special guest speaker of Jenny Beth Martin, founder and president of the Tea Party Patriots.

Also missing from the speakers' dais was Reince Priebus; they relegated him to a panel titled On Wisconsin!  Turning Blue States Red.  This is particularly interesting in light of the fact that  Governor Scott Walker decided to skip the whole CPAC thingy this year.

And semi-professional liver-abuser John Boehner wasn't asked to speak.  I guess his calling out the Tea Partiers for their craziness last December didn't go over very well.         

International Women's Day 2014: The Call for Gender Equality 

Only CPAC would have the two dumbest women in politics speak on IWD 2014.

On being married to a President of the United States, Barbara Bush once said, Somewhere out in this audience may even be someone who will one day follow in my footsteps, and preside over the White House as the President's spouse. I wish him well! 

Michele Bachmann, otherwise known to Minnesota's Native American tribes as Bug-Eyed Loon Hooting at Empty Space, probably made one of the stupidest, most dishonest statements at CPAC 2014: that at its core, she said, the Tea Party is an intellectual movement.  That core must be rotten, because while I'm sure you and I could come up with a number of appropriate adjectives to describe the Tea Party, I doubt that intellectual would be one of them.  Correct me if I'm mistaken.

Of course she also said -- again -- that the United States would some day elect a female president, but it would be the right one. Now she may have been using a double entendre -- right meaning best and right meaning conservative -- but I sincerely doubt that Bachmann is that smart.  In all her brilliance, the almost-ex Representative proudly and smugly declared that the GOP was the only party that has put a woman on the ticket in this century -- Sarah Palin.  Woo hoo!  Might I remind her that this century is only fourteen years old; there are still eighty-six years to go.  Sigh...

Of Green Eggs and Ham and a Wig that Goes Limp in the Night

OH M'GOD!  They just announced that Sarah Palin will speak next. 

Ted Cruz's official jock-strap sniffer, Sarah Palin, continued to make an ass of herself, much to the delight of the frenzied group of C-Packers.  It was rumored that many of the men were disappointed in her choice of attire because they lost a golden opportunity to do a little cell-phone upskirting.  Such is life, guys, but I doubt you missed much.

I have to say, Sarah has the mind of a computer: garbage in, garbage out is all you're going to get.  Not that anyone at CPAC cared, of course, because she put as many check marks next to her self-prescribed dose of hate and rage as possible: Obama is weak, Obama is a liar, Obamacare is bad, bad guy with a nuke, good guy with a nuke, yammer, yammer, yammer.  She even spoke right to the ladies at one point, telling them not to vote for Democrats because Republican women were fighters and were tough and powerful like her -- or something similar.  She read someone else's bastardization of the aforementioned Dr. Seuss book, giving a casual Hat Tip to the Internet because she stole it from a specific right-wing blog.  I guess she doesn't understand that The Internet is merely a repository, not an entity that writes its own stuff.  Palin failed to tell her fans that she's never actually read Green Eggs and Ham; she quit halfway through because it was too hard.

Charles Pierce at Esquire wrote an excellent synopsis of Palin's CPAC speech, and summed her up nicely with She respects no standards but her own.  To this I would respectfully add, She's only willing to change her standards if it boosts her ego or her bank account.

And a special message for you, Sarah, from your very own tough conservative idol, Margaret Thatcher:  Being powerful is like being a lady.  If you have to tell people you are -- you aren't.    

Rand Paul Manages to Wear Out the Word Liberty 

Meet me at the intersection of Moran Avenue and Refudiate Boulevard.  I'm driving a white car.

I'm not going to get into a pissing contest with Rand Paul over the meaning of his favorite subject, Civil Liberties.  However, just to put any confusion to rest, the term civil liberties in the United States of America is interpreted by the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution as those rights, privileges and immunities held by all people.  And even if Rush Limbaugh gave the incident a pass by calling her a professional agitator who provoked the incident, it does not mean your campaign volunteers have the right to give a concussion-causing head stomp to a MoveOn.org member protesting at one of your rallies.  See, little things like that are not a civil liberty.  Just sayin'.  (I have a rather fertile imagination, but for the life of me, I cannot conceive of Rush Limbaugh having such a thoroughly dismissive attitude if one of Barack Obama's supporters had head-stomped a Tea Party protester.)

So at CPAC, Senator Libertarian forgot about that rights, privileges and immunities thingy and launched into his usual diatribe over President Obama's timid defense of liberty and his shredding of the Constitution.  The nine thousand (OK, a possible exaggeration on my part) Libs he had bussed in screeched and applauded and generally appeared to have imbibed a six-pack each of Red Bull.  Whoa!      

Perhaps Paul's finest opinion on how to be an effective president came in an op-ed he wrote for Time in which he pretty much laid out his concept of how a president should conduct himself in these icky international situations like the one currently on everyone's radar, Ukraine.  While declaring in no uncertain terms that President Obama should start demonstrating tough leadership, he added that the President should do absolutely nothing.  (No, seriously.)  Well, he did say that we should withhold military or financial aid to Ukraine, the country we support against Russia.  And to further show his toughness against Russia, we should boycott the G-8 Summit in Sochi this summer.  (Spoiler:  The U.S. and six other G-8 members have already done that.)  Oh, and we should start shipping natural gas to western Europe; that will show those godless Russkies a thing or two!

Doing nothing about an international crisis might work out really swell in isolationist Rand Paul's fevered nocturnal emissions dreams, but it's high time for him to wake up to the real world and learn how to govern in a democracy.  World Leader countries do not remain world leaders very long; doing nothing may mean your grandchildren will be learning to speak Russian in the not-so-far distant future.

Because a Brown-Bag Lunch Means Love, Y'all

And there are no finer examples of hypocrites than Paul Ryan and Ayn Rand

In her book The Virtues of Selfishness, Ayn Rand wrote that accepting any government controls is delivering oneself into gradual enslavement.  And yet, when she needed them, she grabbed both Social Security and Medicare; she was ill and needed those controls.  Her acolyte, Paul Ryan, so worshiped Rand that he himself gladly accepted Social Security benefits after his father died, and subsequently went to college on the money.

In a trip to Once-Upon-a-Time Land, Paul Ryan (R-Wingnutville) heard about a little (insert black here) child who told a campaign staffer that he didn't want a free government school lunch, he wanted a brown-bag lunch because it showed that someone cared about him.  Naturally, budget-wonk Ryan had to repeat the story at CPAC.  And just as naturally, it became urban-legend material to be told throughout Tea Partyland.  Only problem is, Ryan's version ain't true.  It's from a freaking book written about the relationship between a woman and a homeless boy.  The author and the young boy appeared on Mike Huckabee's Fraud News program in 2013 and talked about their support for the Share Our Strength No Kid Hungry campaign.  So, there's that bit of awkwardness.

Let's review some history here to get a bead on Mr. Ryan and his, um, little problem.  After the 2012 election, he stated that the Republican ticket lost because too many (insert black here) urban voters turned out for President Obama.  (No explanation on why he lost his own hometown, which is 88.6% white and 2.8% black; nor did he explain why he couldn't carry the state of Wisconsin for the Republicans, with 88.2% whites and only 6.5% blacks.)

Oh, it wouldn't have anything to do with the fact that Mitt Romney went to the NAACP convention and told the (insert black here) folks there that if they wanted Obamacare and free stuff, vote for the other guy.  Nah.

Shortly after CPAC, Mr. Ryan bewailed the fact that inner-city (insert black here) men have a culture of not working.  Mind you, this was during an interview with Bill Bennett, who once said that crime in the U.S. would go down if all black babies were aborted.  Makes you wonder how Paul Ryan squares that with his anti-abortion stand, doesn't it?  Can you say hypocrite?

In the same interview, the Congressman referenced a study by white supremacist Charles Murray, who believes that social inequality is caused by the genetic inferiority of the black and Latino communities, women, and the poor.  And he's got the racist pseudoscience and misleading statistics to prove it!  (Just in case you're not getting the message, Mr. Murray believes that the only worthy people on the planet are white... men.)

Bottom line here, if there's any culture of not working, it's in the U.S. House of Representatives, where each of these so-called lawmakers is making more than $1,500 an hour for doing absolutely nothing to help Americans.  (Insert Asshole! here.)

Mitch McConnell Goes Hunting for Tea Party Votes

See this?  This is a gun.  I'm holding a gun.  I've never held a gun in my life.

Mitch promised the Tea Party crowd that if they'd return him to the Senate as Leader, he'd lead with integrity, fight tooth and nail (how original) for conservative reforms, wouldn't let them down, blah, blah, blah.  You know the routine.  Yawn.

No one has the remotest idea why McConnell thought he needed a prop to speak to Tea Partiers, much less a gun prop.  He looked about as comfortable with a gun as Sarah Palin would holding a dictionary.  In fact, he doesn't own a gun and it's doubtful he has ever hunted.

The hilarious thing about Mitch begging for Tea Party votes is the interview he did that appeared in the New York Times on the Saturday that CPAC ended its big gig.  In it he was asked if Republican incumbents were concerned about being challenged by Tea Partiers and he indicated they were not worried because I think we are going to crush them everywhere.  I don't think they are going to have a single nominee anywhere in the country.  Talk about awkward!   But Mitch is probably safe; it's doubtful that Tea Party folks have ever heard of the that particular publication, much less actually read it.

Cruzin' for a Bruisin'

Why yes, yes it is.  Please inform the Canadians, Big Guy; they'll be thrilled to hear it.

It's extremely difficult for normal people to figure out what Ted Cruz's game is.  It's obvious to anyone with a pulse that Teddy intends to be the Republican nominee for president in 2016, and yet he goes out of his way to piss off the very people he needs to get there, namely, the GOP itself.  Most of his fellow senators cannot stand him.  At a party luncheon a week after the President's State of the Union Address, John McCain -- referring to weirdo Steve Stockman -- complained that some crazy guy from Texas had stormed out in the middle of the speech.  Cruz quickly replied, Hey, I didn’t walk out of the State of the Union!

It's been reported that Cruz is trying to curb his wacko-birdiness this year.  Well, it seems he's fallen off the wagon on that venture because in his speech at CPAC he disdainfully reminded the Tea Partiers in attendance that they wouldn't remember a President Dole...a President McCain...a President Romney.  That infuriated John McCain, who demanded that Cruz publicly apologize to Dole.

And, of course, Cruz swore that he would continue his fight to repeal every word of Obamacare.  That received the expected wild explosion of cheers and applause from the Tea Partiers.  Unfortunately for Sen. Cruz, a minor problem has arisen:   House Republicans are moving to improve the law, not repeal it.  Bwahahaha! 

There will be more on this senator in the near future.

End Note

If you are ever fortunate enough to receive a call from a Republican campaign asking for a donation, be sure to tell them, I'd really like to help, but I'm afraid you'd become dependent on it so I'll try to make you more self-reliant.  That ought to do it.