Crazy, stupid and mean

By Phoenix Woman

The members of the self-styled Morality Party just can’t stop doing and saying immoral (not to mention stupid, cruel, bigoted and hypocritical) things:

– From ThinkProgress: “The audience at Thursday night’s GOP presidential debate in Orlando, Florida commemorated this week’s repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell by booing Stephen Hill, a gay soldier, as he asked Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA) about open service in the military. Without condemning the audience reaction, Santorum responded to Hill’s question by proclaiming that ‘any type of sexual activity has absolutely no place in the military’ and promising to reinstate the 1993 policy.”

– Earlier this month, during the first (and Tea-Party-sponsored) GOP presidential debate, the audience yelled out “Yeeeeahhhh!” for the latter option when the moderator asked if a person without insurance who needed intensive long-term medical care should receive it or if we should “let him die”; this was originally thought by some to be just a grim joke on the audience’s part, but after what happened to Stephen Hill, I kinda doubt that idea.

– The same Republicans who are making the most noise over the Bush-backed Solyndra loan guarantee (yeah, Diaper David Vitter, I’m looking at you) are being oddly quiet over Bush’s role in making it happen, just as they’re being oddly quiet over their own support of loan guarantees and outright grants (aka free taxpayer money, folks) for energy-related projects in their own Republican districts. And you won’t hear Darrell Issa talk much about the burgeoning San Bernardino Airport scandal that’s unfolding, complete with an FBI raid, in the home district of Issa’s fellow California Republican congressman, Jerry Lewis, the former head of the House Appropriations Committee and a big fan of the Berdoo Boondoggle:

FBI agents and other law enforcement officers raided the San Bernardino International Airport Authority office and storage units as well as a home and offices used by Scot Spencer, a convicted felon who was awarded two no-bid agreements in 2007 to build a commercial airport at the former Norton Air Force Base. [...]

The cost to build the [San Bernardino, California International] airport — which includes a luxury Million Air corporate jet terminal and a four-gate passenger concourse — has grown from $45 million to $142.5 million in local and federal taxpayer funds.

Interestingly, Scot Spencer, the convicted felon behind the airport boondoggle, has gone missing: Bill Ingraham, the airport’s aviation director, said Wednesday that he didn’t know where Mr. Spencer might be, and that he hadn’t talked with him in about a week.

– Speaking of convicted felons and the Republicans who love them, let me introduce you to Frank Vennes, buddy and major campaign contributor to Michele Bachmann. What was that about crony capitalism again, Michele?

– And just as Michele Bachmann’s embrace of Joe Arpaio is one of the many things making it harder for saner, more pragmatic Republicans to woo back Hispanic voters and convince them that the GOP isn’t really dominated by insanely racist Tea Partiers, the fact that “Numbers USA” and “Californians for Population Stabilization”, two of anti-immigrant activist John Tanton’s many front groups (he’s to immigrant hate what Pete Peterson is to Social Security hate) are now running anti-immigrant TV ads. Not anti-undocumented-immigrant, but anti-immigrant, period — letting the mask slip on Tanton’s racism and his racist affiliations.

Like President Clinton before him, President Obama seems to be very lucky in the sort of enemies he faces. They may well be openly repulsive enough for him to win re-election.