Rumproast

Heritage Action for America: Project Tora! Tora! Tora!

2013-05-22T15:50:35Z

Last week a curious little news item surfaced that might have attracted more focused attention if it hadn’t been lost in the sturm und drung of Scandalpalooza. It had to do with a letter from Michael Needham, CEO of Heritage Action for America, schooling House Speaker John Boehner and Majority Leader Eric Cantor in how to do their jobs. Needham’s advice boiled down to forget about legislation, it’ll only make us look bad; focus on your one true mission: destroy Obama.

I guess, tactically, that’s not bad advice for several reasons: a) destroying Obama is pretty much the only unifying ideology left among Republicans and b) Republicans have no intention of legislating anyway so why not make that look like a shrewd political ploy.

You can read the entire letter here but here’s my personal favorite bit:

To that end, we urge you to avoid bringing any legislation to the House Floor that could expose or highlight major schisms within the conference. Legislation such as the Internet sales tax or the FARRM Act which contains nearly $800 billion in food stamp spending, would give the press a reason to shift their attention away from the failures of the Obama administration to write another ‘circular firing squad’ article.

[Not the only “circular” activity going on with the GOP these days, I might add]

Now, if I were John Boehner or Eric Cantor, I can’t help feeling that I’d be more than a little pissed at some nerdy think-tank pedant telling me how to do my job [even though there is every indication that I don’t know how to do it]. I’d be pissed. It took them a few days of reading tea leaves and consulting the Magic 8-Ball but, sure enough, now they’re pissed.

GovExev.com was first to cover some of the Republican backlash to Heritage Action‘s no legislation advisory:

Rep. David Schweikert (R-AZ), a conservative Republican Study Committee member who said he normally supports Heritage Action’s efforts said:

This is the House of Representatives, we need to step up and do our work.

Better late than never, I suppose, Dave.

Rep. Mike Coffman (R-CO) said:

We’ve got two things occurring at the same time: committees doing oversight work, and committees doing legislative work. I don’t see the legislative agenda being changed at all—and that’s how it should be.

According to a senior House leadership aide:

Heritage Action isn’t concerned with the harmony of the House Republican Conference. Rather, the group wrote to leadership with the sole purpose of preventing legislation they’ve fought against from coming to the floor. Are they opposed to the farm bill because of timing, or are they just opposed to the farm bill? It’s not a serious argument.

To be honest, I find Congressional aides’ comments a whale of a lot more insightful than anything coming out of a politician’s mouth. Indeed, Needham specifically called out the FARRM Act and the Market Fairness (Internet Sales Tax) Act as two pieces of legislation, specifically, that should never make it to the House floor if the GOP is to survive.

If Heritage Action were truly concerned about the future prospects of the GOP as a viable political party there are many more constructive pieces of advice they might offer . . . like go hide, for a while, and stay away from anything that looks like a microphone . . . for starters.

Our daily news is filled with examples of how pathologically divided the GOP is and how they’d better make some serious adjustments just to stay alive and none of those examples have anything to do with the FARRM Act. The problems are much more systemic and life-threatening than a little internecine squabbling on any one piece of legislation.

As witness, this little melodrama that played out in the Senate yesterday:

In the latest expression of Republican frustration with conservative GOP colleagues, Sens. John McCain (R-AZ) and Susan Collins (R-ME) excoriated Sens. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Rand Paul (R-KY) for persistently refusing to initiate House-Senate budget negotiations.

“For four years, four years, we complained about the fact that the majority leader … would refuse to bring a budget to the floor of the United States Senate,” McCain said. “What [do] we on my side of the aisle keep doing? We don’t want a budget unless — unless — we put requirements on the conferees that are absolutely out of line and unprecedented.

McCain called the GOP’s stance “a little bit bizarre” and Collins added:

We have called repeatedly for a return to regular order in this body. Well, regular order is going to conference.

She said her party’s stance “certainly is ironic at the least. It is an opportunity for the Republican House to argue for its budget.”

Well, I guess Collins is spending too much time on Planet Moderate because we all know why Republicans don’t want to “argue for their budget.” It’s because their budget is a dog that don’t hunt and a guaranteed electoral disaster if they argue for it before 2014.

Also, this week, there was this little gem, reported by Roll Call about GOP aides losing patience with House Republicans’ partisan witch-hunt over the Obama administration’s handling of the attacks on Benghazi, and arguing that the Party should be focused more on substantive issues, such as lessons learned and how to recalibrate diplomatic security.

“We have got to get past that and figure out what are we going to do going forward,” a GOP aide told Roll Call. “Some of the accusations, I mean you wouldn’t believe some of this stuff. It’s just — I mean, you’ve got to be on Mars to come up with some of this stuff.”

Yes, well. And just one more thing before I let go of Heritage Action . . .

As you may or may not know, Heritage Action is a registered 501(c)(4) organization. Now a 501(c)(4) organization, according to IRS rules, operates exclusively for the promotion of “social welfare” i.e., in promoting the common good and general welfare of the people of the community. 501(c)(4) organizations are tax exempt but differ from charitable organizations in that they may participate in political events and elections however they are not required to disclose their donors’ identities making them a haven for “dark money” political spending.

That also means that all of us American taxpayers are subsidizing the very organization that’s advising our lawmakers not to do their job. I would be quite interested in hearing whatever pretzel logic turns that activity into “promoting social welfare” and earning tax exempt status into the bargain.

Hack Ack-Ack

2013-05-22T00:09:48Z

May Robert Gibbs find solace someday, after the savaging he received at the wit of Bill Clinton’s ex-wife Maureen Dowd.

“I don’t normally read Maureen,” Gibbs, now an MSNBC contributor, said during an appearance on the network. “I don’t largely because it’s sort of largely the same column for the last, like, eight years.”

Oh Robert, why tempt Fate? Why?

After an uneasy interregnum, during which dogs were silenced with juicy bones and straw spread in the streets outside MSNBC studios, came to Politico the crushing reply:

I don’t normally listen to Robert,” she wrote in an e-mail to POLITICO. “I don’t largely because it’s sort of largely the same tired defense of President Obama for the last, like, six years.”

Now that’s some Pulitzer-grade devastation right there.

Makes us wonder with what weaponized snark the Dowdinator crushed the authors of this hilarious and still, like, apropos 2009 Huffpo Maureen Dowd Column-Writing Flow Chart?

Coburn & Co. Continued: Can It With The Compassion Crap, You Crass Creeps

2013-05-21T20:25:13Z

Anybody remember to set a stopwatch or start a pool on how long it took Senator Tom Coburn to accuse critics of his hypocritical disaster-aid political posturing “crass?”

For pity’s sake, all Coburn wants to do is make sure his constituents
receive help in:

the most compassionate, effective and efficient way possible.”

Presumably, Sen. Coburn’s attempts to starve the agency that would provide that help won’t affect all that effectiveness. As Betty Cracker observes,

what does seem somewhat novel—to me, at least—is the brazen callousness in today’s breed of Republicans

Meanwhile in the annals of brazen callousness, Sen. Coburn’s fellow coprolite OK Sen. James Inhofe has tried to get around their stonewalling aid for Eastern states by calling the Sandy aid bill a “slush fund:”

“they were getting things … in the Virgin Islands, fixing roads there, and putting roofs on houses in Washington, D.C.”

Evidently the good senators are unaware that both Washington and the Virgin Islands are U.S. territories. But what does that matter? It’s not like they have senators to deny aid to anybody.

Something Has Been Lost

2013-05-21T14:53:10Z

Just to amplify an issue related to Mistermix’s post at Balloon Juice about austerity peacock Tom Coburn’s announcement that he would seek to offset federal disaster relief funds to Oklahoma with budget cuts elsewhere (Pentagon exempted, naturally). Let’s pause to consider what it means that Coburn issued this statement while bodies were still being pulled from the rubble in his home state, an activity that is ongoing.

A spokesman for the senator claimed that Coburn was merely being consistent about his position on federal disaster aid. That’s a lie: Mrs. Polly provides links to accounts of Coburn questioning and delaying disaster relief to other states while accepting funds for Oklahoma below. It’s no surprise that Coburn is a liar and a hypocrite: That’s what we expect from politicians. It’s what our grandparents expected, and their grandparents too.

But what does seem somewhat novel—to me, at least—is the brazen callousness in today’s breed of Republicans, a rigid orthodoxy combined with a rich man’s insulation from trouble that renders them utterly indifferent to the fate of others, even those who look like them and share their origins and cultural pretensions.

Coburn is retiring after his current term: Maybe he’d be less quick to rush before the cameras to display his austerity plumage if he had to stand for another election. But I don’t think that’s necessarily true anymore. His real political masters, Koch Industries, et al, will applaud his haste to emphasize what’s really important in the face of a natural disaster, which is to keep corporate tax rates low and gut regulations on industries that contribute to extreme climate events.

And even if voters remember some other austerity peacock’s callous disregard for an unfolding disaster in some future election (doubtful thanks to the flood of corporate money that swings most elections), the heartless pricks who are voted out of office can transition seamlessly into cushy private sector influence-peddling gigs.

There’s really nothing new to see here, I suppose, but I can’t help but feel that something has been lost nonetheless: basic human decency, fundamental accountability—or at least the need to pretend that these quaint notions are relevant.

[X-posted at Balloon Juice]

Conservatives Decry Ruthless Effort To Pimp Effect As Result Of Cause

2013-05-20T20:43:43Z

Still red-faced from deploring Newtown parents’ strange commitment to furthering an anti-gun agenda, right wingers are disgusted that Rhode Island Democratic Senator Sheldon Whitehouse would be so callous as to use Monday’s devastating monster tornado to highlight his global warming agenda.

Too soon, Senator Whitehouse! Can’t you have the decency to wait a couple hours, as Oklahoma GOP Senator Tom Coburn did to announce that he’d seek budget cuts to offset any aid his state might receive? Senator Whitehouse’s state was one of the coastal areas severely affected by Superstorm Sandy that had its aid package questioned and delayed by Senator Coburn, despite Coburn’s having requested and received aid—quite a lot of aid —without being questioned on the need for such porky projects as “disaster mitigation.”

Yes, Senator Whitehouse, the beset members of the GOP will long remember your shameless rant against them, particularly the parting shot:

So, like it or not, we’re in this together.

As is usually the case in disasters of this sort, the best and fastest way to help is with cash.. Go to:RedCross.org or text REDCROSS to 90999. Other suggestions for where to send donations are welcome.

SHOCKED! Shocked, I Tell You!

2013-05-19T11:09:42Z

[Updated below the fold]

What a week! And, I have to agree with Jay Carney, it’s actually been a good week, if for no other reason than its entertainment value. Scandalpalooza has downtrodden Republicans floating in a purple haze of political fairy dust and, history teaches us that when the GOP has magic on its mind it becomes rather spectacularly self-destructive.

By the end of a week of Republican non-stop merrymaking, Prince Rebus and “You’re a Mean One, Mr Gingrich” are the sole, sober voices of reason. Say what you will about Newt, but he does have decades worth of first-hand knowledge of the inner workings, serial miscalculations, over-reach and bumbling blunders that have carried the GOP to its present-day level of uselessness.

So it is that Prince and Newt are the grownups desperately calling cabs for the less inhibited partygoers before they start spewing a skinful of Impeachment Punch all over the rotunda.

In one of those cabs, we find Peggy Noonan belting out “those were the days, my friend” spliced with “we are in the middle of the worst Washington scandal since Watergate” and “the South shall rise again.” [I added that last part; it seemed to fit]

Admittedly, it’s been a while since Peggy Noonan made any sense to me. At first, I thought she was cleverly speaking in tongues. But Peggy’s Catholic and they generally frown on that kind of melodrama.

Nowadays, I tend to agree with Charlie Pierce:

God put her [Noonan] on this earth to make Maureen Dowd look sane.

That makes more sense to me.

In another cab, we have Michael A Needham whose true genius has only just recently been unleashed by his elevation to Starfleet Commander of Heritage Action for America, the lobbying arm of Jim Demint’s Conservative Boys Club, the Heritage Foundation. Basking in the media’s “white hot” focus on Scandalpalooza, Needham addressed a letter to House Speaker John Boehner and Majority Leader Eric Cantor advising them to lay off the governing and fan the media flames for all they’re worth:

. . . it is incumbent upon the House of Representatives to conduct oversight hearings on those actions, but it would be imprudent to do anything that shifts the focus from the Obama administration to the ideological differences within the House Republican Conference.

To that end, we urge you to avoid bringing any legislation to the House Floor that could expose or highlight major schisms within the conference. Legislation such as the Internet sales tax or the FARRM Act which contains nearly $800 billion in food stamp spending, would give the press a reason to shift their attention away from the failures of the Obama administration to write another ‘circular firing squad’ article.

I have to wonder how the interests of actual constituents figure into this equation.

Having a low-info base is both a blessing and a curse . . . it can mean that it’s oh-so-easy to snooker the poor rubes into hyperventilating over the conservative outrage du jour but, on the other hand, if something subtler than “See Dick run” comes along it has to be “clarified” and writ large for it to penetrate their tiny tricorn-covered domes. Since Benghazi lacked an easily identifiable “smoking gun,” Republicans created a 3D printout, of their own, loaded with some dry ice.

All of Benghazi-Gate depended heavily on the President doing what a Republican President [and “REAL MAN”] would do: refuse, by gum, to cough up the White House emails. Republicans on those super-special “Eyes Only” House committees counted on being a select few to actually peruse the emails, take copious notes and spin gold out of dryer lint. And the American public would just have to take their word for what they found. Lo and Behold! they found exactly what they were looking for: Grounds for Impeachment! Word.

But, as usual, the Kenyan Usurper played the Outside-the-Box gambit, waited patiently for the prevaricating to commence, then released the damn emails for all to see [and compare to the GOP version]. Ooooh! tough break, GOP. Hoist by your own improvised explosive device!

Likewise, the AP “scandal” is a big fat nothingburger that has already faded into a dud story about the Department of Justice actually doing what 31 Republicans demanded they do: find out where those leaks are.

And the IRS? Well, aside from the shocking revelation that the agency that administers our rococo tax code is just as baffled by their job as John Q. Public, this scandal has no legs either. This one has more to do with total confusion in the backwash of Citizens United and the dash for “every middlesex village and farm” to create its own PAC.

If we look very closely at the situation, we might find that the truth lies somewhere in the top-heavy in-boxes of underpaid federal workers doing their best to provide bottoms-up support for our ricketiest of bureaucracies, on an austerity budget.

Waiting in long lines can sometimes feel like discrimination, but, really? Annoying? yes. Predictable? Oh yes, indeed. Sinister? hardly.

[I, personally, just finished wrangling with the IRS for six years over $6,000 they erroneously believed I owed them. My accountant and I responded to reams of forms with reams of evidence. Three times, in all, the IRS sent me a notice saying that the mistake had been corrected; followed up, twice, by increasingly threatening demands (for the tax bill they’d just said I didn’t owe) climaxing with a tax lien notice.

HAPPY ENDING: the whole thing has been vacated and I have an official apology, with a cherry on top.

Now, I’m a lesbian, but am I claiming this was a hate crime? No. If I were a loony conspiracy theorist could I? Sure, sky’s the limit.]

I must admit, though, that it provides me with no end of entertainment to watch drips like Mitch McConnell publicly pump up the outrage perpetrated on the poor TEA Party by the diabolical Obama, while clandestinely cackling over the notion that some Obama administration apparatchiks have unwittingly granted him, and many of his RINO cronies, a campaign dream-come-true by tying up the TEA Party political machine in miles of red tape.

Meanwhile, back at the Oval Office, polls out just this morning show Obama’s approval rating actually improving to 53%, after a week of Scandalpalooza, while his Republican nemeses shriek impeachment from their confinement in the shallow end. Despite the fact that Rep. Fred Upton (R-MI), chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee, said, “It’s been a bad week for the administration,” and Michele Bachmann (R-MN) reports that her constituents badger her every weekend with calls for impeachment, a lot of interesting things are going on, nonetheless, in the real world.

For example, immigration legislation keeps trudging methodically toward bipartisan approval in the Senate Judiciary Committee. The measure “has strong support of its own in the Senate,” said Sen. Amy Klobuchar, (D-MN)., a member of the panel [who didn’t mention being pestered by her Minnesota constituents to impeach the President]. Meanwhile, in the House, a bipartisan group reported agreement in principle toward a compromise on immigration, which would become a notable second-term domestic achievement for Obama.

Ernest Moniz, the president’s nominee for energy secretary was actually confirmed unanimously by the Senate. And Republicans are showing signs that they might allow confirmation of Sri Srinivasan to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

Also, a House committee approved legislation to prevent a spike in interest rates on student loans on July 1. Loosely supportive of a White House-backed proposal for future rate changes to be based on private markets.

So why do the remaining sane people of the GOP allow this zany, often embarrassing, political circus to take up valuable time in the center ring? Mostly because it’s all they’ve got. If America isn’t interested in tax cuts, 18th century social and fiscal policy, hating on the black guy or shooting Hillary in her ladyparts, then the GOP is pretty much all washed up. It’s come to this highly imaginative, arrested development acting-out that will most likely play out over a very long four years.

For the rest of us, it’s time to make the popcorn, tap a keg and kick back while Republicans attempt to go way too far on fumes, breakdown somewhere between Kansas and Oz and have to hitch-hike back to the Beltway.

******************UPDATE**********************

At the same time that I was hammering away at this piece, my sister-blogger, VixenStrangely, was putting her own spin on roughly the same observations and coming to similar conclusions. By dumb luck, I posted here before Vixen had a chance to cross-post from her eponymous blog. Blogger’s Code says you don’t double-team a fellow-bloggers’ play, so Vixen graciously held back. But, you really should read Vixen’s post, too, because two heads are always better than one [plus, she makes some really good points that didn’t occur to me]. Brava, Vixen.

May The Force Stiffen Your Spanx

2013-05-18T23:15:58Z

I knew from the get-go that it wasn’t James Earl Jones lending gravity and heft to Darth Vader’s Jedi armor back in 1979. The only question—which I never asked—was what extremely large and sturdy stunt double would allow himself to be swanned around on-camera for ten years without so much as a single shot of the actor’s actual face. (Anonymity is generally a useless P.R. tool.)

As it turns out, Vader (or at least his clanking physical presence) was portrayed by British weightlifter David Prowse, a robust bodybuilder who helped train Christopher Reeve:

He helped train Christopher Reeve for the role of Superman in the 1978 film and its sequels after lobbying for the part himself. In a television interview, he related how his response to being told “We’ve found our Superman” was “Thank you very much.” Then he was told that Reeve had been chosen and he was only to be a trainer.

as well as training Cary Elwes for The Princess Bride.

Little to my beknownst, I first encountered Prowse a few years earlier, when he played the nearly naked pleasure-boy Julian in Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange.

It ain’t politics, and it ain’t funny, but here’s hoping I just cleared up the deepest mystery of your brain with Mr. Prowse’s own workaday website.

Sometimes an Umbrella Is Just an Umbrella

2013-05-18T19:08:36Z

Most wingnuts go straight for the “uppity” angle when criticizing President Obama for asking two Marines to hold umbrellas over himself and the Turkish Prime Minister at an outdoor press conference during a downpour.

Noted boxed wine enthusiast Ann Althouse digs a bit deeper in a post entitled, “The word ‘umbrella’ appears exactly once in Obama’s ‘Dreams from My Father.’” Do think I’m kidding? No, I am not.

I’m astounded to see that the umbrella figures importantly in the book — and it is even an umbrella held over him by another man (his younger brother Bernard). This happens at the end of what is the most dramatic scene in the book, on the last page of the final chapter.

[snip]

So — as he dramatizes it —it is at the moment when he finds out who he really is that another man suddenly appears and is sheltering him with an umbrella. He’s been crying, but now it all makes sense, and — with the prompting of the younger man — he sees that he is okay.

[snip]

Flash forward, and he’s President. He is in the Rose Garden. It starts to rain. No man suddenly appears with an umbrella. He is getting wet and he is President — with plenty of airplanes and rifles and all of the world’s greatest military at hand — but he is still getting wet. He has to order the Marine to shelter him. It isn’t Bernard squatting with a bent-up old umbrella. It’s a Marine in full-dress uniform, with a fine unbent umbrella, which is nevertheless not correct under the official — male, rigid — Marine Corps regulations… And here he is, the center of the whole world’s attention, and he had to call for the umbrella. He is not okay.

Wingnuts have demonstrated amazing super powers in the past, including the ability to conduct a comprehensive neurological assessment via a snippet of grainy videotape and audit a family’s finances by peering through the kitchen window at their countertops.

In her analysis of the meaning of UmbrellaGate, Althouse has taken it a step further, investing that “famously Freudian symbol” with powers that far surpass Mary Poppins’ foul weather gear, including the ability to emasculate US Marines and transform the POTUS into an insecure child. It’s both insane and fascinating.

[X-posted at Balloon Juice]

Eggs Bettydict

2013-05-18T13:24:27Z

I usually don’t attempt emulsification prior to 10 AM, but I made a smashing hollandaise sauce this morning:

It was a simple recipe: 4 egg yolks, a tablespoon of lemon juice, a stick of melted butter, white pepper, cayenne pepper and salt.

Then I toasted some thick slices of Italian bread, topped them with some slices of Ukrainian purple tomatoes from our garden, topped that with eggs over easy, ladled hollandaise sauce over it and sprinkled it with smoked paprika:

Definitely not a heart healthy breakfast, but we’re patching a floor and laying tile today, so we need the fuel.

Please feel free to discuss whatever.

[X-posted at Balloon Juice]

See, ABC? This Is How You Give ‘Em The REAL Song And Dance

2013-05-18T01:08:17Z

Oh, look, it’s ABC; still not admitting that their tin-eared right wing experiment Jonathan Karl was flim-flammed by a questionable source (and wishful thinking) into trumpeting his completely false EXCLUSIVE about the White House editing Benghazi talking points.

So what culprit fed faked notes from the White House Benghazi briefings to the eager and uncritical Karl? At least we can rule out John McCain!

On the other hand, this post could just be a thin excuse to post a video of Lee J. Cobb tap-dancing. As if I needed one.

Woodward: WATERGHAZI!!

2013-05-17T18:58:36Z

Apparently primordial Villager Bob Woodward’s information stream is less than a trickle these days, or else how to explain his ignorance of the news that Benghazi emails purportedly doctored by the White House were actually doctored by interested, and likely Republican, parties instead?

Perhaps Woodward is still a little traumatized after having been threatened with a good dinner and flattery by a thuggish member of the Obama administration.

Or, perhaps, somewhere deep within the man (if that’s possible at all at all), he needs to discredit himself by daring more careful reporters to throw facts at him like a carnival dunk-me clown. Predictably, though, at the Village carnival, the game is evidently rigged, and Woodward stays dry as a bone.

Never Fear, FOX Fans, The New Dingbat’s Here

2013-05-17T17:57:11Z

Just because they bounced the Alasklown, you didn’t think FOX was giving up on their mission to give the maximum possible juice to the dimmest possible bulbs in these divided States, did you?

Rest assured that while there’s an unemployed photogenic psychotic willing to preen in front of bright lights and pocket Wingnut Welfare, FOX will be assiduous in helping malevolent loons fail their way to the top, if by “top” we mean the bottom of a barrel similar to the one West likes to torture Iraqi policemen in.

So Many Scandals, So Little Time

2013-05-15T13:34:17Z

Has anyone noticed that the GOP Faux Outrage Machine has been somewhat subdued on the recent revelations that the Department of Justice has been secretly poring over news reporters’ phone logs? Odd, isn’t it? Sure, we all know how Republicans feel about the LAMESTREAM MEDIA!!!1! and it’s insufferable Librul Bias. But, FIRST AMENDMENT! FOUNDING FATHERS! etc., plus, really, Flip-Flops R Us. So why aren’t Republicans getting all apoplectic over this now that they have their big chance to expose Big Brother-ish, Fascist tactics?

Maybe it’s because you’d have to really beat the bushes to find a Republican who isn’t a huge fan of spy vs. spy stuff or who doesn’t believe that anything—anything—that the intelligence community, the military or federal law enforcement does in the name of National Security is out of bounds. And what a slippery slope political talk about limitations could land us on if we’re not careful, eh?

Besides, remember all the way back to the 2012 campaign when Republicans were screaming foul about deliberate White House leaks on national security coups strategically designed to make President Obama look good in an election year? Stories like how the CIA had foiled an Underwear Bomber 2.0 plot that could have taken down a passenger-laden jetliner? Or the sexy one about cyber-spying on Iran’s nuclear program?

I’m sure these Republicans haven’t forgotten:

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) circulated the letter . . . signed by Sens. John McCain (R-AZ), Mitch McConnell (R-KY), Lamar Alexander (R-TN), Kelley Ayotte (R-NH), Roy Blunt (R-MO), John Barrasso (R-WY), Saxby Chambliss (R-GA), Susan Collins (R-ME), Jim DeMint (R-SC), Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), Marco Rubio (R-FL) and John Thune (R-SD), among other Republican senators.

It was 31 in all who signed the letter demanding that Attorney General Eric Holder immediately appoint a special counsel to investigate national-security leaks from the executive branch:

The numerous national-security leaks reportedly originating out of the executive branch in recent months have been stunning.

If true, they reveal details of some of our nation’s most highly classified and sensitive military and intelligence matters, thereby risking our national security, as well as the lives of American citizens and our allies. If there were ever a case requiring an outside special counsel with bipartisan acceptance and widespread public trust, this is it.

So. Months later we find ourselves “uncovering” that very investigation.

Surprise! Surprise!

Pimp My Song

2013-05-14T22:32:00Z

With the exception of Margaret Dumont in a white toga performing her plus-size version of the Rites of Spring, nothing makes Classical Occultism less appealing than Stevie Nicks levitating in a cloud of silken Underoos. Needless to say, I was never any kind of Fleetwood Mac fan until I discovered “Tusk” on the B side of a 45 RPM Top 40 single. Talk about relentless rhythm!

Think of this as today’s rock n’ roll sorbet. Cleanse your palate. Enjoy the interplay of exotic pop riffs, and don’t thank me just because the band isn’t dancing all over the YouTube video.

How Can We Enjoy The Wingnut Circus With All This Government Circus In The Way?

2013-05-14T19:14:12Z

**ALREADY WITH AN UPDATE ALREADY!**
GREAT MINDS PUT THEIR HEDS TOGETHER

So, Heavily Armed Disgruntled People Of America, how’s every little thing?

Our special correspondent (kitted out at his insistence in Cloak of Invisibility and Kevlar Pants) was attending that little treasonish trade-show-cum shindig of yours last week, when he happened in on the creative gun-storage seminar “Store Your Semi-Automatics In The Kids’ Closet” which sounds like a David Sedaris title but turned out to be really real. So many small children having either smoked their siblings or been smoked in general recently, he began to feel slightly peaky, and unable to appreciate your full spectrum of defiant ballistic wackadoo, detailed here by the vastly more stalwart Bette Noir.

Any old hoo, rankled 2nd-half-of-the-2nd amendment fans, sometime between the Glenn Beck philippics on Michael Bloomberg, Nazi, and fifteen minutes of mike-melting audio purporting to be the thoughts of Gammy Gunrack, yr. correspondent thought, “Line-Dancing Jeebus With A Chaw and a Blowsy Girlfriend In A’Women Hunt’ T shirt, I sure hope these people never have a legitimate grievance—they’re halfway to an armed march on Washington as it is!”

And now, look you, after over four years of Birthy confabulations and paranoid delusions about your government, not only may you actually have had your ticket to ride the steam locomotive to Zanyville stamped by the actual IRS, but it seems that Nostrils Of Governmental Overreach have been hoovering up Associated Press communiqués, little, until now, to the A.P.‘s beknownst*

It was at this point that the old back-office telex machine started its musical chattering, and churned out a missive from our special correspondent: “My understanding file reports on people perpetually wrong,from own inviolable position of moral superiority. Currently drowning self in pink gin at expat bar on riverfront. Suggest reply only by telex until further notice or Holder bounced down Capitol steps on keister.”

Gentle Red-State Readers, nobody is unhappier at the thought that you were unfairly targeted for extra scrutiny by the IRS than we your most fervent critics. Still less happy are we that the Justice Department has an unseemly enthusiasm for driftnet snoopery, which is why Rumproast may become the first all-Telex blog. But, and I hope you won’t take this personally, after the dust has cleared, we Rumproasters, possibly excluding our Sp Correspondent (inviolable moral superiority at a blog called Rumproast?), know that you will continue to be the most ignorant, petulant, silly, bigoted, faux-Patriots that ever threatened their country with violent revolution for the crime of letting the majority attempt to govern, and we will continue to point and laugh at you.

Even a stopped wingnut is hilarious twice a day.

*Courtesy StrangeAppar8us Personal Collection of Ethnographic Oddments Of American Locution