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.

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]

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.

[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.

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.

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]

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]

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.

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.

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.