An entire political party continues its death spiral of crazy...
Here comes the sun: Darrell Issa lies some more about solar power and the loan guarantee program. I know, I know, this isn't really news - every time Issa opens his mouth on the subject of solar power, he seems to be lying. But it's interesting to see how the Republicans appear to be incapable of just letting go and moving on, and are compelled to repeat the same alshoods over and over again. This time, Issa claimed that the loan guarantee program that helped fund Solyndra actually discouraged development of solar energy. This is kind of hard to reconcile with the fact that, by every measure (total revenue, systems installed, number of large projects), the solar energy sector grew enormously in 2011 compared to 2010, more than doubling in the U.S. No sane person would define this as a measure of failure. On the other hand, it IS the Republicans making the accusations...
The outrageous tyranny of...access to health care: The astonishingly reprehensible Reps. Steve King and Louis Gohmert demagogued health care outside the Supreme Court during the recent hearings on the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare. What's truly bizarre is that they had to make themselves sound like liberals to do it. King bravely told the government to "keep your hands off my body!", while Gohmert informed the crowd that if they wanted to protect women's health they had to be against Obamacare (possibly because of the imaginary "rationing" that conservatives claim it will bring). Curiously, Republicans show no eagerness to keep government off of people's bodies when it comes to women's health care, including abortion access, contraception coverage, etc. Nor do they show any concern for how women might maintain access to these things. So perhaps the disingenuous, faux-populist outrage is a measure of their desperation to block health care access for millions.
Screw the handicapped: Rep. Allen West of Florida hates the idea of handicap accessibility to swimming pools. Really, he does. Because, you see, it's just too "burdensome" for businesses to do things like that. And really, doesn't West embody the values of the GOP nicely? Their concern for the burdens that businesses must bear is infinite. Their concern for the most powerless or disadvantaged of Americans? Not so much.
More GOP "support for our troops": Rep. Paul Ryan accidentally revealed the true motive of GOP "support" for the troops when he was forced to backpedal after calling top generals liars. What had happened, that led Ryan to make such intemperate remarks about the military leadership? In brief, the top military leaders said that they could ensure national security while spending less than the GOP wants them to spend. You would think that such information would be welcomed by Republicans, whose mantra of "waste, fraud, and abuse" is regularly invoked against non-military spending of all sorts. But no - Ryan simply said he didn't believe the generals were being truthful. Now, a cynic might suspect that Republicans actually like wasteful spending when it comes to our most-powerful-military-in-the-world, which already receives more funding than almost all other world militaries combined, and that what they really want to do is just come up with an excuse to accuse Obama of endangering America so that, I don't know, a rag-tag band of jihadis will sail across the Pacific in rubber dinghies, sinking the entire U.S. Pacific Fleet on the way, and then overwhelm all the tanks, armored personnel carriers, attack helicopters, jet fighters, and bombers of our shriveled and emasculated army, marines, and air force, who have somehow become a weak and hollow shell despite receiving better funding than any other military on Earth. I'm certainly not a cynic, so I wouldn't suggest anything like that.