No More Mr. Nice Guy!

A week is a short time in politics

Last night, Arnold Schwarzenegger's pudgy-me, Jay Leno, made some lame quip about the Democrats in Congress moving to a four-day work week, accompanied by the standard rethug ranting-points about lazy Dems who don't get anything done, are even more unpopular than Junior, etc, etc. I hadn't heard anything about this in the news, and when I searched on Google News, all I found was a couple of links to lunatic extreme-right hate blogs, which I'm not going to link to because they just spew more of the same ignorant, hateful crap.

I think it's worthwhile recalling that the rethug congress of 2004-06 had only a two-day work week, or two and a half at most (when it wasn't in recess), and wasted whole months with mindless craw-thumping and bible-banging about gay marriage, flag burning and Terri Schiavo, while US troops were dying and trillions of taxpayer dollars were being flushed down the crapper in a pointless, exitless quagmire.

When the Democrats announced after the midterms that Congress would move to a five-day work week, the rethugs were livid with rage, and whining about those mean nasty anti-family liberals.

"Keeping us up here eats away at families," said Rep. Jack Kingston (R-Ga.), who typically flies home on Thursdays and returns to Washington on Tuesdays. "Marriages suffer. The Democrats could care less about families -- that's what this says."

Of course, some Republicans saw this new schedule in more of a political light:

House Majority Whip Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), one of the architects of the lighter workweek, put the best Republican face on Hoyer's new schedule.

"They've got a lot more freshmen then we do," he said of the Democrats. "That schedule will make it incredibly difficult for those freshmen to establish themselves in their districts. So we're all for it."

Now of course the 'thugs are singing a different song. The Dems are giving up! They've realized that they can't accomplish anything! Never mind that it's the mindless, partisan knee-jerk filibustering, obstructionism and sabotage of the 'thugs, gumming up the works over even the most routine and uncontroversial matters, that has prevented progress. (A strategy crafted by odious neanderthal Trent Lott and carefully ignored by the media.)

Sick, sleazy, slimy hypocritical bastards. They turn my stomach, every single one of them.