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How Republican Stall Tactics Could Capsize Guam!

I really wish I could say this was an April Fool’s hoax or a Mensa audition gone horribly awry. Actually, it’s a hearing in the House Armed Services Committee:

Which seems like a good time to mention that Senator Carl Levin is filled with angst over all the wise on-the-spot guidance our general officers are missing out on because of a Republican parliamentary stall tactic somehow related to health care collectivization reform:

“Lives are at stake here. American lives and Afghan lives,” said Levin, who would have led the hearing on US national security in Asia. “It’s unconscionable.” [….] Defiant Republicans rolled their eyes, with one leadership aide asking “Do they really believe that a hearing is the difference between life and death? Seriously?” [….]

The Michigan lawmaker said he had hoped to question them about “pressing national security topics such as North Korea’s nuclear program, Chinese military capability and the threat of cyber-warfare.” [AFP]

The government is best that governs least, and that’s never more true that when your national brain trust is comprised of pompous, talentless buffoons like John Kerry and the shallow waters of the Foreign Relations Committee. I’ve given kind reviews to President Obama’s North Korea policy, but the current Congress — and the Democrats in particular — represents an intellectual vacuum whose collective impulse always defaults to the Sisyphean diplomacy of appeasement and agreed frameworks. Are we really missing anything by having 40% less of that?

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12 Responses

  1. First we gave Saipan to South Korea, and now Guam is going to be capsized!

    Seriously, though, I somehow thought this was going in some other direction. Many local Guamanians are not all that happy about unresolved land confiscation issues related to the military bases there. When I was last there early in the 2000s, it seemed a Vieques-type issue that’s ready to boil over, and if Okinawan bases completely or mostly move over to Guam, it might. At any rate, I don’t think it’s a suitable alternate location for the move-’em-out-of-Korea crowd.

  3. Doesn’t the Korean People’s Army have a secret plot to capsize Guam — starring Michael Myers as Dr Evil?

  4. Some on the left are actually claiming he was using “dry humor” to make a point. It is so clear in the clip that he was not trying to be humorous (dryly or otherwise) and is just a plain idiot.

  5. Can you really give the Republicans in congress high marks? And the phrase “intellectual vacuum” could with more validity describe the new heart of the GOP consisting of the tea party, Glenn Beck, Etc. This wing of the party is at times blatantly anti-intellectual driven by an ideology often disconnected from the facts. Obstructionism is a blunt strategy employed by those who can’t think up a better one.

  6. Jimmy,

    Obviously you’ve NEVER watched Glenn Beck or been to a Tea Party rally to really learn what they believe. Beck is anti-GOP as much as he is anti-DNC. The Tea Party rallies I’ve been to are made up of people sick of our government and BOTH parties. We are Constitutionalists that believe BOTH parties are not adhering to the principals of the Constitution and we want the bums from both sides of the aisle thrown out if they can’t follow the Constitution and keep the government small and unintrusive.

  9. Thomas,

    I’ve watched enough of Beck to form an opinion of him and the rationality of his thought processes. As for the tea party it does contain members with a libertarian ethos I admire. But it also contains a lot of angry blue collar conservatives that are more interested in talking about death panels and comparing Obama to Hitler than any kind of constitutional debate.

  10. Thomas,

    Glenn Beck is the right’s version of Michael Moore; don’t use him as a political role model. Glenn Beck and the teabaggers are supported by many in the GOP, and many prominent Republicans speak at their events. Don’t let Glenn Beck fool you when he says he’s a “libertarian” or “moderate”.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_s-lvpRj00

    As you can say, many teabaggers are driven by fear and anti-intellectualism. Look, I disagree with Obama on many things, but these people are far worse than him.

  11. Jeff,

    As I asked Jimmy, have you ever been to a Tea Party event? I have and it was the first and only political rally of any type I’ve ever been to and many there were of the same background. The speaker at the event I went to was Judge Napolitano and he spent an hour bashing George W. Bush and the Patriot Act. You’re severely uninformed. Either because you choose to be or because you have your own political agenda/view that contradicts that of the Tea Party. Your derogatory term “teabagger” belies your true motive as does your claim that Tea Party event members are “driven by fear and anti-intellectualism”. You have an agenda, I get it, but don’t try to make me fall into lock-step with you. I’m not scared (but I am disgusted) and while I do not profess to be an “intellectual” (that’s a term used by arrogant elitists), I am INTELLIGENT.