Rachel, if you really don't understand why "they're not embarrassed," let Tom Tomorrow explain: "TOO MUCH CRAZY"

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THEY'RE NOT EMBARRASSED: Of course they're not, Rachel! Has any Republican uttered a truthful syllable since -- oh, I don't know, sometime back before the Bush regime? As you point out in this segment from last night's show (which features as guest Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown), they've discovered that there's no price to pay for lying.

RACHEL: We keep doing these segments that are called, [turns to face graphic projected behind her] "THEY'RE NOT EMBARRASSED," right? They're about people who have lied or been blatantly hypocritical in their opposition to policies like the stimulus and health reform. The reason we keep calling these segments "THEY'RE NOT EMBARRASSED" is because that's supposed to describe a problem, in that people should be embarrassed when they get caught lying, or when they get caught showing blatant hypocrisy.

But there is a problem here. THEY'RE NOT. They're not. And as the health reform fight draws to a close, people who want health reform to not happen are becoming even less afraid and even less embarrassed about lying abouthealth reform, and about demonstrating rank hypocrisy about health reform. This problem is not getting any better. It turns out that our diagnosis was not at all a cure.

by Ken

Let me say at once that I think it's wonderful that Rachel can still experience such astonishment and rage at all the lying and flagrant hypocrisy. On Tuesday night's show, she points out in this clip from last night's show, she called attention to Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch writing an op-ed on health care that was simply contrary to fact. As she puts it, she wasn't expressing an opinion about Senator Hatch or his beliefs, she was simply documenting that he lied. And his response? He didn't contest any of the facts. He tweeted that being slammed by Rachel he considers a "wonderful badge of honor." This useless putz is actually proud of being shown to be a fucking liar.

Then there's Miss Mitch McConnell, lying his worthless head off about previous uses of reconciliation. He claimed yesterday, "Virtually every time reconciliation has been used, the resuts were bipartisan support." What Rachel doesn't point out is that you don't have to have any deep knowledge of Senate history or do any research to know that this is patently idiotic. If there was such bipartisan support, why the fuck would the Senate leaders have resorted to reconciliation? Of course if you do actual research -- you know, involving actual facts -- you find that the reconciliation votes were, oh, 51-50, 50-49, 52-47. In fact, says Rachel, in the majority of cases where reconciliation was used in the last two decades, the result was a party-line vote.

Then there's my personal favorite, what we will call The Two Judd Greggs, demonstrating the popular new Republican stunt that Rachel describes as "taking brave stands against their own records, their own positions."

I believe this is the New Judd Gregg, but it's hard to say for sure without hearing which set of lies he's peddling. This is, after all, a man who can announce diametrically opposed positions and be lying both times!

It was the New Judd Gregg who yesterday traipsed into the Hall of Lies that is Fox Noise and, prompted by a female creature so abjectly ignorant and poisonously contemptuous of reality and truth (mercifullyl not seen in Rachel's edit of the clip) that the mere fact of the earth not opening and swallowing her provides irrefutable proof of the non-existence of God, at 3:05 of the clip denounced the Democrats and all their kin for so much as contemplating perpetrating the profound sin and wickedness of reconciliation, with the intent "to railroad the American people and the Constitution."

"That new Judd Gregg," Rachel cautions, "is really not going to be happy when we introduce him to the old Judd Gregg." And here is the Old Judd Gregg, at 3:25 of the clip:

We are using the rules of the Senate here. That's what they are, Senator. All this rule of the Senate does is allow a majority of the Senate to take a position and pass a piece of legislation to support that position. Now [with heavy saracasm] is there something wrong with majority rule? i don't think so!

[The best part is Rachel echoing mockingly, "I don't think so."]

In a political universe that contained an iota of honesty or morality or ethics, the Two Greggs would have had literally no choice but to file back onto Fox Noise today and blow their itty-bitty brain out.

Then there's the dance of the Beyond-Certifiable Wingnuts, like Sens. Jim "I Defy Anyone to Find a Genetic Human, Living or Dead, More Insane Than Me" DeMint and our old pal Orrin "I'm Proud to Be a Liar" Hatch denouncing the Senate parliamentarian. You'll recall that It's the Senate parliamentarian who will be the arbiter of what, under Senate rules, can and cannot be passed under reconciliation. Now apart from the fact that the gentleman in question is a personally hired stooge of then-Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, hired indeed to replace a former stooge who had proved insufficiently stoogelike, the fact is that he has yet to do or say a thing. And here are these unaccountably uninstitutionalized raging psychopaths just pounding the doody out of him.

As Rachel points out, DeMint and Hatch are "preemptively bullying" the parliamentarian. It's a particularly insane and unprincipled version of "gaming the refs," and is the sort of thing that Tony Soprano and his associates would attempt without hestiation, but that from a U.S. senator should arouse general revulsion and a universal chorus of demands for official sanctions. Absent resignation, of course, which would be the appropriate remedy. At the very least, these are people -- Orrin, Mitch, Judd, and Jim -- who should be spat upon by all decent folk wherever they may show their faces.

Yes indeed, as Rachel puts it in her calm but emphatic way: There is a problem.

Of course it's not exactly a brand-new problem. As I've been screaming for some time, when we have an entire side of our political spectrum that has suspended any and all responsibilities to reality, oh yes, we've got a problem, especially when we're stuck with a media establishment that is either too stupid or too corrupt to blow the whistle. Random example: How many of the network evening newscasts featured clips of the Two Greggs?)

On this subject, the chair recognizes the great Tom Tomorrow:

[Don't forget to click to enlarge]

Ah yes, too much crazy. Exactly so.

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