Care to say that to his face?

chick·en·shit (chîk'ən-shît') Vulgar Slang

• n.
1. Contemptibly petty, insignificant nonsense.

• adj.
1. Contemptibly unimportant; petty.
2. Cowardly; afraid.

So, from now on, when someone from the other side of the aisle bemoans the state of discourse in this country, whining about how crude and mean all those lefties have made politics with their foul-mouthed attacks on the president or when one of them finds some nameless commenter (or pseudonym'd partisan blogger - natch) on DailyKos or FDL has used objectionable and disrespectful language to talk about the opposition, please feel free to point to the same kind of ugly name-calling by an elected official of the man the loyal opposition has selected as their candidate (and who will likely be the next president of the United States) by none other than House Minority Leader John Boehner of Ohio regarding the voting record of Barack Obama (from the Miami Student, via FDL):

"Now, listen, I've voted 'present' two or three times in my entire 25-year political career, where there might have been a conflict of interest and I didn't feel like I should vote," Boehner said. "In Congress, we have a red button, a green button and a yellow button, alright. Green means 'yes,' red means 'no,' and yellow means you're a chicken shit. And the last thing we need in the White House, in the oval office, behind that big desk, is some chicken who wants to push this yellow button."

Note that one of the definitions at the top of this post includes the word "cowardly," which for my money perfectly describes this:

Wow. For a guy who loves to talk tough, he sure gets weepy easily enough. I don't remember any of their pretend tough guys in the Regan-era action movies (Red Dawn, Rambo, Missing in Action, etc...) that form the entire basis of their policy world-view ever crying like that. Chickenshit is a strong word that shouldn't be bandied about by someone who is still so unhinged at the prospect of all those scary brown people out there in the world possibly attacking his local shopping mall, or some other such perceived local "soft target," i.e target for Homeland Security boondoggle dollars to buy Republican votes. As far as I can tell, Sarah Palin's anti-American parts of America are where the bulk of the 3000 people Boehner weeps over actually died (and -- depending on how Pennsylvania goes this election -- arguably all of the 2,998 who died that day), so wasn't it a good thing that such a large swath was cut through the America-haters? I'm just trying to keep up with their logic. It's so hard, sometimes.

Jebus, September 11 really made the other side collectively lose their freaking minds. They are a timid, fearful, blustering and morally weak people. The events of that day confirmed all their worst pre-conceptions about the world, which have in turn been well-manipulated into electoral success by the Svengalis in the GOP High Command. Until now, when one of those scary brown people will be their next duly-elected president, which is why they are losing it.

Sickening or just plain sad, I'm not entirely certain. What a bunch of nincompoops. Tristero over at Hullabaloo gives a better voice than I ever could to the sentiment I feel about this whole ugly business and what is to be done about it (bold face mine):

We want the extreme right and their agenda out of our national politics, driven back to the margins of American discourse where it belongs. Maybe someone out there truly yearns for a less nasty politics, but not me, not now. Not with extremists who call me "traitor," who have listed my friends as some of the 100 most dangerous people in America or placed them on terrorist watch lists, and who, from their seat as a US Representative pronounce a candidate for the American presidency a chicken shit.

Since I'm sure our resident rightwing friends will take what I just said out of context, let's be clear. I am not saying that a robust, vibrant, and bipartisan effort on serious issues will remain ipso facto impossible or is necessarily undesirable. Nor am I saying that Democrats and only Democrats always have the "right" answer to a problem - clearly they don't. I am saying, however, that it is absolutely impossible with the Republican party as it is now, and in its forseeable paleolithic palinized future, for Democrats to work together productively with the extremists at the top of (and throughout) the party except on the most circumscribed of issues. To get anything serious done, they will have to be fought. And that will not be pretty. I see no reason for Dems to back down and plenty of reasons to respond tit for tat, with interest.

You cannot "work with" the extreme right, but you can defeat them. Obama's tactic appears to be to ignore them and isolate them from the atrophied remnants of the "moderate" Republicans, which he will encourage. Fair enough, that's part of a strategy, but it's not sufficient. To defeat Bushism and other trends of the American extreme right will take, as it always has, concentrated . sustained, and effective resistance in addition to Obama's "divide and conquer" tactics. It requires us to denounce scoundrels like DeLay and humiliate buffoons like Boehner as well as a consistent, persistent, hounding of the media to do their job to expose these people for what they are.

These are incompetent frauds driven by a dangerously belligerent ideology grounded not in American values, but only sheer ignorance and fear. There is no reason to show them respect or kindness. They simply must be pushed away from the corridors of power, left to mutter in their plush think tanks and at their gun shows 'bout how Obama is using hypnosis, how the beginning of the end was fluoridated water, and how gay marriage is the only human factor that causes global warming.