Assclowns of the Week #76: Reading the Tea Leaves/Labor Day edition

Let it not be said that conservatives aren’t all about conservation and recycling, as was evidenced by them designating 2009 “Teabag Recycling Month.” Yes, the teabaggers (2) of April came back in full force to willingly dip themselves into hot water in their valiant attempts to turn health care town halls into Jerry Springer shows and in doing so opposing Obama’s stubbornly bipartisan, HMO co-opted, Everything-can-be-taken-off-the-table health care proposal that is still socialist/fascist/communist. Truly, it takes a certain kind of I Will Go Where Angels Fear to Tread type of courage in using extra-factual talking points spoon-fed to them by bloated billionaires.

Of course, these screaming zombies had to be activated by someone from somewhere and what better place to waggle our digit but at right wing pundits, insurance companies, Big Pharma and certain Republican congressional cheerleaders? And even though health care dominated the news this past month, some other stellar assclowns made the grade for other reasons, such as the Sarah Palin of the Democratic Party, Rod Blagojevich (7) for singlehandedly lowering the literacy level of America; James Taranto (3) for wanting Mordor to make a comeback and Rep. Lynn Jenkins (10) in calling for a Great White Hope to knock out President Barack Johnson.

So hop on board the conservative clown car and let’s peer in the windows and laugh at these August assclowns and much, much more!

10) Rep. Lynn Jenkins

What’s the big fuss all about? Just because freshman Congressman Lynn Jenkins called for “a great white hope” to oppose the Obama/Democrat agenda, it’s doesn’t mean that there were any racial overtones. Even though she could’ve called for “a dynamic Republican leader” or “a conservative luminary” to lead the GOP, there obviously wasn’t any racism whatsoever in calling for a big, stupid, white Jess Willard style of Republican to lead the rest out of its rump party status and knock Obama to the canvas. I know this because Jenkins said so. She was only calling for a “bright light.” It’s not her fault that bright lights are typically white. Racist context? Huh?

Although, it ought to be noted that Jenkins had once voted for legislation in the House that used that very same phrase. It also ought to be noted that Jess Willard made his home just 27 miles from fellow Kansan Jenkins.



But, beyond those amazing coincidences, what’s there not to trust?

9) President Barack Obama

Perhaps when he runs for reelection in 2012, President Obama can revise his campaign slogan to "Status Quo You Can Believe In." Because since taking office, Obama has kept Robert Gates as Secretary of Defense, is offering lukewarm compromises to Republicans instead of actual health care reform, continually provides cover for the Bush administration's most heinous crimes, is needlessly extending and expanding the war in Afghanistan and now has decided to give Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke another term.

Lost on the President is the fact that before becoming Chairman, Bernanke was a member of the Fed's Federal Open Markets Committee, which essentially downplayed the coming danger and even helped to midwife it. Obama's decision to appoint Bernanke to another term may have had a brief positive effect on the market but this is a dangerously short-sighted, superficial attitude for the president to take (in a way, it was all too apt that Obama would make the announcement at an elementary school).

And as for Bernanke being an expert on the Great Depression, how can anyone lay claim to being an expert in all matters financial when they don't even know what year the Federal Reserve Act was passed in Congress, doesn't believe in traceability even when a half a trillion dollars is handed out to foreign central banks, thinks a high employment rate is the cause of inflation and believes in the wildest coincidences that make congressmen openly laugh at him.



8) The MSM

If the MSM’s conduct during last month’s health care debate doesn’t provide proof of the need for a reinstatement of the Fairness Doctrine, nothing will. Because what does it say about an increasingly tabloid media that only encourages the type of wackos who run naked across a playing field during a game (which local sports networks refuse to show for that very reason)?

It shows the MSM’s willingness to cheapen the national discourse on health care reform by providing more than a counterpoint to rational informed progressive opinions to idiotic astroturfers who can only scream, “Heil Hitler!”, “Keep your government hands off my Medicare!”, assault SEIU members, tar, feather and hang in effigy Democratic congressmen and generally carry on like manic depressives who’d mistaken a suppository for their lithium and still get treated as if they offer a valid counter argument to health care reform? If they want to start with anyone on the opposition, they can start with someone who’s really opinionated, like Rev. Steve Anderson (1).

Or could it be the right wing MSM talking heads are also in their O so subtle way torpedoing the health care reform because they all make well over $250,000 a year? Nah!

7) Rod Blagojevich

And speaking of tabloid media, former Illinois used Senate seat salesman Rod Blagojevich prevented several real authors from breaking into print by getting a book deal of his own. The upcoming bargain bin fodder, entitled “But… But Rahm Emmanuel Did It, Too!” pretty much cements the sad realization that even his fellow ex Governor Sarah Palin has still shown more class and dignity than the one man sideshow that has been Blago’s all too personal life.

With his hair shirt of a book and in getting kicked off a third rate reality TV show because of his pending litigation, Blagojevich’s sad, National Enquirer life makes Tom DeLay’s Lollipop Guild insertion into “Dancing With the Stars” look like a triumphant, inspirational return to public life.

6) Special Agent Provocateur Hal Turner

“I swear to Christ, take one more step and I’ll eat another sausage and take out the whole fuckin’ block! I will!”

So, let me get this straight, Mrs. Turner:

During the time your husband was working as a well-paid informant for the FBI, not a single white supremacist hate group was ever investigated, no revelation in the MSM that Hal had singlehandedly rooted out 240 moles in the FBI, CIA, NSA, DOJ, the House, Senate, White House and foreign governments and this is supposed to somehow exonerate him? Furthermore, this is what Mrs. Harry had to say (I wouldn’t advise taking a sip of anything before reading this:

(H)e was approached by supervisory people who were higher up in the FBI. They wanted Hal to be an “Intelligence Operative”. They pointed out how radical, Marxist-oriented left-wing liberals, their politicians and their judges were destroying the fabric of America. Liberal Legislation was socializing the land, Liberal Immigration policy left our borders wide open, and Liberal Judges were shredding the Constitution. Hal fully agreed with that analysis. These FBI higher-ups spoke to Hal about how Conservatives were too modest to resort to “street activism” and how the reluctance of the right to go out in the streets is causing us to lose the culture war.

Really, now? The FBI encouraged your husband to engage in clearly unlawful activity including threatening members of Congress, federal judges and two presidents of the United States because of all the out-of-control left wing 2002 legislation such as the USA PATRIOT Act, the Iraq War Resolution, etc? Yyyyyeah. No wonder Wormfront is now threatening to ban anyone who takes Turner’s side.

In that case, I would think such a selfless patriot like Hal would be honored to help his country without having to get paid for it. Still, help Harry the Hero. He really needs it. At last count, Mrs. Turner has raised a whopping $49 from four contributors for his legal defense fund. That ought to buy about ten minutes of an ambulance chaser’s time.

(Tip o’ the tinfoil hat to reader Firestarter5 for the link.)

5) Dick Cheney and Chris Wallace

In his latest verbal fellating of Dick Cheney, Chris Wallace essentially gave Vice President Torquemada another chance to prove how utterly cruel and devoid of compassion he truly is. And it wasn't even his pro-torture stance and inveighing against the Obama administration for essentially covering up for Bush's and his crimes that was the worst of it.

Because at one point, Cheney waded into deeper waters by offering his opinion of Bill Clinton freeing those two American journalists:

Well, obviously, you are concerned for the reporters and their circumstances, but I think if we look at it from a policy standpoint, it is a big reward for bad behavior on the part of the North Korean leadership. They are testing nuclear weapons.

They have been major proliferators of nuclear weapons technology. They built a reactor in the Syrian Desert very much like their own reactor for producing plutonium for nuclear weapons. They probably are the worst proliferators of nuclear technology any place in the world today.

And there ought to be a price for that. Instead, I think when the former president of the United States goes, meets with the leader and so forth, that we are rewarding their bad behavior. And I think it is a mistake.

Shorter Cheney: Innocent or no, those two bitches can go fuck themselves. Fuck giving North Korea a chance to reduce tensions by doing a good deed. Diplomacy doesn't win wars. Wars win wars. By the way, Chris, when the fuck is your father gonna die?

4) The New York State Senate

The Huff Po’s Sam Stein posted an article today that I thought was a work of satire. Indeed, as I read the headline, “Palin Invited To Testify Before NY Senate On Elderly Care, Death Panels” I kept moaning, “No, NO, NO! It has to be a joke!” But, no. New York State Senator Reverend Ruben Diaz “a conservative Democrat” (read: A Republican who’s smart enough not to run under the damaged GOP label) was so impressed with Palin’s Facebook-based platform on death panels that he’s invited her to testify to get a better handle on how such death panels would impact on the elderly. And if that doesn’t put the sound of a calliope in your mind’s ear, Diaz has also invited former NY Lt. Gov. Betsy McCaughey, chief of the Committee to Reduce Infection Deaths and the Committee Committed to Spreading Baseless, Easily Debunked Lies About Health Care Reform to testify. McCaughey, you may remember, actually beat Palin to the punch by being the first to spread the myth about death panels.

It’s frightening enough when supposedly intelligent, informed people fall for a baseless, unproven myth such as death panels. It’s even more frightening when they continue pursuing a non-issue that’s no longer even an non-issue because the end of life consultation provision that would’ve merely subsidized such consultations was removed from the Senate version of the bill because of people like Palin and McCaughey. Just remember this, people, if and when Palin ever appears as an expert on “death panels” and health care reform because we liberals who have been screaming for universal single-payer reform were pointedly kept away from every panel that Max Baucus’s Finance Committee ever held on the issue.

3) James Taranto and John McLaughlin

Republican pollster and all round Republican cock puppet John McLaughlin put the “laugh” in McLaughlin by parroting fellow Republican cock puppet James Taranto’s call in the WSJ to nominate Dick Cheney for president in 2012.

Forget the fact that “Dead Eye” Dick has been a rotting albatross around the wattled neck of the congressional GOP or that he has a favorability rating that’s smaller than Vern Troyer’s shoe size. Forget the fact that Cheney has never come close to proving that torturing terror suspects has directly resulted in our never being attacked after 9/11.

But according to Taranto and McLaughlin, Cheney ought to be recruited despite him repeatedly saying (most recently to Chris Wallace a few days ago) that he has no more taste for political life. Tweedle Duh and Tweedle Dumb think that Cheney would make the perfect candidate should the 2012 election focus on national security, which ought to demonstrate right there the two dimensional thinking of Republican strategists who apparently think there wouldn't be other issues on which to base Cheney's suitability such as the economy and deficit or global warming or reducing our dependence on foreign oil.

2) Teabaggers and Astroturfers

If health care reform wasn’t such a serious issue it would’ve been hilarious to see blue collar rednecks acting as shock troops for a health care racket has either priced them or their loved ones out of coverage or reserves the right to drop them the minute they develop a hangnail. And indeed, we saw a comforting lack of evidence of class warfare as Joe Sixpack took to the streets to literally fight for multibillion dollar health insurers and Big Pharma companies that have already half-heartedly “supported” the same reform
measures that their surrogates are still fighting against.

Of course, health insurers and Big Pharma, through their 3,300 lobbyists that make $1.4 million a day (that’s $424.24 per lobbyist per diem), know the real reasons for rejecting health care reform through the other side of their mouths and it has nothing to do with death panels or euthanizing Grandma or medical care for illegal aliens. Yet these are the talking points that are spoonfed to the teabaggers because they’re guaranteed to evoke a more visceral reaction than would saying, “Help me continue making $125 million a year.”

Among the other talking points hoarsely passed along by the gun-toting Maury Povich demographic:

Democrats insist on forcing James Sensenbrenner and Rush Limbaugh to undergo gastric bypass surgery to help get a handle on alleviating world hunger.

Obama will force you to abandon your existing plan and physician for a witch doctor that’s already been discredited by Sarah Palin’s pastor Thomas Muthee.

Obama will impregnate every white woman in the US knowing that he can now fund their abortions.

Republican patients will have to pass a Democrat-provided litmus test so we can kill off as many of them as possible before the 2012 election.

Barney Frank introduced a provision to federally fund gay-based initiatives such as clinically proselytizing the nation’s 275,000,000 heterosexuals.

Ted Kennedy’s ghost told Dick Armey he didn’t want his name and legacy to be used to inspire and energize the continuation of his life’s most important work because he really shunned publicity in life.

But take heart dear, constant reader: We won’t have to bid a fond adieu to our comic relief when Congress goes back to work because in just over a week they’ll organize and march on Washington, DC with round-the-clock coverage courtesy of Fox Noise.

1) Pastor Steven Anderson

To look at his hapless “Aw shucks” publicity photos, Rev. Steven Anderson looks like an Iowa farm boy who was just kicked out of Marine boot camp because he was too stupid to be used even as IED fodder.

In reality, the Tempe, Arizona-based Baptist minister is a bellowing, homophobic douchebag who apparently isn’t afraid to lose his tax exempt status or attracting the attention of the Secret Service by openly praying for the death of the President of the United States mainly over the health care issue.

Indeed, the man who’d toted an AR15 to an Obama Town Hall meeting in Phoenix last month was revealed to be one of Anderson’s parishioners who’d obviously taken literally his pastor’s call to arms. Problem was, President Obama’s Town Hall wasn’t about the 2nd Amendment but on health care. Now they’re both saying they’d like to see the President dead. Meanwhile, it ought to comfort you to know that the Secret Service is “aware of the situation.”

Ah, but if only the mysterious Chris Broughton was the sole exception but others in New Hampshire apparently have to fall back on the threat of violence of lieu of rational, informed debate.

Meanwhile, despite being rumored to have been visited by the Secret Service (which wouldn’t be his first runin with federal authorities), the 27 year-old Anderson continues to vomit eliminationist bile from his bully pulpit without gaining any attention from the MSM, delivering the Good Word of the Bible such as salting the president as if he was a slug.



In case you’re wondering how such a young man has already become so violently bitter toward the government, I have a theory but whether or not it will ever bear fruit, one thing is obvious: The “civil rights crusader” who prays for our black president to die can dish it out (through others) but he can’t take it.