Assclowns of the Week #77: …And Justice For Once edition

Heigh ho, neighborinos, and welcome to a very special 77th edition of Assclowns of the Week. And why is this one so O, so very special? Well, let’s just say that for years, your old porcine powerhouse has been feeling kind of blue these past four and a half years having to write about Republican and Democratic assclowns giving facials to the collective face of America with complete impunity.

Well, no more. The tide is turning. So, in a belated nod to Constitution Day, this edition is targeting people such as Joe Wilson (6), Orly Taitz (5), Fox “News” (4) and Gale Norton (10) getting their just desserts or about to as the true vox populi, the voice of reason, is finally clearing its throat and saying Shut the Fuck Up.

So as our hearts are uplifted with the aroma of long-delayed justice, let’s all let the wing also lift our winds, as George W. Bush would say, and also shit on this week’s top ten assclowns and much, much more!

10) Former Interior Secretary Gale Norton

Norton? Norton?! Where the fuck are my oil shale leases?

In a very encouraging development, former Interior Secretary Gale Norton is now the focus of a Justice Department corruption probe. The DOJ’s investigation more than suggests that Norton, while head of the Dept. of the Interior, steered shale acquisition rights to a subsidiary of Royal Dutch Shell PLC.

Within months, Norton quit her job at the Interior and went to work as a legal counsel for… Royal Dutch Shell PLC. No, no conflict of interest there. Strictly coincidence, as usual, folks, that Norton was more interested in the interior of one of the five largest oil companies on the planet because there are Republicans involved. Well, Attorney General Eric Holder disagrees. The investigation, hopefully the first of many, marks the first time a high ranking official of the Bush administration has been the focus of a federal investigation.

Instead of kowtowing to Shell, Norton, instead, would’ve been better off investigating the Caligula-like antics going on at the MMS office at the Interior Department during her tenure.

9) Teabaggers























Teabaggers? Racist? Oh, heavens to Betsy, no!

8) Barack Obama, Harry Reid and Arlen Specter

”By the way, Mr. President, thanks for writing that note to Senator Reid for me.”

Well, isn’t that nice? President Barack Obama last Tuesday attended a fundraiser for Senator Arlen Specter’s re-election campaign and helped him raise $2.5 million. The fundraiser for the new Democrat, which took place on September 15th, featured… Waitaminnit. Wasn’t September 15th on a… lemme check my calendar. Gee, that was on a Tuesday. Why, O why was Arlen Specter in Philadelphia on Tuesday afternoon when he should’ve been on Capitol Hill doing his job?

The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review explains why:

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid performed some disgraceful maneuvering to provide Sen. Arlen Specter with political cover so he could attend a campaign event.

Reid, D-Nev., announced that the Senate would hold no votes after 3 p.m. on Sept. 15. The reason? So that Specter wouldn't miss voting on any legislation while he was holding a fundraiser in Philadelphia attended by President Barack Obama.
The move was intended to shield Specter from allegations of hypocrisy. Specter has hammered U.S. Rep. Joe Sestak, D-Delaware County, for missing a handful of House votes.

Said Sestak: "Can Arlen Specter -- or anyone in this fundraiser -- explain why it's OK to hold up the entire U.S. Senate to benefit his political campaign, but it's -- in Arlen's words -- a 'court-marital offense' for missing a few primarily procedural votes"?

The answer, unsurprisingly, was no.

Bottom line: Harry lets Arlen play hookie so he can vacuum up legalized bribes. President leaves Arlen’s opponent Rep. Joe Sestak to twist in the wind because he wants to keep “Democratic” insiders in the Senate and, lastly, Harry shows himself for the hypocrite that he’s always been after making a fuss about John McCain not voting in the Senate during his own race.

7) The Hyatt Hotels

Leave it up to a corporation to say with a straight face, “Times are tough so to protect ourselves from extinction, we’re going to lay off 100 of our lowest-paid employees and further weaken the local economy. But, hey, better them than us.”

The Hyatt Regency Boston, Hyatt Regency Cambridge, and Hyatt Harborside Hotels here in Massachusetts just did something classy: Firing 100 housekeepers and replacing them with people from a Georgia-based staffing agency, Hospitality Staffing Solutions… after lying to them and telling them they’d merely be replacing them when they go on vacation. The Hyatt employees were getting paid little as it was. The move is designed to not so much shore up but fatten up Hyatt’s bottom line because the new employees will be getting paid $8 an hour (minimum wage here in MA) and no benefits whatsoever.

This isn’t the first time the Hyatt chain has shown itself to be the scum of the earth that they are: In January 2006, their executives tried to force these same housekeepers to clean 30 rooms per eight hour day instead of their usual 16-17. MA Gov. Deval Patrick, along with several Congressmen and state senators, have been making a big stink about this. Fortunately, the media are covering it as well as A list blogs such as AmericaBlog. Let’s keep the pressure on these scumbags and help these people get their jobs back.

6) Joe Wilson and Democrats

Alright, so Joe Wilson became only the second congressman to be rebuked by Congress this decade. What we’re talking about, essentially, is the House saying, “Bad Congressman, bad! No Freedom Fries!” Sure, Wilson deserves to make a second consecutive spot on this list for thinking that a private phone call to his old colleague Rahm Emmanuel would pass for an apology for insulting the President and refusing to do so on the House floor so we could all hear it.

Yet Democrats starting with Obama and Emmanuel all the way down to Nancy Pelosi and Barney Frank also deserve the spotlight because these were the very same people who, once upon a time, refused to censure let alone impeach Bush and Cheney. “Oh, let’s not look back in anger,” they said, “but forward with hope and optimism.” Then a year later, these same Democrats busted their spineless backs to get Barack Obama elected on a platform of hope and optimism.

Then the white House blew their first big chance to support their man in the other White House when a cracker racist like Joe Wilson violated House rules by interrupting the President’s speech on health care. Now the endless loop is starting over again and this is what we’re hearing after they left the President out to dry: “Oh, let’s not look back in anger but forward with hope and optimism.” Because maintaining the delusion of bipartisanship and civility in a pit bull sport like politics is easier than actually observing much less enforcing the rule of law that they themselves write.

5) Orly Taitz

Foot of Clay Lands on birther with feet of clay. Film @ 11.

It’s one thing when astroturfers willingly become unpaid shills for a health care racket that’s been rear-ending them for years. It’s another thing entirely when cowardly birthers seek out other birthers to represent them in court to dodge a draft that doesn’t even exist.

Capt. Connie Rhodes is a surgeon who refused to ship out to Iraq on account of her belief that Barack Obama is not the lawful President. So it only follows that she’d hire the dubious services of one Orly Taitz, the Queen of the Birthers. Judge Clay Land, the federal jurist who presided over Taitz’s suit had had enough and threatened to impose sanctions on Taitz the Tooth Fairy for bringing such frivolous lawsuits into his court.

A real attorney, one who didn’t prepare for the bar exam by reading Perry Mason novels, would say “Thank you, your honor” and slink away but not Taitz. Instead, she filed a belligerent motion that read,

(T)here is increasing evidence that the United States District Courts in the 11th Circuit are subject to political pressure, external control, and, mostly (sic) likely, subservience to the same illegitimate chain of command which Plaintiff has previously protested in this case, except that the de facto President is not even nominally the Commander-in-Chief of the Article III Judiciary.

In other words, You’re out of order, the White House is out of order, your president is illegitimate and you better change your mind.

Judge Land didn’t see it her way and put his foot down, giving Taitz 14 days to show the court why he shouldn’t bitchslap her with a $10,000 fine. No word, yet, on whether Taitz has heard of the real political pressure put on the Justice Department and the fact that, if Barack Obama is a fake, then George W. Bush is even less legitimate. Plus, Conscientious Objectors, when filing their own suits to avoid deployment in Iraq for legitimate reasons, never once called George W. Bush illegitimate, although they could have. But then again, they had real lawyers who would’ve advised them against doing so.

Perhaps Taitz ought to stick to cleaning other peoples’ teeth and avoid federal judges for a while.

4) Fox “News” and The Washington Post


CNN’s Rick Sanchez is my new hero. Why is Rick Sanchez my new hero? Because all month last August, we could see Sanchez winding up when reporting on stories about disrupted town halls and people bringing guns to Obama speeches on health care. Then finally, Sanchez let loose and hit one out of the park.

It seems Sanchez, for some reason, had a problem with Fox taking out a full page ad in the Washington Post, reputedly also a news organization that should’ve known better, claiming that CNN and all the other networks never covered the tea baggery in Washington, DC on the 12th. In fact, Fox spent good money crowing that they were in fact the only one to cover the demonstration.

However, the fact is they weren’t. ABC covered it, giving us more realistic attendance numbers than Fox shills such as Michelle Malkin were offering. Another fact: CNN, Sanchez’s network, also covered it. Extensively. With four correspondents. And Fox’s Bill O’Reilly even said so. And the kicker? In using the high altitude shot in the full page ad, they were unknowingly using a screengrab from CNN’s customary pole camera.

Rick Sanchez became that all-too-rare news anchor besides Keith Olbermann to call Fox for what it truly is: A factual quadriplegic, the bastard spawn of Winston Smith and Goebbells. Now, if only we can get the other news anchors at CBS, ABC and NBC onboard and to similarly put Fox in the news for being stupid enough to become the news through partisan and corporate cheerleading.

3) Max Baucus

The new Max Baucus Love Doll, now with 25% more orifices! Order your’s now!

I suppose we should have the Republican Party to thank for showing up Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus as the non-polymer love doll for the health care racket that he actually is. When Baucus finally unveiled his “health care” bill, it was greeted with a universal loathing that we haven’t seen since Bush’s proposal for immigration reform. Why Baucus was allowed to take fixed point on this bill when there were four other committees in Congress that still had to weigh in is anyone’s guess.

The usually-reliable Ezra Klein hasn’t exactly fallen in love with the raucous Baucus bill and it’s obvious why: It’s a treasure trove for the health care industry that’s been so good to his campaigns (specifically 3,900,000 times over the last two decades) while tossing a bauble or two our way. Small wonder that senior Democratic senators such as Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) are dead-set against it.

But Republicans have themselves to partly to blame for the co-opted piece of shit the Baucus bill is. The bill, despite Baucus’ “courageous” show of partisanship by freezing out Republicans at the last minute, is a morass of compromises to mollify the GOP and his employers in the health care racket. Small wonder the Republicans hardly raised a whisper about being left out when the bill was unveiled last week.

2) Troy Dale West and Cousin


Aw, now, ain’t that a shame? And just ‘cuz Mr. West defended hisself ‘gainst a colored woman getting’ all uppity an’ all, now he’s banned from Cracker Barrel for the rest of his life, which is redneck Purgatory. Thank the good Lord there’s still Denny’s.

However, what Sanchez and CNN didn’t show us was the unedited footage of our Georgia Peach on the swing:


See now, them there Cracker Barrel crackers ain’t all bad.

Now, can we all agree to refight the War of Secession and to let them win this time?

1) Republicans

Salon.com’s Joe Conason finally laid out the GOP for their hypocrisy and idiotic shrillness in their jihad against ACORN. Apparently, Joe had had enough with Republican operatives entrapping ACORN activists by illegally taping them giving advice about getting housing subsidies for brothels. They also swallowed hook, line and sinker a shaggy dog story told to them by an ACORN employee who claimed to have murdered her ex-husband (and trumpeted by Fox as fact after Andrew “Not So” Breitbart posted the video. I guess they couldn’t wait for Drudge to weigh in.) and he gave these wingnuts a jolly rogering.

The Republican Monica-esque hysteria over ACORN has reached such proportions that LA Gov. Bobby “The Exorcist” Jindal and MN Gov. Tim Pawlenty ordered that their funding be cut off … despite the fact that ACORN gets no funding from either Louisiana or Minnesota. Despite this, the Louisiana Republican Party still has not taken down its online press release crowing about Jindal’s “coup.”

These aren’t just isolated peaks of stupidity. This is a nationwide Republican effort to defund ACORN that actually started in Congress. House Nutters pulled together the GOP ACORN Rapid Response Committee, or Grand Old Party Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now Rapid Response Committee (I know, but they’re still working on the name). John “Weepy” Boner even called on Nancy Pelosi to call a vote to pull federal dollars out from under ACORN’s feet.



Of course, unhinged lunatics such as Michelle Malkin have been trying to tie Obama to ACORN since the election, even going as far as to smear the organization for working to protect lower income families from foreclosure. True, the GOP could take some sincere steps toward winning ACORN’s beneficiaries to their side by making itself a party worth voting for instead of trying to hamper ACORN’s efforts to register these two million largely minority people to vote. But that would be too hard. And it’s much easier to just be racist touchholes about it.

It’s a sad change of heart, really, considering that not too long ago Republicans and ACORN used to be bestest buddies.