Assclowns of the Week #92: Akin to a Fool edition

Since beginning this feature over seven years ago, I've often found that August, the month Congress recesses for five weeks, tends to be slow. But the environment gets very target-rich during election years and Republicans, as usual, never fail to disappoint. To wit (or the lack thereof):

House Republicans (5) for shaking their full montes where Jesus once walked on water; Apple (4) for not thinking any differently from your typical corporation and Mitt Romney (3) for turning away New Hampshire locals in favor of shills. And if, after looking at the subtitle, you don't know who made the first one-two finish in ACOTW history, then maybe you belong on this list, too.

So let's climb aboard a gurney as Republicans send us all to inner city free clinics as we review the abovementioned cavalcade of assclowns and much, much more!

10) Rick Santorum

Pope Ricky on "ObamaCare", from a makeshift papal balcony somewhere in Ohio:

We have a president who, for the first time in American history, is directly assaulting the First Amendment and freedom of religion. He is going to tell you what to do in the practice of your faith. He is forcing business people right now to do things that are against their conscience, that they will have to – if you're a Catholic – you'll have to go to confession … to confess that you are complying with a government program that is a sin in the Catholic Church.

It astounds me how so many Republicans can be spot-on about Obama while listing exactly the wrong reasons. Yes, Obama is assaulting the First Amendment by making protesting near a federal building or anyone with Secret Service protection a federal felony. But the Affordable Care Act is, in the mind of at least one federal judge (and a Nixon appointee) hardly an impingement on the part of the 1st Amendment that guarantees freedom of religion. That is, unless you're a low-information, single-issue evangelical nut job who votes how James Dobson, Franklin Graham or Pat Robertson tells you how to vote.

But don't look for Romney and especially Ryan to distance themselves from His Holiness's offensive lies on this non-issue any time soon.

9) A Well-Regulated Militiaman

Remember how in the wake of the Aurora theater shooting, lunatics like Louie Gohmert had openly wished there had been more armed citizens in the theater to prevent bloodshed? Well, last Tuesday night at a theater in Sparks, Nevada, an unnamed moviegoer was about to sit down to watch The Bourne Legacy when his gun fell out of his pocket, which then discharged and lodged a bullet in his but-tocks.

The well-regulated militiaman and Darwin Award nominee then excused himself and checked into a VA hospital to get the bullet removed. A frightening sidebar is that the man had a legitimate concealed permit. I guess, as long as you have a concealed permit in Nevada, a pants pocket is as good as a holster.

8) Victoria Foyt and Weird Tales

Gee, I can't understand why she couldn't get a literary agent and a legitimate publisher interested in this Bircher masterpiece and was reduced to self-publication.

The most offensive thing about Foyt's Save the Pearls: Revealing Eden is not the racism with which its author has been charged but the clueless racial stereotypes thrown together hodge-podge so it appears to look like a white supremacist dystopian nightmare of a small white minority (the Pearls) being lorded over by a coal-black race (the Coals). In it, white women are terrorized by "powerful, beastly" black men wearing blackface. I guess Foyt fell asleep watching Mandingo one night and turned the resultant nightmare into a book.

The second-most offensive thing is that excerpts of it were bought and very briefly published by Weird Tales, a sci-fi pulp magazine I wasn't even aware still existed. How the author of this tripe and the editorial staff of the magazine thought this was a good idea eludes those of us who know how to write stories that a five year-old would be able to predict would flare up racial animus.

Predictably, Foyt's abortion of a self-published book has gotten almost all one star reviews and nothing but negative tags. I don't believe for a minute that Foyt is a racist but such sheer cluenessness, in choosing the most virulent forms of racial stereotypes and assuming it wouldn't get negative feedback, is stunning. But if you're Newt Gingrich or Pat Buchanan, fret not. Take note of the subtitle: There's going to be a sequel. Save the Pearls 2: Attack of the Well-Endowed, Tap-Dancing, Watermelon Eaters.

7) Sharon Barnes

Just to whet your appetite for what's to come, I give you low-level Missouri Republican official and five star evangelical nutbag Sharon Barnes, who, in responding to fellow MO Republican Todd Akin's fascinating theory on self-abortion, told the NY Times that if a woman is forcibly raped and impregnated, “at that point, if God has chosen to bless this person with a life, you don’t kill it.”

Never let it be said that the Republican Party is all doom and gloom and never sees the silver lining in every black cloud. Who cares about your right to do with your uterus as you see fit? La dee dah dee dah, Hey, honey, where's my lithium?

6) Benjamin Smith and OPSEC

As far as former Navy SEALs go, it's a neat trick to make scumbags like Dick Marcinko and Erik Prince look good by conspicuous relief but somehow Benjamin Smith managed it. And just who is Former Navy Seal Benjamin Smith? Just another right wing nut job birther conspiracy theorist, latter day Swift Boater and a complete and utter embarrassment to those of us who'd worn the uniform and the SEAL patch. In fact, he and his outfit, Special Operations OPSEC Educational Fund, Inc., is so embarrassing that Politico's Ben Smith is thinking of changing his name to Silas Tomkin Cumberback or some other moniker that doesn't sound remotely like Ben Smith.

OPSEC brags about getting a million dollars in funding but to anyone who's got two neurons to rub together (effectively excluding poor Benny), when a faux military-intelligence organization pops up just three months before an election and starts spreading spurious lies about the president, you know there's dirty Republican money behind it. This is what jamess at DKos found out about OPSEC and the people behind them:

The group says it is a non-partisan organization informing voters for social welfare purposes and has 501(c)(4) social welfare organization tax status with the IRS. Its leaders have ties to the Republican Party and Tea Party. Its president is former Navy SEAL Scott Taylor, who failed to win a Republican nomination for a Virginia congressional seat in 2010. Its spokesperson Chad Kolton, who worked for the Bush administration as a spokesperson for the Director of National Intelligence, was hired through HDMK, a Republican strategic communications firm, to perform media relations for OPSEC in July 2012.

The group claims to have raised almost $1 million between June and mid-August 2012. Because it claims that its primary purpose is to further the common good, the group doesn't have to disclose who is funding it to the public.

Who or what the fuck is HDMK?

HDMK is a new public relations firm named for the firm's partners and founders, Republican "communications veterans" Terry Holt, Trent Duffy, Jim Morrell and Chad Kolton, The Politico reported October 22, 2007.

Holt is a former spokesman for Rep. John A. Boehner (R-Ohio); Duffy served most recenlty as a deputy press secretary under President George W. Bush; Morrell was deputy chief of staff to the House Republican Conference and a speechwriter for former Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.); and Kolton "led the public affairs department for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and for the Federal Emergency Management Agency."

Hm. A Republican communications firm with people tied to John Boehner, Dennis Hastert and George W. Bush and with its members screaming about birth certificates and Obama being a Muslim. Sure. What could be more non-partisan than that?

By the way, Bennie, the last asshole in the WH didn't do any wonders for the SEALs or any other JSOC outfit. So if you can't include Bush in your racist, Islamophobic jeremiads, then kindly put on a Michael Biehn movie and eat a bullet or two and let the experts do the mudslinging and deadcatting until November 6th.

5) House Republicans

Even though Jesus was the greatest prophet of all time, I doubt even he or his fisherman apostles saw the Coming of Republican lawmakers, in the presence of their wives, daughters and staffers, skinny-dipping in the Sea of Galilee while under the influence of stupidity and alcohol. This drew an official reprimand from House Majority Leader Eric Cantor and House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy, who were probably pissed off they didn't get to make it to this hedonistic fact-finding mission. The one Republican we know of who went naked into the Sea of Galillee was Rep. Kevin Yoder (R-Fast and Furious), voted "the hottest freshman in Congress."

Suffice to say it'll be a while before the American Israel Educational Foundation underwrites another trip involving Republicans who think nothing of getting hammered and dipping their flaccid wicks in the same waters on which Jesus had once walked. So can we finally stop hearing about Rahm Emmanuel's locker room horseplay and Anthony Weiner's penis?

4) Apple

When people wondered why I cheered when Steve Jobs died, I would say, as with so many other non Apple cult members, that I had a problem with them offshoring US manufacturing job overseas to Chinese sweatshops such as Foxconn. But now I have a new reason to loathe Apple. Because when the closing trading bell rang on Wall Street last Monday, Apple became the most profitable and valuable publicly traded company in US history, with shares selling at over $665 apiece. This is obviously largely due to their insistence on paying sweatshop laborers pennies on the dollar while continuing to sell us their shit at the regular market value.

But another part of the reason why Apple's shares are selling so briskly is because they've been dodging billions of dollars in corporate taxes for years, ducking $2.4 billion last year alone, while paying a global tax rate of barely over 3%. And paying a less than 10% US tax rate still isn't enough for Apple, if their lobbying for ever lower rates and more tax exemptions are any indication. If I didn't know any better, I'd swear that Steve Jobs or his people created an app that allows them to take their ill-gotten billions with them.

3) The Romney/Ryan Campaign

How big of a scumbag do you have to be to give free tickets to New Hampshire residents only to rescind the tickets less than 12 hours before the event and allow inside, instead, Republicans from out of state? Well, I dunno how big. How tall are Romney and Ryan? Don't believe me? Take a gander of this screenshot.


This means the Romney camp couldn't find enough rock-ribbed Republicans in Goffstown, New Hampshire to fill the venue so they sent out these cancellation letters only to registered Democrats. And, in the case of at least one guy, those who tried to enter were escorted out. So the next time some scumbag Republican asks when you're within earshot why liberals hate America, just remind them of Republican Voter ID laws and tactics like the one Romney used in Goffstown, New Hampshire that had shut the locals out of the democratic process.

2) Rep. Todd Akin

Last Friday, senate candidate and GOP Rep Todd Akin went on Fox2 in St. Louis to suggest that maybe we should get rid of those pesky little Civil Rights Acts of '64 and '65 and just trust in the best intentions of white southern racists at the state level. He thought he could slip one by us by using the Lee Atwater/Ronald Reagan-era dog whistle phrase "states' rights". You see, according to Akin, protecting black people against white discrimination is a notion that's "outdated". And as proof, look at the nationwide Republican push for Voter ID laws across 37 states as evidence of how much they've progressed.

Very soon thereafter, he had to eat some Jim Crow and walk back those racist comments. Maybe he read Victoria Foyt's Revealing Eden and thought it was nonfiction.

1) Rep. Todd Akin

Incumbent Missouri senator Claire McCaskill must be thanking the political gods that she's running against gaffe machine Todd Akin. Last Sunday, just two days after saying the Civil and Voting Rights Acts ought to be repealed, Akin said during an interview on, once again, St. Louis Fox affiliate KTVI that women can automatically prevent a pregnancy resulting from "legitimate rape." Then the outcry online (especially Twitter) was so loud, that Akin was forced to walk back those comments. Understandably, by Monday, he wasn't making any public appearances. To make matters worse, the Republican Party is busting a nut trying to get Akin to drop out of the Senate race despite him still leading McCaskill by 1% and even the Romney campaign condemned him. By Tuesday Akin was reduced to making a campaign ad apologizing for exposing himself as the Michele Bachmann of biology.

Now, if you feel the need to ask yourself where Akin gets these ideas, you could start by checking out his pastor, D. James Kennedy, who thinks that women occasionally invite rape. Specifically, he wrote, “the immodest woman is contributing to the lust of other people” by wearing suggestive garb. (Btw, Akin still serves on the House Committee for Science, Space and Technology. Doesn't that reinstill your faith in how your tax dollars are spent?)

And, to show you how toxic Akin is to the GOP, he'd not only essentially torpedoed his own campaign but put a serious dent in Romney's presidential campaign. He managed this because his stupendously stupid "legitimate rape" remark reminded Democrats and voters of Akin co-sponsoring a bill last year with Republican VP nominee Paul Ryan that actually tried to narrow the definition of rape to the detriment of women.