Assclowns of the Week #93: You Da Bomb! edition

Well, the silly season is once again upon us and by that, I don't mean the Christmas holidays. And as looney tunes as election years typically are, I never thought I'd live to see the day when the Republican nominee for President would #1 allegedly be called "The Stench" and #2 by his own running mate and #3 when that same running mate is code-named by the top of the ticket as "Gilligan." (Pure satire, as Roger Simon, the meme's originator, assures us).

And it was a typical, Looney Toons week in teh Qrazy Qaeda Quadrant. We saw Paul Ryan (10) drag Momma from the train and onto the campaign trial; Rush Limbaugh (8) for feeling a little insignificant these days; Bennie Netanyahu (1) and his curious artwork correspondence class at the UN and Willard "the Stench" Romney (2, 3) for channeling Bush and Reagan in the most disastrous CBS interview since Palin/Couric. So check into the Romney OR (Omnibus of Regressivism) as we review this week's crop of right wing assclowns and much, much more!

10) Paul "Gilligan" Ryan

Last week, Rep. Paul Ryan (not to be confused with the Ryan Gilligan of soccer fame) went to Louisiana, dragging along his 78 year-old mother as human scenery, then had the nerve to tell the AARP members in attendance that he was going to repeal ObamaCare. Well, they roundly booed him, which Ryan immediately tried to spin as "a mixed reaction." Meanwhile, as other 78 year-old mothers booed her son, Mommy beamed as can only the mother of a multimillionaire son who can ensure that she'll never need Medicare or "ObamaCare."

Using his mother as window dressing was bottomlessly despicable. To outdo that, Ryan would have to drag along his black ex girlfriend to tell the NAACP that he was going to repeal the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Nine years ago, even professional scumbag Billy Tauzin didn't bring his mother along when he told Congress that nobody loved their mommy more than he did his. Sadly, the right wing has actually degenerated since Tauzin's Norman Bates speech.

 9) Scott Brown & His Supporters

Last week in both Boston and Chatham, Massachusetts, Scott Brown supporters who obviously can't point to their man's slender legislative record in the US Senate took to mocking Elizabeth Warren's Cherokee Indian heritage by making war whoops and tomahawk chopping motions. As Brown said, he can't control all his supporters but they were merely reacting to Brown doubling down on a fact he didn't have the balls to even broach during last Thursday's debate with Warren: Questioning her native American heritage.

Brown's responsible for setting the bar very low in this election's discourse and has no right feigning shock that his supporters would similarly carry that racist narrative into the streets of Massachusetts. Of course, this bar-lowering is set by a guy who ran as a Tea Bagger favorite when the Tea Baggers briefly had a bit of juice only to run, two years later, as a moderate devoted to bipartisanship when he realized the astroturfers couldn't get him re-elected. For good measure, Mr. Staple-in-the-Crotch then warned both sides to remain civil and respectful. What can Brown do for me? Get the fuck out of the Senate after a speedy concession speech.

8) Rush "10%" Limbaugh

Speaking of, ahem, "lowering the bar", the terrifyingly sex-obsessed Rush Limbaugh played his part by complaining that "feminazis" have decreased penis size in America by 10%. Perhaps Rush's second-hand Viagra is past its shelf life or he just has sensitive marital issues he's dying to share with the rest of the class. Or perhaps he's personally measured every penis in America. Either way, Rusty Nail was singing the cowboy blues about his sill bolt being turned into a tacking nail by saying this on his radio show a week ago:

I think it's feminism… it's tied to the last 50 years - the average size of [a male's] member is 10 percent smaller than 50 years - it has to be the feminazis, the chickification and everything else.

Yes, folks, thanks partly to Cape Girardeau, Missouri's most notable export, the bar for the national discourse has now sunk so low the most malleable munchkin couldn't even place or show in a limbo contest. 

7) Todd Akin

Congressman Combover (aka Todd Akin) will have to try a lot harder before he can top the "legitimate rape" comment from this past summer. But his explanation to a constituent as to why he'd voted against the Lilly Ledbetter Equal Pay Act was good enough to get him on the back half of this list. To quote Akin,

I believe in free enterprise. I don’t think the government should be telling people what you pay and what you don’t pay. I think it’s about freedom. If someone (wants) to hire somebody and they agree on a salary, that’s fine, however it wants to work. So, the government sticking its nose into all kinds of things has gotten us into huge trouble.

Wow. No wonder Akin's own pollster compared her boss to cult leader David Koresh.

In other words, let's once again trust the free market to do the right thing and to give them a chance to pay women equally just as we trusted them to not employ children or force people to work in hazardous environments and to pay non-union workers a fair, living wage. And what is with this nonsense of forcing companies to provide handrails on high catwalks? Emergency exits? Handicapped ramps?! Sprinkler systems and fire extinguishers? Seriously???

If you think that's good enough to keep him out of the Senate, think again. Nearly two and a half years ago, Rand Paul (R-Aqua Buddha) said on the Rachel Maddow Show the day after winning the KY Senate GOP primary that he'd love to repeal at least part of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. That was because it was an example of government impinging on free enterprise, i.e. the right of racist, white business owners to refuse service to people based on the color of their skin. Paul, as if you need me to remind you, is now serving the Kentucky coal industry in the Senate.

What's next? Repealing laws banning murder because that would be Uncle Sam impinging on knife and gun sales as well as the rights of maniacs with histrionic gifts?

6) The Republican Party of Florida

Amid a lot of hoarse screaming and fake paranoia about voter fraud, it turns out the Florida GOP and a Romney-affiliated firm they'd hired to get out the vote is turning in so many fraudulent registration forms, the scandal has now spread to no less than 10 counties in the Sunshine State. And that's just the beginning. Quoth the LA Times:

The controversy in Florida -- which began with possibly fraudulent forms that first cropped up in Palm Beach County --  has engulfed the Republican National Committee, which admitted Thursday that it urged state parties in seven swing states to hire the firm, Strategic Allied Consulting. The RNC paid the company at least $3.1 million -- routed through the state parties of Florida, Nevada, Colorado, North Carolina and Virginia -- to register voters and run get-out-the-vote operations. Wisconsin and Ohio had not yet paid the firm for get-out-the-vote operations it was contracted to do.

Well, who knew that this could happen after climbing in bed with a notorious Republican bag o' sleaze like Nathan Sproul? Well, everyone, apparently:

The firm appears to be another shell company of Nathan Sproul, a longtime, notorious Republican operative, hired year after year by GOP Presidential campaigns, despite being accused of shredding Democratic voter registration forms in a number of states over several past elections.

The firm is not only tied to the FL GOP, but also to the Mitt Romney Campaign, which hired Sproul as a political consultant late last year, despite years of fraud allegations against his organizations in multiple states.

5) Beth Meyers & Camp Willard

Shorter Beth Meyers: "Our man is a 98 lb weakling and can't debate and the President will be a mean bully and kick sand in his face, make him eat worms and his own scabs and make him look like the social retard he is. Meanie!"

Early on Friday (of course), senior Romney campaign adviser Beth Meyers (no clear relation to the Meyers of Haddonfield) said we should lower our expectations regarding the first presidential debate between Mitt Romney and President Barack Obama. But there were other expectations that Meyers warned us we should lower as the campaign reaches the home stretch. What were they?

10) If elected president, Romney's annual physical may not show strains of human DNA.

9) May not consider it his job to pardon Thanksgiving turkey if it was raised by a 47% farm.

8) Romney may not have time to get to the bottom in his eight year "Top to Bottom" economic recovery plan.

7) Slight chance of showing up at first debate wearing a Mariachi costume and a Chihuahua on his arm.

6) Ann Romney's ongoing attempt to "humanize" her husband will consist of nothing more than a vague pledge not to engage in ritual human sacrifices of welfare recipients at Bohemian Grove and Bilderberg Group meetings.

5) Release of full tax returns going back to 1990 may show takeover, "harvesting" and subsequent bankruptcy of at least three lemonade stands.

4) Effective immediately, to cease and desist attempts to humanize Romney by endlessly "rebooting" campaign.

3) Concentrate on Romney's "virtually life-like" appeal.

2) Will try to talk Ann Romney out of biting and spitting on the 47% at rope lines.

1) Romney campaign giving up hope that candidate will be able to shake "the Reaper" nickname.

4) Right Wingers

In an audacious paroxysm of projection, right wingers led by Rush Limbaugh did a 180 and, instead of accusing Democrats and progressive GOTV organizations of stuffing ballot boxes, they're actually accusing pollsters of trying to (I'll finish typing this sentence as soon as I finish laughing)... suppressing Republican votes! Sez Eric Boehlert:

Just as left-leaning community organizers at ACORN were selected as unlikely scapegoats for John McCain's loss in 2008, pollsters today have been tapped by the far right as conniving conspirators in cahoots with Democrats to seal another election for Obama.

Recall that four years ago little-known ACORN was allegedly trying to flood ballot boxes with fraudulent votes...  This year, instead of producing too many votes, pollsters are allegedly doing the opposite - making sure fewer people cast a ballot on Election Day. Teaming up with the media, pollsters are suppressing the vote by concocting phony results; by skewing the data. That drumbeat of results is supposedly designed to "depress Republican enthusiasm," which in turn hands victories to the Democrats.

The reason, of course, for this sudden venomous attack on pollsters (which, apparently, includes the right wing Rasmussen people that most recently put Obama one point up on Romney) is that they consistently show Romney to be unpopular. Romney? Unlikable? That's unpossible!

The supreme irony, as we all know, is that if anyone's to be blamed for suppressing Republican enthusiasm, it's not the pollsters but Romney, himself, a man who was recently pronounced by David "I'm finally tiring of the taste of Republican jism" Brooks himself as "the least popular candidate in history."

3) Willard "14%" Romney

As further proof that Mitt Romney (R-Power Windows) can fight his way out of a bag of Cheetos...

On 60 Minutes last Sunday, Willard told Scott Pelley it was perfectly fair that a hypothetical guy making $50,000 a year should pay a higher tax rate than a guy like Romney, who made about $20,000,000 last year and paid a rate that was (temporarily) just under the maximum capital gains rate of 15% because that's how you spur economic growth. In other words, let's give Trickle Down Economics another chance and we'll promise to create jobs this time. Really, we mean it. No, really.

Elsewhere in the interview, poor Pelley had to hear Willard repeat the old George W. Bush line that everyone has medical care: All they need do is walk into an emergency room where the cost of that short-term health care is literally ten times what it would cost someone with insurance. Plus, RomneyCare in Massachusetts was based on the unfavorable proposition that uninsured people would go to the ER for medical care. Because spreading those liabilities around to the taxpayer would be (gasp) income redistribution! Socialized medicine!

2) Willard "The Stench" Romney

Cynics and others in the reality-based community finally got some validation in their suspicions about Willard's tax returns when the campaign released 2011's filings, which were retroactively amended. Why were they retroactively amended and how could that be done? Apparently, after you file your taxes, you have up to three years to "amend" them. Specifically, this means (provided if you're in the 1%) you can pull a Willard and not claim $1.75 m in charitable deductions, thereby artificially bloating your taxable income rate so it'll look as if you actually paid more than the 9-10% that the Romneys actually would've paid if they'd claimed all their "charitable" deductions. (The 2011 returns also didn't give anything but an abstract overview as to his business holdings in foreign countries such as China and the Caymans which, as one notable pundit reported, was mentioned on 28 different pages of the return.)

It was a classic bait-and-switch game that temporarily makes the Romneys look like they're on the hook for a whopping 14.1% tax rate, thereby temporarily making Mitt look as if he was telling the truth about never paying less than 13%. Then, after the campaign, when no one's looking, Mitt will then claim the other $1.75 m in deductions and get a nice, fat, extra $500,000 payday courtesy of you, the Taxpayer. Nice, huh? Like money in the bank, only non-taxable. Romney once said if he'd paid more in taxes than the law stipulated, he'd be unqualified to run for president. In the minds of many, anyone worth more than a quarter billion dollars who pays a tax rate lower than, say, an illegal landscaper and resorts to sleazy shell game tactics like this in an election year is automatically unfit to be president.

1) Israeli PM Bennie (Hill) Netanyahu

The only thing that was missing from meme machine Bibi Netanyahu's bit of alarmist assclownery at the United Nations last Thursday was a Youtube video of his presentation speeded up to double time and accompanied by "Yakety Sax." But aside from the obvious, i.e. the Dr. Strangelove/Wile E. Coyote performance of Bibi at the UN, did his Boris and Natasha cartoon of an Iranian nuclear bomb strike anyone as looking and sounding vaguely and eerily familiar?

Yeee-ah, that's what I thought. This means that not only is the fear-mongering at the United Nations over the phantom WMDs of Muslim countries continuing unabated, the cartoons are actually getting worse and more, well, cartoonish.

No wonder the President said he was too busy to meet with Colin Powell, Jr when in reality all he had to do yesterday was attend a few fundraisers.