Assclowns of the Week #96: Treat or Treat, Kiss My Ass edition

     (Thanks to Tengrain linking to this during his turn on Mike's Blog Roll at Crooks and Liars, this posting will get some decent exposure. After making the rent on November 1st, Mrs. JP and I will be seriously wiped out. If 1000 people read this post and every one chips in even a dollar or two each, it would make all the difference in the world. With $800 in back taxes and the steady barrage of bills bearing down on us, we need all the help we can get as we stagger into the holiday season. So please kick in whatever you can to help keep this feature a regular one like it was before.)

     As one person on Twitter recently observed, "people are now acting as if Hell suddenly got air conditioning." That's especially true of the Tea Baggers who have been a hemorrhoid in the body politic since the White Man's Arab Spring of 2009. From fronting the special interests of the billionaires who've co-opted and financed their so-called populist uprising to cheering on the shutting down of the government and Republicans playing chicken with our creditors, the Tea Bagger movement seems to be comprised of every family's crazy brother-in-law or uncle that no one wants to talk about.
     But it isn't just the Tea Party that made the top ten spots this week. No siree. There's also Pat Robertson (9) for telling a caller that she doesn't know how to pray; Don Yelton (1) for providing a window into the antebellum South; Dick Cheney (Dishonorable Mention) who thought terrorists would hack into his bionic chest and Senate Democrats (3) who think cutting the social safety net will kill fewer people than raising taxes on the rich. So hop on board the hayride in this special Halloween edition as we harvest and  Boo! this week's bumper crop of assclowns and much, much more!

10) Ted Cruz

 

Ted Cruz and Sarah Palin morph into pod people versions of Bill Murray and Tina Fey.

     "We need 100 more like Jesse Helms in the Senate"?
     When Jim Piersall hit his 100th home run, he ran the bases backwards. After shutting down the government and driving us to the brink of a ruinous default, Ted Cruz is doing his own backwards victory lap around the country. Granted, Cruz said this in North Carolina a month ago, well past the week-long parameter of this feature but it certainly bears repeating. However, if you insist on a more recent example of wingnuttery to justify putting Cruz on this list, how's about him saying of Dick Cheney's hunting accident, "Look, it happens." He was hunting for Mexican children with Steve King in Iowa and King chimed in by saying of the 2006 incident, "Doesn't bother me a bit. The way I understood it, (Harry Wittington) was standing in the wrong place." Yes, these compassionate conservatives actually said that. This is not the Onion or Andy Borowitz. They. Actually. Said. That. It'd be real interesting to see how fast they'd change their tune if either of them were accidentally shot in the face with a shotgun.
     But to go back to my first point, by saying we needed 100 virulent racists like Helms in the Senate, Cruz forgot that he'd have to resign to make that happen. Unless he proudly counts himself as a racist of the magnitude of Helms.

9) Pat Robertson

      Lord only knows why the 700 Club still pushes Pat Robertson out in front of the cameras several times a week. Lately, it seems as if he's bound and determined to insult every viewer who calls in. Last week, he told an old woman on a fixed income to keep tithing to her church despite the fact it hasn't made her husband a lick healthier. Earlier this week, Robertson insulted a mother who wanted to know why God was ignoring her and not healing her deaf child by saying, "I don’t know what you’re doing wrong. Why don’t you try that and if it doesn’t work, try something else."

     You know, like going to an EENT instead of calling in to a senile, blood diamond-grubbing huckster like Pat Robertson.

      

8) Sarah Palin  

      While declining an invitation to appear on Piers Morgan's show, Sarah Palin posted this bizarre picture on her Facebook wall of her posing with a bear she'd allegedly killed. Note the hi-powered rifle is resting on the animal's carcass pointed directly at herself, once again proving her ignorance with firearms. Apparently scrawled in White-Out, Palin's communique to Piers looks like something a serial killer would send to the police just before or after a conquest. This astoundingly heartless picture was accompanied with a heavily sarcastic, barely literate message that reads, "Oh dear Piers, thank you so much for all your invitations to appear on your shambolic show, including the adoring message you sent. But is it still any wonder why I’ve politely responded that I’m too busy doing, um, er… pretty much anything to accept the invite? (At least I didn’t tell you to “get stuffed”.) And to all our British friends: we ask, what did your friends across the pond ever do to you to deserve your Piers?"
     Yes, she coined another word: "Shambolic." Hard to refudiate the woman's wit and erudition, such as her retelling of the midnight ride of Paul Revere so he could warn... the British.... "with warning shots and bells."
     Thank you again, John McCain, for unearthing this EEG flatliner and troglodyte from the Alaskan scree.

7) Rand Paul  

"Fret not, Vincent: You will always have more fabulous hair than Rand Paul."      During a rally at Jerry Falwell's Liberty University ("The Finest Xeroxed Law Degrees Under God's Green Earth") for Gubernatorial candidate Ken Coochie Coochie, Rand Paul had this to say about eugenics:
     "In the movie Gattaca––In the not-too-distant future, eugenics is common and DNA plays the primary role in determining social class... Due to frequent screenings, Vincent faces genetic discrimination and prejudice. The only way to achieve his dream of being an astronaut is he has to become what’s called a ‘borrowed ladder.’"
     Problem: Paul or his researchers seem to have lifted his dystopian vision of the pro-abortion agenda virtually word for word from Gattaca's Wikipedia page, according to Rachel Maddow. In other words, plagiarism, like the kind that sank Joe Biden's chances to become president in 1988. But, Maddow aside, since the MSM typically won't touch it it, IOKIYAR. (Interesting aside: In the first line of the "Plot" section, the word "liberal" before "eugenics" has been excised.) By the way, this isn't the first time Paul has plagiarized from a movie's Wikipedia page.
     Perhaps Paul thought Gattaca's tale of the triumph of the human spirit was written by his idol Ayn Rand. Which, if it had, would've ended with Vincent colonizing another world and plundering its natural resources for the benefit of the corporation that put him there, thereby forcing James Cameron to send a crippled Sam Worthington and a giant Smurf to kick his ass.

6) Nevada Assemblyman Jim Wheeler

     Three years ago during an interview, Nevada Assemblyman Jim Wheeler was talking to a right wing blogger and the latter asked him if he would vote, say, to bring back slavery if his constituents demanded it. Then he was stupid enough to publicly relay his answer during a town hall meeting last August. Wheeler frankly admitted he would. Because, you know, that's what a Republic is all about, enslaving people of color if it ever became the zeitgeist again. Because you can always count on Tea Bagger-backed Republicans to unfailingly listen to the vox populi. In fact, his exact words were, "If that’s what they wanted, I’d have to hold my nose, I’d have to bite my tongue and they’d probably have to hold a gun to my head, but yeah … if that’s what the constituency wants that elected me, that’s what they elected me for."

     Typically, when the video leaked out this past week, Wheeler was quick to blame "liberal operatives" (or Laura Martin, communications director for Progressive Leadership Alliance of Nevada, who'd put the clip on Youtube) for smearing him with his owns words despite the fact his state's party has joined with Democrats in universally condemning him.

5) Ted Cruz

      

     Leave it to a Brylcreemed NRA pimpstick like Ted Cruz to mansplain during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing to Sabrina Fulton, Trayvon Martin's still-grieving mother, that Stand Your Ground laws aren't inherently racist. In fact, according to Tailgunner Ted, they actually benefit black people!

     As proof that this is true, Cruz pulled out of his ass like a magician pulling endless scarves from his sleeve misleading and cherry-picked statistics from right wing sites about Stand Your Ground that aren't even remotely grounded in reality and actual statistics. For instance, a white defendant who'd killed a person of color and invoking Stand Your Ground has a better chance of successfully using that defense than a person of color who'd killed a white person. And the rate of exoneration is much higher for white defendants than for people of color (less than 4%).

     Oh, and Canada's favorite Cuban shyster also claimed that Stand Your Ground wasn't considered in the Zimmerman trial, another falsehood in two ways: Zimmerman initially invoked Stand Your Ground as his defense before switching to self defense and the jurors considered while deliberating whether or not SYG was germane. In other words, Zimmerman didn't need to invoke SYG to benefit from it.

     But just try telling that to a guy who paralyzed the United States Senate for almost 22 hours while reading Green Eggs and Ham and talking about Duck Dynasty.

  4) Barack Obama & the NSA

     What's next? Checkpoint Charlie II?

     This week from Der Spiegel came the news, largely thanks to Edward Snowden, that the National Security Agency had been bugging Chancellor Angela Merkel's cell phone since 2002 (Apparently, when Bush was rolfing Angela Merkel during a G8 summit seven years ago, he was actually planting a bug on her). Once word broke out about this, Obama lied to Merkel's face and told her that if he'd known about it, he'd've stopped it.

     Oops. Problem: Obama not only knew about this since 2010, he also signed off on it and even ordered a dossier to be assembled about Merkel. And that wasn't the only revelation made by Der Spiegel: Apparently, the US diplomatic mission there seems to think they're living in a Sean Connery-era James Bond movie because the US Embassy in Pariser Platz is also what the magazine calls, "a nest of espionage. From the roof of the embassy, a special unit of the CIA and NSA can apparently monitor a large part of cellphone communication in the government quarter."

     Oh, and we've also been spying on 34 other world leaders. But, but, we've thwarted 54 terrorist attacks as a result! No, we can't prove it. You'll just have to trust us. Oh, and your wife reminded you to pick up little Cindy from her ballet lessons on the way home.
     So take heart Joe Sixpack, John Q. Public and Jane Doe: You're in good company. Thanks to our own Chancellor Obama and the NSA, we're all terrorist suspects in the second Golden Age of spying!

3) Senate Democrats

 

    I'm going to play it straight for a minute and editorialize because what the Democrats are willing to do to us isn't a damned bit funny: After the government shutdown ended on the 16th, Democrats, especially those in the Senate, proved they didn't have to budge an inch when negotiating with mouth-foaming right wing psychos. The Democrats, for once, weren't the fractious, self-defeating Bozos they tend to be and it was a resounding victory over the Tea Party-dominated GOP.
     That's why it's both inexplicable and disturbing to hear that nine Democrats in the Senate are willing to make cuts to the social safety net for which Republicans have been slavering since time immemorial. Cutting Medicaid and Medicare benefits to those most in need of it will be like blowing spitballs against the raging elephant of the debt and deficit. And, as everyone knows, Social Security is not (and, yes, I'm looking at you, Dick Durbin), with its $2.6 trillion surplus, in need fixing because it's paid for 52 times a year in the form of payroll taxes. Obviously, the spineless Democrats are getting their cues from "Grand Bargain" Obama and are willing to put on the table social service programs they're never going to need so they can steal retirement benefits promised us decades ago and denying health coverage to seniors and low-income people. And even George Will is admitting both sides of the aisle "are talking entirely on Republican terms."
     All so they can show the Republicans they, too, can play nice. They didn't budge on Obamacare and they shouldn't budge on this because raising taxes on the 1% and increasing revenue is a far saner and more humane alternative than what nine Democratic senators have already proposed. Their names are:
     Dick Durbin (IL)
     Dianne Feinstein (CA)
     Patty Murray (WA)
     Mark Warner (VA)
     Max Baucus (MT)
     Joe Manchin (WV)
     Chris Coons (DE)
     Tom Carper (DE)
     Michael Bennett (CO)
     If any of these people are your senators, write them and let them know you will never forget this when they're up for re-election.

2) Joe the Plumber  

 
     Someone needs to take Joe the Plumber aside and tell him to stop taking his history lessons from Michele Bachmann. In a recent tweet, Joe was screaming his bald head off about Alan Grayson's spot-on fundraiser email and said, "I will not let the 'left' set the narrative. Democrats have a history of lynching Black Americans..." He then posted an audaciously derivative picture from a seriously misguided black Republican named Kevin Jackson, one using the same exact burning cross Grayson had used in his much more accurate picture.

      Meanwhile, we're supposed to ignore Joe's recent comment that wanting a white Republican president doesn't make you racist, it makes you an American or his insistence on calling African Americans "Black Americans". Likewise, we're supposed to ignore the ignorant right wing talking point that the Democrats of the 19th century are ideologically indistinguishable from today's Democrats and that he chose to use a picture that is incredibly unoriginal.

1) Don Yelton  

     Meanwhile, back at the plantations of the Tar Heel State, former Buncombe County, North Carolina (That's right, people. North Carolina actually has a county named after a synonym for PT Barnum bullshit) GOP chair Don Yelton was reminding folks that the Democratic Party didn't necessarily have the market cornered on antebellum racism. In an epic interview with The Daily Show's Aasif Mandvi, Yelton proudly pontificated on neo Jim Crow Voter ID laws as only an old, white, southern man still holding a personal grudge against Gen. Sherman could. Among the pearls of wisdom that dribbled from his jowls:

     "Now you have a black person using the term, Nigger this and nigger that, and it's OK for them to do it."

     "If it hurts the whites so be it."

     "If it hurts a bunch of lazy black people who want the government to give them something so be it."

     And when Mandvi pointed out the people who will be most victimized by North Carolina's racist voter ID law usually vote Democratic, he sarcastically said, "Gee!" (In case there's any doubt, the voter ID law, as The Daily Show pointed out, is designed not to hurt people of color but Democrats). Then he doubled down on his racist comments in the press and on NC radio.

     Well, before anyone knew it, despite having a token black best friend, Yelton was ousted from his chairmanship of the county GOP, not because he was so racially offensive but because he pulled a Ted Cruz and did an impromptu public reading from the GOP's own playbook. And, whatever their reasons for demanding his resignation, if you've lost the Republican Party of North Carolina, arguably the most racist in the country, then you know you've strayed off the reservation.

 

Dishonorable Mention:

 

     In yet another example of Excrement in Broadcasting, Darth Cheney did a little pre-Halloween monster mash on Rush the Hutt's radio show. Before verbally fellating each other in some 69ing from Hell, Dick Cheney was pimping his new book, "Socialized Health Care For Me But Not For Thee, So Go Fuck Yourself." Then, after gobbling down Cheney's toxic man juice, Rush wiped his three chins and made it a point to tell us "leftists" that Dick Cheney was going out hunting.
     Oddly enough, after hearing the news, every Republican lawyer in Wyoming then suddenly booked flights out of the state.