Assclowns of the Week #73: The Twelve Assclowns of Christmas Edition

(Photo courtesy of The Onion.)

Ho, ho, fucking ho, yo. And why is your prehistoric porcine so merry these days when our housing bubble has burst, our credit and lending institution in tatters, the car industry about to collapse, with hundreds of thousands facing job loss, millions facing foreclosure and us spiraling more and more deeply into a recession that’s seemingly more inescapable than a black hole?

Because not only had Providence (as well as Wasilla, New York and Washington, DC) provided yours truly with an assclown for every one of the twelve days of Christmas, but these past two weeks have given us so many villains on such a colossal scale the question isn’t who to include in this week’s list but who should occupy the top spot.

But as miserable as the economy is, let it not be said that our government doesn’t understand the spirit of giving. Otherwise, why would the Big Three automakers and every other company larger than the next door kid’s lemonade stand be standing in line waiting for their handout from Uncle Samta Claus?

There’s Illinois Governor Rod Blowjob Blogger the guy with the fabulous hair (2) for allegedly trying to gift a Senate seat to the most qualified highest bidder; George W. Bush (4, 12) for magnanimously laughing off the gravest insult in the Muslim world; former NASDAQ chairman Bernard Madoff (3) for bringing Charles Ponzi out of obscurity and Dick Cheney (1) for giving us a ringside seat into the nuclear meltdown of a human mind.

So hop aboard the sleigh, Pottersvillians, and let’s take a bird’s eye view of 2008’s last crop of jolly assclowns and much, much more!

12) George W. Bush


Leave it to a zipperhead like Bush to have a pair of shoes thrown at him in an Islamic country without knowing what a grave insult that is among Muslims or what an equally vicious burn it is to be called a “dog”.

Add to that Bush being genuinely perplexed why a single Iraqi didn’t show him the proper gratitude after all the things he’s done for his country. But I know who is grateful: the Egyptian guy who's offered al Zaidi his daughter's hand in marriage. Now, that's gratitude!

11) The New York Times


If you heard that Muntather al-Zaidi, the “shoeder” who took a couple of potshots at Bush, was a Saddam Hussein sympathizer in an attempt to isolate him from a national populace who’s supposed to love Bush, you’d think it was a disinformation campaign designed and carried out by the administration. But you’d be wrong because this is being spearheaded by the liberal New York Times.

Less publicized by the NY Times or any other major outlet is the very real possibility that al_Zaidi perhaps has a broken hand and is being tortured, according to many people, including the investigating judge.

By the way, Mr. al Zaidi is being kept out of reach of his legal representation. Then again that shouldn't surprise anyone considering that Iraqi detainees don't get legal representation any more than our own people.

10) Frank Gaffney

Shorter Frank Gaffney: Even when neocons are wrong, we’re right. 4200 Americans had to die even though we were wrong. Put it on the CIA’s tab, not ours.

To Chris Matthews on Hardball, neocon puppet Frank Gaffney defended Dick Cheney’s statement on ABC that the administration still would’ve invaded Iraq even had it been known it had no WMD’s. When pressed by the Mr. Hyde side of Tweety, who pointed out that 4000 troops died as a result of Bush’s lies, Gaffney backed up Cheney’s ridiculous belief that a nation with no WMD’s was still “a mortal threat” (which amounts to a 0% Doctrine) to the US and that 4200 “had to die.”

Forgotten by the Gaffe Man was the fact that many of those men and women died needlessly due to a lack of adequate body armor or no body armor at all, no steel plating for their Humvees and an almost complete lack of protection from IED’s.

I guess they had to die because the Pentagon short-changed the troops in order to free up billions to tamp down the throats of war profiteers, soldiers that died looking for WMD’s that, after barely over a year, had become a punchline and fun fodder for Bush.

Some people drink the Koolaid. Heartless pricks like Frank Gaffney drink it, mainline it, freebase it, snort the crystals and get it in an enema.

9) Senate Republicans

Granted, folding the Big Three automakers' stopgap bailout (with at least another required later) into the $700 billion TARP is a bitter pill for taxpayers to swallow. However, it's a necessary evil in the minds of Democrats who may legitimately fear for tens of thousands of jobs currently held hostage by auto executives now suddenly concerned about the welfare of their proletariat.

Enter the GOP, putting the skids to the Democratic Senate's attempts to save those jobs and impose some regulation and reform of executive compensation. Southern Republicans, led by the intrepid Mitch McConnell, a human sawhorse who never saw a progressive and populist omnibus under which he's refused to valiantly throw his body, as an opportunity to deal a body blow to the UAW.

Because this sticking point, demanding that the UAW actually negotiate for lower wages, has become the mantra for a GOP that seems bound and determined to torpedo their diminished standing in Middle America, their one remaining stronghold. The UAW, which has spinelessly capitulated to the Big Three for years with the industry of Democrats, is to blame for this latest crisis, doncha know?

And you know you're hitching your Wagoner to a falling star when Bill "Wrong Way" Kristol says on national TV that the Democrats have the right idea and that southern Republicans shouldn't be allowed to determine the future of the GOP.

For a quick, cheap laugh, see what John Boner and Michelle the Merciless had to say about Bush agreeing to loan the auto industry $17.4 billion, quite possibly the last passably decent thing that Bush will ever do in his last month in power.

8) Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice

"Oh, Georgie, you make my piping throb."

It's so refreshing when a high-ranking administration official takes pride in their work.

It's all too noticeable, especially since the shoe-throwing incident in Baghdad, that one neocon flak after another, including Bush, has engaged in a furious spin campaign designed to wrench public opinion of the Iraq War back to 2003 levels.

Doing the time warp again is the perennially clueless Condoleezza Rice, who, speaking "not as Secretary of State, not as National Security Advisor" but as a political scientist that she is "absolutely... so proud that we liberated Iraq."

It's almost unimaginable that our own top diplomat could have a view of the invasion and occupation of Iraq that's so diametrically opposed to reality.

Then again, we've been there before.

The invasion of Iraq, far from providing geopolitical stability, had resulted in lawless barbarism fueled by sectarian hatred, corruption, economic hardship and anarchy. Iran had been empowered. Al Qaida completed the flypaper effect by flocking to Iraq after the invasion. Yet 4200+ troops won't be spending any more Christmases with their families so we could hang an aging dictator and jerry rig a dysfunctional, deeply divided and corrupt puppet democracy.

In the balance, we may actually be better off that Condi Rice became a political scientist and not a nuclear scientist.

7) Dennis Prager

Fuck pride: What about minority shame, asks Dennis Prager?

I read a news report that because of the objections of one kindergartners mother, a public school in North Carolina had banned the singing of Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer because the song contained the word Christmas. I blame the school officials first and foremost for this craven and foolish decision. But when the news report noted that the woman was Jewish, my heart sank. Just as I had read the Beevor report and felt a surge of Jewish pride, I read the North Carolina story and felt a surge of Jewish shame.

So there's his entire impetus for writing this article. One of his own waged her own little war on Christmas, a holiday that his people don't celebrate, and that made him ashamed to be a Jew. So why shouldn't we all march in the shame parade? What about black racists, gay economic terrorists, etc?

The article starts off with this picture of a newlywed same sex couple in Los Angeles, another minority that's supposed to apologize and express shame for threatening the Mormons or whoever they're supposed to be blacklisting.

So, I suppose we should expect an apology from black people for teeming our shore for 450 years in manacles and littering trees in the American south with their bodies? I suppose Matthew Shepard should come back from the grave and apologize for being mistaken for a scarecrow when his near-dead body was found on that barbed wire fence in Wyoming and they should also express chagrin for having their right to marry whomever they want taken away from them by a minority religion that's also got a shitload to be ashamed of.

I'll make you a deal, Dennis: You can ask these people to apologize for their persecution when you first apologize for acting like a bloated, flaccid white penis and playing the accordion in public.

6) Sherry Johnston

I wonder how long it'll take John McCain to shake her hand, too.

Sherry L. Johnston, the mother of Levi Johnston, the mullet-headed, hockey-lovin' redneck who doesn't want kids, was arrested on charges of making and selling illegal drugs in her home that's smack dab in the middle of Sarah Palin's "real America." The Alaska State Police is being tight-lipped about it but a spokesman for the state police said the drug involved was Oxycontin.

It was inevitable, I suppose, that the amateur spin meisters of right wing sewers such as Newsbusters to take this as an opportunity to slime us for "sliming" Palin. It's a response that's eerily similar to El Rushbo's bellowing when he was charged with Oxycontin abuse. Sez this particular Newsbuster,

Now, it is beyond me why a person who is not yet even an official in-law by marriage of a public official is a major news story for a low-level drug bust. I can see where it might interest local media for a brief minute, but for this story to have spread all across the wires and the Old Media with nearly 1,000 stories on the national scene... well, it is rather silly, really. Evidence of the worst in tabloid maneuvers.

It's silly, of course, until one realizes that it is just another lame attempt by the Old Media to slime Governor Palin, even if it does have to be guilt by association. And it isn't even association by color of official government business, either. It is family business.

Uh huh. Well, first she's not a member of the family yet in the next paragraph it's "family business."

So was the Clinton affair. That was a family matter that involved no drugs and broke no laws, was it not? A family matter that became an impeachable offense.

We're talking about six felony counts involving illegal drugs that's directly connected to the Palin administration, a drug bust that does nothing to dispel the perception that the people surrounding the Palin family are hillbillies who reproduce out of wedlock and keep illegal stills in their backyards.

If Chelsea Clinton's boyfriend's family was somehow involved in a drug bust, how much you wanna bet the blowhards at Newsbusters would be singing a different tune regarding family privacy?

5) President-Elect Barack Obama

”Nope, your breath doesn’t smell like cock. You’re clear.”

Never thought you’d see him on this list, eh? Well, that was before Saddleback Mountain.

It took a lot of progressives by surprise when Barack Obama announced that he’d tapped Rick Warren, who can best be described as Pat Robertson Lite, to deliver the invocation at his inauguration.

Obama’s talking point regarding this controversial invite, frankly, sickens me. Yeah, it’s one thing to agree to disagree and no one person associated with the Obama administration will be in perfect concert with everyone in the progressive blogosphere. But Warren is so far to the right that it leaves one scratching their head as to what Obama was thinking. After all, this is a guy who once called himself “Rupert Murdoch's pastor and had sent out a letter to 150,000 pastors to “get out the vote for Bush.”

Like Pat Robertson, Warren has it in for gays, likening gay marriage to incest and is for the assassination of elected heads of state, once uniting with Sean Hannity when he called for the assassination of Iran’s President Ahmadinejad because stopping evil “is the legitimate role of government.” Gee, who does that remind you of?

4) George W. Bush

The truly miraculous thing about George W. Bush is that the man never ceases to amaze the most jaded, to intrepidly continue pushing the envelope every time one is confident that he cannot possibly spelunk to any greater depths of moral putrefaction.

The day after he had shoes thrown at him by an Iraqi journalist, George Bush sat down with ABC’s Martha Raddatz and began trotting out the old talking point of al Qaida being the reason we invaded Iraq. When corrected by Raddatz that al Qaida didn’t infiltrate Iraq until 2003, the year of the invasion, Bush said, “So what?”

Yes, he actually said that. Not only did a reporter have to correct him about a very big, very basic and very important distinction between al Qaida being in Iraq before or after the invasion, Bush said, “Yeah, that’s right. So what?” Classy and a workaholic married to his job, I see.

Just for good measure, comrades, Big Brother also boasted of 52 consecutive months of job growth, despite the fact that last month alone, the US lost 533,000 jobs and nearly two million in 2008.

But the truly horrible news is that after January 20th next year, the most chronically underemployed man since John McCain will also be a victim of unemployment. O, the horror, the horror. No wonder he’s crying a lot, these days.

3) Bernard Madoff


The man who Madoff with 50 billion dollars.

It’s shocking enough that, almost 90 years after the Ponzi Pyramid scheme was unmasked for the massive fraud it was, that $50 billion worth of investors could still be duped by essentially the same swindle and at the hands of the former NADAQ chairman.

But, really, how much surprise are we permitted when Madoff once boasted to the same watchdog group who was supposed to be watching him (the SEC) about how much loot he was bringing in? And what does that in itself say about the state of government regulation?

It also doesn’t augur well when one of the victims is a charity run by one of our lawmakers, you know, one of the guys who’s been bailing out other con artists like Madoff. That would be the same guy who’d advised that same easily-duped Congress in how to stop swindlers and crooks like himself. But that’s OK, since he kicked a little back to Lautenberg, as well as Hillary Clinton, Charlie Rangel, Vito Fosella, David Obey, Ron Wyden and his favorite boy toy ever, Chuck Schumer.

2) Gov. Rod Blagojevich


Unless the usually reliable Patrick Fitzgerald is totally fabricating evidence, then Rod Blagojevich has got to be the stupidest fucking politician since Dan Quayle.

Because how much brain damage does it require to try to sell a Senate seat to the highest bidder while #1 knowing damned good and well you’re the subject of a federal probe since 2004 and #2 doing so on Patrick Fitzgerald’s turf?

Blagojevich is George Bush’s only serious rival for the Stupidest Man of 2008 for the simple reason that trying to sell Barack Obama’s seat casts a taint not only on any choice he could still make but cast suspicion on any Democratic Governor charged with the task of filling Biden’s, Clinton’s or Salazar’s seats.

Late this week, Blago said that he couldn't wait to prove his innocence and that he would fight, fight fight. Which is pretty much the same thing that Ted Stevens said just before his own conviction and ouster from office.

About the best thing you could say about Blago’s alleged fire sale was that he didn’t try to sell Obama’s Senate seat wholesale.

1) Dick “Twister” Cheney

This is Dick Cheney among friends at CPAC. Can you imagine what he looks like when he’s among Democrats?

Watching a Republican, especially a neocon like Dick Cheney, give an extended exit interview involves a morbid curiosity factor not unakin to watching an imminent train wreck involving a freight car full of nitroglycerine barreling toward another full of cow manure.

Dick Cheney gave an interview to ABC this past week that perhaps exceeds any lunacy ever uttered by him since his last CPAC conference this past winter.

Regarding Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's interrogation, Cheney said, "There was a period of time there, three or four years ago, when about half of everything we knew about al Qaeda came from that one source. So, it's been a remarkably successful effort. I think the results speak for themselves."

Of course, deleted from Cheney's memory as was KSM's redacted transcript was the fact that the CIA had kidnapped his seven and nine year-old sons and interrogated them. Also forgotten by Cheney was that Mohammed had confessed to all sorts of stuff just to make the waterboarding stop (which it did when the wild goose chase he'd sent them on had begun). In the words of one CIA official, "90 percent of it was total fucking bullshit.” And an ex-Pentagon analyst adds: "K.S.M. produced no actionable intelligence. He was trying to tell us how stupid we were."

But waterboarding isn't torture if our neocon shysters tell us it isn't nor is abducting small children kidnapping when the CIA does it. And bullshit is still gold if Vice President Midas says it is.

There's a special place in Hell for people like Dick Cheney and it's a small cave filled with microwaves that play havoc on defibrillators.