Assclowns of the Week #95: Monumental Stupidity double-sized edition

    "You can re-litigate these policy issues in a political forum, but we shouldn't use threats of causing the U.S. to fail on its obligations to repay its debt as a cudgel." Lloyd Blankfein, CEO, Goldman Sachs

"The American people would get better government out of Monkey Island at the local zoo than we're giving them today." Rep. John Dingell (D-MI)

"This mess was created by the Republicans for one purpose, and they lost. People in my district are calling in for Obamacare -- affordable health care -- in large numbers. These guys have lost, and they can't figure out how to admit it... So we sit here until they figure out they fuckin' lost."
Rep. Jim McDermott (D-WA)

     (Tip o the tinfoil hat to Mrs. JP for going on an assclown safari with me this past week.)

     Lord only knows why the Republican Party en masse hasn't already been rounded up and tried and convicted for treason. Since the government shutdown at midnight on Tuesday at the behest of all surviving 20 Tea Baggers (according to Rep. Greg Walden), children have gotten kicked out of Head Start, other children are being denied cancer treatment, 401 National Parks have been shut down as well as certain monuments, there are virtually no more food or airline safety inspections, no paid border security (they're ordered to go to work, anyway), no tax collection, no litigation in the federal courts and, worst of all, no Panda Cam at the National Zoo. Oh, and they're still dicking around trying to decide if the 800,000 furloughed federal workers will get back pay like they did in 1996 (Watch: Some GOP asshat will demand spending offsets, like the nonCongressionally-funded ObamaCare). And now the Republican Party is running around like several hundred Curly Howards yelling "Woo woo woo woo woo!" and wondering why everyone is so pissed off at them. After all, shutting down the largest government in the world is like shutting down a lemonade stand after Daddy told you to clean your room, right?
     Therefore, with the sheer mountain range of right wing madness that we've seen since Monday night, this will be a double-sized edition of ACOTW. To wit: Stuart Varney (11), who wants to punish federal workers while forgetting that's why we have the GOP; Pat Robertson (4) for telling an elderly lady, "Don't pay your medical bills, pay me or God will kill your husband!"; Rick Joyner (5) for having a Savonarola wet dream on the air and RNC Chair Rinsed Penis Reince Priebus (12) for his failure to communicate.
     So hop on board the Halloween haywagon (The GOP clown car's in the shop since the shutdown) and let's ridicule this week's double-sized harvest of assclowns and much, much more!

20) Senators Mitch McConnell and Rand Paul       While having a hot mic pinned to him before a CNN interview, Mitch McConnell had a little confab with his junior counterpart, Ayn Rand Paul, one clearly laying out their shutdown strategy. At the end of the exchange, Paul said to McConnell, "I think -- well I know we don't want to be here, but we're gonna win this I think."

     "We're gonna win"?! Seriously? Is this the GOP's idea of upholding the Constitution? Not safeguarding the national interests but winning? I swear, I think these fetid fucksticks are still playing the same touch football game against the Kennedys since 1961.

19) House Natural Resources Committee

     Senior Republican lawmakers launching an investigation into why monuments, national memorials and 401 parks got shut down is like a band of arsonists breaking into the same building over and over again, finally succeeding in burning it to the ground then starting their own arson investigation. Yet, that's exactly what the House GOP is doing even as I write this. Incredibly, Republicans on the House Natural Resources Committee are actually asking for the preservation of documentation leading up to the shutdown. How about looking at the transcript of the vote that brought the shutdown into being? Congressional record?

 

     Bueller?
     Then, even more reprehensibly, certain members of that august body, including Michele "1000 Yard Stare" Bachmann, is trying to drum up support among the electorate by posing for photo ops with disabled WW II veterans at their own monument with the yellow tape clutched in their bony hands. Once again, like an arsonist still holding the gasoline can, smelling of acrid smoke and happily parading around the burning neighborhood looking for sympathy over what the voices in their heads made them do. Even with several hundred more Republicans in Congress, when Bachmann finally leaves, the legislative branch's average IQ will automatically shoot up about 15 points.

18) Sarah Palin

     Lord only knows why Sarah Palin is still in the public eye like a cat hair. The woman's a failed "author", a failed GOP Vice Presidential candidate, a failed, small town mayor, a failed, half-tern Governor, a failed reality TV star and a failed Fox "News" commentator. Yet, despite this unrelieved record of mediocrity and failure, Sarah Palin, eternally reliving her snotty head cheerleader days, is still solicited for her opinion and by the same network that fired her well-toned ass. This time, Sister Sarah makes the grade for trying to make a clever pun on the President's first name, calling him "Barrycades" in light of the monuments that have been closed since midnight Tuesday. Which may not be the best pun to make considering that some of the monuments shut down by her Republican brothers and sisters really are barricaded.
     Sarah, Oblivion and Irrelevance called: They're on a tight schedule, are tired of the delays and want to commence the inevitable.

17) Me

     After nearly nine years and 100 of these features, it seems unfair that the eternally frustrated author would never once think to include himself on this list. And now seems about as good a time as any to join the rolls of infamy.

     Last week, I posted a Mike Flannigan article entitled "Don't Worry: It's Only a Chemically-Induced Coma" and then, wanting to play my part to provide fresh material on Brilliant at Breakfast, I cross-posted it. Well, it featured a lead picture of Uncle Sam in V fib being attended to by emergency room doctors and nurses with defibrillator paddles. Unfortunately, the moron who cross-posted the article didn't stop to check on Mr. Brilliant's progress. I'm no longer on Facebook, which is where Jill almost exclusively posts (hence the impetus to provide fresh content on B&B), but Mrs. JP is. Apparently, after some surgery, Mr. Brilliant had slipped into a week-long coma and all this time, your peckerheaded proprietor was hoping Jill wouldn't notice since he posted the article just before hearing the news. Well, she did, of course, and left a terse but acerbic comment calling me on my unintentional callousness. Way to go, JP: You're about as funny as a barium enema and produce about the same results.

16) Rep. Randy Neugebauer  

Speaker of the House John Boehner sends out his minions to PR bomb the shutdown. (Rep. Randy Neugebauer, 2nd from left, Michele Bachmann farthest right.)

     In what has to be the most audacious example of Blame the Victim since Republicans fanned out across the World World Two Memorial like Danny DeVito's bomb-strapped penguins in Gotham City, take a gander at what Texas Congressman Randy Neugebauer said to a Park Ranger.
     "How do you look at them and ... deny them access? The Park Service should be ashamed of themselves." Then, after brow-beating the technically unemployed Park Ranger who was working for free, the woman actually apologized. Gee, Congressman Noogie, how can you look anyone in the eye and deny them the chance to earn money while continuing to draw your own pay, especially since you're one of the Republican sociopaths who voted to shut down the government? Well, maybe you can look the Ethics Committee in the eye and inform them as to why you're such a conspicuously distended asshole in a political party filled to bursting with them.

15) Rep. Lee Terry

    It's a rare pleasure to see a Republican tell the truth and give the political landscape a fresh breath of air with unrestricted candor. I give you Congressman Lee Terry of Nebraska, who, when asked by the Omaha World-Herald if he would continue to collect his paycheck, said, "Dang right." When reminded that a small delegation of GOP House members volunteered to forgo or donate their paychecks during the shutdown, Terry admitted it was all grandstanding and added,

"Whatever gets them good press. That's all that it's going to be. God bless them. But you know what? I've got a nice house and a kid in college, and I'll tell you we cannot handle it. Giving our paycheck away when you still worked and earned it? That's just not going to fly.”

     Keep in mind, this is coming from a guy who works a total of 129 days a year and gets paid more than about 80% of the nation, someone who'd "earned" his pay by voting to defund ObamaCare and helping to set up the shutdown. Seems to me he could easily take on a second job with the other 236 days a year he's not doing shit. Luckily, federal workers also don't have mortgages to pay and kids to put through college, too. In other words, it's the same old, "For me, not for thee" bullshit. Nebraska should primary his ass just for that horrible haircut. (Btw, Terry's not the only Republican who's refused to surrender his paycheck. Before generating a firestorm, Rep. Renee Ellmers (R-NC), wife of a wealthy surgeon, said, "I need my paycheck." She's since announced she'll forgo her check while claiming she didn't know Congress would still get paid during the shutdown, which is a bald-faced lie.)

14) Sen. Mike Lee

     Republicans need to learn three things:
     1) The President won re-election. No, really, he did.
     2) ObamaCare is popular and here to stay. People, oddly enough, like being healthy without going bankrupt. Go figure.
     3) We no longer have to rely on word of mouth since we have recording technology. Seriously, we've moved beyond Edison's wax cylinders. That includes digital audio of radio interviews you give when you say you're still "working", are essential personnel and will continue to get paid.
     Which is what Sen. Mike Lee told KUTV the other day.
     Then lied about it through his unpaid Communications Director, claiming that KUTV made the whole thing up until they released the entire interview on their website, complete with the transcript. Oh, no, Lee said, I planned on donating my paycheck all along. I just don't like to grandstand when committing random acts of charity when I'm not trying to overturn child labor laws days after getting sworn in.
     4) You're an asshole, Mike, always have been, always will be.

13) Rep. Darrell Issa

     Let's call this segment Slow and Furious.
     Remember when Darrell Issa (R-GTA), chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, filed a motion a couple of years ago in his ongoing attempts to get Attorney General Eric Holder to turn over documents pertaining to the Bush-era Fast and Furious program? Well, after Issa did his part to hijack the government like it was a red Maserati, Issa then had the chutzpah to request the federal courts to make an exception and order the furloughed US attorneys to go back to work prosecuting his case. IOW, make an exception for me and fuck everyone else.
     Needless to say, federal Judge Amy Berman Jackson, an Obama appointee, was not amused. She slapped Issa upside his head with a ruling that essentially told him, among other things, "You want this case prosecuted? End the shutdown so we can legally litigate again."
     Are you guys also getting the sneaking suspicion the GOP didn't think this shutdown thingie thoroughly?

12) RNC Chair Rinsed Penis Reince Priebus      This is Reince Priebus' appearance opposite Thomas Roberts (rolling down hill) on MSNBC in which he blamed Democrats and Obama for not wanting to negotiate with the GOP in good faith, adding that the GOP didn't actually want the shutdown.
     But seriously, here's Roberts' epic verbal suplex the other day of Rinsed Penis on MSNBC. The sheer depth of this man's delusion never ceases to amaze me and, as horrible as this 113th Congress is, I think we should all be grateful more often this oversized, shaved French bulldog isn't in that Congress. First, he claims ObamaCare is a failure because the server for the government's sign up page keeps crashing, then he's trying to claim that ObamaCare isn't popular at all with the people. Secondly, he refuses to accept that the ACA is existing law and has been adjudicated by the SCOTUS and, thirdly, thinks the GOP has the majority over the government, despite not having the Senate or the White House. Reinhold is like those stupid dogs you see on Youtube that defensively bite their own hind legs while gnawing on a rawhide chew.

11) Stuart Varney

     Stu Varney has long been a barnacle on Fox's Business Channel, a worn-out but still-reliable human dildo for every corporate entity or interest that ever came down the pike. But after the shutdown occurred, Varney couldn't merely regurgitate Roger Ailes' talking point of it being the Democrats' fault. Oh, no. Varney then went on a tirade about how he wanted to punish federal workers for sucking on his $10,000,000 teat. This is what he said when a Fox host asked him if the furloughed federal workers should get back pay:

That is a loaded question isn’t it? You want my opinion? This is President Obama’s shutdown. He is responsible for shutting this thing down; he’s taken an entirely political decision here. No, I don’t think they should get their back pay, frankly, I really don’t. I’m sick and tired of a massive, bloated federal bureaucracy living on our backs, and taking money out of us, a lot more money than most of us earn in the private sector, then getting a furlough, and then getting their money back at the end of it. Sorry, I’m not for that. I want to punish these people. Sorry to say that, but that’s what I want to do...

On hearing a small voice of reason from the same host who said the shutdown wasn't the fault of the workers and that they shouldn't be made to pay for the shutdown, he replied,

I take your point, Amy, it is not directly their fault, but I’m looking at the big picture here. I’m getting screwed. Here I am, a private citizen, paying an inordinate amount of money in tax. I’ve got a slow economy because it’s all government, all the time. And these people are living on our backs, regulating us, telling us what to do, taxing us, taking our money, and living large. This is my chance to say “Hey, I’m fed up with this and I don’t miss you when you’re on furlough.” Sorry if that’s a harsh tone, but that’s the way I feel.

     I don't know why this One Percenter whining about getting screwed when he still has his job and is worth $10,000,000 surprises me but somehow I am. Maybe he would've been singing a different tune if he'd been in Washington DC last Thursday when a woman trying to ram the White House was shot dead by the Capitol Police that will be shut off in a week unless the government gets up and running again. Or maybe he'll then care if he eats a tainted piece of steak because FDA food inspectors were considered "non-essential personnel". After these comments, someone should tie this douchebag down to his desk and shove an unlubed, rolled-up copy of Forbes up his fat, pasty ass.

10) Rick Perry

     "I shit y'all not! That oil lobbyist's cock was so huge, I hadda use both hands!"

     Yes, like Bible Spice Palin, another dimwitted Governor, Rick Perry, is on the rolls for the second week running for using scare tactics in trying to keep Texans from opting into the hugely popular Affordable Care Act (he'd already denied Medicaid expansion to millions of Texans). Perry, like the right wing ideologues who think the Defense of Marriage Act is still in place and is enforceable by law despite it being struck down by the Supreme Court, is now saying ObamaCare is illegal. Problem is, Rick Perry's memory is getting worse. Not only can he not find a third example of how this is true, he can't even find one.

     You know, despite being ratified by Congress, signed into law by President Obama three years ago and found constitutional by the SCOTUS earlier this year. If Governor Goodhair says it's illegal, he don't need to provide an example as to why. Just trust him on this like y'all trusted him to end last year's drought.

9) Rep. Marlin Stutzman  

     Meanwhile, elsewhere on the GOP's Sulk Road...
     I know it's been a while since I was raising and making babies but I recall that when a small child cries, they sometimes go on and on for so long that they eventually forget what it is they're crying about. I give you Rep. Marlin Stutzman to the Washington Examiner on the GOP shutdown of the government:

     "We have to get something out of this. And I don't know what that even is." 

     Uh, a burp, bottle of formula, a new diaper (Vitter may have a spare)... the absolute, privatized Free Market destruction of the government of what was once the greatest nation on earth?

     It frightens me to think that we have in our Congress people that goosestep in lockstep to whatever their party leaders say without a definable goal or coherent legislative strategy in mind. So, Indiana, I know you're mostly made up of corn farmers and basketball coaches but what the fuck were you thinking when you sent Putz Man to Capitol Hill?

8) The Pentagon

     The day after Thanksgiving is the first official day of the holiday shopping season and is known as Black Friday. If it's the day before the government shutdown of 2013 and you're the Pentagon, it's Black Monday.
     The DoD announced on September 30th (at 5 PM ET, or just before the end of the news cycle) that they'd gone on a $5 billion spending binge just hours before Republicans shut down the government. This included many cost-plus, incentive fee, no-bid contracts (94 in all) worth $50,000,000 or more, including the purchase of a radar base mounted on an offshore oil platform (pictured above) and a $50,000,000 Air Force contract for Reaper drones. To help put this shit in perspective, only 14 contracts were handed out on September 3rd, the first workday of the month. Typically, this spending spree on WMDs wasn't reported by a single mainstream media outlet despite the Pentagon's press release.
     And to put all this in greater perspective, we can no longer afford Head Start, cancer treatments for children, food and airline safety inspections, law enforcement in the nation's Capitol or keeping open our parks, memorials and monuments. But we can always find it in our budget to spend $5,000,000,000 a day on shit that kills people. Another factoid: We spend more on national defense than the next 10 nations combined, even though 9 of them are allies.

7) Rep. Greg Walden

     Perhaps it's unfair to put a Republican or anyone on this list for being perfectly honest and having a Bulworth moment but I think we should give some backasswards props to the chairman of the NRCC for admitting to top GOP donors the real reason for the shutdown: "We have to do this because of the Tea Party. If we don’t, these guys are going to get primaried and they are going to lose their primary." Then, after the usual furor erupted, which is inevitable after any Republican speaks in public nowadays, an NRCC spokeswoman tried to deny he ever used the phrase "Tea Party."
     Let's get one thing straight: When Republicans hold the the Tea Party in thrall and praise their virtues, they're not talking about the actual grassroots Tea Baggers but the Koch Brothers and other billionaires. Otherwise, if they can admit to longtime Wall St GOP donors they don't give a fuck what they think, then their only reason for waving the Tea Party banner is sucking up to (or sucking off) the Kochs and their other billionaire yacht lizards.

 

     Because, really, folks, the Tea Bagger fad's been dead for, like, years.

6) Jeremy Shane Temple  

     Yeah, this poor, mistreated pooch may not be human but neither is his sack of shit of a former owner.

     Cincinnati animal control officers made a horrifying discovery when they responded to neighbor complaints about a German Shepherd and a Pomeranian being abused. They found Joseph (original name, ironically, Toby) tied to a tree where he'd been confined for four years. You can hang a hat on his ribs, he's so emaciated (Oddly enough, the Pomeranian was found in a secure spot with food and water).

 

     The animal hospital treating Joseph says it will cost about $1000 to treat the pooch until he's adoption-ready. So please consider making a donation here at Joseph's official Facebook page, Justice for Joseph. Oh, and if you have a blog, please spread the word about this animal-abusing, miscreant son of a bitch, who's now free to abuse more animals after paying a $25 fine.

5) Rick Joyner

     Some are born leaders, others followers. Then there are the Joyners. Human palindrome Rick Joyner of MorningStar Ministries went on the air last Monday to declare that "democracy is failing" and that we must remove Obama through a military coup. Of course, we have to tolerate seditionist twat twaddle like this since it comes from a "man of the cloth". Well, like a typical right wing nut case living in an impenetrable bubble of delusion, Joyner's doubled down, saying,

A recent MorningStar TV Prophetic Perspectives program that I did on how martial law is coming to America has created quite a stir. Some were outraged and some glad that the obvious had been stated. Both of these responses are understandable. The stir that was created by this is encouraging. I obviously touched a nerve, as even the national news picked it up. At least for a moment, a lot of people are alert and listening... I make no apologies for this statement, and I will stand by it.

     What the anti-Santa doesn't realize is that his own ministry pulled not only the offending video from Youtube but three others ("Due to a copyright claim." Uh huh.) It remains unclear where Rickie Retardo was during the fascist Bush years where wearing even the wrong tee shirt or having written a letter years ago to the editor of a small town liberal newspaper could get you thrown out of a public event.

4) Pat Robertson      This vicious prick's greed and rapacity knows no bounds. Two years ago he once told a woman facing foreclosure that even she must continue tithing. Well, last Friday when a retiree with an ill husband emailed Patsie if it would be wrong to instead apply her tithing money to health care expenses, this is what he said:

Your husband has all these medical problems because the ‘devour’ has not been rebuked. You need to rebuke him. You give your tithes faithfully and God said, ‘I will rebuke the devour,’ the person that is eating up your money and eating up your health. So you want to be healthy? That’s a promise in the Word.

     Shorter Patsie: "I know you've been tithing since you were a child, even though it hasn't gotten you shit. And even though you're probably not from my congregation or even my denomination, I'm so astoundingly greedy I'll even go to bat for someone else's church. Keep giving until it literally bleeds. The payoff will kick in any moment now."
     Here's a blast from the recent past: A month ago, a documentary came out proving Robertson had personally diverted money from his so-called charity, Operation Blessing, originally pledged to Rwandan refugees to his blood diamond mining operation. So, yeah, lady: Keep giving money to some church because it'll go to a worthy cause like a diamond stud for Christina Aguilera's clitoris.
     Will someone please admit this asshole to a nursing home so we don't have to listen to him, any more?

3) Reynaldo Villanueva and Mr. Clean Laundry and Cleaning Services

     In what has got to be the scummiest bait-and-switch in recent memory, Mr. Clean Laundry and Cleaning Services out of Destin, Florida cracks the top 3 for the stunt they pulled this past summer.

     According to AlterNet, the owner, Reynaldo Villanueva, enticed Jamaicans with the usual stories of fabulous wages if they would just come down to Florida and work for him. Some of these guest workers (Read: Legal immigrants with H-B2 work visas) were so taken by the come-on they borrowed as much as $2000 to get to Florida. When they arrived and began working for these scumbags, the reality was very different. They were issued checks that read 0 dollars and 0 cents and receiving texts from the boss's wife saying they actually owed them more money for the privilege of living in company-owned hovels so crowded some of them had to sleep on the floor.

     That's right. They had to pay their employer rent that actually exceeded their wages on account of having their hours cut (Produce companies in Florida are notorious for this). So, not having incentive to continue working, they went on strike and got threats from their "employer" demanding they go back to work or they'd be in violation of the conditions of their visas and get evicted and deported by both the Sheriff's Department and ICE (which is now reluctant to be used as a weapon in ongoing labor disputes). They've since filed a complaint with the Federal Labor Board (.pdf file). Mr. Clean's contact information is below. Be a good citizen and give this fucking asshole a piece of your mind.

     2 Industrial Park Lane, Unit 5

     Destin, FL 32541

     Cell (850) 586-1033 Business phone: (850) 460-2877 Fax: (850) 460-2878

     Email: info@DestinMisterclean.com

2) Rep. Mark Meadows

     They say behind every great man, there's a woman. And it could also be said that behind every collectively suicidal, shithouse rat-brained piece of legislation, there's a Republican.
     While Sen. Ted Cruz has certainly played his part and has instigated the shutdown, bleeding his toxic influence to the lower chamber (Prompting Grover Norquist to correctly say Cruz "pushed the House Republicans into traffic and then wandered away."), Cruz's face is not the only one of this shutdown that's crippling the government and turning its 99% against the 1% who largely run it. Meet North Carolina's Mark Meadows, the real instigator of the shutdown. Because, according to CNN, it was Meadows' bright idea to tie the looming debt ceiling and government funding "crisis" manufactured by the GOP to defunding or delaying ObamaCare, getting 70 other GOP Congressmen to sign on to his letter proposing this to party leaders, which was at first actually rejected.
     Meadows is trying to keep himself off the radar screen, largely successfully, despite the CNN piece, and passing himself off as just another "Aw, shucks" freshman teabagger representative. This further proves it's not idiotic, childrens' book-reading glory hounds like Ted Cruz we have to watch out for but devious snakes in the grass like Mark Meadows.

1) Fox "News"

    

 

 

     The "slimdown" is actually a "slimedown" and much of the slime is coming from the maws of Sean Handjob and Brent Bozo, who fought against fictional media bias with the real thing.

Dishonorable Mention: Rush Limbaugh for his alleged thoughts on the WIC program running out of funds for 9,000,000 women and children at the end of the month due to the shutdown. I've been in the trenches in left Blogotopia for close to a decade and have taken a lot of hits for the team but, after reading the transcript, even I hadn't the stomach to hear this pill-popping pedophile's tirade against dependent women and children. Perhaps you'll have more intestinal fortitude than yours truly. But I doubt it.