Assclowns of the Week #97: SNAPping Your Fingers at the Poor edition

     As the caption in the lead picture attests, we'd rather murder poor people overseas than feed our own. As the World Champion Boston Red Sox were taking a boat ride through the Charles, we were treated to the sight of carefully guarded and isolated multibillionaires and multimillionaires slapping each other on the backs for getting even richer the very day after Congress and the White House quietly let the 2009 Recovery Act lapse, resulting in $5,000,000,000 in SNAP spending cuts. The juxtaposition and timing couldn't've been more awful. Because of that "oversight" that conveniently paid for the Pentagon's $5,000,000,000 spending spree the night before the government shutdown, 22,000,000 children (or roughly half the people on food stamps) will have less or less nutritious food to eat and 3,800,000 people were kicked off SNAP. Meanwhile, during times of record profits, oil subsidies and defense contracts continue getting handed out like Halloween candy.
     There's something wrong with a nation that has such maximum security prison shower-fucked priorities.
     So your porcine progressive isn't going for belly laughs this week as he is laser-guided head and body shots and if the laughs come, anyway, it'll be strictly incidental. Because this edition of ACOTW will be the most vicious, vindictive and nastiest one in years, if not ever. After all, after this week, can you blame me?
     Making the Wall of Shame this week: Rand Paul (10) for saying he wants to shoot his critics; Chris Christie (5) for screaming at a teacher and RNC Chairman Rinsed Penis (8) for a moment of high projection. So let's hop aboard the GOP Omnibus of Regression as we use them for satirical speed bumps and much, much more!

10) Sen. Rand Paul

    
     Yeah, I'd fork over $100 for a PPV of Rachel Maddow dueling Rand Paul.

     In an interesting bit of projection, Rand Paul (R-Yosemite Sam) called the people who'd accused him of plagiarism as "haters and hacks." Then he mused that he wished dueling was still legal. No, really, he actually said that. Specifically, this is what he was quoted as saying: “If dueling were legal in Kentucky, if they keep it up, it’d be a duel challenge.” No, Randy, a hack is someone who lifts shit from another source, bases his entire speech on it then gives no attribution. Which is the very definition of plagiarism. And, really, is defending your nonexistent honor without a leg to stand on really worth taking the life of the person who rightly calls you on the minor offense of plagiarism?

     Afterwards, Senator Aqua Buddha said of his critics, "I shall fight on the beaches, I shall fight on the landing grounds, I shall fight in the fields and in the streets, I shall fight in the hills; I shall never surrender." He then finished with, "To the last I grapple with thee; from hell's heart I stab at thee; for hate's sake I spit my last breath at thee. And that is a direct quote." Sounds like someone's been spending a bit too much time with Zell Miller, who was himself the ultimate Blue Dog hack.
     An interesting postscript: The charges of his plagiarism have caused Paul to order his people to scrub his website. Apparently, someone should take Paul aside and remind him of those pesky little things known as screengrabs.

9) Ken Hamm

    
     Creationist windbag Ken Hamm, a man who has done more than his fair share in Copperfielding the truth and established science in the modern age, had some interesting things to say recently about politics. According to Kenny, we should vote not for candidates who propose policies that are good for you but "godly candidates" who, more often than not, aren't. Which, if memory serves me correctly, didn't work out too well for 15th century Florence, Italy. Despite basing all his theories of prehistory on a Hanna-Barbera cartoon, not enough people in Virginia listened to Ken or the other Ken and Coochie Coochie lost to Terry McAuliffe in Virginia's gubernatorial race.

8) Chairman Rinsed Penis

     Rienh... Riengold... Rinsed Penis... The little shaved French bulldog mascot of the GOP recently stirred up hatred of the Democrats by condemning President Obama's "culture of hatred" on, of course, Fox "News." He went on to say, "It’s the culture that the president’s cultivated here. A culture of dishonesty, a culture of hatred." Which, after endless capitulations to the rabid, genocidal right wing on the part of the President and constant calls for diplomacy between Israel and Arab states and consistently taking the high road in the red, spittle-flecked face of wave upon wave of racial bigotry is so insanely ridiculous it's not even worthy of refutation. But, wait, there's more. The Little French Bulldog then coughed up this hairball of wisdom:

I think he should take ownership over this divisive culture that he has created. Look, it’s the Democratic Party that has the shameful history. It’s not the Republican Party, and I think it’s about time that we also as Republicans start recapturing the real history of the Republican Party and not let these guys rewrite the history of equality, freedom and opportunity, which is what the party is about.

     Ja vol, Reinhold, let's recapture the real history of the Republican Party, shall we? Let's start with Prescott Bush's proposed fascist takeover of the US government in 1933 and him being Adolph Hitler's biggest American financier and him actually profiting off Jewish slave labor, how his Harriman Brothers violated the Trading With the Enemies Act or Karl Rove's grandfather being one of the builders of the Nazi death camps. Sure you wanna go there, Chairman Penis? While you're trying to think of a rebuttal, let's examine the president's "culture of hatred":

     Yeah, what a misanthropic brute, huh?

     Chairman Penis, please retire, go back to Wisconsin and get a job working in a cheese factory, will you? Or die. It really doesn't matter to me, anymore.
     Actually, that's not true. I'd rather someone stuff you in a gas chamber and euthanize you. Maybe Rove or Bush can help with that.

7) The Mainstream Media

     Showing for the billionth time this year that the mainstream media is fit solely for wrapping fish and providing a night light during fornication, there was its ongoing obsession with the slowness of the ObamaCare website while paying no attention whatsoever to the even slower Congress' inability to even hold a vote on the expiration of the 2009 Recovery Act. I guess nearly 50,000,000 Americans being needlessly denied food is a First World Problem and was infinitely less important than Clinton's blow job, the balloon boy, Kim Kardashian's sex life and nonexistent Iraqi WMDs. So what was more important? Mitt Romney's dessicated brain droppings on the Sunday Flea Circus. It's a testament to the MSM's utter worthlessness that they continue giving unlimited amounts of house room to George Romero Republican zombies peddling easily discredited conspiracy theories.
     And it goes without saying the right wing is hardly in a position to laugh about healthcare.gov's rollout, considering their own online misadventures of late.

6) The Hidalgo County Sheriff’s Office, Deming, NM PD & Gila Regional Medical Center

     Talk about making a federal case over shit.

     Last January, David Eckert was leaving a Wal-Mart and committed the unpardonable sin of not fully stopping at the stop sign. Deming, New Mexico police pulled him over then observed he appeared to be clenching his buttocks. Convinced he was hiding drugs up his ass, they then took him to a Deming Hospital where a doctor refused to probe Eckert because it would've been "unethical." Undeterred, they then took him to the Gila Regional Medical Center. They were only too glad to do what would turn out to be eight medical procedures including two x-rays, two finger probes, three enemas and a full colonoscopy, an ordeal that lasted for over 14 hours. And this was all done without the patient's consent.
     No drugs were found, by the way. The invasion of this man's person was compounded by the fact that the search warrant they got a judge to sign (Yes, a judge actually signed off on this) was only good for the county in which Eckert was stopped, not the county in which he was eventually violated.
     Oh, and the Gila Regional Medical Center demands that Eckert pay them for being anally raped for 14 hours, without his consent, or they'll take him to court. But that's OK, because I'm sure this is just a hysterical reaction to finding out Eckert hired Civil Rights attorney Shannon Kennedy to launch a federal lawsuit.
     My suggestion? We arrest, charge, convict and sentence every single lunatic willingly involved in this unbelievable anal rape over non-existent drugs that was wildly disproportionate to the crime that actually was committed (not stopping fully at a stop sign), send them into the general population and then and only then will they understand what poor David Eckert went through.

5) NJ Gov. Chris Christie

     Obviously, the "R" on his shirt didn't stand for "Rutgers" or "Republican" but "Raving Psychopath."

     At a campaign stop last weekend, Chris Christie, the Ralph Kramden of politicians, thought he'd burnish his gubernatorial and presidential credentials by sticking his finger in a teacher's face and screaming at her. All she asked was why Christie insisted on calling New Jersey schools "failure factories." "Because they are!" he bellowed at middle school teacher Melissa Tomlinson as he stuck a pudgy finger in her face before adding, "I am tired of you people. What do you want?" Uh, the billion dollars he essentially stole from the NJ school budget his first year in office? Getting charter schools out of public education and evaluating teachers by test scores? An emergency lobotomy and to eat a fucking salad once in a while? (Tip o' the tinfoil hat to New Jersey teacher/blogger Jazzman for the full account from Ms. Tomlinson.)

     Oh, and in an interesting bit of projection, Christie said the campaign by his rival Barbara Buono was one "fueled by anger."

     Really, now? Oh yeah, this is precisely the man I want having possession of our nuclear launch codes.

     Last night, Christie got elected by a landslide, a word I suspect will never again be associated with Christie unless he goes sight-seeing on the Palisades. I can't wait to see the look on his supporters' faces when he pulls a Sarah Palin or Hillary Clinton and leaves office after two years.

4) Comrade Raphael Cruz

     If you ever wondered what Dezi Arnaz would be like today if he was still alive and with a degenerative brain tumor, Ted Cruz' father Raphael provides us with a glimpse. At a recent men's prayer breakfast, Raphie had this to say:

You know, communism or socialism, whatever you want to call it, what is happening in this country is not different than what happened in Cuba. It is about government control of your lives. You got to realize how Marxist, how socialism works… When you hear all these things about homosexual marriage, this has nothing to do with homosexual rights. Did you know that? The whole objective is the destruction of the traditional family, it has nothing to do with homosexuals, they could care less about homosexuals, they want to destroy the family.

     Showing typical stupendous right wing ignorance, Cruz seems to have forgotten that for much of its history, Communism had been hostile to the LGBT community and the quasi Communist Russian Federation has in the past couple of years cracked down on all facets of homosexuality as a criminal offense.
     I guess someone should take Dizzy Dezi aside and remind him that he was a Castro supporter 55 years ago. Oh, and he also broke the law by bribing a US Immigration official to let him into the US. So much for "government control of your lives."

      What you see above is part of a speech that has since mysteriously been purged from the internet in which Cruz pere thinks he's helping Cruz fils by telling easily-proven lies about President Obama, such as his "refusal" to mention the words "by their Creator" while reciting the Declaration of Independence. As an accurate indicator of Ted Cruz's character or lack thereof, he's not embarrassed at all by his father and is instead willingly sending his old man out as a surrogate to spew this insane bullshit. Poor old Raphael is looking for relevance for the first time in his life when, instead, he ought to be looking for the nurse with the paper cup.

  3) The Obama Administration

     Once upon a time (Oh, say, 42 years ago) John Kerry testified about the Vietnam War before the Senate. The Nixon administration went after him because he was a liberal peacenik who'd concluded that war, specifically the one in SE Asia, flat-out sucked. Then this past week, Kerry was essentially calling a drone strike that killed at least four in Pakistan righteous because we'd taken out Hakimullah Mehsud, the so-called leader of the Pakistani Taliban on the first, and the usual unnamed "others". The problem with that strike was Mehsud was there for peace talks with Karzai's Afghani government.
     That's right, people. We bombed peace talks in central Asia, an act the Pakistani government, a sovereign state, rightly condemned, saying it would destabilize peace talks in the region. But fear not, faithful reader, the Obama administration is "sensitive to Pakistan’s concerns", meaning we're fully prepared to yes them to death as we blow off their fury and criticism concerns.

2) John Boehner & House Republicans

     A couple of days ago, John Boehner's press secretary Michael Steel issued an interesting communique from the Oompa Loompa's office: “The Speaker believes this legislation will increase frivolous litigation and cost American jobs, especially small business jobs.” Boehner was talking about his refusal to bring ENDA up for vote in the House. As with the government funding bill earlier this fall, the ENDA bill was fast-tracked and passed in the Senate with 61 votes and bipartisan support. Yet, despite seven Republican senators voting for cloture, Boehner, once again, is standing in the way of progress like Mitch McConnell on steroids or George Wallace before a school door.
     Typical of Republican scumbags, Boehner thinks LGBT people taking their employers to court for being discriminated against because of their sexual orientation is "frivolous litigation" (read: Tort reform) and that gays, lesbians and bisexuals should just shut up and take it when they lose their jobs for reasons other than workplace performance. In light of Illinois lawmakers last night legalizing gay marriage, making 15 states and the District of Columbia to have marriage equality (ten states have ratified it since 2005, meaning 33% of the population now enjoys marriage equality), remind me again why dinosaurs like Bawling Boehner are still allowed to be policy makers in the federal government?
     In virtually every US state, it is perfectly legal to fire someone for their sexual orientation. So ratifying ENDA and letting the President sign it into law would actually save and not cost us jobs.

1) Uncle Sam

     Unlike the shutdown last month, we can't blame just the Republicans for this latest shutdown: That of the expiration of the extended SNAP budget that automatically triggered $5,000,000,000 in cuts. This was because Congress and the White House quietly let Obama's own 2009 Recovery Act expire with nary a word from either the Executive or Legislative branches. This means 22,000,000 children, or almost half of food stamp recipients, will have to make do with less or less nutritious food. Meanwhile, the President still draws his $400,000 salary (plus an additional $169,000 in annual expenses) while Congresscritters draw their $174,000 ones.
     Strictly by coincidence, I'm sure, I mentioned a few weeks ago that the very day before the government shutdown, the DoD went on a spending spree buying up weapons, radar bases and handing out defense contracts worth, wait for it, $5,000,000,000. This time around, the Republicans didn't even have to take the Recovery Act hostage because they already knew the Democrats didn't give enough of a shit about it to even mention let alone renew it.

     Dishonorable mention: Former Chief of Staff Andy Card suffered through an interesting bit of projection and irony deficiency when he appeared on Morning Joe yesterday to say Obama was misleading the American public about Obamacare. OK, so maybe the ACA hasn't quite lived up to the President's oft-repeated promise that people can keep their old health care plans. But has Card completely forgotten about Bush misleading us about WMD in Iraq, a war that cost us about 4500 American lives (not including contractors) and $3 trillion? How about Saddam trying to get yellowcake uranium? Saddam's complicity with 9/11, with al Qaeda?

     As far as I know, despite its many flaws, ObamaCare is more likely to have already saved 4500 lives, not taken them.