Dumbfuckery du Jour

Can Cons really get any more hypocritical and ridiculous?  Haley Barbour is suddenly of the opinion that tax cuts must be paid forif they’re tax cuts suggested by those dirty Dems, that is:

Yesterday, in an attempt to reach out to Republicans and jump start the economy, President Obama proposed new tax breaks for businesses, which would allow them to write off the cost of new investment in plants and equipment through 2011. 
[snip]
In an interview with the National Review, Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour (R), whom Politico recently dubbed “the most powerful Republican in politics,” called Obama’s proposal “very good.” However, in keeping with the GOP’s reflexive opposition anything to Obama supports, Barbour said the “problem” with Obama’s plan is that “we do not know how he will pay for it“…

You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.  This is the party of tax cuts pay for themselves.  The party of “you should never have to offset cost” of tax cuts.  The party of tax cuts “expand tax revenue.”  The party of the Tax Fairy.  This is the party that has been wailing and screaming and howling for tax cuts, positive that our every woe requires nothing more than a good tax cut to fix it, and damn the expense – until the President of the United States is a Democrat proposing tax cuts, in which case tax cuts maybe aren’t so magical and must be paid for.  ZOMG WTF???

Double fucking standards, anyone?

Dumbfuckery du Jour
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Dumbfuckery du Jour

Republicans have somehow convinced enough people that taxes = pure evil to make increasing taxes well-nigh impossible.  Witness the fruits of their labor:

A month ago, the New York Times reported that cash-strapped states and municipalities are resorting to “major life-changing cuts in core services.” This includes four-day weeks for public schools, local bus systems being shut down, and turning off streetlights in Colorado Springs. The report came on the heels of a Wall Street Journal piece about several state governments cutting back on paved roads, because they can only afford gravel. More recently, we learned that struggling public schools, finding their budgets slashed, used to simply require students to bring in glue, scissors, and crayons. They’re now demanding that families provide everything from paper towels to garbage bags to liquid soap. In one instance, children are asked to even bring in toilet paper.
Today the NYT reports on “a nascent budget-balancing trend in municipal government: police and fire departments have begun to charge accident victims as a way to offset budget cuts.”

Ambulance charges have long been common and are usually paid by health insurance, but fees for other responders are relatively new. The charge is variously called a “crash tax” or “resource recovery,” depending on one’s point of view. In either case, motorists are billed for services they may have thought were covered by taxpayers.

Sometimes the victim’s insurer pays. But if it declines, motorists may face threats from a collection agency if they don’t pay.

The AAA opposes such fees, said Jill Ingrassia, managing director for government relations and traffic safety advocacy. “Generally, we see that public safety services are a core government function that should be properly budgeted for with general taxes and not addressed by fees after the fact,” she said.

Ms. Ingrassia says such charges can place an “undue burden on motorists who can’t choose the size or duration of an emergency response,” which means they cannot control the size of the bill they may get. “We also really don’t want to discourage any motorist involved in a crash from calling for police or rescue services if they fear they are going to be billed for it,” she said.

Now, I’m sure Cons will start babbling about how charging accident victims enforces personal responsibility, makes us drive more carefully, and that accident-free people shouldn’t have to pay for other people’s bad driving.  They’ll repeat such tropes ad nauseum  – right up until they’re the ones in an accident, when they’ll instantly start shrieking about how outrageous it is to have to pay for a police response.  Not that they’ll see the light and authorize a tax increase to pay for basic emergency services – they’ll just demand we do something like let poor people starve to death in the streets (but not any streets where sensitive Cons might see their icky dead bodies).  Budget cuts, we’re told, are the solution to every governmental budget woe – as long as those cuts only impact the icky poor people who do awful things like vote for Democrats.

Quite soon, we’ll start hearing about how emergency services would do much better if they were privatized, as the free market is almost godlike in its ability to solve our every problem.  City and state governments, they’ll say, should contract with private entities for the provision of fire and police services.  Why, that would be almost as good as cutting programs meant to help icky poor people out of the budget!  Someone should explain the history of private firefighting to them and ask if they’re pining for a return to those halcyon days of private enterprise.

Something tells me they still won’t get it even when they’re house is burning down and the private companies are too busy fighting over who’s going to put out the fire to actually put out the fire, but one can always hope that a tiny spark of sense will ignite somewhere in the depths of what passes for their brains.

I don’t hold out much hope, however.  We are talking about a group of morons who believe that $50 billion for infrastructure improvements is an outrageous, unaffordable expense (probably because it’s already paid for by removing minuscule amounts of public money from private oil companies), while around $800 billion in tax cuts for the fabulously wealthy is a bargain.  You cannot reason with people whose math skills are only equaled by Dr. Evil’s.

And in the must-be-seen-to-be-believed category, watch Teabaggers and Con candidates rally round a man who thinks stringing up murdered gays is an excellent decorative idea.  I’m sure these folks could be a lot more offensive, disgusting and morally bankrupt.  It’s just hard to imagine how.

Dumbfuckery du Jour

Dumbfuckery du Jour

How many Cons does it take to keep us from changing a lightbulb (h/t)?

Unemployment remains at record highs. The economy is stuck in a rut. The US is still fighting wars on two fronts and constant threats to security here at home. But the real menace facing America? The looming phase-out of incandescent light bulbs.
That’s the second-biggest threat to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness (after healthcare reform)—at least if you’re Erick Erickson. The Red State blogger has launched a campaign to save the old-school bulbs, which, under the 2007 energy bill, are set to begin phasing out in 2012 in favor of more energy-efficient compact florescent bulbs. Erickson wants to “get every Republican out there to pledge their support to saving the incandescent light bulb when they take back Congress.”

What a putz.  Focusing the energies of Congress on saving the incandescent light bulb is Erick Erickson’s #1 priority.  I wonder if he also ran a campaign to save chalk from dry erase markers and the daguerreotype from the camera. 

Now, this would be ridiculous enough, except that there are no sane Republicans left in Congress.  Michele Bachmann and Ted Poe have already begun the crusade to save the world from the horror of energy-saving bulbs.  I can only imagine there will soon be a stampede.  Tea Partiers everywhere will be calling for the restoration of our right to use outdated bulb technology.  Cons will speechify on the stump, promising to overturn this hideous threat to our precious liberty.

Ah, well.  If it distracts them from the rabid Islamophobia and trying to repeal health care reform, I suppose we can count it good.

Dumbfuckery du Jour

Dumbfuckery du Jour

I didn’t intend to write much about pollyticks this weekend, seeing as how it’s a holiday and everything.  But this is just too extreme to ignore:

First up from the God Machine this week is a good example of the larger dynamic among political conservatives this year, with competing contingents split between secular economic issues and religious culture-war issues. For much of the right, the emphasis on issues like taxes and health care should remain the focus, especially in the midterm elections, but as we saw last week, self-proclaimed moralists also have a religious war in mind.
It’s leading some Republican officials to shape campaign messages built around notions of “righteousness.”

The head of the Hawaii Republican Party is calling GOP Lt. Gov. James “Duke” Aiona the only “righteous” gubernatorial candidate while urging pastors to bar Democrat Mufi Hannemann from campaigning in their churches.

In an undated e-mail that came to light Sunday in three Hawaii political blogs, Jonah Kaauwai also wrote that a vote for Hannemann or Democrat Neil Abercrombie is “succumbing to fear and advancing unrighteousness.”

The e-mail frequently cites Bible verses and uses other religious language to allege that Hannemann deceptively wants to visit church services to boost his support in the Sept. 18 Democratic primary.

“Duke will win because the church has been behind him the entire time operating in the POWER and the AUTHORITY of the NAME OF JESUS!” stated Kaauwai’s lengthy e-mail. [emphasis in the original]

Kaauwai added that Hannemann does not deserve voters’ support because he’s shown “no signs” of being “controlled by the Holy Spirit.” He also described the Republican candidate’s campaign as “Christ’s opportunity.”
Just to be clear, the letter wasn’t written by some odd televangelist, but rather, the head of a statewide Republican Party — who apparently believes in some kind of evangelical religious test for public office.

Note: these are the same fucktards screaming about sharia law and dictatorships and so forth.  Then they turn around and spew this frothing fundie bullshit.  If these assholes had their druthers, they’d set up a Christian theocracy in this country in about a tenth of a second.

They’re not even trying to hide it anymore.

American Taliban indeed.

Dumbfuckery du Jour

Dumbfuckery du Jour

All I want to do is spend time with my new books.  I want to sit surrounded by them, and page lovingly through them, lingering here and there on a page or a photo.  Oh, and I want to change the blade on my razor, since I finally found blades at a somewhat less than obscene price.  So what happens?  Today, the stupid overfloweth.  Argh.

So difficult to choose which deserves the tender attentions of the Smack-o-Matic.  So many excellent targets to choose from, so little time.

Let’s start with a little news from my former home state.  Over the years I lived there, I saw plenty o’ lame in Arizona politicians – we are, after all, the state that has foisted Jon Kyl, J.D. Hayworth, and John McCain upon this poor nation, among a great many others so painfully stupid that one wonders how a state so beautiful can elect so many dumbfucks.  But Jan Brewer is vying for the title of Dumbshit of the Decade.

Folks, we are talking about a governor – an actual sitting governor – who can’t even make a simple opening statement in a debate:

It really is bizarre, and kind of painful to watch. An opening statement is the easy part — a quick introduction, highlight a few talking points, something about getting stuff done, ask for support, and move on. It’s the part of a debate in which folks tend to memorize a short spiel so they come across as competent and set a good impression for the rest of the debate.
Brewer just had a breakdown of sorts. Worse, she seems to be referring to notes in front of her — which would seemingly tell her what to say if she forgets — but which didn’t help.
By my count, there’s a full nine seconds in which a stumped Brewer says literally nothing. That may not sound like a long time, but on the air, during a debate, it’s an eternity.

Video at the link.  But wait!  There’s more!

During an exchange on the economy, state Attorney General Terry Goddard, the Democratic gubernatorial nominee, noted that it doesn’t help the state when its governor tells the nation that Arizona is a dangerous place, unsafe for tourists and investors. He was referencing an incident in which Brewer insisted that immigrants entering the U.S. illegally are responsible for “beheadings” in the Arizona desert. The governor appears to have just made the claim up out of whole cloth, as part of a larger attempt at shameless demagoguery.
During the debate, Brewer refused to comment on her own allegations, so after the event, reporters followed up. The frighteningly unprepared governor, unable to think of a response, froze, said nothing, and then literally fled.

Friends.  Countrymen.  Arizonans.  If you elect this nitwit, thus condemning my beautiful former state to several more years of inane Con artistry wrapped up in a ball of burning stupid, I shall never ever forgive you. 

In other news, Sheriff Joe’s getting his ass sued by the DOJ.  Good.

And, in case you haven’t had your fill o’ burning stupid, Mr. Dan “Bike Riding Programs Are a Dastardly UN Plot for WORLD DOMINATION!!1!!!” Maes is at it again, this time spinning hair-raising tales of his daring deeds in the Kansas Bureau of Investigation.  Perhaps he got reality confused with a novel he’s read, because he never actually worked for the Kansas Bureau of Investigation.

Where the hell does the GOP keep finding these morons?

Dumbfuckery du Jour

Dumbfuckery du Jour

Mr. Alan “Social Security’s Just A Bunch of Cow Tits” Simpson’s at it again:

It was encouraging to see the Obama administration make it easier for veterans affected by Agent Orange to receive disability payments. This is a worthwhile move, and it reinforces the fact that this administration is committed to doing right by those who wear the uniform.
It was far less encouraging when Alan Simpson decided it was a good time to start mouthing off again.

The system that automatically awards disability benefits to some veterans because of concerns about Agent Orange seems contrary to efforts to control federal spending, the Republican co-chairman of President Barack Obama’s deficit commission said Tuesday.

Former Wyoming Sen. Alan Simpson’s comments came a day after The Associated Press reported that diabetes has become the most frequently compensated ailment among Vietnam veterans, even though decades of research has failed to find more than a possible link between the defoliant Agent Orange and diabetes.

“The irony (is) that the veterans who saved this country are now, in a way, not helping us to save the country in this fiscal mess,” said Simpson, an Army veteran who was once chairman of the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee.

Oh, I’m sorry, are our veterans’ illnesses inconvenient for you, Alan Simpson?

Yup.  So are healthy, happy elderly folk.  In fact, Mr. Simpson seems to believe that the 98% of us who aren’t filthy stinking rich should just get off his lawn.  It’s rather difficult to believe that a former vet could be so callous towards his fellow vets, but then again, he served less than two years in Germany in peacetime, so it would seem he’s never had to experience any actual medical issues from his service to his country.  Perhaps that’s why he can so breezily demand that men who have already sacrificed too much sacrifice their health care as well.

It’s hard to capture in words just what a rancid piece of leper donkey dick this man is.  Put it this way: one gets the sense that Stalin might back away from him after the above comments, muttering in awe, “Dude, that’s harsh.”

Dear Mr. President: it’s well past time to fire his ass.

Dumbfuckery du Jour

Dumbfuckery du Jour

I don’t know whether to thank the Cons or scream:

Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) has conceded defeat in her Republican primary, losing in a major upset to right-wing challenger Joe Miller. The primary was held last week, with Miller taking a 51%-49% lead in the election night count to the surprise of many observers. However, the final result was delayed by an extended period of absentee ballots arriving, with many of them counted earlier today.

So, this leaves us with yet another race in which the Dem will face not a staunch conservative lackwit, but a batshit frothing insane conservative fucktard who thinks Social Security and Medicare are illegal, would condemn states to fiscal ruin, and says “we haven’t heard” that humans are responsible for the current drastic global warming trend.  The “we” he’s talking about may not have heard about it, but only because their heads are so far up their own asses all they’re hearing is the sound of their own wind.

If I felt better about Dems’ chances this fall, I probably wouldn’t mind so much.  But the American public is in a throw-the-bastards-out mood, and I’m not sure many general election voters are paying attention to more than the letter after the candidate’s name.  This means that we may end up with a herd of certifiably crazy morons and one hell of a feedback loop.

Those who don’t believe things can get much, much worse are in for a very rude shock indeed if the Crazy Caucus finds its way to the halls of power. 

Dumbfuckery du Jour

Dumbfuckery du Jour

And the horsemen of hypocrisy keep on ridin’.  Short story: NJ’s Education Commissioner, Bret Schundler, managed a cock-up of astounding proportions, thus losing New Jersey a shitload of education funding.  Gov. Chris Christie threw a screaming fit, claiming the Obama administration’s bureaucracy was to blame (it manifestly wasn’t). 

We’ll stop right there for a sec.  Christie, who is a Con fucktard, was howling over not getting big guvmint largesse.  Yes, a Con wanted federal money.  Yes, the same Con who swore up and down he wouldn’t take federal money if it had strings attached (and one can’t imagine this chunk o’ change came without strings) threw a fit over not getting federal money.  But that’s not the hypocrisy that caught my attention at first.  This is:

Christie, now having been caught misleading the entire state about what transpired, got rid of his education commissioner today.
And then there’s the interesting part.

[Schundler] said he was asked to resign, but he requested to be fired instead so he could collect unemployment insurance.

“I have a mortgage to pay and a daughter about to start college,” he said.

So, to summarize, Schundler, a far-right Republican, screwed up and cost New Jersey $400 million in education grants. But his top concern, upon being shown the door, is qualifying for unemployment benefits — which his far-right brethren don’t think should exist.

My goodness, how attitudes change when the unemployment check’s in the other wallet.

Bonus Dumbfuckery: Mississippi hasn’t got the memo about our post-racial society.  And the AFA’s attempting to install frothing fundie judges to get rid of those horrible gay-lovin’ libruls in Iowa, which makes this a good time to point out how psychotic they are.  A sample:

And freaks like these scream I should be proud to be an American.  Not when they’re around, I’m not.  If we, by some horrid turn of fate, find ourselves in the same room with the AFA, I’m Canadian, eh?

Dumbfuckery du Jour

Dumbfuckery du Jour

Memo to Gov. McDonnell and idiot friends thereof:  Taking $2.5 billion from the feds to balance your state budget does not make you a brilliant balancer:

The Wall Street Journal editorial board has an item today heralding Virginia Gov. Robert McDonnell’s (R) $400 million budget surplus. According to the WSJ, it “proves” the efficacy of the Republican approach, and reminds federal policymakers to “employ the Virginia strategy.”
In his ridiculous economic speech today, House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) also singled out Bob McDonnell for praise, noting how impressive it was to see the Virginia Republican “balance his state’s budget … without raising taxes.”
McDonnell himself has started patting himself on the back. Last week, he stopped by the Fox Business Network to boast about the greatness of his “conservative, fiscal, practical approach” to budgeting. McDonnell added his way is a model for reducing the “dependence of people on government.” Fox Business described it as “an amazing story.”
So amazing, in fact, that it deserves a closer look. Indeed, there’s a key detail about Virginia’s surplus that Republican leaders and their media outlets hope you’ll overlook.

Gov. Bob McDonnell decries rising federal spending, but a handout from Washington is helping him balance Virginia’s cash-strapped budget, a fiscal think tank says.

If not for $2.5 billion from President Barack Obama’s economic-stimulus program, the state’s shortfall would have swelled from more than $4 billion to nearly $5.5 billion, according to the Commonwealth Institute for Fiscal Analysis.

[snip]
Republicans consider this “an amazing story.” That’s not the adjective I’d use.

Oh, it’s certainly the adjective I’d use.  It’s amazing to me that Cons can be this bloody stupid, ungrateful, and blatant in their lying.

And here’s something else amazing: Faux News and the lengths they’ll go to in order to whip their dumbshit viewers into a frenzy:

My one wish out of all of this is that everyone who watches Fox News for news becomes aware that their second most invested shareholder is Arab and, yeah even I gotta admit, looks like a South Park Cartoon Terrorist. And Fox and Friends just got caught calling this co-owner of their parent company, Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, a “funder of radical madrassahs.”

One wonders how Prince Alwaleed bin Talal will feel about his money going to an organization that subsequently smears him as a terrorist (though they were careful not to mention said “funder of radical madrassahs” by name because, y’know, the average Faux News viewer can be trusted not to be able to add 1 and 1).

Bing’s rant on this is epic.

Dumbfuckery du Jour

Dumbfuckery du Jour

Way to go, fucktards:

For nearly eight years, the right had a simple mantra when it came to defending the Bush/Cheney White House against criticism from the left: liberals were emboldening terrorists. If there was another large-scale attack, it’d be our fault.
It’s hard to overstate how common this was. The left was constantly reminded that al Qaeda had access to modern communications, and could monitor American media. If Democrats, liberals, and other Bush detractors made us appear divided in a time of crisis, and sent a signal to the world that the Commander in Chief lacked Americans’ support, we’d look weak and invite terrorism. Progressives in America, the argument went, were — deliberately or not — helping our enemies.
In the summer of 2010, it’s interesting to see just how much has changed.

Islamic radicals are seizing on protests against a planned Islamic community center near Manhattan’s Ground Zero and anti-Muslim rhetoric elsewhere as a propaganda opportunity and are stepping up anti-U.S. chatter and threats on their websites.

One jihadist site vowed to conduct suicide bombings in Florida to avenge a threatened Koran burning, while others predicted an increase in terrorist recruits as a result of such actions. […]

A U.S. official on Sunday said the administration was taking the upswing in anti-U.S. chatter seriously. “Terrorists like al-Qaeda and its violent allies are motivated already to try to attack the United States, but when it comes to propaganda, extremists are pure opportunists. They’ll use whatever they can,” the official said.

And the right is giving them all kinds of fodder to work with, isn’t it?
“We are handing al Qaeda a propaganda coup, an absolute propaganda coup,” with the Islamic-center controversy, said Evan Kohlmann, an independent terrorism consultant at Flashpoint Partners who monitors jihadist websites.

So, you hystiCon fuckwits, I do not ever again want to hear how anyone on the left is emboldening terrorists or letting the terrorists win.  I do not want to hear a single peep cross your lips about respecting the President of the United States no matter what kind of jackass you all managed to get elected.  I want you to remember that the instant a President took office with a D rather than an R after his name, you all forgot your “patriotic” rhetoric and practically started writing al Qaeda’s recruitment pamphlets for them. 

I expected no less of all of you, considering you stood by and cheered for eight years while Bush the Younger and his sidekick Darth Cheney shat regularly upon the Constitution.  You’ve practically made xenophobia into a religion.  But the last remaining hope I have is that somewhere in the pea-sized rotted smear of gray matter that can only be referred to as a brain due to its location within your skulls, you realize that what little authority you had to babble about “freedom” and tell the left to STFU lest the terrorists win has perished like a snowflake in a blast furnace.

Of course, I’ll be expecting your usual hypocrisy.

Dumbfuckery du Jour