More Saturday Stuff

Here’s more on Paul Ryan, Willard Mitt Romney’s VP nominee, and his “funny number” creation (Or maybe the top of the ticket instead, as noted here? Unbelievable…for more, click here)…



…but even though the supposed GOP financial “architect” will come a bit later on the list, for now, we’re going to journey to “the land of the yellow rose”…

#8, Allen West
#9, Joe Pitts
#10, Jack Kingston
#11, Patrick McHenry
#12, Spencer Bachus
#13, Jim Gerlach
#14, Cliff Stearns
#15, Jean Schmidt
#16, Phil Gingrey
#17, David Schweikert
#18, Virginia Foxx
#19, Pete Sessions
#20, Charlie Dent
#21, Cathy McMorris Rodgers
#22, Chris Smith
#23, Todd Akin
#24, Buck McKeon
#25, Kristi Noem
#26, Hal Rogers
#27, Lou Barletta (Two bonus selections: Boren and Ross)
#28, Paul Broun
#29, Mary Bono Mack
#30, David Dreier
#31, Marsha Blackburn (including backgrounder)

...and that means it’s time for #7 on our list of U.S. House Repugs opposed to health care reform, and that would be Louie Gohmert of Texas (by the way, I should warn that there may be bad words on some of the pages I link to here – I don’t usually say anything about that since I believe that other people’s content isn’t my problem, but others, to their credit, have also pointed out this stuff about Gohmert, and his particular type of confrontational wingnuttery has, not surprisingly, generated some rather strong feeling).

Saying this is probably going to make me sound like an elitist liberal or something, but it’s hard to truly “wrap my head around” Gohmert’s particular type of ignorance. He may be the one of the stupidest people in the country. He may be one of the stupidest people on the planet. It’s possible that he could be one of the stupidest people in the entire solar system (with the possible exception of anyone who actually voted for him).

I’m not sure where to begin, so I might as well just pick a spot and get going:

Here, he cheapened the recent massacre in Aurora, Colorado by saying it supposedly wouldn’t have happened if everyone had been armed (as you can see, there’s no line that Gohmert won’t cross when spouting this garbage).

Here, he said that Number 44 somehow timed the who mess over the debt ceiling last year so it would coincide with his 50th birthday (actually, I take back what I said earlier – Gohmert may not be just the stupidest person in the solar system, but possibly the entire galaxy).

Here, he said the hate crimes bill passed by Congress would lead to Nazism, or worse (cue scary background theme - and speaking of that former Austrian postcard painter, Gohmert said here that a column by Thomas Sowell comparing Obama to Hitler was “brilliant”).

Here, he said Obama would somehow use the Affordable Care Act to call up troops to fight in Libya (WHAAA?????!!! And by the way, as noted from the link, Gohmert claimed that the health care bill was 2,800 pages in length – I’ll come back to this talking point in a future post).

And oh yeah, TERROR BABIES!!! (here).

Here, Gohmert referred to Sen. John McCain as “numb nuts” (of course, Gohmert would have ended up crying like a little bitch after enduring a day or two of what McCain endured as a POW for 5 ½ years – I don’t like McCain’s politics, but that doesn’t mean that the man doesn’t deserve respect).

Here, Gohmert made disparaging remarks about former Obama Commerce Secretary John Bryson, who suffered a seizure and crashed his car; Bryson took a medical leave of absence (another "class" moment from Gohmert).

Here, Gohmert claimed that Huma Abedin, the wife of former Dem U.S. Congressman Anthony Weiner and aide to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, was in league with Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, or something.

I’ll tell you what – since a picture is worth a thousand words (last I checked), I’ll just “go to the tape”; here, Rachel Maddow and Kent Jones introduce us to “Gohmert” Pyle (someone else came up with that, not me)…



…and in case anyone has any doubt as to whether or not Gohmert should be on this list concerning health care reform, I give you this (I’m sure I’ll put this video up again before this list is complete - more here)…



…and here’s a tongue-in-cheek song for Gohmert, who probably will think it’s a documentary (sorry, no video).



Update 8/28/12: I just found this - truly, words fail.

Update 1/5/13: As I said, he's the stupidest life form in the galaxy (here).

Update 4/30/13: What a dipshit (here).

Update 10/23/14: Lather, rinse, repeat (sigh).

Saturday Stuff

I think this selection sends the following message to the “values voter” zealots of the Republican Party who, to be fair, comprise a lot of their “foot soldiers” too…

...and here is Willard Mitt's VP selection doing something he does well, unfortunately...



…and I think this contains what should be the Romney/Ryan campaign theme song.

Friday Stuff

(I also posted here.)

I just can’t face doing the congressional list tonight (partly a commentary on the next person coming up, to be honest). I promise I’ll get back to it soon.

In the meantime, isn’t it interesting how the political party that screams the most about “voter fraud” is so good at actually practicing it (here, which made me recall this clip about McCotter, the guy who tried to teach everyone “how to speak Democrat” )…



…and happy 65th birthday to Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull (another tune appropriate for this week, unfortunately).

Thursday Later PM Stuff

I meant to get to this a few days ago, but I know I'm a little late - sorry (have to relish the good news when we can...hat tip for the pic to bluegalfran at Crooks and Liars)...

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

...and this video should be completely unnecessary, but unfortunately it isn't (here - never occurred to me the toll that job has taken on him until I watched this clip)...



...and for the next installment of the countdown, it's time to journey to the primordial swamps of Florida, where misbegotten creatures emerge from the unholy ooze...

#9, Joe Pitts
#10, Jack Kingston
#11, Patrick McHenry
#12, Spencer Bachus
#13, Jim Gerlach
#14, Cliff Stearns
#15, Jean Schmidt
#16, Phil Gingrey
#17, David Schweikert
#18, Virginia Foxx
#19, Pete Sessions
#20, Charlie Dent
#21, Cathy McMorris Rodgers
#22, Chris Smith
#23, Todd Akin
#24, Buck McKeon
#25, Kristi Noem
#26, Hal Rogers
#27, Lou Barletta (Two bonus selections: Boren and Ross)
#28, Paul Broun
#29, Mary Bono Mack
#30, David Dreier
#31, Marsha Blackburn (including backgrounder)

…and that brings us to #8 on the list of U.S. House Repugs opposed to health care reform, and that would be Allen West of The Sunshine State.

Now before I say anything else, I should note that Alan Colmes, among others, has said something to the effect of “well, West has actually said that there are some parts of health care reform that he likes,” or whatever. If so, then please explain this.

(Also, I should probably say something about my thoroughly unscientific method of compiling this list as long as I’m thinking of it. There are people who you probably aren’t going to see on this list, though I can’t totally guarantee it, such as Peter King, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Dana Rohrabacher, and others. I definitely have disagreements with these individuals, but on the issue of health care reform, I’ve done a bit of research and haven’t found anything worth trying to nail them. Ros-Lehtinen and Rohrabacher are really bad on foreign policy as far as I’m concerned, but they’re actually a lot better on HCR than some of their same-party counterparts. And as awful as Peter King is on the “OMIGOD, SCARY MUSLIMS!!!” stuff, he actually said to Eric Cantor that we should, in essence, just move on after the recent Supreme Court ruling on the mandate, which I think showed some notable common sense...of course, that sleazy weasel Cantor – who definitely is coming later – has no intention of doing that.)

Now, back to West...

With the possible exception of Joe Walsh of Illinois, I don’t know anyone else remaining on the list who has said and done so many provocative – and just about always mind-numbingly stupid – things in less than two years in Congress (though it’s not as if we weren’t warned by folks such as Keith Olbermann, who we’ll hear from a little later). Race baiting, class baiting, questioning or trying to outright destroy the patriotism of those with whom he disagrees…none of that matters to West. I cannot recall a single episode where he has decided to refrain from demagoguery and adhere to the simplest possible standard of common decency (here, in response to a vote trying to hold President Obama to a timetable of troop withdrawal from Afghanistan, West said some of those in Congress advocating for troop withdrawal should “get shot at a few times”…and this came just a few months after the carnage in Tucson in January 2011).

Here, West said the Congressional Black Caucus was “racist” for supporting Attorney General Eric Holder in the wake of all of that “Operation Fast and Furious” business, in which Holder honestly tried to get to the bottom of that utter fiasco, with no help from House Oversight Committee Chair Darrell Issa (with “F&F” predated by the similar “gun-walking” idiocy of Operation Wide Receiver, though I don’t hear a word of complaint about Bushco AG Michael Mukasey). Also, West said that President Obama wants “you” (??) to be his “slave” here (nice – I’ll let you, dear reader, try and unpackage the crazy of that one). Oh, and among other things, West also said that drivers with Obama bumper stickers are “a threat to the gene pool” here (takes one to know one, I guess).

West also said here that student loans were “communist” here, and harking back to that once career-fatal but now laughable slander, he said here that there were “80 communists” in the House. He also said that early voting was an “unconstitutional entitlement” here (speaking of voting, he wanted to withhold foreign aid to Egypt to protest that's country's democratic election here). He added that Obama’s refusal to deport the children of “undocumented” workers who would have been covered under the DREAM Act, had it been passed, constitutes “voter fraud,” or something here (with West thinking they would be inclined to vote for Obama which, the last I checked, wasn’t a crime). And just to make sure that West is keeping his utter wingnuttery current, this tells us that he sent “chicken and biscuits” from Chick-Fil-A to a recent Congressional Black Caucus meeting and offended just about everybody.

As long as this post is, I should note that there’s a lot more that I could point out to show that West is an utterly craven life form that (you could argue) doesn’t deserve the company of respectable human beings, let alone a career in public life. Instead, I’ll just include this link and let you read the evidence for yourself (oh, and as noted here, count West as yet another elected official who has played the teabaggers for fools).

I wonder if he had that same insipid, half-smiling smirk on his face when he tortured his Iraqi prisoner in 2003, avoiding a court-martial even though he had to pay a $5,000 fine and accept non-combat duty (K.O. gets into that and other stuff shortly). Also, if you’ve had enough of West (haven’t you?), click here to support Florida’s Patrick Murphy, thus restoring a bit of sanity and plain decency to the House…



Update 8/26/12: Just a bit of projection here, you think?

Update 9/10/12: Point, meet counterpoint.

...and I have a feeling that this tune will be appropriate for a little while.

Thursday Early PM Stuff

Hopefully back to the blogging thing for better or worse tonight – in the meantime, I give you the following dose of reality on Willard Mitt Romney (here)…



Update: And maybe I’m just an impertinent, pointy-headed liberal, but why the hell should Robert Gibbs or anyone else on the Obama side be forced to "condemn" an ad which, as far as we know (and I have no information otherwise), is COMPLETELY TRUE??!! (here).

…and after enduring a recent family loss of the four-legged variety, I feel like putting up this video.

Tuesday Stuff

I now give you today's regularly scheduled lies from Willard Mitt Romney (here)...

…and “demand a plan” indeed (here)…

...and we're into the single digits now, people...

#10, Jack Kingston
#11, Patrick McHenry
#12, Spencer Bachus
#13, Jim Gerlach
#14, Cliff Stearns
#15, Jean Schmidt
#16, Phil Gingrey
#17, David Schweikert
#18, Virginia Foxx
#19, Pete Sessions
#20, Charlie Dent
#21, Cathy McMorris Rodgers
#22, Chris Smith
#23, Todd Akin
#24, Buck McKeon
#25, Kristi Noem
#26, Hal Rogers
#27, Lou Barletta (Two bonus selections: Boren and Ross)
#28, Paul Broun
#29, Mary Bono Mack
#30, David Dreier
#31, Marsha Blackburn (including backgrounder)

…and that brings us to #9 on our list of U.S. House Repugs opposed to health care reform, and that would be none other than Joe Pitts (the mistake of PA-16) in our beloved commonwealth.

There are so many levels of awfulness to Joe Pitts that it’s hard to categorize them, though I know I’ve tried (oh, and on the health care law, I give you this). There’s the Joe Pitts that’s the utterly craven shill of big bidness (insurance, pharma, what have you), the Joe Pitts that claims to be a model of supposed fiscal rectitude for everyone else, the Joe Pitts who missed the proverbial boat on the issues that matter long ago, not that he’s had anything worthwhile to say or do on that score anyway (Please note here his “memorandum on creating jobs and fixing the economy” from last November! And by the way, I skimmed over it and had to wade out of it before the dookey got too deep), and on and on.

However, I believe there is no more level of awfulness associated with Pitts than that of the supposed paragon of “family values,” the “culture warrior” who would see women relegated to a permanently subservient status to men and utterly incapable of managing their reproductive health. There was no more proof needed as to what Pitts stood for than during the entire circus concerning the so-called “Stupak-Pitts Amendment” to the Affordable Care Act (named also for Democratic congressman Bart Stupak who, mercifully, is no longer in Washington). As Media Matters points out here, the amendment was dutifully “reported” by our corporate media stenographers as a ban on federal funds for abortion. The problem is that such a ban is already in place from that amendment named after a serial Republican philanderer in the U.S. House. What Stupak-Pitts was really all about was an attempt to roll back reproductive rights also for women in private insurance plans that received no federal funds (more information is here).

(And by the way, when it comes to the Affordable Care Act and women’s health, I would ask that you read this, something you’ll never hear about from Joe Pitts of course.)

Returning to the health care law overall, though, Pitts told us the following from here two years ago…

It’s just been four months since President Obama signed the new health care law, and already Democratic leadership is conceding that portions of the bill will harm the economy. We cannot create a massive new government entitlement program without someone footing the bill.

Small businesses all over America have just been told that they will have to pay billions more in taxes to foot the bill for Obamacare. That’s money that might otherwise go to job creation. That’s just one reason why America isn’t creating more jobs.

And as I noted at the time from here, the PPACA (the proper acronym) will reduce the deficit, something the Republicans pretend to care about. Also, as far as health care reform supposedly hurting the economy, how can something “hurt” that isn’t scheduled to be fully implemented until 2014 (when, God willing, the exchanges are set up in each state and we have competition among health care providers for real, at long last, as noted here…more health care-related propaganda from Pitts is here...last bullet).

And on top of all of this, did you know that Pitts voted against funding COBRA benefits for the long-term jobless and to help states meet Medicaid obligations, among other social safety-net outlays (here)? Or that he voted against expanding SCHIP four times among many other odious votes listed here, as well as cutting the federal gov’t share of Medicaid by $13 billion? Or that he also voted against a bill empowering the FDA to regulate cigarette content, requiring disclosure of product ingredients, banning cigarette marketing to children, and requiring more prominent health warnings (this is pretty sick, and I mean “sick” as in “truly awful” – see the previous link)?

If, somehow, someone from PA-16 happens to be reading this, I implore you as strongly as I can without using profanity to click here and support Aryanna Strader, who is running for Pitts’ PA-16 seat. It is long past time to send Pitts packing (someone else who reneged on a term-limit pledge, it should be pointed out). And though it pales in comparison to his other antics, I give you the following video clip to remind you of what an utter embarrassment Pitts truly is (and my admittedly juvenile response is here)…



…and in light of this story about more Russian human rights misery, I thought it would be a good idea to revisit the protest of three other brave young women in a singing group (putting up the video again perhaps as an expression of solidarity, but also because I like it as a piece of music by itself).

Monday Stuff

I’m taking a break from the Repug congressional countdown opposing health care reform for tonight – I’ll probably get back to it tomorrow (entering the home stretch and a whole new level of crazy, I might add).

And speaking of nuts, I give you this, and this, and kudos to President Obama for this (speaking again of nuts).

I have to tell you that I’m personally disgusted more than I ever thought I would be with the routinely demonic vilification of President Obama by various right-wing mental defectives, one example of which is on display on that disgusting billboard shown above. And I ABSOLTUELY DEFY anyone to try and manufacture some faux equivalency between this and any violence threatened against George W. Bush (yes, it did happen, and it was also wrong, but nothing as orchestrated with this type of frequency).

And finally on this subject, I give you this, with a good response by K.O, including the "a" word, and I'm fine with that when talking about Nugent because it's true.…

…and I’ve put this up a few time already I know, but it always seems to fit, doesn’t it, particularly given what I just pointed out (warning: bad word alert).

Sunday Stuff

I know I’ve picked on the “Peach State” a bit in this list with Broun and Gingrey, and I’m about to do it again; I’m sure there are a lot of good Democrats there, but unfortunately, there are also a lot of Republicans whose actions speak for themselves…

#11, Patrick McHenry
#12, Spencer Bachus
#13, Jim Gerlach
#14, Cliff Stearns
#15, Jean Schmidt
#16, Phil Gingrey
#17, David Schweikert
#18, Virginia Foxx
#19, Pete Sessions
#20, Charlie Dent
#21, Cathy McMorris Rodgers
#22, Chris Smith
#23, Todd Akin
#24, Buck McKeon
#25, Kristi Noem
#26, Hal Rogers
#27, Lou Barletta (Two bonus selections: Boren and Ross)
#28, Paul Broun
#29, Mary Bono Mack
#30, David Dreier
#31, Marsha Blackburn (including backgrounder)

…and that takes us to #10 on the list of U.S. House Republicans opposed to health care reform, and that would be Jack Kingston of Georgia.

So why exactly does Kingston belong on this list? Well, aside the reason noted here, he said here that the way to get out of poverty is to get married and work longer hours (Wonder if that’s the route he took? I doubt it). He also denied the theory of evolution here, and openly supported right-wing bigot Bryan Fischer (along with Chris Smith, Number 22 on the list) here.

Want more reasons? He justified a bill that would cut $87 million in food safety here (which is particularly repellent given the fact that one of this country’s worst salmonella scares happened in Georgia in 2009, as noted here), he voted for all seven debt limit increases under Dubya, as noted here (something to consider when reading this), and of course, he had no problem with handing out stimulus funds in his district while he cries about it in Washington (here...also, get a load of Kingston trying to explain drug testing for anyone collecting unemployment or government assistance in general here).

I don’t care how many times Kingston appears on TV with Bill Maher – he’s still nothing but a right-wing nutjob (and of course, who can forget this utterly weaselly moment with Dan Savage, with Kingston acting like, well, you libs are the ones making it an issue by responding to our nutty BS…anyone voting for Kingston outside of the one percent should have to take an IQ test to see if they make it beyond single digits)...



…and every once in awhile, MoDo writes a really good column, and she did so today on a tragic milestone, which brings to mind this video (and speaking of people leaving us too early, our deepest sympathies to Philadelphia Eagles head coach Andy Reid and his family for this).