The Clown Car Lurches in to 2nd Gear and Begins to Gain Speed . . .

Aside from Sarah Palin's spectacularly failed attempt at a Foster Brooks impersonation, there were some other conservative heavyweights (insert Chris Christie joke here) at Steve "Cantaloupe Thighs" King's Iowa cornshuckin' fab this past weekend.  Pursuant to such, The Gadfly thought it would be a fun little exercise to take a quick, drive-by look at the present crop of self-proclaimed front runners for the 2016 Republican Presidential nomination.

Humor The Gadfly on this one for a bit dear readers -- for while admittedly this may appear to be nothing more than a partisan hit job on the GOP field, it really isn't.  Believe it or not, The Gadfly is approaching this undertaking, as unsavory as it is, with the very noble idea of voter education at the forefront of his mind.

So - while Mama Grizzly hasn't yet formally thrown her moose fur mukluks into the 2016 arena, her inebriated performance this past weekend certainly solidified her support among middle-aged, horny, white conservative males who'd cast a vote for her based solely on their sexually repressed fantasies of having just 5 minutes in bed with the naked, Uzi-toting and very boozy Caribou Barbie.

Setting aside the horrifying optics of that observation, allow The Gadfly to run down the list of Sarah Palin's competition for the Presidential throne, which quite honestly, for a  few of these asshats, is beginning to resemble Gollum's lust and obsession for his prized golden hoop:

Nonetheless, here's the cast of the GOP's clown car brigade:

Mitt Romney:  Twice failed Presidential candidate; still has yet to comprehend the dynamic behind why struggling, American working people find it difficult to warm to a guy who has elevators in his house for his cars.

Jeb Bush:  Bush ... the sins of the father and the older brother . . . oh fuck it . . . "Bush" - that's all anyone needs to know as to what to expect from this guy.

Rick Santorum:  Lol.  Just go read Charlie Pierce at Esquire to get a good insight in to what a colossal __d*ck____ Rick Santorum is.  Oh -- and man on dog.

Dr. Ben Carson:  While Dr. Carson has deservedly earned every laurel for his career as a successful pediatric neurosurgeon, perhaps he should perform some of that brain surgery on his own belfry for making utterly ludicrous statements such as Obamacare is worse than slavery, or that America under Obama is like Nazi Germany, or that ISIS can be compared to America's founding fathers.  Either way, he's delusional if he honestly believes that the Tea Party is ready for yet another negro, even one with as equally idiotic views as themselves, to continue residing in the people's "white" house.

Rand Paul:  Hmmm.  Supports legalization of drugs.  Is sick of our endless wars.  Critic of government's domestic spying activities.  And he's actually kind of socially liberal in many policy areas.  For that alone Paul will never be a GOP presidential nominee.  Ever.

Chris Christie:  He hugged Obama when Obama visited NJ after hurricane Sandy.  The Teatards will never forgive him for that and they are the kind of people who hold on to grudges like Linus holds on to his security blanket and his belief in The Great Pumpkin.  Oh yeah -- he's also under investigation for political corruption (which usually is a badge of honor for GOP'ers, but not when you're a fair weather conservative like Christie).

Rick Perry:  Dumb as box of rocks.  Viewed by many, including some in his own party, as the male version of Sarah Palin.  Believes Obama conspired to manufacture the Central American child immigrant crisis of this past summer.  Currently under indictment for political corruption in his home state of Texas.

Scott Walker:  Wisconsin political boy wonder.  Union buster.  Sock puppet and wholly owned subsidiary of billionaire industrialists and mega-polluters Charles and David Koch (Koch brothers).  Presently under investigation for political corruption.  Six former aides convicted of various felonies related to political corruption while serving under Walker.

Ted Cruz:  Arrogant.  God complex.  Shut down the government at a cost of $24 billion to U.S. taxpayers just because he could.  Nearly caused U.S. to default on it's national credit and nearly plunging a slowly recovering economy back in to deep recession, just because he's an asshole and just because he could.

and last but not fucking least . . .

Donald Trump:  Well . . . let's allow Jon Stewart to have the honors on this one . . . 

So basically the GOP 2016 Presidential Clown Car is proffering up to the American people --- a drunken half term governor of Alaska, a twice rejected Mormon oligarch, the latest progeny from the nation's most notorious political crime family, a guy with an unhealthy obsession with bestiality, a brain surgeon who doesn't seem to know how to utilize his own brain, a guy with liberaltarian ideas trying to pass himself off as a wingnut, a bullying NJ governor who dared to hug the dirty, communist, Kenyan usurper Obama and is under investigation for political corruption, two more asshats who have the authorities crawling up their asses in similar political corruption scandals, a pompous little prick who smugly patted himself on the back after shutting down the U.S. government at a cost of billions and is threatening to do it again in the new Congress, and to top the whole sordid lot off, a serial bankruptcy applicant who sent an army of investigators to Hawaii to uncover the Obama birth certificate conspiracy (except they didn't find shit) and who appears to have some deeply ingrained personal issues with women and black folk.

That is the sum total of your modern day conservative movement dear readers.  The motliest collection of haters, corporate sellouts, fundamentalist religious nuts, political grifters, con artists and buffoons that could possibly exist.

And they all desperately want the most powerful position in the world.

God help us all if any one of these bozos see their political ambitions become reality.



----TFG

Word Salad? More Like Word Cole Slaw . . . .

Oh dear!  Looks like Mama Grizzly's handlers allowed her to hang out too long at the Tequila bar again:

Sarah Palin’s Bizarre Disconnected Word Salad at the Iowa Freedom Freakout, Complete:
Palin delivers an entire speech in one incredibly long run-on sentence

 By Charles Johnson

Even by Sarah Palin’s already low standards, this speech is extraordinarily incoherent and scattered. I’ve seen a lot of her speeches (do not pity me, it is my job), and I can’t remember a more garbled, deeply weird performance from Caribou Barbie.

http://littlegreenfootballs.com/article/44253_Sarah_Palins_Bizarre_Disconnected_Word_Salad_at_the_Iowa_Freedom_Freakout_Complete/comments/#ctop






Please watch the whole thing if you are still on the fence as to whether it was a wise decision that this horrifyingly embarrassing nitwit should have been allowed the opportunity to be a heartbeat away from the Presidency of the most powerful nation on the planet.

But if you truly want to maximize your depression level - go to the YouTube page for the video and scroll through the comments section and get a gander of the level of intellectual midgetry that supports and defends Palin -- good lord -- it's akin to the Orc minions and their rabidly fanatical devotion to their leader, Azog the Defiler.

As The Gadfly has previously noted many a time - there is a special party suite reserved in Hell at The Hotel Hades for John McCain and his people for foisting this buffoonish and deeply ignorant woman in to the political limelight and giving her and her equally ignorant rube disciples an air of legitimacy to push their brand of brain-dead, jingoistic, regressive politics, and fundamentalist religious dumbassery in to the public discourse.



----TFG

True Grit on The Prairie During The Wonder Years . . . One Teabagger's Story

The Gadfly did not watch President Obama's State of The Union speech this past week.  It seemed to The Gadfly that there was not much of a point in watching the man make promises on a bunch of public policies, beneficial to the country be damned, which he damn well knows haven't a snowball's chance in hell of getting any support from the Flying Monkey brigades that now control Congress.

The Gadfly did, however, catch a few minutes of the GOP response starring the Republican party's next new rising star Joni Ernst, the Iowan Tea Partier and swine castrator extraordinaire.

Aside from Ernst's Stepford wife delivery, which really did creep The Gadfly out, what really sent The Gadfly's bullshit meter pegging off the dial was Joni's hokey story about having to wear bread bags over her shoes on rainy days as a child because her family was too poor to be able to afford more than 1 pair of shoes for their children:

“I had only one good pair of shoes. So on rainy school days, my mom would slip plastic bread bags over them to keep them dry,” she said. “But I was never embarrassed. Because the school bus would be filled with rows and rows of young Iowans with bread bags slipped over their feet. Our parents may not have had much, but they worked hard for what they did have.”

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2015/01/sen-joni-ernsts-family-actually-received-more-than-460000-in-federal-subsidies/


Sigh . . . . Christ almighty -- if these phony Teabaggers can't even tell some bullshit story with any measure of believableness, what in the hell makes anyone seriously think that they can govern the country in a sane and responsible manner??

Ernst's hoary bread bag story falls apart in the very first sentence - "I only had one good pair of shoes.  So on rainy school days, my mom would slip plastic bread bags over them to keep them dry."

The Gadfly only has one reaction to that statement . . . .





Umm Joni dear . . . The Gadfly grew up in a lower middle class, large midwest family and is quite familiar with the use of plastic bags in the quest to keep one's feet dry (primarily in winter btw).  First off - you don't put the bags over the outside of the shoes to keep the shoes dry hon - you put them over your socks and then put your shoes on to keep your socks and feet dry - but then again - who is The Gadfly to question the methodology of Iowa morons?

The second thing that caused The Gadfly's bullshit meter to skyrocket was the insinuation that the bread bag anecdote was evidence of lil' Joni's destitute upbringing.  Joni Ernst is 44 years old, which around 10 years of age would have had her growing up smack dab in the middle of Saint Ronnie Reagan's economic revival -- the one that conservatives are incessantly reminiscing (more like hallucinating) about.  Is Joni Ernst, in her zeal to bullshit the rubes, inadvertently copping to the actuality of the times back then that the Reagan revolution really wasn't all that great of an economic era for working and middle class families due to Republican's disastrous and now totally discredited trickle down economic policies?

Lastly, it really isn't that hard to put the total lie to Ernst's sob story that her poor poor family could only afford one pair of shoes, and that the Ernst kids had to wear Wonder bags over their only pair of shoes to make them last longer.  More diligent folks than The Gadfly have already done some homework on Joni and her family and not so shockingly, her family has benefited quite well (to the tune of nearly half a million tax dollars) sucking at the teat of government handouts in the form of agriculture subsidies - story here.

So yeah -- call The Gadfly depressingly unimpressed with Little Joni on The Prairie and her contrived rags to riches fairy tales.  Unimpressed because it is the kind of bullshit that requires absolutely no effort to see right through it and recognize it for the phoniness that it is.  And depressingly so for a whole lot of idiots in this country will lap that shit up like it's gospel.

Frankly - if The Gadfly wants to hear manufactured fables of how tough that presently affluent people had it before they were affluent, The Gadfly can watch this classic over and over again . . .






Suffice to say, it's going to be nothing short of a horror show with these duplicitous asshats running the show in Washington the next two years.




----TFG

Nothing to kill or die for And no religion, too . . . Imagine

Conservatives and more than a few asshats in our dysfunctional mainstream media are writhing on their fainting sofas because Obama didn't jet off to Paris on Air Force One and join a handful of other world leaders and French citizens at the march against terror and the attack on the French magazine Charlie Hebdo.

Here's an example of the American media idiocy:

Never mind that this picture of the world leaders was nothing more than a phony photo-op - here's a wide screen shot of the leader's "participation" in the march:

Ok - so the world "leaders" didn't actually march with the unwashed masses of people, but cordoned themselves off on a heavily guarded side street for a photo op.  What amuses The Gadfly even more is that during the real march, the people whom conservatives have suddenly found some love and empathy for were overheard singing a very famous song - this is actual video/audio from the march in Paris yesterday . . . .





The Gadfly can only imagine the howls of impotent rage emanating from the flying monkeys on the right if Obama had actually gone to the march in France and was filmed singing along with that dirty fucking communist peacenik hippie John Lennon's song Imagine.

And now do you dear readers understand why it is that The Gadfly does not trust our nation's corporate media anymore to give us the unvarnished truth of things?

Even more so, it is also exhibit A as to why The Gadfly does not respect or give much of a rat's fucking ass about conservatives opinions on a wide array of issues and subjects these days.  If they cannot even be up front and honest about an unpretentious situation like this, one that everybody should be united in viewpoint on, then why should they be trusted on any matter of importance to our lives?



----TFG

The Future Dilemma of Grandpa and Grandma -- Friskies or Meow Mix? . . .

The man was so fucking prescient:




Carlin was dead right - the plutocrats will not rest until they get it all back from us - every god damn penny - and if it takes them buying the best, and most servile, government and politicians that plutocrats can buy, they will gladly pay the price.

The Gadfly truly wonders whether you dear readers are prepared to see your elderly parents and grandparents subsisting on cat food and living in your basements should the GOP ever get their grubby meat hooks in to the Social Security program:

JANUARY 12, 2015

The new House Budget Committee chairman hinted Monday that he had big plans for Social Security reform in the next two years, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

A week after the House voted on a rule that critics say could force a manufactured crisis in the disability program in late 2016, a potential leverage point for Republicans aiming for changes, Rep. Tom Price (R-GA) told a conservative audience that he wanted his committee to tackle Social Security.

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/tom-price-social-security-reforms


Let's not mince words here.  When conservatives talk about social programs in the context of "reform," their concept of reform is the equivalent of the Nazi military's concept of employing the "Blitzkrieg" as it's method of annihilating it's foes.

The Gadfly can only hope that enough Americans see through the lies and the bullshit that these Wall Street owned conservatives are peddling and that enough of us stand up and with one voice tell them to keep their dirty, corrupt fucking mitts off of our one enduring and fully functional social safety net.



----TFG

Of Corporate Cat Fights and Whining Wing Nuts . . .

[ click to enlarge ]

The Gadfly finds this hilarious on many fronts, not the least of which is the fact that Fox "News" loves to beat it's hairless chest and pretend that they and they alone are the champions of free market capitalism, the kind of capitalism of course that Dish Network is practicing here by denying Fox a vehicle for polluting the American public airwaves with their duplicitous bile via Dish's wholly owned cable network unless Uncle Rupert forks over some more money:

NEW YORK (CNNMoney)

As Fox News enters its fourth week without carriage on the Dish Network, it is making a sensational new charge: "They're censoring what you see."

Bill O'Reilly says so in a new commercial that Fox began to televise over the weekend.

"Dish has dropped Fox News. Now you should drop Dish," O'Reilly declares.

The ad is a dramatic escalation in the war of words between the cable news channel, a unit of Twenty-first Century Fox (FOX), and Dish, the satellite company that delivers TV to 14 million households.

Dish (DISH) declined to comment on Sunday.

http://money.cnn.com/2015/01/11/media/fox-news-dish-blackout-censoring/


Btw - as a measure of just how fucking cynically disingenuous Bill O'Reilly and Fox are, a contract dispute between corporations does not, even in the most bastardized sense of the word, rise to the level of "censorship."  Censorship is the premeditated and deliberate act of examining journalistic and artistic works and removing content that the self-anointed censor unilaterally deems offensive, immoral or harmful to society.

Now - never mind that The Gadfly wholeheartedly feels that the lies and propaganda that Fox spews out over the public airwaves is indeed offensive, immoral and harmful to our society, true freedom dictates that they have just as much a right to propagate their political and social views and agenda just as much as anyone else does.  It really is a matter for we the people to regulate Fox's success by either buying in to their fraudulence or rejecting it.

Nonetheless - Dish Network subscribers should take some heart - the month long absence of Fox "News" from their viewing routine has accomplished, if nothing else, an exponential increase overall in their collective IQ as well as their being much more accurately informed on news and current events.



----TFG

Hood(ie)-Winked . . . .!

And 2015 gets off to as about a dumb ass start as seemingly possible.  It's going to be a long two years with these fucking nitwits running the show.

Sigh . . . . this from the people and party who claim to hate government intrusion (unless of course they are running said government and said government is intruding on behalf of their draconian political and social views):

Oklahoma residents are concerned that a proposed bill would make it a crime to wear a hooded sweatshirt, or hoodie, in public on many occasions, according to local news station KFOR.

The wearing of hoods or similar head coverings during the commission of a crime has been against state law since the 1920s, with the original intent of curbing violence perpetrated by the Ku Klux Klan. But the new proposal would also ban an individual from intentionally concealing "his or her identity in a public place by means of a robe, mask, or other disguise" even if he or she were not involved in a crime. Violation of the proposed law would constitute a misdemeanor, punishable by a fine up to $500.

The bill's author, state Sen. Don Barrington (R), said that the goal is simply to help deter crime.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/01/03/hoodie-oklahoma-bill_n_6410746.html?utm_hp_ref=mostpopular


This, dear readers, is the kind of legislation that these right-wing, Tea Party conservatives are sitting around in a group circle-jerk and dreaming up.  No really -- they are.

And The Gadfly nearly pissed his pants with hysterical laughter over the motivating reason provided by the GOP turd-kicking clod who sponsored this bill that it's only to "help deter crime."  Fucking sure -- because right now, there's some career criminal somewhere having second thoughts about pulling that armed liquor store robbery because he just cannot decide if he wants to take the chance of getting that $500 fine tacked on to his charges if he's busted while wearing a hoodie! ... ROTFFL . . .

Oh yeah -- one more thing -- and lest the obvious question be neglected to be asked . . . .  Who do you think this law (in Okla-fucking-homa no less) is much more likely to be applied to . . . this guy:

. . . . or this guy:

The Gadfly thinks that the ass-hattery of these right wingers at times is simply a thing of beauty to behold -- spine-chilling beauty albeit -- but beauty nonetheless.




----TFG