NASHUA, N.H. (AP) — Ties between Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, political allies for more than a decade, are fraying as the Republican presidential campaign picks up.
In public, mentor Bush and protege Rubio have avoided criticizing each other since Rubio announced his candidacy.
But Bush allies have started quietly spreading negative information about Rubio's record. Also, supporters of the two Miami politicians are drawing contrasts between Rubio, a 43-year-old son of Cuban immigrants, and 62-year-old Bush, a member of one of the nation's most powerful political dynasties.
It's going to be a lovely thing to watch as the entrenched, old school GOP establishment, anchored by the Bush Crime Family, goes toe-to-bloody-toe with the Tea Party loons.
Beautiful. And no -- not a single mainstream news media organization in this country would dare to question and push back on Cheney's lies and historical revisionism. It takes a fucking comedian on a comedy cable channel to do that.
In the latest of lame-brained, poor shaming ideas from Wisconsin's Republicans war on the poor, Jesse Kremer (R-Kewaskum) has a doozy. He wants to put poor people receiving food stamps to go on a Jim Crow diet:
Food stamp recipients in Wisconsin would be required to use photo ID cards for their purchases under a bill being proposed by two Republican lawmakers.
Rep. Jesse Kremer, R-Kewaskum, says the proposal is an effort to crack down on waste, fraud and abuse and to make programs like FoodShare more efficient. But detractors say it would shame those living in poverty, with no discernible benefit.
The bill, currently being circulated for co-sponsorship, would require the state Department of Health Services to submit an implementation plan to the U.S. Department of Agriculture for approval to issue electronic benefit transfer (EBT) cards with photo identification to participants in FoodShare, the state's successor to the food stamps program. Sen. Steve Nass, R-Whitewater, is the Senate's lead sponsor.
Of course, like most of the dreck brought up by the state's Republicans, this proposal runs afoul of a number of laws, including the fact that any member of the family can use the EBT card, not just the head of the household. Federal law also forbids food stamp recipients to be treated differently than anyone else. I can't recall any time that I was carded to buy a loaf of bread.
But there's more. There's always more.
Kremer really wants to make sure the poor are shamed thoroughly by forcing them to shop at poor people-only stores:
Kremer also wrote in his "term paper" about an idea he'd raised during his campaign: limiting the use of QUEST cards to privately-run food pantries overseen by the government.
"Yes, it may be humbling to go into the pantry to purchase 'needed items,' but as I mentioned earlier, most people understand that this is meant to be a crutch and not a lifestyle. I would also love to see photo lD's (sic) on all Quest cards and will continue to work this angle," Kremer wrote.
Ahh riiiiight! Because "forcing" food assistance participants to shop at "poor people-only stores" is just the right message we can send to the world about what an "exceptional" and humble, and don't forget Christian, nation we are huh?
Honestly -- if The Gadfly were to live to be 500 years old, he would still never be able to decipher what exactly is the driving force behind the hatred and selfishness and meanness that dwells in the small hearts and smaller minds of right wing Republicans. It has gotten to the point where The Gadfly believes that there is a mutant strand of dna in these people's genome that makes them predisposed to being cold-blooded dickheads. They are the collective reincarnation of Gollum with "the precious" being other human's souls.
And don't you just adore this fucking asshole's tough love admonishment that "yes, it may be humbling to go into the pantry to purchase 'needed items,' but as I mentioned earlier, most people understand that this is meant to be a crutch and not a lifestyle."
Holy fuck - that is some of the ballsiest smugness that The Gadfly has ever had the displeasure of laying his weary old hippie eyes on dear readers. There's some truly magical assholery in that brief, nasty little statement.
Hey Asshole Congressman!! Has the thought ever crossed your little dickhead mind that you yourself got in to politics in order to use the political system as a "crutch" for never having to endure a day of honest, hard work in your life and that you have become so inured to the position that you will say and do anything to keep your cushy little taxpayer funded "job" and "lifestyle."
Good lord The Gadfly so loathes these jack offs. There truly is a special place in hell reserved for every last one of them.
Sometimes the right's assholery is just so mind numbing stupid (see pic at top of post) that to deride it would be the equivalent of shooting dead fish in a barrel.
Observe:
SUBMITTED BY Brian Tashman on Friday, 4/17/2015 3:55 pm
Rep. David Brat, R-Va., took issue with a PolitiFact post that rated a recent anti-Obamacare statement he made as “false,” telling conservative talk show host Lars Larson at yesterday’s “Hold Their Feet To The Fire” conference that the Affordable Care Act represents a severe threat to the country.
Brat said that Obamacare, which Larson inaccurately referred to as “a health care system run by government,” will move America away from a free market system. He pointed to the two Koreas as an example of the dangers of such policies: “Look at every country in the world. Look at North Korea and South Korea. It’s the same culture, it’s the same people, look at a map at night, one of the countries is not lit, there’s no lights, and the bottom free-market country, all Koreans, is lit up. So you make your bet on which country you want to be, you want to go free market.”
“We have poverty on the rise because we’re moving away from free markets,” he said.
Here is just how headache inducing asinine that this Republican David Brat, and the audience of drooling goobers that he is targeting with this bullshit, truly are .... he cites South Korea as a shining, "lit up" free market paradise as his example as to why the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare), which is NOT a government run healthcare system, is a "severe threat to the country."
Except someone neglected to inform Congresscritter Brat that South Korea has a law-mandated, national healthcare system which is funded by compulsory contributions from ALL of it's citizens, non-citizen residents, and government subsidies.
So if any conservative out there can coherently and definitively explain to The Gadfly how it can be that Obamacare can be designated a "severe threat" to the free market in America, and yet an infinitely more comprehensive, truly government run system in the nation of South Korea can be held up as a stellar example of free market purity ---- well, The Gadfly is all fucking ears.
Oh -- and lastly Congressman Brat -- no, poverty most certainly is not "on the rise because we're moving away from free markets." Poverty is on the rise because bought and paid for politicians like yourself are performing the shameful, conniving bidding of the oligarchs, Wall Street, and the corporate tax evaders by enacting legislation which has the sum effect of accelerating the ever widening wealth inequality gap, shipping good paying, good benefits jobs overseas in order to fatten the wallets of the investor class, coddling Wall Street's thieving criminality, and shoveling the working middle class's hard earned tax dollars in to the gaping maw of the military industrial complex and their bloated war machine coffers.
But if you try to have this conversation with right wingers, their eyes just glaze over and they stick their fingers in their ears and begin chanting their childish mantra .... Kenyan Muslim! No birth certificate! Terrorist appeaser! Jeremiah Wright! Socialist tyranny! .... and The Gadfly knows this by personal experience for it was just such reactions to his efforts at having rational debates with conservatives which eventually led The Gadfly to abandon any pretense for the prospect that dealing with such hopelessly ignorant human beings had so much as a popsicle's chance in hell of producing some beneficial result. Ultimately though, giving up on that hope freed The Gadfly's conscience and allowed him to channel his energy in to the noble avocation of destroying modern-day American conservatism and the assholes who practice it -- and for the present time being, The Gadfly toils at that lonely undertaking gladly and with nary an ounce of regret.
And right wing heads and forehead veins thus did explode in unison across the land and there was much gnashing of teeth and lamentation and rending of garments:
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton confirmed the obvious on Sunday, officially announcing that she would seek the Democratic nomination for president in 2016.
"I'm running for president," Clinton says in the video. "Americans have fought their way back from tough economic times, but the deck is still stacked in favor of those at the top. Everyday Americans need a champion, and I want to be that champion so you can do more than just get by. You can get ahead and stay ahead. Because when families are strong, America is strong."
"So I'm hitting the road to earn your vote. Because it's your time and I hope you'll join me on this journey."
Foremost let it be known that The Gadfly would not have HRC as his first choice for the Dem nomination in 2016. The Gadfly has a lot of issues with HRC and her coziness with the Wall Street criminals, the military industrial complex vampires and her penchant for stepping on her own tits [and no - that is not a sexist statement] by surrounding herself with some truly incompetent and awful assholes and spokespeople.
Their primary target in the 1990's was the man from Hope -- one William Jefferson Clinton. They splooged their own load of cum on to the American political process dress in their zeal to impeach Clinton. And the mainstream media was the defective condom. 'Nuff fucking said.
The Clinton impeachment spectacle was the boatload of fun that right wing Republican breathlessly delivered to America and a fawning, gutless, craven and conniving media in an effort to destroy one man's presidency. Everyone knew it would fail, as it did. And the only thing it accomplished was to give Bill Clinton the highest public approval rating of a president leaving office in a very, very long time.
The targeted man's wife, at the time, one Hillary Rodham Clinton, was deemed collateral damage in that right wing, ratfucking effort.
To right wingers, Bill is Hillary, Hillary is Bill. Their primordial brains are incapable of distinguishing the two. Like zombies -- all they know is 'hate Clinton'... 'destroy Clinton' ... ' must eat Clinton brain' .... zarggghhh... ......
All The Gadfly is saying here is ... get ready for the most godawful, ridiculously over the top, bullshiting load of gangster political ads you've ever seen attacking the dread Billary....... and it will not end until election day in November 2016.
Haha! The Gadfly just simply loves Esquire's Charlie Pierce.
His way with words is magical in ways that oft times leave one breathless, and he always leaves this reader yearning for just a little bit more of his insight and sharply barbed wit.
Watch how he, in one uncomplicated sentence, deftly describes the idiocy of the media villagers and their tremulous hand-wringing over how Wisconsin Republican Governor, and 2016 Presidential contender Scott Walker's notorious penchant for flip-flopping on issues might negatively affect his standing with GOP primary voters in 2016:
"First of all, this "problem" is not going to mean fk-all to the Republican base, because the Republican base is filled with crazoids, Bible-bangers, and people with short-wave radios for brains."
Nugent suggested that people shoot immigrants who illegally cross the southern border, fondly recalling a time he threatened to shoot a trespasser on his property.
There is video at the link above, but The Gadfly could not stomach putting it on and despoiling the pages of his shitty little blog.
About the only thing The Gadfly has to say about this story is that he is still waiting for this loud mouthed, Vietnam war draft dodging coward to fulfill his promise in 2012 in which he boldly proclaimed that if Obama won a 2nd term, he would either be dead or in jail.
The Gadfly isn't picky. Either upshot is just a-ok with The Gadfly -- and if ol' Ted ever does manage to gather the courage and man up by following through on this vow, The Gadfly might even find cause to say something approvingly of him.
Suffice to say, The Gadfly isn't holding his breath for ol' Ted to live up to his macho proclamation.
Wilkerson set aside three years of college studies in the fields of philosophy and English literature to honor a family tradition of serving in the military. And not only did Wilkerson voluntarily join the military, but he joined during a time of war, and an unpopular one at that, Vietnam.
Wilkerson logged 1100 hours in combat as a helicopter pilot and lived to tell about it. After Vietnam, Wilkerson went on to become an airborne ranger while simultaneously garnering college degrees in English literature, international relations and national security. He attended the Naval War College and later served as the deputy director of the Marine Corp War College. Wilkerson's distinguished career led him in to the position of national security adviser in the Ronald Reagan administration and ultimately as Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Colin Powell's chief of staff under George W. Bush.
Why is The Gadfly sharing the impressive and unimpeachable career accomplishments of this impressive military man and life-long Republican with you dear readers?
Because Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson has some things to say about your modern day Republican party, for while it is understandable for some people to dismiss the voices of people like yours truly, The Gadfly, as just being partisan snipers, it is a whole other measure of deniability to dismiss the voice of a man who has seen it all and most all of it from his position as a Republican party insider.
Observe Col. Wilkerson's view of the racial taint staining his party:
You have been very critical of the Republican Party. Why do you stay?There are sane and sober people in the Republican Party. The public persona of the Republican Party has changed since the days of Abraham Lincoln and Dwight Eisenhower.
In the past you have said the Republican Party is full of racists. Do you stand by that and aren’t you afraid of a backlash?I’m not afraid of a backlash. The GOP has scores of racists. Under Richard Nixon’s blessing, the GOP took advantage of disgruntled Democrats in the South. They are still there and their children are there. This is very much known in our party. This was a conscious strategy.
Col. Wilkerson on Cheney & Bush's Iraq adventure and the same assholes now pushing for war with Iran:
Your boss, Colin Powell, helped move forward the Iraq War with his presentation to the United Nations. But that turned out to be wrong information. What happened?It wasn’t just Powell, he just said it convincingly. I helped him. It was everyone in the administration. [The information] was provided by 16 U.S. intelligence agencies and CIA director George Tenet. The Russians, French and British spy agencies all provided the same evidence. It was a political and intelligence failure. The politicians took advantage of that. They took the intelligence and cherry-picked it, reinforcing the idea that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction.
So if Iraq never had WMD, what were the real reasons behind the war?There are several reasons. President George W. Bush wanted a stellar victory. Vice President Dick Cheney and Bush are both oil men and wanted to ensure 300 billion barrels didn’t stay in Saddam’s hands. The Israel lobby and [former Deputy Secretary of Defense] Paul Wolfowitz wanted to get rid of Saddam. There is no singular motivation. There are many, including wanting to send a message to all concerned after 9/11 that said, very forcefully, “Don’t mess with America.”
I have read that another reason for the Iraq War was to send a message to other Middle Eastern countries that America has the military might to overthrow their countries and reshape the region.The opposite occurred. [The Bush administration] demonstrated we were incompetent. They destroyed the balance of power and we are living with the result. Iraqis will tell you that Iraq was a better country under Saddam. There was more freedom for women and a better economy. It shows you how bad the situation is today.
Was the war partially about making money for defense contractors? The Financial Times states the U.S. government has paid contractors $138 billion. KBR, a subsidiary of Cheney’s former company Halliburton, received about $40 billion in government contracts.We wasted a ton of money. It went into people’s pockets, like Halliburton and Lockheed Martin and Bechtel — and a lot of Iraqis like Ahmed Chalabi. I also understand Eisenhower’s warning about the Military Industrial Complex’s unchecked power. It was a prescient warning. Eisenhower said this unchecked power was in every office of the federal government, every statehouse, and impacted our economic power and even our spiritual well-being.
So the Iraq War was a costly disaster. Why are Republicans pushing for war with Iran?There are three components of this push for war with Iran. The neoconservatives feel the only way to settle the problem is to destroy the current Middle Eastern governments, and they will turn into democracies in 30 years. The second reason is Israel. We have come to the point where we blindly follow Israel. Congress gave multiple standing ovations to Benjamin Netanyahu. If Middle Eastern countries are in chaos, they can’t unify against Israel. The third reason is there is a regional power struggle between Iran, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Cooperation Council [a union of gulf states] and the United States. These people don’t want Iran in power. They want Iran isolated.
Some Republicans have called for an attack on Iran. Rep. Duncan Hunter said we should use a tactical nuclear weapon.If we attacked Iran, they would go nuclear. If we attacked Iran it would take 500,000 troops, 10 years and trillions of dollars. Alexander the Great almost died in Iran. You don’t want to invade Iran. Iran has 75 million people. It’s the most stable country in the region.
You have also been critical of the way the military is structured, and the strains on an all-volunteer force.The people who are pushing this [war with Iran] are not going to fight. They are chickenhawks. They have no skin in the game. I don’t see how you can have a democracy with 1 percent of 330 million people doing all the fighting. In the future we will have to look at conscription. The all-volunteer military is far too expensive. One rifleman can cost more than $1 million over 20 years. My half-pay in retirement, if I live to age 88, is $2.1 million. Powell’s is probably closer to $3- or $3.5 million, if he lives a similar time.
You raise an interesting point about the cost of these wars. If the government is going to start all these wars, they need to raise taxes to pay for them and no Republican politician wants to do that. George W. Bush invaded both Iraq and Afghanistan and actually reduced taxes. New York Times columnist and Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman says this has never happened at any time in human history.For the first time in American history, we had no war tax. Even European monarchs levied taxes to fight wars. It is inexplicable not to do so –unless of course you are stupid or don’t care that we have a national debt of $17 trillion.
Nothing new -- not insofar as to what The Gadfly and many others have been saying about these same subjects for the better part of a decade or so now.
It's great that someone of Col. Wilkerson's prestige is going on the record and telling the truth. And while Col. Wilkerson's views are the proverbial day late and dollar short, it is nothing but bittersweet vindication for the The Gadfly, for it is the exact same goddamn message that he has been trying to share with all of you for all for these many years on the pages of this shitty little blog dear readers.
Now - what becomes of this information? - well that story has yet to be written. But if Americans truly want a happy ending to that story, they really ought to start paying more attention to -- no not The Gadfly -- although that would be flattering to say the least -- but to people like Col. Lawrence Wilkerson and other sane Americans who have seen up close and personal, just how deep the damage can be to our nation from the senseless ignorance and hatred of people and the idiocy and and incompetency of our political and military leadership ranks.
Before The Gadfly can even get in to the heart of this post .. let's do this .. relax.... .....
It appears an asshole strain of Ebola has spread .... carriers of the disease appear to be mostly conservative, Republican politicians ......
In 2013, Fox News proudly broadcast an interview with a young food stamp recipient who claimed to be using the government benefit to purchase lobster and sushi.
"This is the way I want to live and I don’t really see anything changing," Jason Greenslate explained to Fox. “It’s free food; it’s awesome."
That story fit a longtime conservative suspicion that poor people use food stamps to purchase luxury items. Now, a Republican state lawmaker in Missouri is pushing for legislation that would stop people like Greenslate and severely limit what food stamp recipients can buy. The bill being proposed would ban the purchase with food stamps of "cookies, chips, energy drinks, soft drinks, seafood or steak."
"The intention of the bill is to get the food stamp program back to its original intent, which is nutrition assistance," said Rick Brattin, the representative who is sponsoring the proposed legislation.
Curbing food stamp purchases of cookies, chips, energy drinks, and soft drinks at least falls in line with the food stamp program's mission to provide nutrition. Nutrition experts are already discussing whether to remove unhealthy items from the list of foods participants can buy.
But seafood and steak? Seafood has been shown, time and again, to be a healthy part of any diet. And steak is such a broad category that it's essentially banning people from buying any flat cuts of beef, from porterhouse to flank.
Hey -- why don't we just make it a fucking law that anybody on government assistance can only eat rice and beans. Make it a fucking law! Enforce it! Then form Rice& Beans swat teams .. anybody suspected of deviating from the mandated rice&beans government approved diet gets their homes stormed by swat teams and all their worldly possessions confiscated and major fines for defying some right wing asshole's law........
Is The Gadfly the only one who sees what these pricks are trying to do??
Ok -- so the other big news this past week is the nuclear agreement between the U.S., it's co-negotiators, the U.K., Germany, France, China and Russia and the dread pirates - Iran.
Every reputable statesman who has read the agreement is pretty much on the same page that the U.S. and it's co-negotiators got way more concessions from the Iranians than anyone remotely even imagined possible, and providing that there are no major obstacles, you know -- like your own countrymen ratfuck stabbing you in the back, then the prospects for the avoidance for yet another bloody, costly, protracted war in the mid-east are pretty damn good.
Not that the prospects for peace are anything that right-wing, American conservatives in this country have so much as a passing interest in as it stands:
A small part of the Middle East may soon be off limits to US bombing and killing, so naturally Republicans and their neocon allies are furious.
The tentative Iran deal announced on 3 April, in which Western leaders and the Islamic republic agreed on strict limits to Iran’s nuclear program, was hailed by many as a breakthrough, given that it could avert yet another US-led war in the Middle East. So almost immediately, it was denounced by key conservative members of Congress, neocons, and Republican presidential candidates, whose unquenched thirst for blood almost always outweighs their supposed commitment to peace.
Senator Mark Kirk kicked things off by quickly proving Godwin’s Law, and absurdly declared that “Neville Chamberlain got a better deal from Adolf Hitler”. (“Appeasement” and “Chamberlain” are two of conservatives’ favorite buzzwords whenever a diplomatic breakthroughs by Democratic presidents may be afoot, even if they don’t actually know what they mean.)
Israeli Prime Minister, with his usual bombast, said: “This deal would pose a grave danger to the region and to the world and would threaten the very survival of the state of Israel”. He added: “In a few years … the deal would remove restrictions on Iran’s nuclear program, enabling Iran to have a massive enrichment capacity that it could use to produce many nuclear bombs within a matter of months.”
It’s hard to take Netanyahu’s hyperbolic statements seriously when he has basically been saying the same thing - that Iran is this close to a nuclear bomb - for over twenty-three years. Even his own intelligence services don’t agree with him.
Often forgotten in the entire debate is the fact that all 16 US intelligence agencies have concluded that Iran actually abandoned its active nuclear weapons program in 2003. The US has known this since at least 2007, when a classified National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), which undercut George W Bush’s burgeoning Iran war talk, was leaked to the media. In 2010 and 2012 two other NIEs were issued by the US government that concluded, as the LA Times put it: “US intelligence agencies don’t believe Iran is actively trying to build an atomic bomb”.
So basically, the fear mongering by the right wingers and the leader of their wet dreams, Israel's own version of Baghdad Bob - Benjamin Netanyahu, is nothing more than a crock of propagandizing horseshit aimed at keeping uniformed and Fox "News" informed (ignorance personified) Americans fearful that the Iranian mullahs are hiding under their beds, ready to jump out at any moment and shove a nuclear-tipped missile up their asses.
That's how these people operate -- fear, lies, subterfuge -- and don't think for a moment that they will not make a concerted attempt to sabotage this historic agreement.
Fortunately, others in this country are willing to take a stand, even some fellow conservatives. Watch this clip as former Nixon speech writer and former GOP Presidential candidate Pat Buchanan bitch slaps Fox's Sean Hannity on the subject:
Hannity began to get rather exercised. But Buchanan continued, undeterred.
BUCHANAN: Are we going to be frightened by words from some character in Iran? …Listen to the American head of intelligence. He says Iran does not have a bomb program as of 2013. Secondly, if they start building a bomb, we will know it. Third, Iran has made some concessions, they’re not enough, it makes them less able to get to a bomb…
…Your friend Bibi’s been talking about Iran getting a bomb since 1992. In 2006, he said they’ll be building 25 bombs by the end of the decade. Are they? No.
Buchanan also explained that U.S. and Iranian interests are allied to some degree right now.
BUCHANAN: In Iraq, Iran is fighting ISIS and Al Qaeda. In Syria, they’re fighting ISIS on behalf of Assad. In Yemen, they’re not involved there.
…Sean, they’re fighting our enemies. I’d rather have Iranians fighting in Tikrit and dying than American kids there.
But the best part was when Buchanan told Hannity, “The reason Iran is gonna be a power in the gulf is because your president, George W. Bush, invaded Iraq and turned it into an ally of Iran.”
Hannity tried to blame President Obama but Buchanan wasn’t having any of it.
BUCHANAN: Sean, the reason we’re in this position is because Saddam Hussein, a thug, was overthrown, his state was destroyed, his army was broken up. Elections were held by Bush's democracy crusade and the Shia won and we lost Iraq!
Buchanan finished by making Hannity and Netanyahu look like cowards.
BUCHANAN: I’m not scared of Iran, for God’s sakes. They don’t have an atomic bomb. …Bibi’s sitting on 200 atom bombs and he’s fretting over Iran, which hasn’t even produced weapons grade uranium?
The United States could finish off Iran in an afternoon. What are you frightened of, Sean? …I think you’re hysterical, Sean.
Buchanan had Hannity sputtering – and it was a thing of beauty.
Yes indeed -- that was a thing of beauty. The Gadfly is certain that Hannity went home and cried himself to sleep the night after that interview with Buchanan took place. Oh -- and also let it never be said henceforth that The Gadfly does not ever showcase the views of conservatives on the pages of his shitty little blog here. Haha.
Nonetheless, let's hope more sensible conservatives, an endangered species to be sure, but they do exist, come out and support our president and his allies' quest for peace over unnecessary war. And let us all raise our voices and collectively tell the warmongers in the industrial military complex and their cheerleading enablers on Fox "News" that unless every one of the defense industry CEO's and their institutional investors, along with their supporters, will be the first Americans to willingly offer up their own heirs as front-line cannon fodder in the wars that they yearn for, then they can all just go fuck themselves.
Making your voice heard in this debate may very well salvage the future quality of life of your children and their children. Think about it.
Kansas Bans Poor People From Spending Welfare On Cruise Ships
Posted: 04/04/2015 7:30 am EDT
Kansas welfare recipients will be unable to get more than $25 per day in benefits under a new law sent this week to Republican Gov. Sam Brownback's desk by the state legislature.
The bill also prohibits welfare recipients from spending their benefits at certain types of businesses, including liquor stores, fortune tellers, swimming pools and cruise ships. "We're trying to make sure those benefits are used the way they were intended," state Rep. Michael O'Donnell (R) said, according to the Topeka Capital-Journal. "This is about prosperity. This is about having a great life."
No -- this is not an article from the parody news site The Onion. Kansas' right wing Republicans actually spent time, on the taxpayers dime, drafting legislation, voting on it, then having their governor sign a bill that bans people from spending welfare money on cruise ships. Apparently they just couldn't muster up the time and energy to work on rescuing their slowly disintegrating state economy, which is going straight in to the shitter after their Tea Party governor gave away the store to the oligarchs.
First off, The Gadfly challenges any conservative, any fucking where, to provide documented evidence that there is an epidemic of Kansas welfare recipients spending their benefits on Caribbean cruises, fortune tellers and swimming pools, then produce that evidence -- right goddamn now! If you cannot produce that evidence, for if indeed it were an epidemic problem there should be an abundance of it, then The Gadfly would not so kindly implore you to shut your stupid fucking pieholes and move on to the next manufactured outrage that your ideological "leaders" keep spoon feeding you.
This Kansas bill is just another red herring load of bullshit by conservatives. It's sole assholish purpose is to simply compound the already existing delusions in the fevered pea brains of their followers that everyone who is receiving some form of government assistance is a shiftless scam artist who is living high on the hog off of the blood and red, white & blue sweat of honest, hard working, conservative 'Murrikans.
Quite frankly though, The Gadfly will gladly go on the record by saying that if some economically destitute Americans have found a way to utilize $25 a day in welfare benefits to galavant off on luxury cruises, and install swimming pools in their back yards, then The Gadfly loudly applauds their ingenuity and resourcefulness and wholeheartedly believes that these are the kind of people who should be running our government and leading us forward in to the 21st century -- for if anyone has the ability to convert a measly $25 dollars a day in to a luxury lifestyle, The Gadfly sure as shit wants in on that deal.
Crazy eyes Shelly Bachmann waltzes back in to the old neighborhood to remind us all that she is still one of the most obnoxiously dumb, and hysterically vituperative nitwits on the fucking planet:
Former Minnesota U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann is comparing President Obama to the mentally unstable co-pilot who authorities believe intentionally crashed his German airliner last week in the French Alps and killed everyone onboard.
In a posting Tuesday on her Facebook page she wrote, “With his Iran deal, Barack Obama is for the 300 million souls of the United States what Andreas Lubitz was for the 150 souls on the German Wings (sic) flight — a deranged pilot flying his entire nation into the rocks. After the fact, among the smoldering remains of American cities, the shocked survivors will ask, why did he do it?”
The United States is engaged in multinational negotiations aimed at trying to persuade Iran to limit its capability to produce nuclear weapons.
To think this cross-eyed moron woman once sat on the House Intelligence Committee makes The Gadfly violently ill to his stomach, albeit eternally grateful that she and her idiocy spewing piehole miraculously managed to avoid causing some international incident and touching off World War III.
And the fact that she was on that committee is prima facie evidence of just how extremist and out of touch with reality that the Republican party has become. That committee assignment would be the equivalent of putting a science denying, fundamentalist religious nutjob in in a position of influence on the House Science Committee . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . wait for it . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Congressman Paul Broun (R-Ga.) said last week that evolution and the big bang theory are "lies straight from the pit of Hell."
"God's word is true. I've come to understand that. All that stuff I was taught about evolution and embryology and the big bang theory, all that is lies straight from the pit of Hell," said Broun, who is an MD. "It's lies to try to keep me and all the folks who were taught that from understanding that they need a savior."
"You see, there are a lot of scientific data that I've found out as a scientist that actually show that this is really a young Earth. I don't believe that the earth's but about 9,000 years old. I believe it was created in six days as we know them. That's what the Bible says."
According to NBC News, Broun's comments were part of a larger speech given at the 2012 Sportsman's Banquet at Liberty Baptist Church in Hartwell, Georgia on September 27th. A clip of the video was distributed by the The Bridge Project, a liberal watchdog group.
Broun is a high-ranking member of the House Science Committee, of which Rep. Todd Akin (R-Mo.) is also a member.
Sigh . . . . . it's not a pleasant thing to think about, but every day that passes, The Gadfly is ever more certain that this country will someday have to suffer the karmic consequences of tolerating and abetting these people's epic ignorance and assholery.
