Another Hypocrite Bites The Dust

California state Senator Roy Ashburn is a big supporter of "traditional marriage" and has a 100% anti-gay rights voting record. Said he:

"We need to preserve traditional values for the future of our children. Children must be raised with morals and principles. As a society, we must provide them with a secured and loving environment that allows them to flourish."

I'm sure you can guess the rest... Yup, Ashburn, married father of four, gets pulled over drunk driving a state-owned Tahoe with an "unidentified male passenger" leaving "Faces" gay bar in Sacramento, California. Says TPM:

Here's a look at the votes of Ashburn, a Republican of Bakersfield:

In 2006, he voted no on a measure to add material on the contributions of gay Americans who had contributed to the development of California or the United States

In 2008 he voted against expanding anti-discrimination laws to include sexual discrimination.

In 2009 he voted against a resolution to oppose Prop 8, the anti-gay marriage ballot question.

Last September, he voted against recognizing out-of-state same-sex marriages.

That same month Ashburn opposed creating Harvey Milk Day, to honor the slain gay rights icon from San Francisco.

Shysters like Big Gay Ashburn make me wonder if the word 'hypocrisy' is even adequate. Is there room in the dictionary for 'hypercrisy'?

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Happy Easter! (Via easterbunnieswillstealyoursoul.com)

Mitt Romney Showing Signs of Republican Dumabass Syndrome

Says Fonz's Dad:

"Look, it doesn't make a lot of sense for us to have millions and millions of people who have no health insurance and yet who can go to the emergency room and get entirely free care for which they have no responsibility."

Does anyone in the GOP understand anything about the real world? I appreciate their entire philosophy is based on spin, misinformation and concealment. But really, "free" emergency room treatment??? Maybe I should email Mitt a copy of our $8,000 ER bill from last November...

Rewarding Bad Behavior

As any parent knows, you're not supposed to reward bad behavior. But it seems the House Dems did just that by promising Jim Bunning votes on his pet bills so that he'd ease off on his campaign to shut down Washington.

The good part? Bunning's bills are doomed to failure as his lunatic ideas are almost as roundly despised by Republicans as they are by Democrats.

But how pathetic is it that legislators have to jump through hoops like this and use cod child psychology to get one insane old f*ck to comply with basic procedure? Why is no-one taking the logical route and pushing for Bunning to be dumped instead as he's proven himself to be incompetent and in contempt of the body in which he was elected to serve?

It's an oft-said thing, at least for me, but what does a pol have to do to get fired around here anyway? The idiot man-children in DC get to do stuff on a daily basis that would have you sent packing from almost any other job in America. Why???

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So... did anyone actually attend the "what are we going to call this product" meeting?

Random Moving Picture of The Day...

Would life even be worth living were it not for unintended sexual innuendo? This TV Wii Curling (Wii Curling???) demonstration is a masterpiece.

Welcome To The Bizarro World Pre-Civil Rights Era

At Bluegrass Politics, the site that "covers Kentucky Politics & Government", they're announcing a new event:

Republican Rand Paul’s campaign for the U.S. Senate will hold a rally at 3 p.m. Tuesday in front of U.S. Sen. Jim Bunning’s Lexington office to support Bunning’s blockage of unemployment and health care benefits for over 1 million jobless Americans, including 119,230 Kentuckians.

You might think this wouldn't go down so well with Kentuckians. But a lot are getting behind this self-immolating dumbassery. It seems that conservative Kentuckians think it's a good thing that 119,230 of them lose their unemployment benefits. Sample comment:

"I have seen more fat and listless welfare or unemployment welfare recipients than can be counted. Kentucky is also one of the fattest states because a huge majority don’t work, but sit around eating beer cheese and Ale 8."

It suddenly struck me how middle class conservatives today resemble those broken-spirited 'house negroes' of the pre-civil rights era. You know, those black people who didn't stand up and fight because they'd been so beaten into self-hatred and acceptance of a system that oppressed them.

Lower-class conservatives are today's economic 'house negroes'. They even hate themselves so much they'll join Teabag minstrel shows and tip their hats to corporate overseers like Jim Bunning when he puts them out of work and generally screws them over. We really are living in the Bizarro world pre-civil rights era.

Liberals might "have a Dream." But it seems too many conservatives, from their place of fear, self-hatred and misdirected anger, just want to perpetuate the nightmare.

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If this looks odd to you, you don't live in Texas.

Conservative Hero Also Big Fan of Child Killers

Via Mark Ames at Alternet:

Back in the late 1920s, as Ayn Rand was working out her philosophy, she became enthralled by a real-life American serial killer, William Edward Hickman, whose gruesome, sadistic dismemberment of 12-year-old girl named Marion Parker in 1927 shocked the nation. Rand filled her early notebooks with worshipful praise of Hickman.

What did Rand admire so much about Hickman? His sociopathic qualities: "Other people do not exist for him, and he does not see why they should," she wrote, gushing that Hickman had "no regard whatsoever for all that society holds sacred, and with a consciousness all his own. He has the true, innate psychology of a Superman. He can never realize and feel 'other people.'"

Spin that, conservadweebs.

A-hole of the Day Part 2

Jim Bunning: sticking it to the (working) man everyone...

So not only is Sen. Jim Bunning (R-KY) singlehandedly putting 2,000 federal employees out of work as a direct consequence of his filibustering buffoonery, he's now caused a 21% pay cut for doctors.

Wow. Now can we fix the dumb rule that allows one grandstanding prick from Kentucky to derail the entire US government?

Cast your mind back to 2008... maybe you voted for Obama. Maybe you voted for John McCain. Either way, I don't think you voted to live in Jimbunningstan.

The Chemists' War On Booze

Deborah Blum at Slate is telling "The little-told story of how the U.S. government poisoned alcohol during Prohibition with deadly consequences."

Seems the feds were frustrated by Americans' failure to quit during prohibition and decided they could more proactively discourage alcohol consumption if they poisoned it. Says Blum:

"By the time Prohibition ended in 1933, the federal poisoning program, by some estimates, had killed at least 10,000 people."

The Federal Poisoning Program?! One government initiative Republicans Warren G. Harding, Calvin Coolidge and Herbert Hoover could get behind apparently.

Cheap shot, sure... but it wasn't the Dems who presided over Prohibition. Next time you crack open a beer without risk of arrest or death by poisoning, just thank FDR.

Liberals Smarter Than Conservatives

Via CNN:

Evolutionary psychologist Satoshi Kanazawa at the the London School of Economics and Political Science correlated data on these behaviors with IQ from a large national U.S. sample and found that, on average, people who identified as liberal and atheist had higher IQs.

Scientific evidence that liberals are smarter than conservatives? It's the small things that make my day...

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Yikes... it's Marcel Marceau from hell. Detectives in Ogden, Utah, are looking for a career petty criminal with the street name "Happy." He's being sought after a break-in and burglary late Wednesday.

A-hole of the Day

Jim Bunning: sticking it to the (working) man

Congratulations to Sen. Jim Bunning (R-KY) for blocking the passage of the extension of transportation funding and unemployment benefits. Thanks to Bunning's dickishness, a full two thousand federal transportation workers will be put on unpaid furlough today.

We can only dream that a-holes like Bunning will one day be put on unpaid furlough...