Ted Cruz: Two-Time Equine Posterior Achievement Award Winner and an ISBL Asshat Winner

You gotta hand it to Ted Cruz. I mean, no one in Congress works harder at doing nothing than our visitor from Canada — who decided to become a US citizen so he could run from president … of his homeowner’s association because that’s as close to a presidential office as he’ll ever get.

But, while accomplishing nothing other than shutting the government down because he’s a pissy little brat, Ted has also been the recipient of several honors. He’s been an ISBL Asshat of the Week more than once, and just recently he won the coveted Equine Posterior Achievement Award, which is the People For the American Way’s annual prize for the country's most extreme right-wing politician.

And by right-wing I mean asshat, er, Horse’s ass. And it wasn’t even close! Cruz won by a 21-point margin repeating his 2013 victory, when he beat out the likes of Michele Bachmann and Sarah Palin for the coveted award. Seriously. He’s more of a Horse’s Ass than those two! That’s a prize-winner if I ever saw one!

Ted Cruz bested MGB™ and Crazy Eyes by pulling another stunt that backfired … badly. He’d hoped to humiliate President Obama and congressional leaders by challenging a bipartisan budget bill as a way to show his anger over Obama’s executive actions on immigration, but, instead, his maneuver was handily defeated and gave Senate Democrats the opportunity to put several judicial and executive nominees up for a vote before Republicans took control of the chamber.

Thanks for helping the Democrats, Ted!

Ted’s previous Horse’s Ass win in 2013 was due to his spearheading the opposition to a constitutional amendment to overturn the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision by falsely claiming that the amendment would throw comedians in jail and muzzle pastors.

He also threatened civil disobedience to block the enforcement of LGBT rights measures, introduced new measures to prevent marriage equality, said same-sex marriage is “heartbreaking” and causes his heart to weep and alleged that LGBT rights laws will put pastors in prison.

Cruz also stood by lawless rancher Cliven Bundy , notorious for his racist remarks and refusal to recognize the U.S. government’s authority, while at the same time torpedoing the nomination of a noted civil rights attorney , whom he accused of “fanning…flames of racial tension.”

Cruz also wants to go to war with net neutrality , although he doesn’t seem to have a clue about what net neutrality actually means.

Ted Cruz, a Horse’s Ass and an ISBL Asshat; what an honor.

via RightwingWatch

FoxNews: The Dumbest "News" Network Ever

I know! You know! But still ...

It all began with, yes, yet another airline disappearing over the ocean in Southeast Asia and the conspiracy theories are up and running already; it was a terrorist attack; it was hijacked; it fell into the ocean and sank; a UFO beamed it up.

But, while not so much a conspiracy theory, the dumbest explanation by far for what might have happened to lost AirAsia Flight QZ8501 comes from, naturally, Fox News and one of its blonde news pundits.

Anna Kooiman, the dim-bulb-blonde in question, wondered, out loud and on air, if the … wait for it, it’s absolutely precious … seriously … if the metric system is to blame for the plane’s disappearance; and then, to throw gasoline onto the fire of her own stupidity, she asked if international flights are unsafe for Americans because of the metric system.

Kooiman also seemed to think that Americans should be scared of international travel because international pilots are trained to use the metric system and American pilots are not. Even when Fox’s own guest expert, FAA spokesperson Scott Brenner, explained that while there are differences between American pilots and international pilots, the differences in how we measure things does not make international flights less safe.

KOOIMAN: “Even when we think about temperature, it’s Fahrenheit or Celsius. It’s kilometers or miles. You know, everything about their training could be similar, but different.”

BRENNER: “I think you see a large reliance on automatic pilot and the requirement that pilots use that automatic pilot more often than probably more than in the US. A lot of that is just because a lot of crashes are due to pilot error. So, if you try and eliminate any potential risk, you try and eliminate the pilot’s ability to make incorrect inputs into the aircraft.”

KOOIMAN: “It’s not just a difference in the way that we measure things? Is it not as safe in that part of the world? Because our viewers may be thinking, ‘International travel, is it safe? Is it not safe?’”

BRENNER: “It’s incredibly safe. It’s the safest mode of travel you can have. But just on training, I believe our U.S. pilots are very well trained… They also actually fly the aircraft when they’re in the cockpit versus, a lot of times as soon as those wheels are up, a lot of times folks are required, foreign pilots are required to hit that autopilot almost until wheels come back down again.”

So, it’s the metric system, y’all, coming at us from some evil, no doubt Democratic, empire and hell bent on destroying the very fabric of America.

Fix News. The Dumbest Bunch of News “People” Anywhere.

via AddictingInfo

A Plea Deal Will State That Adrian Peterson Never Beat His Son

If you were sickened by yesterday’s post about the death of eight-year-old Gabriel Fernandez at the hands of his “mother” and her boyfriend — that post is HERE — then this one won’t sit well with you either.

Remember when word got out Vikings running back Adrian Peterson had beaten one of his children with a switch? Well, Peterson was accused of child abuse by the medical examiner — who called the beating, er, as Peterson called it, the whipping, “extreme.” He was subsequently indicted by a Grand Jury in September on charges related to his admitted use of a “switch” to beat his four-year-old son.

The police report included photos of cuts and bruises to the child’s back, buttocks, ankles, legs and scrotum, along with defensive wounds to the boy’s hands — meaning he was trying to stop the beating any way he could.

,

On top of the photographic evidence was the fact that Peterson not only admitted to the beating, he even texted the boy’s mother, saying that one wound in particular would make her 'mad at me about his leg. I got kinda good wit the tail end of the switch.'"

Bragging about how good he is at beating a child; that’s a parent, I guess.

And then, when the scandal broke, he showed very little remorse, and, in fact, told a reporter he would never "eliminate whooping my kids . . . because I know how being spanked has helped me in my life."

It helped you grow up to thinking a spanking means bruising and cutting your little boy’s body to an extreme degree.

He also described the incident as a “normal whooping” in regards to the “welps” on the child’s buttocks, but that he felt bad immediately when he saw the injuries on the child’s legs. And he “believes” he whipped his son with the switch “10 to 15” times, but he’s not sure because he doesn’t “ever count how many pops I give my kids.”

Sickening, no? It gets worse.

Now Adrian Peterson has reached an agreement in the case, and will plead no contest to one count of misdemeanor reckless assault; the plea will not include any reference to family violence or violence against a minor meaning it looks like he didn’t beat his own child.

If the agreement is accepted by Judge Kelly Case, Adrian Peterson will pay a $2,000 fine, be placed on probation, and perform 80 hours of community service. 

For beating his son so badly he had to be taken to a hospital.

Adrian Peterson, who beat his child, texted his mother that she might be angry at how bad he beat his child, admitted he gets so caught up in beating his child he has no idea how many times he’s hit the boy, and says he’d do it again, though, maybe next time, without a switch, pleads "no contest," meaning he admits no guilt. He’ll pay a tiny fine — he makes $20 million a year — and there will never be any mention of child abuse, family violence, domestic violence, or violence against a minor on his record. 

But there will be physical and emotional marks on his child for the rest of his life.

source

File Under: "Yeah, Like That's Gonna Happen!"

In what surely must be the most delusional thing to ever come out of his mouth — including his assertion of heterosexuality, which is laughable, at best, and pathetic, at worst — this week South Carolina’s own Lindsey Graham has said he is thinking of running for president.

Of the United States, y’all.

Graham, who votes every chance he gets to send Americans off to war, and then also votes every chance he gets to deny them benefits when they return home, is suggesting that she, er, he just might be the one to fix all the problems in this country by taking the White House in 2016.

Oh, but wait, there’s a caveat …

“If I get through my general election, if nobody steps up in the presidential mix, if nobody’s out there talking​ —​ me and McCain have been talking ​— ​I may just jump in to get to make these arguments.”

Yes, if he wins reelection he’ll think of running because when he loses his bid for the presidency, and make no mistake, while many of the loons in South Carolina think he’s just peachy, most of the people in America know he’s a twisted fruitcake and will never vote for him, he’ll still have his cushy job as a Senator to fall back on.

But if he loses his chance at reelection, then he won’t run because, well, he’s just a loser, with John McCain—remember The Mama Grizzly Bore™--his chief supporter:

“I’ve strongly encouraged him to give it a look. I think Lindsey has vast and deep experience on these issues that very few others have.”

Huh! That sounds awful close to what he said about that moron he chose for his running mate back in ’08.

Lindsey? Bitch, please. You haven’t got a snowball’s chance in hell of getting elected to the presidency, so take a seat, pour yourself a Cosmo and unwind with a Real Housewives marathon.

And shut up.

Things Stupid People Say, Part 2: Republican Glenn Grothman: People Should Work Seven Days A Week

I thought it might be hard to picker a winner of the Things Stupid People Say Contest, but it wasn’t difficult at all.

It’s Glenn Grothman, a Wisconsin Republican state senator who just might become the next congressman from state's 6th district. I doubt he’s never read a moronic statement, or an outright lie, that he didn’t repeat and repeat and repeat.And, without further ado, here are some of the gems that came dripping out of his piehole.

In 2004, Grothman called for new restrictions on the federal food stamps program because poor people don't act poor enough:

"I've interviewed over a dozen people who check out people who pay with food stamps, and all felt people on food stamps ate better — or at least more costly — than they did. [People] who work in food stores indicate that many people who use food stamps do not act as if they are genuinely poor."

Cuz, you know, being on Food Stamps means you're rich and you eat a whole lot better than other people.

In 2010, Grothman, who believes homosexuality, is a choice, wanted to ban Wisconsin public school teachers from saying the word “homosexuality” in sex education classes because some teachers had an "agenda" to turn kids gay.

I think teachers just want to turn kids into thinking adults, something the GOP probably doesn’t want to happen.

Also in 2010, Grothman continued to rail against homosexuality:

“Did people even know what homosexuality was in high school in 1975? I don't remember any discussion about that at the time. There were a few guys who would make fun of a few effeminate boys, but that's a different thing than homosexuality. Homosexuality was not on anyone's radar. And that's a good thing."

Grothman doesn't just miss the '70s, he’s also said he’d like to go back to those simpler days of the 1950s, when the black folks knew their place and The Gays lived in closets.

In 2011, after voting to repeal Wisconsin's equal-pay protection law, Grothman argued that the male-female pay gap wasn't about discrimination in the workplace:

"Take a hypothetical husband and wife who are both lawyers, but the husband is working 50 or 60 hours a week, going all out, making 200 grand a year. The woman takes time off, raises kids, is not go go go. Now they're 50 years old. The husband is making 200 grand a year, the woman is making 40 grand a year. It wasn't discrimination. There was a different sense of urgency in each person. You could argue that money is more important for men.”

You could win the argument that Glenn Grothman has his head up his ass.

His latest bit of ridiculosity occurred when he proposed rolling back a Wisconsin law that required employers to give workers at least one day of rest per week; he called the existing law "a little goofy":

"Right now in Wisconsin, you're not supposed to work seven days in a row, which is a little ridiculous because all sorts of people want to work seven days a week."

Except Congressmen, who worked just 133 days in 2014. I guess Grothman just means regular folks need to work seven days a week.

Glenn Grothman, perhaps — well, not perhaps, but truly — the dumbest human being on the planet … even edging out the Mama Grizzly Bore™ since she’s less involved with politics these days and more involved with street brawls.

via MotherJones

Things Stupid People Say, Part 1: The Benham Twins: We’re Like ISIS Victims

David and Jason Benham are a couple of mildly attractive contractors, or house flippers, or do-it-yourselfers, who managed to attract the attention of HGTV over the summer. And when the network offered them a TV show, they leapt at the chance to share their expertise with America. Trouble was, they are also experts in the art of homophobia, bigotry, intolerance, and basic rightwing nuttery, and when word got out about all of the anti-gay, anti-women, anti-Muslim things they’ve said over the years, HGTV said, Um, no thanks and quickly canned the show before I ever aired.

Since then the Benham twins have become darlings of the Asshat Set, by basically whining about how they’ve been denied a chance to be HGTV hotties because of their religious beliefs. Not so much, boys; you were denied the chance to be on TV because of your hate speech about The Gays.

Get it queer, dears.

But they haven’t and they won’t and their latest foray into Crazy Talk occurred when they spoke at the Hate Summit, er, the Values Voter Summit, and compared themselves to victims of the terrorist group ISIS.

Oh, but they did.

Jason Benham, who seems to be the bigger, crazier, more asshatted twin, first announced that he and his brother are like Jesus Christ himself, and then David took over with this line, a direct quote out of the mouths of wingnuts:

“There is a radical agenda that has come in our nation. The weapon of choice for the agenda in the Middle East is a sword, but the weapon of choice for the agenda in America is silence. They demand silence.”

Yup, innocent people finding themselves captured by ISIS and then beheaded on live TV are the exact same thing as two delusional rightwingnutted, asshatted loons having their TV show taken away from them.

Out of the mouths of morons ….

via LGBTQ Nation

Have You Heard? If You Don't Swear To 'God' You Can't Join The Air Force

I never wanted to join the military, even though I come from a military family. My father served twenty-plus years in the Air Force and even my sister enlisted. But I never had the inkling to join up, probably because I am staunchly anti-gun, anti-violence, anti-war; yeah, maybe that had something to do with it. But I am grateful for the men and women who do join up, in any branch of the military, and I respect and value their service, and their desire to serve.

Sadly, though, the Air Force doesn’t seem so keen on some enlistees, especially someone who wants to reenlist. At a time when the Air Force, and any branch of service, should be holding the door open to anyone who wants to serve, and is capable of serving, they have decided not to allow one man to reenlist because he crossed out the words "so help me God" at the end of the Air Force oath of allegiance.

His attorney, Monica Miller, with the Apignani Humanist Legal Center, says her client was informed the Air Force would not accept his reenlistment contract because he had crossed out the ‘God’ and that he had just two options: say the oath as written, or leave the Air Force.

In a letter to the inspectors general of the Air Force, Miller said the airman should be allowed to reenlist under a secular oath, and not have to swear to ‘God’ and added that the airman is set to sue the Air Force if he is not allowed to reenlist.

What’s odd is that, up until last October, you were allowed to omit the words ‘so help me God’ from the oath, but for some reason the rules were changed and now this man, who has served his country already, and wants to continue his service, won’t be allowed to because, well, God.

An Air Force spokeswoman confirmed the new policy:

"Reciting ‘So help me God’ in the reenlistment and commissioning oaths is a statutory requirement under Title 10 USC 502. (AFI 36-2606) is consistent with the language mandated in 10 USC 502. Paragraph 5.6 [and] was changed in October 2013 to reflect the aforementioned statutory requirement and airmen are no longer authorized to omit the words ‘So help me God'.”

Basically, the Air Force cannot change its instructions to make “so help me God” optional unless Congress — oh lordy, now the Do-Nothing-Congress is involved — changes the law requiring it. Never mind the fact that to an airman, an atheist airman, swearing to God would be a lie, and never mind that, according to Miller, Article VI of the Constitution prohibits religious tests, and therefore In fact, in the trumps the Air Force Instruction. In fact, in the 1961 case Torcaso v. Watkins, the Supreme Court ruled that “neither a State nor the Federal Government can constitutionally force a person ‘to profess a belief or disbelief in any religion.’”

You know, that whole Freedom of Religion thing we thought we had going on in this country.

As I was saying, I never wanted to be part of the military, and yet here we have someone who has served, and wants to continue serving, but will not be allowed to reenlist because he refuses to swear to God.

This is really getting ridiculous, y’all.

source

Only In South Carolina ...

Last week I told y’all about the woman arrested in a South Carolina grocery store for dropping an F-bomb in the bread aisle, but this story makes that one seem almost sane.

On the first day of school in Summerville, South Carolina, Tuesday, Alex Stone completed a writing assignment on making fake Facebook status updates. Stone wrote about buying a gun and killing his neighbor's pet dinosaur.

Fake. He said:

"I killed my neighbor's pet dinosaur, and, then, in the next status I said I bought the gun to take care of the business."

Fake; but Sumerville High School officials were so concerned about him using a gun in a fake status update on a fake Facebook page that they immediately called police, who came sirens blaring, tracked down Alex, handcuffed him and arrested him.

A search of his backpack and locker was pointless; the fake gun wasn’t found. Still Alex Stone, who was doing what he was assigned to do — create a fake status for a Facebook page — was arrested for disorderly conduct for arguing with the police.

Karen Gray, Alex’s mother, was also stunned by the arrest:

"I could understand if they made him re-write it because he did have 'gun' in it. But a pet dinosaur? I mean, first of all, we don't have dinosaurs anymore. Second of all, he's not even old enough to buy a gun. … If the school would have called me and told me about the paper and asked me to come down and discussed everything and, at least, get his point-of-view on the way he meant it. I never heard from the school, never. They never called me."

Now, I understand a Zero Tolerance policy on guns in school but Alex Stone never said he had a gun in school; he wrote a fake status update saying he used a gun to kill a neighbor’s pet dinosaur and BAM arrested. Investigators say the teacher who assigned the writing exercise contacted school officials after seeing the message containing the words "gun" and "take care of business" and they notified the police.

Alex Stone was suspended for the rest of the week, but says he doesn't want to return to Summerville High; he now wants to be home-schooled.

Where, presumably, he can write a fictional account of dinosaurs and not be handcuffed for it.

source

Whaddya You !@#*% Mean You Can't Swear In Mother@#!&*% South $#*@ Carolina?

Last week Danielle Wolf was at her local North Augusta, South Carolina Kroger store when she was overheard telling her own children to, ahem, “Stop squishing the f**king bread.”

And she was arrested for it. Hands cuffed behind her back, and taken out to a patrol car and placed in the “rear caged area” for dropping an F-bomb in the bread aisle.

Danielle Wolf denies that she was speaking to her children, and said she was talking to her husband instead but, under a local city ordinance, a person commits “disorderly conduct” when they “[u]tter, while in a state of anger, in the presence of another, any bawdy, lewd or obscene words or epithets.”

Man. If that was the law at my local Kroger I’d probably be on Death Row by now for foul language in a food store.

Some folks are arguing that Danielle Wolf’s arrest is unconstitutional because in 1971, in the case of Cohen v. California, the Supreme Court stated that “the State has no right to cleanse public debate to the point where it is grammatically palatable to the most squeamish among us.”

Unconstitutional, sure; stupid, definitely.

Still, I might start checking myself while squeezing melons at the grocery store this week because, well, South Carolina … 

via Think Progress