Liars and monsters

zappaquote

Robert Lewis Dear, the asshole who shot up a Colorado Planned Parenthood clinic and murdered three people, has been flapping his wretched yap again. He’s been talking about how much he admired that other asshole, Paul Hill, who murdered an abortion doctor, and he’s been saying that he was hoping to be welcomed into heaven by a swarm of grateful aborted fetuses. And of course he was influenced by those phony videos from the “Center for Medical Progress” made by sick fuck David Daleiden.

The National Abortion Federation released a report last week documenting what should come as no surprise to anyone: that anti-abortion harassment, threats, intimidation and violence have spiked dramatically since July 2015 when the Center for Medical Progress began releasing deceptively edited videos aimed at discrediting Planned Parenthood’s fetal tissue donation practices.

Despite the Center for Medical Progress’ videos having been widely discredited, and the indictment of its leader, the group continues to release videos — which federal and state politicians are using to justify invasive government investigations into abortion clinics and further abortion restrictions. This one-two punch of anti-abortion activity almost guarantees that the increased violence against abortion providers NAF documented in 2015 will continue into 2016 and beyond.

Now if you want further evidence of the hypocrisy of the Republican vermin who hate Planned Parenthood, look no further than these telling laws. Samantha Bee has noticed something strange: did you know that food stamps can’t be used to purchase disposable diapers? It’s not just punishing babies (you know, those critters they don’t want aborted, and that will be greeting Robert Dear in heaven by shitting all over his shoes), but it’s also a clever way to shackle parents, especially mothers, to their homes and making it impossible for them to find jobs.

How can you be adamant that all babies must be born, yet so callous and uncaring that you deny their mothers basic supplies for hygiene? If the Republicans were actually sincere about caring for children, you’d think they be all over bills to allow poor people to use their food stamps on something as unglamorous and useful as diapers.

After all, it’s not as if they’d be using them to buy red potatoes or spaghetti sauce.

That’s the other thing: the scum of the Republican party in Wisconsin, which is fast becoming a desolate hellhole of smug selfish bastards under Scott Walker, is now trying to pass a bill to control what things poor people are allowed to buy with their food stamps. Why? I don’t know, except that being Republican means you are compelled to meddle in the lives of others to make them more miserable. It’s a kind of psychopathy, I think.

The governor of Florida creates an attack ad…against a constituent?

I had no idea Cara Jennings was running against Governor Scott, or was so powerful and influential that she must be crushed, but I guess she is. Or maybe that public rebuke in a coffee shop was so painful that he had to relieve himself of some bile.

Here’s Rick Scott’s reply to a citizen:

I learned one thing from that ad.

Rick Scott is weak and afraid.

Good.

What I would say to Bernie and Hillary, if they cared about my opinion

amicabledivorce

Remember the long game.

In a few months, the Democratic party will hold a convention and pick a nominee. It will be one of you. Go ahead, imagine that it’s you.

You are then going to turn to the second place finisher and ask them to continue their campaigning and help you defeat the abomination that is going to lurch out of the Republican convention. You want them to agree to do so. Put everything you say now into that future context, please.

I say the same thing to all the Bernie and Hillary supporters.

I would also say something special to Bill: your wife is doing a fine job without you. Stop “helping”.

“Biggest leak in the history of data journalism just went live, and it’s about corruption.”

It’s too much. The sheer volume of the Panama Papers may make its message indigestible — 2.6 terabytes of data? Of accounting data? It’s not exactly the kind of thing I’m going to crack open to read before bedtime.

But this summary of the initial disclosures is helpful.

* Twelve national leaders are among 143 politicians, their families and close associates from around the world known to have been using offshore tax havens.

* A $2bn trail leads all the way to Vladimir Putin. The Russian president’s best friend – a cellist called Sergei Roldugin – is at the centre of a scheme in which money from Russian state banks is hidden offshore. Some of it ends up in a ski resort where in 2013 Putin’s daughter Katerina got married.

* Among national leaders with offshore wealth are Nawaz Sharif, Pakistan’s prime minister; Ayad Allawi, ex-interim prime minister and former vice-president of Iraq; Petro Poroshenko, president of Ukraine; Alaa Mubarak, son of Egypt’s former president; and the prime minister of Iceland, Sigmundur Davíð Gunnlaugsson.

* Six members of the House of Lords, three former Conservative MPs and dozens of donors to UK political parties have had offshore assets. The families of at least eight current and former members of China’s supreme ruling body, the politburo, have been found to have hidden wealth offshore.

* Twenty-three individuals who have had sanctions imposed on them for supporting the regimes in North Korea, Zimbabwe, Russia, Iran and Syria have been clients of Mossack Fonseca. Their companies were harboured by the Seychelles, the British Virgin Islands, Panama and other jurisdictions.

* A key member of Fifa’s powerful ethics committee, which is supposed to be spearheading reform at world football’s scandal-hit governing body, acted as a lawyer for individuals and companies recently charged with bribery and corruption.

That’s just the early disclosures as people start wading through it all. There are rumors that some Americans are going to be implicated in the corruption, too…just give them time.

Another factor that may make this fizzle, besides the overwhelming volume, is that nobody is going to be surprised by any of it. Are any of you at all surprised that rich and influential people of the world are also sleazy, rotten, tax cheats?

Hypocrisy to the fourth power

Jud McMillin has resigned from his position as a Republican representative in the Indiana legislature. I know this bothers you — another promising political career cut short — but the hypocrisy of this one is positively enthralling. Rarely does a politician engage in such furious foot-shooting.

  • He’s resigning because he sent explicit sex videos recorded on his cell phone to a large number of people. Oh, excuse me, his cell phone was stolen and “his cellphone sent a sexually explicit video to an unknown number of recipients”. This is what the passive voice was intended for by the good Lord Above, people!

  • This is the second time he’s resigned because of the escape of sexually explicit images of himself from his phone (AI researchers: look into this. It may be a sentient device). He previously resigned from his job as an attorney because he’d been taking advantage of a client who was a victim of domestic violence. How did he get elected to high office after that? I don’t know. Indiana?

  • A highlight of his legislative record was working to pass a “2015 “religious freedom” law allowing businesses to ban gay customers”. Because, of course, he’s very concerned about public and private morality, since God frowns upon men who touch penises, except of course, when that man is making a masturbation video to send to his mistress. Oh, wait, I just got kneemail from Jesus, and he says Dad disapproves of that, too.

  • I think this one should count as irony, rather than hypocrisy: he also helped stall a bill to outlaw revenge porn, so any Hoosiers who have copies of his porn video, there’s nothing but your conscience to prevent you from disseminating it wildly. And if you’re the kind of person McMillin counts as a friend, there’s a good chance you don’t have one of those!

But don’t you worry about Jud, he has announced that he is resigning to spend more time with his family. You all know about Republican families, right? The family is a versatile institution that both provides an excuse to sanctimoniously moralize at the public, and acts as a perfect, untouchable refuge when you’re caught violating your own moral code.

I tried to read Orrin Hatch’s defense of Republican obstructionism

I really did. I got as far as the first sentence: Justice Antonin Scalia was among the greatest jurists in our nation’s history, and decided that the flavor of that bullshit was going to be just a little too rank. So I skipped to the last paragraph, read Considering a nominee in the midst of a toxic presidential election would be irresponsible, and realized that I have become wise in my years in skipping all the crap in between. What’s making this election toxic, I wondered? Has Hatch looked at his fellow party members?

Fortunately, a historian examined Hatch’s rationalizations for me. Reeking ordure confirmed, and that mysterious scent stinking up the joint? That’s cowardice.

If Hatch and his fellow Republicans want to vote against Judge Garland, they have every right to do so. But they should stop being cowards. They should make a substantive argument against him. vote against him, and accept the political consequences of that vote. They should stop pretending that this reckless path they have chosen is anything but a desperate attempt to hold onto a Supreme Court majority.

Dishonest, cowardly, and contemptible. That’s our Republican party!

Could I ever vote for a Blue Dog? Maybe.

collinpeterson

I have never voted for my representative, Collin Peterson.

Peterson is a co-founder of the Blue Dog Coalition, the caucus of moderate House Democrats, and is known for his conservatism. He’s anti-abortion, opposed to embryonic stem cell research, against same-sex marriage and supports the death penalty. He is also avidly anti-gun control.

I can’t stand the guy. Look at that list: he opposes everything I favor. So every time I’ve had to go into the voting booth, I look at his name, and his opponent (who is always something worse), and I just leave it blank. I’m not voting for him or a Republican.

But I might have to change my habits, hold my nose, and punch that ballot in the future. Not only is Peterson endorsing Bernie Sanders, but the Republicans are getting increasingly vile.

Chad Hartman: I would say this sir, I think you are genuine in what you want [but] I don’t think a lot of these people want the help you are offering. I would say this you have talked about the issue of sexuality and have caused plenty of criticism. I just want to ask you if you still stand by what you said a few years ago that homosexuality is unhealthy sexual addiction. Do you still stand by that?
Rep. Glenn Gruenhagen: Yes I do, and I know — I have friends who are homosexual, and I have friends who are former homosexuals, okay? So it is uh — you know the CDC — the Centers for Disease Control — which is not a right-wing organization, I think we can all agree on that — recently came out with the report that we have between 65 and 100 million Americans that have an STD. 65 to 100 million. We’re approaching one third of our population has an STD.
Hartman: Many heterosexuals obviously…
Gruenhagen: This whole concept of promiscuity outside the bond of marriage is not working out real well, and people say, “Well, that’s a social issue.” Do you understand the billions and billions of dollars in health care costs those diseases brings?
Hartman: You are telling the millions of people in this country who are homosexual — and the rest of their lives are no different than me or yours — but that the reason they have described themselves as homosexual is because they have an unhealthy sexual addiction?
Gruenhagen: Yeah you can go on the internet and there’s treatment for sexual addictions right here in Minnesota, whether it’s pornography or unhealthy sexual behavior. You can receive treatment for that and be free from those compulsions.

OMG. The Republicans are making Collin Peterson look liberal! And compelling me to <choke> compromise!