Firefighters Fight Cancer And The System

-by Tracy B Ann

I am the daughter of a fireman. When I was a kid my dad worked 24 hour shifts. Work a day, off a day, work a day, off three days. Except my dad wasn't home when he was off. No fireman then, or firefighter now, could support a family on the wages they are paid, they all work second jobs.

They run into burning buildings for a living, to save our lives and our property and they get paid shit for doing so. They willingly put their health and lives in danger for US and they get very little thanks in return.

My father was hospitalized for smoke inhalation on several occasions that I know of. Like most firefighters, he just did his job, didn't think he was being heroic, he just did what the job called for. He did it with a sense of humour too. I remember overhearing him talk about a fire in a girls dorm at a local college. He said that as he kicked open the door of a smoke filled room with half dressed, freaked out college women inside, he yelled "Cover your eyes if you're naked, we're coming in."

Later in his career, my dad worked often in elementary schools with young kids; getting them used to seeing a firefighter in full gear. That was to keep them from freaking out thinking Darth Vader had come to get them so that they would come out from under the bed in a fire to be rescued. He appeared on kids TV shows doing the same thing.

My dad was also a union rep, fighting to get the best benefits and pay he could for his fellow fire fighters. My dad didn't live as long as some other members of his family did, not as long as I would have thought, genetically speaking. He died in poor health, also unusual for my family. His mother lived to be 98 and in her own home for all but the last 6 months of her life.

I don't know what he would say about the way firefighters are being treated today but I know that he wouldn't be happy about it at all. I think he would really like Herb Jones, the guy who is running for Virginia's 3rd State Senate District, against Tommy Norment, the Senate Majority Leader. Herb says this about firefighters:

There is presumptive cancer legislation in the code of Virginia, however, cancer is NOT a occupational hazard covered by Workers Compensation. The code requires the firefighter to identify the incident and the hazard that led to the cancer diagnosis. It’s a ridiculous burden of proof. The Republican leadership has played games with this for the past 15 years. One year it will pass in the house, but fail in the senate; the ensuing year, it will pass in the senate but fail in the house

They have to "identify the incident and the hazard that led to the cancer diagnosis" Wtf?!? You can check state by state here, but most states coverage for cancer sucks for firefighters. Though, I have to say, without knowing details, the updated version of Oklahoma's coverage looks good; "existence of any cancer that was not revealed by the physical examination passed by the member upon entry into the department." (Was that coverage enacted after the bombing?)

Firefighters have a higher incidence of cancer than the general population. A 2013 NIOSH study showed that firefighters have a 14% increased risk of dying from cancer, even when using full protective gear. They are exposed to all kinds of hazardous materials that release carcinogens when burned.




My father was most active in the fire department in the 1950's, '60's and '70's. I don't know what kinds of burning chemicals he encountered, but I do know that the house I live in today, built in 1957, most assuredly has lead paint under all those layers and I know for a fact that my kitchen floor is asbestos. When I had a new one put in, they wouldn't take the old one out, a hazmat team is needed for that; yet firefighters are expected to run into what will be a toxic dump if my house catches on fire.

This isn't a problem exclusive to any one state, it's a national problem. In Virginia, Herb Jones says "the only way firefighters and their families will be protected is by a change in the General Assembly and specifically in the leadership." I want to help Herb Jones get elected in Virginia and then I want to help Democrats get elected everywhere. Democrats govern with care because it works better. It will work better for firefighters, and my father, a lifelong Democrat, would for sure like that.

The Whole Jon Stewart Thing

-by Valley Girl

Above is Jon Stewart’s statement to a subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee on Tuesday June 11th. Rep Steve Cohen (D-TN), a member of the subcommittee the Constitution, civil rights and civil liberties explained to Stewart that "All these empty chairs, that's because [the room] is for the full committee. It's not because of disrespect or lack of attention to you." Still, most of the Republicans on the subcommittee stayed away from the hearing. On Wednesday the full committee passed the 9/11 legislation. Now it goes to the floor of the House for a final vote.

I sent this YouTube to Howie, saying that it was powerful. I chose the one from USA Today (~2,000 views) rather than the one from CNN (over 2 million views) because it shows Nadler’s reaction at the end. Plus, the camera doesn’t stray from Jon Stewart himself.

USA Today’s title for the youtube is "Jon Stewart shames Congress over 9/11 first responders fund | USA TODAY."

Howie asked me to write a post explaining why Jon Stewart’s words had such a powerful effect on me.

That, I can't rationally explain. After all, I am an INFJ/P. I’ll try nonetheless.

It was painful for me to watch because of the terrible fate of 9-11 first responders. Cancer, more cancer, their medical problems being dismissed. The first time I watched it, I had to pause the video a few times because I found it emotionally overwhelming.

And on later watching, Jon Stewart’s powerful repetition of "5 seconds," "5 seconds" for the 9-11 first responders to answer their call of duty. As compared with the House’s time taken to answer their call of duty.

Stewart also tapped into something that resonates with me, and surely must resonate with many others.

At the very beginning Stewart mentions "healthcare and benefits."

4:25 There is not a person here, there is not an empty chair on that stage that didn't tweet out "Never forget the heros of 9-11 ..."

6:18 ....setting aside that no American in this country should face financial ruin because of a health issue .. certainly 9-11 responders shouldn't have to decide whether to live or have a place to live.

I searched online to find a transcript of Stewart's statement, alas without success. So, I typed the above, listening to Jon Stewart.

But in a lesser way Jon Stewart’s words tapped into own frustration and anger about the failure of Congress to start impeachment hearings. They have failed the 9-11 first responders. Why should they give a flying f*ck about failing their Constitutional Oath?

Polls Are Delivering A Clear Message To Democratic Primary Voters-- Nominating Hillary Puts America At Too Big A Risk

Yesterday, Democratic primary voters in another state swung heavily for Bernie and against the conservative candidate of the status quo and of the Wall Street/K Street axis of plutocracy. Bernie beat her in West Virginia 51.4-36.0%, and winning every single county in the state, although she did OK in the two counties that are considered DC suburbs, Jefferson and Berekley. The evening before, Monday, everyone had been entertained when PPP released their latest polling data early and exclusively to Rachel Maddow and she led her show with a story about how both the generic band Nickelback (39-34%) and generic lice (54-28%) are more popular with the American people than Donald Trump is. Trump's overall unfavorables are mind-boggling-- 34-61%. In fact, by a margin of 47-40% voters like used car salesmen better than Trump and they prefer root canal surgery to Trump by a margin of 49-38%. But as crazy and prone to believing half-baked, crackpot conspiracy theories as Trump fans are, only 7% think Ted Cruz's father was involved in assassinating JFK and only 5% of Trump's ignorant mob think Cruz is the Zodiac killer. (65% do think Obama is a Muslim, 59% think President Obama was born in another country and 24% think Antonin Scalia was murdered.)

The news, however, wasn't all wonderful for the Democrats. A picture is emerging-- from Monday night's PPP poll and Tuesday morning's swing state Quinnipiac polling, that low-info Democratic primary voters backing Hillary are risking a November Trump victory unnecessarily. Confirming every poll measuring this in the last year, Bernie-- because of his popularity with voters under 30 and with independent voters-- is a far safer choice than Hillary in November against Trump. Quninnipiac measured voter sentiments in 3 big swing states: Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania. Hillary narrowly leads Trump in Florida and Pennsylvania and Trump is already ahead of Hillary in Ohio. But Bernie is ahead of Trump in all three states and in each case has bigger support than Clinton.

• Florida

Clinton leads Trump 43-42%
Bernie leads Trump 44-42%

• Ohio

Trump leads Clinton 43-39%
Bernie leads Trump 43-41%

• Pennsylvania

Clinton leads Trump 43-42%
Bernie leads Trump 47-41%

How many Democratic primary voters have you heard say, "Well, of course Bernie is a million times better than Hillary but she has what it takes to beat Trump and he doesn't?" That a line that was planted early in the corporate media, repeated endlessly, bolstered by Clinton's million dollar social media effort and embedded into the minds of low-info Democrats who aren't following the election cycle too seriously yet. But it is counterfactual. Although Democrats love Hillary and are mostly eager to support her-- as are a tiny and electorally insignificant handful of conservative Republicans turned off by Trump-- the gigantic bloc of Independent voters do not like her or trust her and don't want to vote for her, but do like and trust Bernie and do want to vote for him. In fact, PPP found that undecideds in the Clinton/Trump match-up go by a decisive 41-8% margin for Bernie in a Bernie/Trump match-up. It's noteworthy that PPP, which has a marked Clinton bias, also points out that the difference between Clinton and Bernie against Trump is mammoth among the most independent-minded group of voters, those between the ages of 18 and 30. Clinton beats Trump by a very healthy 49-27% among these millennial voters. But Bernie makes Trump a non-factor and beats him by an unheard of margin-- 70 to 14%.

As Qunnipiac's Peter Brown made clear, "Six months from Election Day, the presidential races between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump in the three most crucial states, Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania, are too close to call... The gender gap is massive and currently benefits Trump. In Pennsylvania, Clinton's 19-point lead among women matches Trump's 21-point margin among men. In Ohio, she is up 7 points among women but down 15 points with men. In Florida she is up 13 points among women but down 13 points among men."

Quinnipiac shows that Trump and Clinton are underwater in terms of favorability in each of the swing states and Bernie has greater favorables than unfavorables in each state. For example, in Pennsylvania, Trump has a favorable rating from 39% of voters and an unfavorable rating from 55%. Hillary is even more disliked. Her favorable rating is 37% and her unfavorable rating is 58%. Bernie has favorables from 50% of Pennsylvania voters and unfavorables from just 36%. The picture is the same in Florida and Ohio: Clinton and Trump disliked by voters while voters like Bernie.

PPP emphasized that, despite the nay-sayers all over cable news, Republican voters "have quickly unified around Donald Trump, making the Presidential race more competitive than it has previously been perceived to be, with Hillary ahead 42-38% [nationally]... Clinton leads Trump 78-9 among Democrats... while Trump leads Clinton 78-7 among Republicans. Although much has been made of disunity in the GOP, it is actually just as unified behind Trump as the Democrats are behind Clinton. 72% of Republicans now say they're comfortable with Trump as their nominee to only 21% who they aren't. Those numbers are little different from the ones among Democrats that find 75% of them would be comfortable with Clinton as their nominee to 21% who say they would not be. Bernie Sanders continues to do the best in general election match ups, leading Trump 47-37 with Johnson at 3% and Stein at 1% in the full field, and leading Trump 50-39 head to head."


Did you watch Jon Stewart's take on Hillary's grotesque and horrifyingly unattractive inauthenticity? AND... do you want to help save the country from what could be a truly disastrous, and possibly existential, Trumpist takeover?

No more "Daily Show with Jon Stewart"? Guess I'll have to get my debate coverage from "The Borowitz Report"

Plus: I advance my latest theory as to why all
these Republicans are "running for president"



"[Jon] Stewart leaves behind a legacy of having raised the bar for political discourse — to jostle folks as they laugh at political folly, to remind people of the real-world consequences embedded in those punchlines, to demand that, amidst all late-night shucking-and-jiving, people in power should be held accountable for the state of our nation."

-- Rolling Stone's Matthew Love, in "How Jon Stewart
Changed the Way We Talk About Politics on TV"

by Ken

The deck on the above-referenced Matthew Love Rolling Stone piece is: "The Daily Show host leaves behind a legacy of small-screen satire that screamed truth to power." I like that.

I really meant at least to set the DVR to record Jon's last Daily Show last night, but I forgot. I expect I can still catch a repeat, or see it via On Demand, but the truth is, I haven't watched the show regularly, or maybe even it all, in ages. I've just got too much politics bombarding me from all directions which I can't escape. I can't, as a matter of free will, take on more.

That said, I can't say enough about the job Jon has done all these years, dating back to the darkest years of the Bush Regime, and I can't say enough how much he'll be missed -- even by those of us who haven't actually been watching all that time. Because everyone always knew he was there, standing ready to offer his take on developments, almost always cutting through the you-know-what to reach a layer of sense. And even those of us who weren't actually watching would read the quotes or see the clips.

The most obvious consolation is the number of Daily Show alumni who have infiltrated the media, where spaces have actually been created for some of them, as Comedy Central did for Stephen Colbert and HBO has done for John Oliver. Even I'll be watching, at least at the start, to see what CBS's Late Show with Stephen Colbert turns out to be, and Last Week Tonight with John Oliver continues to live up to the promise of what I called "maybe the best promo I've ever seen for anything." (Probably we should also include Comedy Central's Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore.)

Luckily, Howie was plugged into the first 2016 GOP presidential debate, so I don't have to feel guilty about taking my customary pass. The idea of sitting down, as an act of free will, to watch those people congregate in any space other than the group-session room of an appropriate mental-health facility fills me with what is known clinically as the heebie-jeebies. And just to be clear, no amount of guilt would prompt me to tune into such a broadcast. I can't offhand imagine what might, short of paying me or holding a gun to my head.

Luckily too, there are other sources to provide coverage of a kind appropriate to an event of this sort. Like these scoops from The Borowitz Report.

CLEVELAND (The Borowitz Report)—The billionaire Donald Trump shocked the American people Thursday night by proving to be considerably more heinous than they had previously thought, an instant poll taken after the debate shows.

According to the poll, viewers who went into tonight’s debate thinking that Trump was one of the most horrible people that they had ever seen were still totally unprepared for the depths of awfulness he displayed during the televised contest.

When presented with the descriptors “loathsome,” “appalling,” and “monstrous,” viewers who witnessed Trump’s interaction with Fox News’s Megyn Kelly said that none of those words did justice to how odious Trump was.

Partially as a result of his debate performance, the poll shows, Trump is now the first choice of seventy per cent of Republican voters.

CLEVELAND ( The Borowitz Report) -- Based on his performance in Thursday night's debate, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker has emerged as a leading candidate to manage an Enterprise Rent-A-Car branch, Enterprise has confirmed.

Tracy Klugian, a human-resources director for the rental-car giant, said that he did not know what to expect before the debate, but after watching Walker in action he felt confident that the Wisconsinite had “what it takes to succeed at Enterprise.”

“He didn’t get too many moments in the spotlight, but, just from what I saw, I would feel comfortable putting him behind one of our rental counters,” he said.

He indicated that the company would be contacting Walker in the days ahead to discuss a possible future with Enterprise.

“Just to be clear, no promises will be made,” he said. “Best-case scenario, Scott works hard and becomes the manager of one of our branches. For starters, we’d like to train him to be an assistant manager and see how he does with that.”

Enterprise’s faith in Walker appears to be echoed by a new poll, which shows that thirty-one per cent of voters believe he is qualified to assistant-manage a rental-car branch.

MY LATEST THEORY AS TO WHY ALL OF THESE
GOP-ERS ARE (WINK) "RUNNING FOR PRESIDENT"

The Presidential Candidates' Hospitality Suite at
the 2016 GOP National Convention in Cleveland?

As you know, I've been losing sleep over the question why all these people who have no chance of winning, or perhaps even being noticed, are choosing to join the GOP presidential fray. I've finally come up with a theory, and while I haven't yet gone to the length of rigging up fake videos to support it, I'm going to stick with it until I either think up a better one or get tired of this one.

My current theory is that the perk that's driving all these people to join the fray is that during the GOP nominating convention in Cleveland, there will be a maximum-secret hospitality suite specially set up for drinks, drugs, and sex, where only former GOP presidential candidates and their designated guests will be eligible to while away the hours, including -- perhaps especially -- during peak podium, er, activities. This means that they'll be able to carouse in maximum secret, the way right-wingers always prefer to do their drinking and drugging and sexing.

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As the Supreme thug-justices issue desperate cries for mental-health help, could they take advantage of provisions of the ACA?

Plus: "Scalia Is a Douche" is a brunch hit in Philly


Watch poor Cartoon Justice Nino having his "terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day" at 4:19 of the Daily Show clip below.

by Ken

It's a sweet conceit on the part of the Daily Show animation team to imagine that the Supreme Court's own Big Rat Bastard Justice merely had a "terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day," when what he has really had -- as Jon Stewart suggests in the piece proper, is that he has had a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad career.



In my coverage last week of this term's marquis Supreme Court decisions -- the affirmation of Obamacare subsidies announced Thursday and the constitutionally guaranteed right to marriage equality announced Friday -- I mostly ignored the assorted dissenting opinions, for the obvious reason that they were, you know, dissenting opinions, which is to say not the Court's rulings. Howie fortunately devoted a good deal more attention to the opposition, on and off the Court. I say "fortunately" because this matters.

In the case of the ACA subsidies and the justices, it matters because three of them announced that they simply can't read, and by virtue of that admission should be encouraged at the very least to resign from the Court on the grounds that they lack the necessary basic skills for the job. I suppose we could write it off by saying that it was "only" three justices who were unable or unwilling to grasp the simplest, most fundamental facts about the non-case, which had no justification except an ideological hit job commissioned from right-wing ideological lawyerly hit men. But is it really much consolation that "only" three justices have no shame about being either raving imbeciles or principle-free ideological hooligans?

Far worse, of course, was the dreadful cue provided to the nation by the outpouring of not just imbecility but savagery and outright insanity on display from the complement of four thug-justices, with Chief Justice "Smirkin' John" Roberts back on his accustomed team. They screeched like demented beasts in four deranged dissenting opinions assailing the majority opinion on marriage equality written by usual thug-justice cohort "Slow Anthony" Kennedy, which was joined by the Court's four moderate justices. After that display, it's hard to understand how any of these creatures is allowed to roam free in the streets without at least being tested to make sure that whatever afflicts them isn't contagious.

And here we come up, as we frequently do when dealing with the Modern American Right, against the problem common to the stupid and the insane -- that their condition generally renders them incapable of grasping their condition. Not only were the Crackpot Four incapable of recognizing the terrifying extremity of their raving; they failed to notice the chasm that lies between their bizarro, bonkers response and the endless succession of sane, principled dissents filed by the Court's moderates while the thugs have routinely shredded the Constitution, the law, and basic human decency. Yes, occasionally the moderates offer a flash of anger, but far more occasionally than the scope and depth of the provocations they face would prompt. And even then they manage to be respectful -- of unreasoning beasts who might most generously heard to be screaming for mental-health intervention.sda


MEANWHILE IN PHILADELPHIA, "ANTONIN SCALIA
IS A DOUCHE" IS A HIT AS A BREAKFAST SPECAL

[Click to enlarge.]

As HuffPost's d3clark put it, "Antonin Scalia is toast - literally and figuratively"). Even if you're a habitué of Sam's Morning Glory Diner on S. 10th St. in the South Philly neighborhood of Bella Vista ("Everything we serve is mindfully made from scratch with the freshest of ingredients"), you had to be a timely bruncher this weekend to catch the specials put on the menu by the diner's weekend-specials specialist, Sean Gaittens, with the enthusiastic approval of owner Carol Mickey: a pair of " 'The Supreme Court Finally Got It Right' Quiches" (one for meat-eaters, one for vegetarians) and an "Antonin Scalia Is A Douche Special" offered two ways, as an egg scramble or a frittata.

"The Supreme Court Finally Got It Right" Quiches
Your choice of two different quiches: one for the vegetarians among us and one for those who have chest hair. Meatie Quiche - A quiche with tomatoes, prosciutto (fresh from the Italian market!), spinach and brie cheese. Veggie Quiche - One with asparagus, onion, parsley, basil and oregano for some added flavoring and topped with smoked mozzarella - either one comes served with your choice of potatoes or a small house salad. 13/12

The Antonin Scalia Is A Douche Special Scrambled
A hefty portion of scrambled eggs mixed with andouille sausage, tomato, scallions and monetary [sic] jack cheese - comes served with potatoes or grits and a homemade buttermilk biscuit (toast can be subbed form .75 extra) 13

The Antonin Scalia Is A Douche Special Frittata
Same as above but served as a frittata. 14

According to BillyPenn.com's Danya Henninger:

Over the weekend, Sam’s Morning Glory Diner ran a pair of specials that sold out faster than any dish in the South Philly restaurant’s 17-year history. It wasn’t the ingredients that made them a hit — although they were reportedly delicious — it was their titles, which referenced the Supreme Court’s historic June 26 ruling that the right to same-sex marriage is guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution.

The “Antonin Scalia is a Douche” special brought eggs scrambled or in a frittata with andouille sausage, tomato, scallions and monterey jack cheese. There was enough sausage to make around 150 of the dish, and it was so popular on Saturday that it sold out by 10 AM on Sunday morning, within two hours of the doors opening.

“The Supreme Court Finally Got It Right” quiches — with tomatoes, prosciutto, spinach and brie or all veg with asparagus, onion and smoked mozz — sold out even more quickly.

Danya noted that Mickey’s husband asked later if she'd been afraid of offending anyone, and she said she hadn't -- "if someone was offended, she didn’t need them as a customer." The, and "is personally familiar with the issues marriage inequality can cause," told BillyPenn: "Not one single person complained. The atmosphere in here was really wonderful. People were just loving saying it! 'I'll have the Scalia Is a Douche, please.' "

HuffPost's d3clark suggests that the "breakfasts are much more easily digested than Scalia's opinions." They do sound mighty tasty. It's probably fortunate that Justice Nino wasn't among the diners. He could have eaten the entire supply single-gluttonously.




SPEAKING OF THE SUPREME COURT --

We still have to take account of the surprisingly large amount of Court business held in reserve for release following the two blockbuster decisions, lending them something of the quality of a "Supreme Court dump." Probably for this reason we should be scrutinizing this stuff more closely, even though the rulings don't seem ominous as one might fear, the obvious exception being the slapdown of the EPA, making one wonder if that agency, so high on the Right-Wing Hate List, is now in the thug-justices' crosshairs.

Well, there are also the announcemenst that the Court will be hearing a case involving mandatory dues collection for public-sector unions and will be revisiting the University of Texas's use of affirmative in admissions policy. There's the potential for much mischief here.

Maybe tomorrow.

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Did Jeb Bush Cede First Place Status To Scott Walker?

Scott Walker... baroque

The latest PPP survey of Republican voters shows a tightly clustered field of candidates without any clear favorite, although with Jeb Bush continuing to fade, Wisconsin's reactionary governor, Scott Walker, is now the front-runner.

• Scott Walker- 18%
• Marco Rubio- 13%
• Ben Cardin- 12%
• Mike Huckabee- 12%
• Jeb Bush- 11%
• Ted Cruz- 10%
• Rand Paul- 9%
• Chris Christie- 5%
• Rick Perry- 2%

Rubio, who many think will be Walker's running-mate, has momentum, as does Mike Huckabee. Bush and Cruz are losing momentum. Bush's disastrous week of flip-flops over Iraq will no doubt lose him even more support. Jon Stewart has helped turn, "knowing what we know now, would you have authorized the invasion?" into a disqualifying national joke:



And the other Republican candidates, particularly Rubio and Cruz, have been happy to jump in and kick sand in Bush's eyes. Welcome that party, Scott Walker! Walker:

Any president would have likely taken the same action Bush did with the information he had, even Hillary Clinton voted for it, but knowing what we know now, we should not have gone into Iraq. President Bush deserves enormous credit for ordering the surge, a courageous move that worked. Unfortunately, President Obama and Secretary Clinton hastily withdrew our troops, threw away the gains of the surge, and embarked on a broader policy of pivoting away from the Middle East and leading from behind that has created chaos in the region.

The Washington Post's resident right-wing propagandist, Jennifer Rubin, claims that "now a question mark looms over Jeb Bush." Behind-the-curtain Republican Party kingmakers-- the Kochs, Adelson, Rove, et al-- are all watching very closely.

Is this guy someone with sufficient political skill, verbal dexterity and aggressiveness to take it to opponents, specifically Clinton? Right now the answer is no. But-- one cannot repeat it too many times-- it is so very early in the race and so few voters are paying attention that most errors are correctable. It will be interesting to see whether the candidate who wanted to run a wholly positive campaign is now forced to show he can throw some punches. That, too, is what the GOP contenders are “all supposed” to be able to do.

...In the same week Bush was struggling, Walker logged travel time in Israel. Steadily over the past few months, he has been acquiring a reservoir of foreign policy expertise. The Israel trip is one more step in the process, providing needed detail and experiences he can then share with media and voters. ("As I was saying to Prime Minister Netanyahu...") Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) will have more granular detail on many foreign policy issues as he demonstrated in a sterling performance at the Council on Foreign Relations this week, but Walker is demonstrating enough understanding of the issues to pass the commander-in-chief test. More important, he will have the leadership card to play. Few will doubt he has steel in the spine and pugnaciousness. Both are needed to win the presidency and then to govern.

Walker also announces today the appointment of Andrew Bremberg, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s adviser on appointment, as policy director for the Our American Revival group. Politico reports, “Bremberg has been with McConnell since March of 2014 and acts as conduit between conservative groups and the Senate Republicans as they fill slots on bipartisan boards and commissions such as the National Labor Relations Board and Securities and Exchange Commission. He also was on Mitt Romney’s transition team in 2012, laying the groundwork for the repeal of Obamacare had the GOP nominee he won.” In conservative circles, he is widely respected for expertise on health care, having worked as a health-care expert at the MITRE Corporation, served in the George W. Bush administration in a variety of health-care posts and worked on strategy and specific policy proposals to repeal Obamacare for Romney’s transition team.

If Walker can combine his political skills and moxie with policy chops and a domestic and foreign policy agenda, he will be a formidable contender. With Bush’s troubles this week, Walker once again has the opportunity to present himself as a someone who can both win and govern.

And that is exactly what the Koch brothers want to see happen.

Well, Tom Brady still has his agent in his corner -- plus the Big Rat Bastard Gummer of NJ

It's hard to believe the Pulitzer people still haven't found a category to honor memorable writing like this.

by Ken

It's Dropping of the Other Shoe Week hereabouts. Yesterday I reported that now-former New York State Senate Majority Leader Dean "The Indicted (And My Boy Too)" Skelos, whose caucus was so solidly behind him in the belief that hell no, he didn't hafta step down, has in fact stepped down, because enough members of that caucus had paid brief visits to reality and discovered that reality was kind of killing them.

Today we report the aftermath of another development yesterday: the meting out of punishment by NFL Exec VP Troy Vincent to superstar QB Tom Brady and the New England Patriots in the Deflategate scandal, in the wake of the Wells Report commissioned by the league: a four-game suspension for Cheating and Lying Tom and a $1 million fine and loss of two draft picks for the Pats.

Well, Cheating and Lying Tom's agent, Don Yee, is hopping mad. He thinks the punishment meted out to his meal ticket boy is "ridiculous." Says Agent Don:

The discipline is ridiculous and has no legitimate basis. In my opinion, this outcome was pre-determined; there was no fairness in the Wells investigation whatsoever. There is no evidence that Tom directed footballs be set at pressures below the allowable limits.

No, actually, it looks like investigator Ted Wells did his darnedest to find out the truth, and was hardly helped by the fact that Agent Yee's client the Golden Boy lied his golden guts out. Here, for the record, is what Vincent wrote to Cheating and Lying Tom:

With respect to your particular involvement, the report established that there is substantial and credible evidence to conclude you were at least generally aware of the actions of the Patriots' employees involved in the deflation of the footballs and that it was unlikely that their actions were done without your knowledge. Moreover, the report documents your failure to cooperate fully and candidly with the investigation, including by refusing to produce any relevant electronic evidence (emails, texts, etc.), despite being offered extraordinary safeguards by the investigators to protect unrelated personal information, and by providing testimony that the report concludes was not plausible and contradicted by other evidence.

Your actions as set forth in the report clearly constitute conduct detrimental to the integrity of and public confidence in the game of professional football. The integrity of the game is of paramount importance to everyone in our league, and requires unshakable commitment to fairness and compliance with the playing rules. Each player, no matter how accomplished and otherwise respected, has an obligation to comply with the rules and must be held accountable for his actions when those rules are violated and the public's confidence in the game is called into question.

Poor Agent Don, sort of like those NYS Republican senators, is caught in a head-on collision with reality, and it almost brings a tear to one's eye to see him fighting back so manfully. Is this man earning his Brady Megabucks or what? I mean, if a feller can't trust his very own agent to make a jackass of hisself in his behalf, who can he trust to make a jackoff of hisself in his behalf?


OOH, IT'S THE BIG RAT BASTARD GUMMER OF NJ!

Well, in Cheating and Lying Tom's case, there's always the patron saint of cheaters and liars, the Big Rat Bastard Gummer of NJ, Kris Krispy. You know, the CEO the State of New Jersey Inc., and the managing general partner of the Gummint of NJ LLP. By great good luck the Krispyman happens also to be the patron saint of bullies, as Cheating and Lying Tom kind of emerges in those embarrassing e-mails with the locker-room stooges who handled the ball doctoring and switching for him.

The Big Rat Bastard thinks people are just jealous 'cause Tom has it all -- the gorgeous wife, the dimple, the whole enchilada. The Big Rat Bastard isn't jealous. Like any dedicated jock-sniffer, he's happy just to get a smile from the big guy -- plus maybe a chance to lick his toes, on account of he is after all a Really Important Person in his own right. Come on, he's a personal acquaintance of Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones! (Some would say he even made Jerry J a limited partner of the Gummint of NJ LLP.) Watch this KrispyKlip:



Okay, Tom cheated and Tom lied. But then, maybe this is why he's still the bee's knees to the Big Rat Bastard Gummer of NJ? And as a connoisseur of bullying, the Rat Bastard Gummer might appreciate that the locker-room stooges who performed Cheating and Lying Tom's dirty work have lost their jobs as a result, while Cheating and Lying Tom has come out, comparatively speaking, not badly at all with just that four-game suspension.


OKAY, HERE'S ANOTHER CLIP TO WATCH

The comedy here is less off-the-wall than in the previous one.

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Why Does The Media Think Aaron Schock's Duplicitous Life In The Closet Is Unmentionable?

Is there still anything to say about Aaron Schock on blogs like DWT which have been talking about his corruption for years and years? Now that TV news has been all over the Aaron Schock scandal, we might as well just walk away and leave it to them, right? Not so fast. Rachel Maddow's report Tuesday night on MSNBC (above) was, as one would expect, better than most of the mainstream media coverage. But like all of her journalistic colleagues, she seems to have left out a pretty key component-- the role of Aaron Schock's life in the closet and how that impacted what turned into a life of duplicity. Are we still too immature to eventually about the subject?

Hunter Walker, writing for Business Insider, asked Barney Frank about "the rumors" that Schock was gay. Schock's gay lifestyle is beyond rumor in DC-- something "everyone" in DC knows about, even if the folks back in Peoria don't. He's not deeply closeted the way Members who actually marry beards are-- like Patrick McHenry (R-NC), Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and Tom Cotton (R-AR). Years ago, when Schock was asked by a TV reporter why such a handsome catch like himself was still single, he smiled and said he just hadn't found the right gal yet. Apparently the gay bars he was hanging out at were the wrong places to be looking.

When former Massachusetts Democratic Rep. Barney Frank first learned that Rep. Aaron Schock (R-Illinois) was resigning, he assumed it was related to longstanding rumors about Schock's sexuality.

"He was outed or what?" Frank said when Business Insider asked for his thoughts on Tuesday afternoon shortly after news of Schock's resignation broke.

...When Frank was told Schock's resignation stemmed from questions over his use of campaign and taxpayer funds, he noted that the congressman was reported to have improperly accepted money to take a male companion on one of his foreign trips.

"Wasn't it [that] he took somebody with him?" Frank asked. "I thought he also traveled with one particular staffer."

Indeed, Schock's travel with a man (who was actually a non-staffer) was one of the things that fueled rumors about his sexuality. The various stories led the gay magazine "Out" to say in a story on Schock's resignation that he was "believed to be working in a glass closet on Capitol Hill."

Frank noted "there's been the rumor" about Schock.

"I don't know if it's true," Frank added.

Frank went on, however, to explain that Schock had no "right to privacy" because of his record on gay issues. Schock has what The Huffington Post has described as a "virulently anti-gay voting history," including votes against hate-crime legislation and the repeal of Don't Ask Don't Tell.

"I will say this, I don't know if he's gay or not," Frank said. "But if he is, he's forfeited any right to privacy because he votes anti-gay. My view is that people who are gay who vote to support the right of other people to do it have a right to privacy, but the right to privacy does not include hypocrisy."

Schock's office did not immediately respond to a request for comment about Frank's remarks.

...Frank also suggested that, if the rumors were true, Schock should definitely come out now that he is leaving Congress.

"Of course he should," said Frank, who concluded with a reference to Schock's muscular physique that is often displayed in shirtless photos on Schock's Instagram:

"Yeah, if they're true, and I don't know that they are. I have to say, if they're not true, he spent entirely too much time in the gym for a straight man."

This morning the Washington Post's Terrence McCoy skirted the subject a bit. "Schock’s choice of that vibrant color underscored his lifelong determination to go big and brash. According to a review of newspaper clippings going back to when he was a teenager in Peoria, Ill., Schock always pushed for more, more, more-- and to be the youngest to ever have it... He’s bold, like his bright-red office." But neither McCoy nor anyone else talks about how living a life of duplicity-- a life as a closet case-- was key to Schock's emergence as a skilled and practiced liar. He and other journalists-- all of whom are aware of the "rumors"-- chalk it up to an over-abundance of ambition and drive. But no one even mentions the lavender belt and tight white pants.



Michelangelo Signorile, of course, doesn't beat around the bush but is HuffPo Gay Voices really a mainstream outlet that will get the story out to voters in the heartland?

That claim by Itay Hod [that a journalist caught Schock showering with his gay male roommate] and the media attention it spurred was little over a year ago. It's odd that it's missing now in virtually all the current coverage, because it's a part of Schock's media history that also points to deception. More interesting is how the media runs from this story, refusing to investigate it while looking into all other aspects of Schock's political life-- yet the possibility that he is gay is part of his political life. Just as he's denied wrongdoing with regard to who paid for his office makeover or his trips, Schock denied being gay when I asked him in 2012 in the context of his anti-gay votes. He did not do this by saying, "I'm not gay," but by saying the question was "ridiculous" and pointing to a denial from years past, saying, "I've said that before, and I don't think it's worthy of further response. I think you can look it up." The question is relevant because if Schock is gay, then he is a hypocrite, since he voted against the repeal of "don't ask, don't tell" and has said he was against gay marriage and for a federal marriage amendment. There are few more stellar examples of past possible deceptions that relate to the current stories about Schock.

That doesn't mean Schock's possibly being gay hasn't been alluded to in the current coverage, however, through code words that show how backward we often still are as a society on homosexuality, as if we've not moved past the 1950s. Both Roll Call and the New York Times, for example, have called Schock "flamboyant," and The Guardian, in an article about the allegedly Downton-inspired office, noted that the decor was "dangerously flamboyant," after first mentioning the White House picnic outfit.

Come on, folks. "Flamboyant" is a word that was most used to describe Liberace but is hardly used to describe any straight male in the public eye. In fact, the Times headlined its obituary of the then-closeted Liberace like this: "Liberace, Flamboyant Pianist, Dead." And in the Times last September, in a review of Behind the Candelabra, the Liberace biopic, reviewer Mike Hale describe Liberace as "a famously flamboyant, closeted-in-plain-sight gay entertainer."

In the recent piece about Schock's current troubles, the Times not only describes the congressman as "flamboyant" but discusses his "ripped ab muscles," his "racy" Instagram account and his "lifestyle"-- a word that is often used pejoratively to discuss gays, as in the "gay lifestyle." In fact, the word "lifestyle" has come up quite a bit in much of the coverage.

It's hard to believe that reporters in D.C. and beyond didn't follow the past discussion of Schock's sexual orientation. Still, I'm not saying all or even most of the code words being used in these articles now are intentional. A lot of it may be unconscious. And Schock is, after all, leading quite a flamboyant lifestyle, painting his office red, posing on the cover of magazines shirtless and jetting around the world and showing it all off.

But whether it's intentional, unconscious, or coincidental, the lack of any overt discussion (or investigation) of Schock's sexual orientation, while wink-wink words keep popping up, betrays a lot. As I discuss at length in my next book, the media and many LGBT activists themselves often breathlessly talk about polls that point to increased acceptance of homosexuality and LGBT rights, as if we've nearly won the war. But when the media still views the possibility that someone is gay as, at best, something that would be too damagingly invasive to report on or, at worst, a dirty little secret-- even when it's relevant or interesting to report on-- then we have surely got a long way to go.

And in Out Magazine Jerry Portwood wrote about "all the talk about the cute, blond-highlighted personal photographer, Jonathon Link, who he employs and even gave a raise to while others in his office had their salaries cut." Even Aaron's father seems to be trying to convince himself his son isn't gay. "He wears stylish clothing, and yet he’s not gay … and he’s not married... and he’s not running around with women," he said. "Everybody’s throwing up their arms. They can’t figure out Aaron. So he must be crooked. So attack him. Bring him down, because he doesn’t fit into our picture."

Booby J and the other GOP guvs may do artful "political theater," but that's not the same thing as artful governing

Breakfast with Booby: Even sitting down, as Governor Booby was here at the Christian Science Monitor's breakfast on Monday, it's easy to slip on political banana peels.

"Some of the [Republican] party’s most promising candidates are governors or former governors running on their executive experience. But their experience isn’t always a good advertisement for the limited-government policies they promote."

-- Dana Milbank, in his Tuesday Washington Post
column, "Bobby Jindal's unpleasant record"

by Ken

Poor Booby Jindal! When he came to national attention, it was as, not just a Republican rising star, but as a policy genius, the smartest of the Republican rising stars. Then the nation started getting glimpses of him, and it sure looked as if, whatever technocratic expertise he may have accumulated, he's a boob.

It became important to keep in mind that the terms "smartest of the Republican rising stars" and "boob" are in no way mutually exclusive. Same deal with that other famous "rising" GOP policy wonk, Paul Ryan, who demonstrates every time he opens his mouth or puts out a press release that you can be the smartest Republican on Capitol Hill and still be a boob.

This week poor Booby, in his attempt to position himself favorably for the 2016 GOP presidential smackdown, came to Washington and had the misfortune to run into the sharp quill pen of the Washington Post's Dana Milbank, who noted:

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal took his presidential campaign-in-waiting to Washington on Monday trailed by an unwelcome, unsavory and downright unpleasant companion: his record.

The interloper followed the Louisiana Republican into the St. Regis Hotel and crashed his breakfast meeting with three dozen reporters, at which Jindal planned to make the case to do for America what he did for Louisiana.

Dave Cook of the Christian Science Monitor, the breakfast host, quickly acknowledged the presence of Jindal’s uninvited guest by pointing out that, for all of Jindal’s claims that he’s a champion of education, a study found that public universities in Louisiana had suffered the deepest cuts per student in the nation under Jindal.

The governor replied by talking about teacher salaries, taxes, state credit upgrades, the state payroll, private-sector job growth — just about everything other than what he had been asked about.

Alexis Simendinger of RealClearPolitics made another reference to Jindal’s unwanted but omnipresent sidekick by observing that he had taken the state from a billion-dollar surplus to a $1.6 billion budget deficit.

Jindal responded with a four-minute filibuster, repeating his points about the state payroll, credit upgrades and private-sector job growth. For good measure, he tossed in statistics about graduation rates, official ethics, population growth — even low-birth-weight babies spending less time in neonatal intensive-care units. “Great for those babies, great for taxpayers,” Jindal said.

It was the equivalent of a homeowner dismissing the significance of his foreclosure by noting that he had done a fine job tending the flower beds.

"This is likely to be a problem," Dana wrote, "for Jindal and several other Republican presidential hopefuls," which led to the quote I've put atop this post:

Some of the party’s most promising candidates are governors or former governors running on their executive experience. But their experience isn’t always a good advertisement for the limited-government policies they promote.

NJ GOV. KRIS KRISPY? COME ON DOWN!

You may have noticed that the more NJ Fats behaves like an actual presidential candidate, the more problematic the results. As if he didn't have a big enough built-in problem with what I think we have to call the extreme far-right-wingers in his party, who consider him a pinko liberal, he's embarrassing himself to the party hacks who thought of him as a potential savior -- someone who, if he could somehow slither through the nominating process controlled by the party's faithful crackpots 'n' thugs, he might actually be able to attract votes outside the Party Faithful Compound.

But even if the Krispyman could do a better job of keeping his big foot out of his Ralph Kramden-size big mouth, Kris like Booby has the problem of his record, as a governor "who has seen his state’s credit rating downgraded eight times and who has presided over a state debt that reached a record-high $78 billion while unemployment is above the national average."


WI GOV. SCOTT WALKER? COME ON DOWN!

If you read the normal Village political organs, what you see is how Governor "Beam Me Up" Scotty has positioned himself as the triumphant scourge of public-employee unions, which for real Americans is supposed to (and to a large extent does) translate as "all those bad people who are everything that's wrong with America." Less often mentioned in the Village panegyrics is his position as chief fluffer for the Far-Right-Wing Billionaires of America, except sometimes insofar as his kissy-face relationship with the Koch Bros. may make campaign funds a bit easier to raise. (Yeah, just a bit.)

The governor's media fluffers are less apt to wave at Governor Scotty's unwelcome guest, his record, as a governor who "led his state to a projected $2.2 billion deficit while Wisconsin’s wage and job growth sag below the national average." Hmm. It's hard to whip up a pithy campaign slogan out of that.


STILL, THIS IS GOV. BOOBY'S WEEK IN THE SPOTLIGHT

Dana allows that among the 2016 GOP hopefuls who are or have been governors,

Indiana’s Mike Pence and Ohio’s John Kasich have more impressive stories to tell. Rick Perry presided over a big boom in Texas during his 14 years as governor, but his tenure has left him with other things, too, including an indictment. Former governors Jeb Bush (Fla.) and Mike Huckabee (Ark.) don’t have current records to sell.

But this is Governor Booby's week, and there may be lessons in what happens when the slow-footed media emerge from their slumber and start poking around. "Louisiana’s travails are particularly problematic," Dana wrote, "because they have been caused in large part by Jindal’s tax cuts,"

which, along with declining oil revenue, blew such a hole in the state budget that even huge spending cuts haven’t made up the gap. In the last few days, articles in the New York Times and Politico have detailed Louisiana’s fiscal travails, including a possible 40 percent operating-budget cut at Louisiana State University and an increase in tuition at public universities of 90 percent during Jindal’s time in office. Jindal has already raided state reserve funds and resorted to the sort of budget-keeping gimmicks that he once criticized.

Jindal ate up the first 15 minutes of Monday’s hour-long breakfast with an extensive preamble about an education reform policy he is proposing for the nation. But his record quickly intruded. “Is there some irony in your talking about ramping up education while you’re cutting it in Louisiana?” Cook inquired.

The governor ignored the specific question — about Jindal’s cuts to per-student spending for higher ed being the deepest in the nation — and instead delivered a sermon that included a boast about “eight credit upgrades” for the state and the “strongest credit rating we’ve seen in decades.”

Unmentioned: That just last week, Moody’s issued a “credit negative” report on Louisiana and said its problems have been intensified by its reliance on $1 billion in temporary patchwork funding being used to prop up the budget this year. The Republican state treasurer, John Kennedy, protested “budget gimmicks” and years of being “fiscally irresponsible.”

Minutes later, when Simendinger asked Jindal to explain why the big state deficit “qualifies you to run for president,” the governor replied with a string of non-sequiturs.

“In New Orleans, 90 percent of our kids are in charter schools.”

“It used to take 10 days to get a prescription if you were uninsured in Baton Rouge, and now it takes 10 minutes.”

“In ethics rankings we were bottom five for legislative disclosure, and now we’re in the top five.”

A while later, he joked, “And that’s the short answer.”

No, governor, that’s a non-answer.

If Governor Booby is serious about this business of being president, and if media types continue asking him these awkward questions, there will come a time when he's going to have to have better answers, or just plain answers -- even in a political theater that is, well, largely political theater.

As it happens, I only just noticed that Dana Milbank's standard WaPo biographical tag says that he "writes about political theater in the nation's capital," which seems to me charmingly descriptive, and perhaps also describes why I've become such a fan of his coverage of the scene. His writing tends to start with going out and observing at close range what the (largely comic) actors in our nation's political theater are actually saying and doing.

Naturally, they don't like this one bit. And I thought this might be worth talking about a little, especially at the time when Jon Stewart has made the big decision to call it a gig after 17 years of Comedy Central's Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Because Jon S has also been eerily good at showing us what the buttwipes who people American political theater -- and their media fluffers -- have been saying and doing. And can you believe, those buttwipes and the buttwipe fluffers haven't liked this one bit either.

Maybe we'll come back to this tomorrow.

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Crackpot Utopia: The Year in Republican Crazy, Part 9

• Pompous Blowhard of the Year Award: Bill O'Reilly
• FOX "News" announces new spinoff: The FOX Benghazi™ Shopping Channel!
• Crazyspeak of the Year nominee No. 11: DiGiorno Pizza


In Crackpot Utopia it was still the Year of Benghazi -- see No. 2.

Crackpot Utopia: A dream world as envisioned by republicans; a manifestation or expression of the deranged, warped alternate universe inhabited by republicans, at least in their minds. See also: Bachmannism, Boehneresque.

by Noah

1. Pompous Blowhard of the Year Award: Bill O'Reilly

When I thought about who deserved this award, there were more than a few candidates screaming out the windows of the Crackpot Asylum. But one truly bizarre person has built a reputation that is so synonymous with the words "pompous" and "blowhard" that there can really be only one true champeen!



The following pearls from the worm-eaten mind of Bill-O are not just breathtaking in their Outer Limits trans-dimensional scope of irony; they are as breathtaking as what would happen if you were sitting in a spaceship orbiting Pluto and suddenly all the windows blew open and in an instant all the air, the contents of the ship, and you were sucked out into the vast vacuum of ice-cold space.

Heeeerre's Bill-O!

"When you hear something on a partisan-driven program, do not believe it!"

And, mere seconds later:

"Distortions are how some people make a living."

Hmmm, good to know, Bill-O! Good to know!

It's worth noting that O'Reilly actually, really cut short his August vacation to bless us with these pearls of his unique genius. It seems he got paranoid and felt the need to rush back and defend himself against people he calls "race hustlers" (no, he wasn't looking in the mirror, although it's reasonable of you to assume that he was), by issuing a diatribe about people who dare to criticize republican icon Darren Wilson, the police officer who shot an unarmed suspect Michael Brown in Ferguson, MO.

Bill-O seems to think that having bravely acknowledged that Michael Brown shouldn't be dead offsets the rest of the nonsense he's spewed about Ferguson. But then, he doesn't have to listen to himself.


"My pal Jon Stewart, basically a comedian, but he's taken seriously by some of his fanatical followers. . . . Stewart mocked me for coming back from vacation. . . . Stewart distorts the [Ferguson] issue, and he has been known to do that. [Plays clips including one showing him saying, "What happened to Michael Brown should never happent to any American," and another saying, "If Michael Brown did something wrong, it doesn't mean that you wind up dead in the street."] So here is the Factor Tip of the Day: When you hear something on a partisan-driven program, do not believe it. And that includes the Net! Don't believe this stuff! Distortions are how some people make a living. Stewart is going for the laugh. He doesn't reallycare if it's true or not. And his audience, watching me, they don't know. Yuk-yuk-yuk. Come on!" (Watch the clip here.)


2. FOX "News" announces new spinoff: the "FOX Benghazi™" Shopping Channel!



Watching FOX "News" during the last year -- in fact, over the last two years, has been like watching a blinding bright yellow flashing road sign, a sign that screams "Benghazi!," flashing it over and over again. Don't worry, when you pass the first one, there'll be another, even bigger flashing Benghazi! sign every 50 yards. Benghazi. Benghazi. Benghazi! Benghazi! After all, the old sign that said "Birth Certificate!" burned out.

It got so bad that in just a two-week period in June, FOX devoted an insane 225 segments to what will go down in history as "The Great Republican Benghazi Hoax." For the FOX asylum, Benghazi is some sort of manifestation of Tourette's syndrome.

Then, a few weeks ago, the report from the republican-led congressional investigation of the Benghazi tragedy came out. After spending millions and millions of our precious taxpayer dollars that Congress could have been put to so much better use, it turned out that, as all non-crackpots knew, there was no scandal. There was no conspiracy. There was no cover-up.



The reaction from Fox? Silence. It was almost like FOX simply went off the air.

Alas, it was not to be. It took all of about three days, but they got their wind back. The republican committee that issued the report had dumped it out after 5:00 on a Friday afternoon in a classic news dump at the time of week when they thought no one would notice, and much of the media, including the so-called liberal media, only lightly mentioned the findings. But on FOX, nothing at all, not even on their Sunday "news" shows.

Not to worry, FOX has regrouped, and they have hopes for a brand-new republican-crackpot committee that will also spend more of our hard-earned money investigating Benghazi. What's that about the definition of insanity? You know, the one about doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results?

FOX is all in. They already pushed all of their chips on Benghazi to the middle of the table a year ago. Now they've taken off all their clothing and added it to the pile. Damn, the idea of seeing a nude Sean Hannity or Neil Cavuto sitting at the poker table is not a pretty sight. ‘Scuse me a minute, I have to go barf.

OK, I'm back. What is it with Benghazi for Republicans? Benghazi might as well be Walter White's blue crystal meth to these wackos. They just can't get enough of it. They constantly need more, more, more! They look under every pillow and rock for what has become the Loch Ness Monster of scandals. Benghazi has become a myth that has fervent bug-eyed believers. The more they chant the word, the more they believe. You could tell these people that the sky is blue and they will scream that it is green.

Recently FOX "News," in their desperation to put literally anybody in front of the camera who will back their nihilistic insanity, called upon Duck Dynasty crackpot Phil Robertson as an expert on foreign policy for their Sean Hannity program. His mission was apparently to convince viewers that "Benghazi is real, my friends." Well, if the Duck Commander says it, it must be so. Hey, that's even better than Krauthammer.

Then there was Hercules, aka Kevin Sorbo, as an expert on Benghazi for FOX's Outnumbered show. (Even the show name reflects the paranoia that is integral to the republican mindset.) In discussing the NFL's very real domestic abuse horrors, Sorbo managed to draw a direct line from Benghazi to the NFL.

And he wasn't the first loon on FOX to do so! Lizzie Hasselbeck had beaten him to it on her miserable little slice of village-idiot theater called FOX and Friends, managing to draw some sort of line between Benghazi and the NFL's domestic-abuse scandal -- as, er, expressed in her Tweet:



It just goes to show that not everyone in Hollywood is a liberal commie pinko. Give it time and crazies like Sorbo will be on FOX connecting Pearl Harbor to Benghazi, complete with tales about Obama using a time machine to lead the Japanese attack. There will be claims of covered-up old black-and-white photos of him shaking hands with Admiral Yamamoto (who also went to Harvard, by the way -- say no more!) and bowing to the emperor.

If FOX keeps going in the direction they've been going, we will see, in time for the 2016 election, a completely made-up scandal based on people and places that don't even exist. Some building that has never been built, in a town that has only existed in republicanland, will be blown up and people that never existed will disappear. Maybe they can call it Roswell, but I think that's already been done. Submit your names for the town of republican myth-mongering now! You might want to get the Web domain name registered. Reaganville, anyone? That's the next step in republican lunacy. Rest assured, though, that it will all be some Democratic front-runner's fault.

The republican masterminds of the crypto-scandal of Benghazi have succeeded beyond their wildest dreams in getting the gullible and the haters to believe. Why did they perpetrate this hoax? My guess is that the real Benghazi cover-up is that the Republicans don't just want to exploit the tragedy in order to politically damage President Obama and Hillary Clinton. They also want to divert attention from the fact that it was they who cut the dollars for the security of our embassies in the first place, and they certainly wouldn't want the media pointing that one out, now would they? If you take away embassy protection, bad things happen.

The way I see it, it's inevitable. FOX already has FOX Business, FOX Sports, and who-knows-what-else, all designed to fatten Rupert Murdoch's wallet so he can invest more money in backing China. So it's only natural that FOX "News" would spin off a FOX "All Benghazi, All The Time" channel: FOX Benghazi™! Your Benghazi Channel! They'll have Lizzie Hasselbeck and Megyn Kelly offering a full line of FOX Benghazi™ merchandise. I can see it now: T-shirts, handbags, socks, AR-15s, all emblazoned with some sort of FOX Benghazi™ logo, even sick little flag-draped FOX Benghazi™ coffins.


3. Crazyspeak of the Year nominee No. 11: DiGiorno Pizza



It's bad enough that DiGiorno makes a virtually inedible product, which even New York City rats ignore when it's tossed out the window and into back alleys, half-finished, by slob citizens. And it's bad enough that said product contributes to the growing obesity problems of those who actually eat it.

Now, in the wake of the sad tale of footballer Ray Rice cold-cocking his then-fiancée-now-wife in an elevator, DiGiorno goes and comments on a twitter account, #WhyIStayed, which someone set up so battered women could explain why they stay with their abusers. Many of the reasons are poignant, even if they aren't quite enough for many of us to fully understand. Reasons offered often deal with things like staying so my unborn child will have a dad or because they believed that every time would be the last time, etc.

In a fine example of typical corporate arrogance, stupidity, and insensitivity, some genius at DiGiorno added what he or she saw as a perfectly reasonable reason to stay with the man who may, some day, kill you:



Is there no depth to which corporate a-holes will not sink in an attempt to separate us from our money and give us diabetes or colon cancer in return? DiGiorno later claimed they didn't know what the Twitter account was about, or even what the phrase "Why I Stayed" means.



I suppose if you live under a rock, it's possible.

DiGiorno's marketing goons may be the Mariana Trench of marketeers, but what should we expect in a world where the likes of Jamie Dimon and Mitt Romney roam free and a whole political party can make light of rape? It seems that it's only a matter of time before some fast food chain uses pictures of the starved prisoners of Auschwitz, saying if only they had our tacos, or pizza, or whatever.


TOMORROW IN PART 10: Beyond Drudgery; and Crazyspeak of the Year nominees Nos. 12 and 13: Michele Bachmann and Kimberly Guilfoyle

NOAH'S 2014 IN REVIEW --
Crackpot Utopia: The Year in Republican Crazy

Part 1: Princess Liz Cheney tries for the Smoothie of the Year Award; "Miss Beck regrets" -- Crazyspeak of the Year nominee No. 1: Glenn Beck; and the Crackpot Party reacts to President Obama’s State of the Union speech [12/19/2014]
Part 2: Republicans wonder why normal people call them racists; Sean Hannity wants to self-deport; and the First Annual Mr. Burns Award, to ABC "shark" Kevin O'Leary [12/20/2014]
Part 3: Using fear, loathing, and paranoia to sell stuff; Arizona legalizes crack!; and Crazyspeak of the Year nominee No. 3: Bill O’Reilly [12/21/2014]
Part 4: A celebration of Michele Bachmann: Pray away the crazy?; What "War on Women"?; and the "Obama angle" on Malaysian Flight 370 [12/22/2014]
Part 5: The GOP and the kiss heard 'round the world; Crazyspeak of the Year nominee No. 5: Joe the Plumber [12/23/2014]
Part 6: A word about South Carolina; Pat Robertson and his magic asteroid; and I'll have a pack of Twizzlers and an IUD to go, please [12/24/2014]
Part 7: And so it begins: The running of the buffoons; Crazyspeak of the Year nominee No. 7, George Will has no idea what rape is; and Crazyspeak of the Year nominee No. 8, Rick Wiles calls for a coup [12/29/2014]
Part 8: Things to come: Forward into the past! (11 Presidential Dream Tickets); Crazyspeak of the Year nominee No. 9: Former republican VP nominee Paul "Crazy Eyes" Ryan; Crazyspeak of the Year nominee No. 10: Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association [12/30/2014]
Part 9: Pompous Blowhard of the Year Award: Bill O’Reilly; FOX "News" announces new spinoff: the "FOX Benghazi™" Shopping Channel!; Crazyspeak of the Year nominee No. 11: DiGiorno Pizza [12/31/2014]
Part 10: Newsmax -- Beyond Drudgery; and Crazyspeak of the Year nominees Nos. 12 and 13: Michele Bachmann, Kimberly Guilfoyle [1/1/2015]
Part 11: GOP and FOX whip up the hate over a POW exchange; and Crazyspeak of the Year nominee No. 14: Iowa asylum escapee Rep. Steve King [1/3/2015]
Part 12: Arizona Republican protests busload of YMCA campers; Crazyspeak of the Year nominee(s) No. 15: the Impeachment Variations (group nomination); Crazyspeak of the Year nominee No. 16: NM Rep. Steve Pearce [1/4/2015]
Part 13 (and last): TV for Dummies: Sarah Palin launches her own channel; Crazyspeak of the Year nominee No. 17: Arizona schools superintendent John Huppenthal (rhymes with Neanderthal); and the final Crazyspeak of the Year nominee -- and also the winner! [1/5/2015]

NOAH'S 2013 IN REVIEW --
A Prayer to the Janitor of Lunacy

For listings and links, see Part 1 of this year's series.

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