Republican Jackass of the Week

Once again, Michele Bachmann of Minnesota (R).

So after 55 attempts at repealing the President's Affordable Care Act, and his party's constant, baseless cries of "impeach him!", orange Speaker of the House John Boehner (R) is threatening to sue -- yes sue -- the President of the United States for the vague charge of "lawlessness," because he has signed executive orders when Boehner's own congress has refused to act.

First, it's a laughable stunt designed to appease the far rightwing Obama-haters. The House has no ability to sue the President over his signing of executive orders.

Second, President Obama has signed fewer executive orders than almost any other US president in 50 years!

His predecessor Dubya signed 291, and the hero of the righties, Saint Ronald Reagan, signed a whopping 381! And neither had to deal with the least productive, most obstructionist congress of all time.

Third, even a Fox Noise host can't seem to take it any more. He points out how hypocritical and futile the cry of "let's sue him" is. You've got to see him take down Crazy Eyes Bachmann.

Republican Jackass of the Week

Former Vice President and current War Criminal Dick Cheney.

The man who cannot visit a whole list of countries because he will be arrested on sight wrote an op-ed piece for the Rupert Murdock-owned Wall Street Journal, and appeared -- not on network TV but in a cheaply-made YouTube video -- wearing a cowboy costume and standing next to his daughter (not the gay one, but the one who was soundly beaten by her own party in a recent primary election in Wyoming).

He spoke in attempt to belittle President Obama and rewrite his own embarrassing legacy as the man who failed to protect the country from the worst terrorist attacks in history, and then promptly lied America into attacking and occupying a country that had nothing to do with those attacks.

He looked like a frail, angry, bitter old man, waving his fists at the clouds.

He has no power, no influence, no credibility. He apparently still has no shame, having lied us into an unnecessary, deadly, expensive war. Everything he said from the pre-war days forward, has been a purposeful lie or just plain wrong.

"They'll view us as liberators... the oil will pay for the war... it'll take weeks rather than months... Saddam no doubt has weapons of mass destruction... uranium tubes... yellowcake uranium... Saddam was behind 9/11... the insurgency is in its last throes (in 2005)... "

At this point you can't even be angry with him. You see him as a pathetic, empty shell, like a burned out building. Politicians, the American public, even far rightwingers couldn't care less about what he has to say these days. He's angry, seething, and still trying to rewrite his sad legacy.

He doesn't even scare Fox Noise into kissing his ass anymore. Can it get any worse than that?

During a live interview this week, rising Fox star Megyn Kelly did something no one had ever dared to do to Dick: make him face the facts that he was wrong about everything connected to the war. (Of course, she then let him ramble on and on, skirting the issue, and never held his feet to the fire. Remember this is Fox, after all.)

But it was a rare 30 seconds of reality on Fox:



He's become such a pathetic, irrelevant, preposterous figure, that it's almost too easy to make him the Republican Jackass of the Week.

I did say "almost."

So Iraq's Coming Apart at the Seams

What a surprise.

This is a country that will never be a democracy and will never end hostilities within its borders. It's made up of three basic factions: two crazy nutjob religious groups that can't stand each other (Sunnis and Shiites) and terrorist extremists.

Yet it was relatively stable under the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein until Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and the rest of these far rightwing military geniuses decided to use 9/11 as an excuse to lie us into attacking, occupying and destabilizing it.

Remember all the blatant lies about "weapons of mass destruction," "ties to 9/11" and "smoking guns"? Those words were drummed into the heads of Congress and the American people to gin up approval for the Unnecessary War Against the Wrong Country, also known as the War to Make Dick Cheney's Halliburton a Fortune.

Yes, we temporarily took over some of the cities in Iraq. But we were not about to stay there forever. Whether we left in 2011, 2012, or waited until 2018, whenever we left, the extremists, terrorists and religious nutjobs were going to create chaos once again.

And of course, now the rightwing blowhards are putting this on President Obama's doorstep. See how it is with Republicans? Lie us into an unnecessary war, destabilize the country, make a mess, walk away and blame it on the next guy.

What's he supposed to do? Put troops on the ground and start all over again? Nuke them? Use air strikes? Diplomacy? Sanctions? No matter what these rightwing chickenhawks demand, if the President does it, they'll immediately run to the cameras and deny it was their idea in the first place. (See the recent post about John McCain. He's a classic case of this mental disorder.)

And what's with the Iraqi army? Are these the dumbest, most cowardly people on Earth?

In the US military, "basic training" can run anywhere from 8-12 weeks. That's it. Unless you need specialized training, you're good to go.

Why were we told, year after year, that we needed to keep US troops in Iraq to continue training Iraqi soldiers? How many years does it take to get these people trained? Iraq must be the only country on Earth where you can spend years and years in training, and then retire having accomplished absolutely nothing.

This week many of the Iraqi troops dumped their uniforms, abandoned all the expensive equipment we handed them, and ran from a much smaller contingent of extremists who are now taking over one city after another. So why did we spend so many years training them and giving them billions of dollars in equipment? Are we supposed to stay there and babysit them forever?

And what's with these rightwing politicians who are always looking to cut unemployment benefits, welfare, school funding, kids' meals, food for the elderly and Social Security (which completely funds itself) to save a million here and a million there -- yet they're suddenly not worried about the deficit when they start salivating about spending hundreds of billions or even trillions of dollars in Iraq again?

We have to take food from Americans living in poverty, and we can't afford to rebuild crumbling schools, highways and bridges, but there's always a few hundred billion for Iraq?

And what's with Iraq's "democratically elected" puppet leader Maliki we've been propping up? This is the guy who kept insisting the US troops should leave and "stop occupying" his country. Couldn't wait to push us out the door. Now he's in a panic because these insurgents are overrunning his useless army. And of course now he wants help from the very people he kicked out.

I say don't spend another dime on this shithole. And don't risk another American life.

Unfortunately, President Obama has to be more diplomatic than I do. And he knows there are American interests at stake, including terrorism, Mideast stability, freedom for the Iraqi people, a whole lot of oil.

I say let it fall apart. It's going to anyway, sooner or later, now or in 20 years. And get ready for the same thing to happen in Afghanistan, another hotbed of crazies.

Tell me where I'm wrong.

Republican Jackass of the Week

The Brat from Virginia.

His name is David Brat, and he's the far, far, far righwing Teabagger who just stunned the political world by beating Eric Cantor in the Republican primary in that state.

This was big news, nationally, because it's extremely rare when such a powerful member of Congress gets voted out, not in the general election, but in his own party's primary election, and by such a big margin -- over 11%.

Eric Cantor, the Majority Leader, was the second most powerful Republican member of the House, right behind Speaker of the House John Boehner. In fact, he was expected to become the next Speaker, sooner or later, assuming the Republicans continue to hold the majority in the House.

But back to Mr. Brat. After his unexpected victory, he appeared on The Daily Rundown with Chuck Todd on msnbc, where he was not able to answer the most basic of questions relative to his alleged political views.

"I don't have a well-crafted response on that one," and "I didn't get enough sleep last night," and "I thought we were just going to celebrate my win today" were my favorite non-answers.

Some of my favorite comments from the Think Progress page:

"He hasn't had time to talk to the consultants so he's not sure what he believes yet."

"Wait -- he's an economics professor and he can't form a response about the minimum wage?"

"I'm totally unprepared for class today, Mr. Todd."

David Brat, who's apparently as surprised as anyone that he won the Virginia Republican Primary: our Republican Jackass of the Week.

What's with John McCain Lately?

As posted on the Maddowblog, John McCain seems to have developed a habit lately of missing meetings so he can run before cameras to complain about what he didn't learn in those meetings.

This week, only a few minutes after it started, McCain left the Senate Armed Services Committee meeting dealing with the latest developments in Iraq. He ran right to the cameras to proclaim "this is the greatest threat since the Cold War." If that's the case, why didn't he stay in the meeting?

He also abruptly left a classified briefing on the prisoner swap for Bowe Bergdahl, the recently released POW in Afghanistan, to complain to the media about how little he knew about the situation.

And in 2012 he held a press conference complaining about the lack of information he'd received about the Benghazi attack. But he chose to hold that meeting during the exact time the Obama Administration was holding a Benghazi briefing that he was invited to attend.

This is the same John McCain who, just a couple of months ago, stated clearly -- on tape before cameras -- that he was in favor of the prisoner swap to free Prisoner of War Bowe Bergdahl. Of course, the minute President Obama accomplished exactly that, McCain reversed course and promptly lambasted the administration for freeing Bergdahl.

Tell you what, John: how about you stop running to the cameras and start running to the meetings you're supposed to attend? Maybe you'd have more of a clue and less to whine about.

You came this close to being the latest Republican Jackass of the Week.