When one is obliged to come up with four or five items a day under the rubric “Dangerous Minds,” the Republican party are the proverbial fish in a barrel. Low(brow) hanging fruit. There are never slow news days with so many craven GOP idiots in Washington. Apparently there is some kind of “Bizarro World” reverse Republican IQ litmus test that you have to pass—or fail, depending on how you look at it—to be a member these days.

Of course it’s always been bad—and there are many, many deeply dumb Democrats to be sure, stupidity is unavoidable in U.S politics—but I’d have to say that the current crop of GOP politicians is the most imbecilic I can recall during my lifetime. Is there a dumber member of the Senate than Rand Paul of Kentucky? (James Inhofe came immediately to mind, I must admit…)

Witness the “universal healthcare is slavery” comments made at a Senate hearing yesterday by the dimwitted senator named after the author of Atlas Shrugged. They’re… special!.

Via Raw Story:

“With regard to the idea of whether you have a right to health care, you have realize what that implies,” the senator said. “It’s not an abstraction. I’m a physician. That means you have a right to come to my house and conscript me.”

“It means you believe in slavery,” Paul added. “It means that you’re going to enslave not only me, but the janitor at my hospital, the person who cleans my office, the assistants who work in my office, the nurses.”

“Basically, once you imply a belief in a right to someone’s services — do you have a right to plumbing? Do you have a right to water? Do you have right to food? — you’re basically saying you believe in slavery.”

“I’m a physician in your community and you say you have a right to health care,” Paul continued. “You have a right to beat down my door with the police, escort me away and force me to take care of you? That’s ultimately what the right to free health care would be.”

As Max Read pointed observed at Gawker:

In Rand Paul’s America, there will be no slaves, except for the people working to pay off their medical bills.

This guy actually believes this shit!! Breath-taking, ain’t it? Why would a poor state like Kentucky elect a man like this? Uh, don’t answer that….nevermind!

More from Raw Story:

Self-described democratic socialist Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT), chairman of the Subcommittee on Retirement and Aging, responded to Paul’s rant by asking witness Dana Kraus, a family physician at a federally qualified health center, if she considered herself “a slave.”

“I love my job,” she answered. “I chose to work there. I do not consider myself a slave. Thank you.”

Sanders and Rep. Jim McDermott (D-WA) introduced federal single payer legislation Tuesday that would ensure that states implement Medicare-like systems for all residents.

Have a look at the trailer for the Denzel Washington film John Q. Rand Paul needs to strapped to a chair like Malcolm McDowell in A Clockwork Orange with his eyelids pinned back and forced to watch this film until he melts into a puddle of his own pathetic stupidity.
 

 
You really have to hear it coming out of his mouth. The man is completely insane… and stupid:
 

 
Those zany, madcap Orwellian Republicans are at it again with legislation known by the acronym, “J.O.B.S.,”  that is to say, the “Jobs, Opportunity, Benefits and Services Act of 2011. ” You have to hand it to these guys, they are shameless.

What this bill will do is give governors in states like, say, Florida… Michigan… Ohio and Wisconsin (shudders) more “flexibility” over how funds are spent for EUC (emergency unemployment compensation) and EB (extended benefits) safety net programs. This, er, “flexibility” would allow states to do other things with the federal monies previously allocated to go to directly to unemployed workers once their initial state jobless benefits period of 26 weeks has expired. Things like paying for state job search bureaus, paying off the debt many states already owe to federal unemployment trust funds and, you know, other things.

One guess what GOP stormtroopers governors like WI’s Scott Walker, Florida’s Rick Scott, Michigan’s Rick Snyder or Ohio’s John Kasich would do given that “flexibility”...? Sorry, all you lazy unemployed people, but it’s their fiscal responsibility to fuck you over.

After all, WWRRD? (What would Ronald Reagan do?)

From The Hill:

Rep. John Larson (Conn.), the chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, said that with unemployment still soaring at 9 percent, the bill represents “an assault” on the millions of Americans who rely on that safety net.

“It doesn’t make an awful lot of sense to throw them out in the cold and not have them be able to pay their taxes, buy their food, pay their rent,” Larson told reporters in the Capitol. “When we peel away the veneer of what the proposal is — aka ‘We’re going to reduce the deficit’ — really what we find here is an ending of the social compact between the people and their government.”

House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) also took a shot at the proposal this week, questioning how the potential erosion of unemployment benefits will create jobs.

“They are referring to one of their bills on unemployment — to end benefits for long-term unemployment, taking away the assistance to 4 million people who are going to run out of unemployment benefits — they are calling that the JOBS Act,” Hoyer said Tuesday. “I am very interested to see how eliminating unemployment insurance is going to be a jobs bill.”

If the so-called “JOBS Act” is passed, states will be able to cut off benefit checks long before the full 99 weeks have expired. But this isn’t just about screwing over the poor, because the farcically named “JOBS Act” has the potential to eliminate up to $40 billion dollars in economic activity (jobless benefits, like food stamps have a multiplier effect as they are spent on groceries and so forth and taxed as well), As the Congressional Budget Office has pointed out, this could mean a loss of over 322,000 JOBS.

 
Karl Marx, the 19th century social philosopher and historian who is regarded as one of the most influential intellectual figures in human history—Marx was voted the “thinker of the millennium” by people from around the world in a 1999 BBC poll—was born on this day in 1818.

Below, Marx for Beginners (look for a cameo from R. Crumb’s “Mr. Natural”):
 

 
Monty Python’s classic “Communist Quiz” sketch from Live from the Hollywood Bowl featuring Marx, Lenin, Che, and Mao.
 

 
Image by Savanna Snow

They spelled “cuntry” wrong!

Did you read about Sarah Palin’s utterly shameless tweet today?
 

 
TPM quipped:

It’s unclear why she thinks photos of bin Laden’s corpse will scare suicidal terrorists.

Who says she’s capable of thinking at all? Certainly I’ve seen no public evidence that Mrs. Palin is able to engage in critical thinking. But who cares about Sarah Palin anyway? I don’t and I’m bored with writing about her, but her tweet is one of the lamer, dumber examples of a Republican lemon-face trying oh so obviously and desperately to spin the killing of the most wanted terrorist in history against President Obama.

Sarah Palin: The incredible shrinking woman. I will admit that watching her flounder for attention now that the bloom is off and the public is starting to tune her out has been kinda fun to watch…

Irish comedy genius Graham Linehan, speaking certainly with MY full approval, tweeted the following to his 94,000+ Twitter followers:
 

 

#Nailed it.

Someone who follows him rejoined “Show us your tits first” and I think this is about where the level of discourse around the Republicans should be, which is to say, pointing at them and laughing.

But where was I? Oh yeah:

Jealous much, Republican’ts?

Of course they are—they can barely stand it—and it’s such a delightful farce to watch these craven shits lashing out like the angry losers they truly are. Even some die-hard Fox News viewers are (probably) starting to suspect what everyone else has known all along: THESE PEOPLE ARE SCURRILOUS FUCKS.

How many times does it take being exposed to the obviously insincere Eric Cantor, for instance, before even a complete idiot would intuit “This fuckin’ guy doesn’t believe a damned word he’s saying. He’s lying through his capped teeth.”

But anyway, back to the whole killing Osama bin Laden thing. The single stupidest, lowest IQ conservative conspiracy theory came from—ya don’t say—batshit crazy racist cat lady Pamela Geller, she of the brain-damaged Atlas Shrugs blog. (Read it if you dare, but as you do, consider the fact that this complete LUNATIC is a frequent commentator on Fox News! As if drivel like THIS IDIOCY has any merit or is in any way worthy of respect or discussion? Seriously Roger Ailes? Seriously??? Pamela Geller believes any damned thing she wants to believe, as long as it fits into her twisted prejudices and irrational foaming-at-the-mouth hatred of Obama, Democrats and Muslims. It would be pointless for me to give her insipid, dimwit conspiracy theories any space here since she’s so mean-spirited, repulsive and beneath contempt. I mean… yuck!).

Steve M., writing at my new favorite political bookmark, No More Mister Nice Blog had this to say about the myriad shameful, embarrassing ways the Republicans are comporting themselves. I think he makes a powerful case here for who America’s real enemies are:

Republicans are responding to this the way they respond to everything: by seeking to divide America and undermine Democrats and liberals. They do this for the same reason the scorpion stings the frog in the fable: it’s their nature. They will continue trying to divide America until we wake up and realize that they hate America—or at least they hate any America in which we don’t turn over all the power to them. They’ll undermine and weaken that pluralistic America until we finally recognize their disloyalty and marginalize the dividers.

We should have expected them to try to deny Barack Obama credit for the fact that bin Laden was located and killed on his watch, and to try to shift the credit to George W. Bush. We should have expected them to use the incident to reopen the debate about torture.

But there’s more. Fox Nation, right-wing bloggers, and others are currently braying about this story from Britain’s Daily Mail:

Obama took SIXTEEN HOURS to make up his mind about Bin Laden mission

Barack Obama kept military commanders hanging by declaring he would ‘sleep on it’ before taking 16 hours to give the go-ahead to raid Bin Laden’s compound….

Really? The mission was successful, and this is the straw they grasp at? A delay of less than a day?

Let me put that in context. It took 1,306 DAYS for George W. Bush to fire Donald Rumsfeld for his sheer inability (or willful refusal) to cope with the chaos of Iraq after the fall of Baghdad, and for his stubborn insistence on a level of troop strength inadequate to quell the chaos and restore order—that’s 1,306 DAYS from the first reports of looting in Iraq (April 12, 2003) through the worst of the insurgency and to the day (November 8, 2006) Rumsfeld stepped down.

(Or perhaps, like Maureen Dowd, you’d like to count it down from Tora Bora: “A pigheaded Donald Rumsfeld, overly obsessed with a light footprint, didn’t have the forces needed at Tora Bora to capture Osama after the invasion of Afghanistan.” In that case, it’s 1,787 DAYS from the conclusion of the Battle of Tora Bora, on December 17, 2001, to Rumsfeld’s resignation.)

So who’s the real hesitator?

But that’s not enough divisiveness for Republicans and rightists. Bloggers, led (as Little Green Footballs notes) by the grotesque Pam Geller, are advancing anonymously sourced reports from shady rumor-purveyors that the bin Laden mission happened over Obama’s objections, in a “military coup” of sorts, and took place only because CIA director Leon Panetta gave the OK without waiting for Obama’s approval.

Maybe this scurrilous nonsense is coming from people at the far margins of the right. Or maybe it’s not—maybe it’s being injected into the debate by people close to the centers of mainstream Republican power, because they can’t bear to have a country that’s not divided, with powerful Democrats widely despised and mistrusted. In any event, the nonsense is being regurgitated at such sites as CNN contributor Erick Erickson’s RedState and the well-connected Pajamas Media. It’s part of the mainstream of Republican commentary. It’s a disgrace from a disgraceful party.

Well put, brother. Amen to that.

Note to Gov. Scott Walker: You should really,really make an effort not to do this face so often in public, because it’s just too easy for bloggers to find images of you looking stupid, forlorn and like you’ve had your ass whipped.

Wisconsin’s District 94 Assembly seat has been held by Republicans for some sixteen years, but last night it was won by a Democrat running a campaign openly disdainful of Gov. Scott Walker and his clownish, heavy-handed attempts to end collective bargaining rights for public employees in the state. Democrat Steve Doyle, a labor-supporter, smashed his opponent, Republican John Lautz in a 54% to 46% bludgeoning. This was a special election, called to replace Mike Huebsch, a GOP incumbent who was appointed Walker’s secretary of administration, and has was seen by many as a symbolic referendum on the unpopular Gov. Walker himself.

If this is anything to go by—and obviously it is with such a lop-sided margin—the statewide effort by progressive activists to remove eight Republican senators just got a major shot in the arm. Every elected Republican in Wisconsin’s government—not the least Scott Walker himself—has to be pissing themselves in terror of what is to come.

So far, the recall effort has been going great, already easily making the quota of signatures for six GOP senators to face recall by Monday’s deadline. You piss in the wind, it comes back to hit you in the face. That’s the way it works. That’s life. That’s karma. The Wisconsin GOP, I think, is going to get what it deserves, a right thrashing! It’s going to be a hot July in Wisconsin, something tells me…

What’s that line about “Don’t quit your day job?” I give Huebsch, like Walker himself, sometime until mid-2012 before he gets thrown on the scrap heap of history with the rest of the Wisconsin Republican party.

If you live in Wisconsin, you can volunteer for the Walker Recall. He has to be in office for one year before a recall against him can come into play, but that gives activists several months to organize a Bronx cheer for this nitwit. If you are from outside of the state, you can donate some money to the Walker Recall efforts at the same site.

 
Wal-Mart, America’s largest retailer, where 140 million people shop each week, is not seeing much of a recovery for the U.S. economy. The low-price behemoth has now seen seven straight quarterly declines in sales figures. According to the company’s CEO, it’s because their customers—who let’s face it ARE America—are simply too damned broke to buy much anymore. From CNN/Money:

Wal-Mart’s core shoppers are running out of money much faster than a year ago due to rising gasoline prices, and the retail giant is worried, CEO Mike Duke said Wednesday.

“We’re seeing core consumers under a lot of pressure,” Duke said at an event in New York. “There’s no doubt that rising fuel prices are having an impact.”

Wal-Mart shoppers, many of whom live paycheck to paycheck, typically shop in bulk at the beginning of the month when their paychecks come in.

Lately, they’re “running out of money” at a faster clip, he said.

“Purchases are really dropping off by the end of the month even more than last year,” Duke said. “This end-of-month [purchases] cycle is growing to be a concern.

I must say that I’m far more inclined to trust Wal-Mart’s sales figures as a barometer of the economy’s health than the suspect reports put out by the government. They’re a public company, they can’t get away with lying with impunity the same way Uncle Sam can…

Doesn’t this make you wonder: How much more do the working class and the poor still have left to lose before things start to get really, really hot for Republican politicians? Even online loans have become a resort to many struggling to make ends meet. Imagine that you are the parent of a handicapped child, you can’t find work, you have no health insurance, first fuel and now FOOD is out of your reach? The people who are making decisions to reward billionaire racists like Donald Trump with tax cuts while your family suffers, well, they do have street addresses…

Normally, I am not one for violence, but this position is—how shall I put it—evolving. As the Republican pols around the country continue to cut the social safety nets that allow our society to rise above the barbaric, I sure hope to see the sight of hungry, angry mobs showing up with pitchforks and torches at their homes for a lil’ chat.

What do they expect them to do, just roll over and die?

Previously on Dangerous Minds
Mad Max in American: Our Republican Future?

 
Y’know, sometimes he does speak the truth. From the NME:

In an interview broadcast on BBC 5live this morning (April 27), the singer said he won’t be watching the wedding, which is set to be seen by a global audience of two billion people.

“Why would I watch the wedding? Why would I watch it?” Morrissey said. “I couldn’t take any of that seriously. I don’t think the so-called royal family speak for England now and I don’t think England needs them. I do seriously believe that they are benefit scroungers and nothing else. I don’t believe they serve any purpose whatsoever.”

Via The Onion

 
They say that there is no such thing as bad press, but when your publicist is getting called out for how inept they are, it’s hardy something that can be reclassified as a media triumph is it? A shitty publicist only has one function and that is to make the individual or company that hired them look poorly. It’s what you might call “counter intuitive” to have a bungler handle your PR. The public questions your judgment for hiring them.

I mean, hey, if making you look like a fucking idiot is what you’re paying them for, then you win, I suppose… but get a load of the preposterously self-defeating taunts tweets that Sarah Palin’s “cyber messenger” prodigy, Rebecca Mansour, came up with. This is the best media strategy money can buy? [Note to Mrs. Palin, I’ll take over your Twitter feed and Facebook FOR FREE! Email me, let’s talk!]

You’ll get more with sugar, than you will with shit, as my mother used to say, but if all Mansour has on offer for the media is the same two-day old bread, what should be expected of them? People are getting really bored with Sarah Palin. I know I am. I can barely be bothered to read about her anymore, let alone write something snarky. She burned out way faster than I thought she would. Her shtick has just gotten too damned repetitive (and predictable) lately to be able to squeeze any humor out of it. Everything there is to be said about her has already been said a hundred million times.

Via Wonkette/Slate

 
Via MoveOn/Hat tip to Mark Szabo!