The Rude Pundit

Another Day, Another Asian Garment Factory Disaster:



Today's Asian garment factory disaster is brought to you by Cambodia. The place made shoes for Asics, Japan's largest sporting goods company (and the shoes are available in the U.S.). While only three people died from the collapse of the mezzanine floor of the building, it's not even clear that the owner had a permit to build the factory in the first place, let alone built it to anything close to code.

Of course, this brings to mind the horrific sweatshop building collapse in Bangladesh last month. They stopped looking for bodies there, with the total dead at over 1100. In that country alone, we are assured, there are "hundreds of buildings" like the one that caused the scores of deaths, places where even having clean drinking water is a regulation that is ignored.

These hellhole factories, which assure the United States a steady stream of cheap garments (and garments with amazing mark-ups, like at The Gap), are also, for the female sweatshop workers, seen as "the greatest opportunity that these women could ever have imagined." Seamstresses in the Cambodian factory sewed 450 pairs pairs of sneakers a day. The starting salary was $75 a month, and that's after three strikes that saw wages go up for most workers.

By the way, The Daily Beast has to win some kind of prize for sensitivity and class for this headline in its fashion section:



Wait, were Julianne Moore's toes squashed by the collapse of the Cambodian shoe factory? Shit just got real.

Appreciate the Little Things: Eric Holder Pushes Louie Gohmert Into a Crazy Idiot Rage:
In this degrading time of overhyped wannabe scandals and fictional impeachable offenses, you gotta learn to appreciate the little things when they come along. So, yes, angry as many on the left are at Attorney General Eric Holder for the Justice Department's way-too-broad subpoena of AP reporters' phone records, a seemingly and disturbingly legal action, it was gratifying to see him bitch slap arrogant numbnuts Rep. Darrell Issa at yesterday's House Judiciary Committee hearing. But one other confrontation from the bizarro hearing, which covered everything from pot legalization to Kermit Gosnell's crimes, will give you a little warmth on this cold fish of a week.

So it was that Republican Rep. Louie Gohmert, a shitkicker from one of the shitkickingest districts in Texas, started to question Holder. In case you are unaware of what a hilarious public figure he is, Gohmert looks like Jim Nabors' inbred cousin and sounds like Foghorn Leghorn trying to cough up a stray pubic hair. He also is one of the craziest sumbitches in the crazy-ass House Republican caucus, ready to believe anything Glenn Beck vomits into his brain.

Gohmert opened by saying that Holder never gave Congress records on a particular closed case, as Gohmert had requested. Gohmert went as far as to threaten a subpoena of the documents. Holder responded, "[W]hat my people tell me is that we never heard from your staff to make those arrangements. We'll promise to make them available to you. What I would just ask is to have your staff contact mine and--" At which point, looking like an incompetent boob, Gohmert cut him off.

Then he moved on to his main issue: that he thinks the FBI is a bunch of fuck-ups who "blew the opportunity" to stop Tamerlan Tsarnaev from bombing Boston because the FBI didn't fully investigate the information Russia was giving it. Holder demurred on much of what he was asked because it is an ongoing investigation. Gohmert insisted that he knew all about the FBI's refusal to go after Tsarnaev and then he played to his base of evangelical dumb fucks when he said to Holder, "Look, the FBI got a heads-up from Russia that you have a radicalized terrorist on your hands. They should not have had to give anything else whatsoever. That should have been enough. But because of political correctness, there was not a thorough enough examination of Tamerlan to determine this kid had been radicalized. And that is the concern I have. On the one hand, we go after Christian groups like Billy Graham's group. We go after Franklin Graham's group. But then we're hands off when it comes to possibly offending someone who has been radicalized as a terrorist." Having tickled Franklin Graham's prostate but good, Gohmert's time expired.

Holder started to speak to say that Gohmert was wrong when, his blood all het up by gettin' backsassed by a Negro, Gohmert jumped in, "You point out one thing that I pointed -- that I said that was not true." Gohmert had to have his cross-burning ass smacked down by committee chair Bob Goodlatte (which is just the most awesome name for a Republican), who told Gohmert to shut the fuck up and let Holder answer.

And then Holder pantsed Gohmert in front of everyone and pointed out what a tiny little dick and balls the Texan has: "The only observation I was going to make is that you state as a matter of fact what the FBI did and did not do. And unless somebody has done something inappropriate, you don't have access to the FBI files. You don't know what the FBI did. You don't know what the FBI's interaction was with the Russians. You don't know what questions were put to the Russians, whether those questions were responded to. You simply do not know that. And you have characterized the FBI as being not thorough or taking exception to my characterization of them as being thorough. I know what the FBI did. You cannot know what I know. That's all."

What followed can best be described as Gohmert going into an insulted idiot rage, screaming and slapping himself, crying that the Negro had gotten so uppity as to tell him he's wrong, while the other Republicans, including Issa, realized they had let him out of the cellar for too long and tried desperately to shut him up and get him back into the basement to sit in his rocker next to the radio that plays Rush Limbaugh's show. Holder's look of barely contained amusement is pretty fuckin' sweet. It climaxed with Gohmert saying, and this is as clear as can be in the video, "The attorney general will not cast aspersions on my asparagus." No, really. And so, his asparagus defended, he was done.

Then Holder kicked Gohmert in the stalk, stating for the record that Louie Gohmert is not nearly as important as Louie Gohmert thinks he is: "He could not know the answer -- he could not know -- there couldn't be a basis for the assertions he's making, not the questions, but the assertions that he made unless he was provided information, and I would say inappropriately, from members of the FBI or people who were involved in the very things that he questioned me about. And I do not think that that happened."

The punchline? Gohmert has posted the exchange on the front of his House website. He's proud of what he did. And you can bet his constituents are, too.

In Brief: It's All About 2014 Now:
The biggest waste of time in Left Blogsylvania, if not all over Left Mediaville, is reacting to the multiple "crises" in the Obama administration with the pathetic cry of "But George W. Bush was worse." So? It's like telling the dude in the prison shower about to penetrate your ass that rape is wrong. Do you really think that a guy nicknamed Rapey Jake hasn't already considered the legal and moral ramifications of his actions?

Of course, Republicans barely peeped when there were dozens of embassy, consulate, and diplomatic outpost attacks during the reign of Bush the Dumber, when the Bush administration sicced the IRS on liberal churches and groups, or when the Patriot Act was proposed, which is what led us to the government having the ability to secretly get phone records on AP reporters. Great. We know it. How's your asshole feel?

If you believe that a single GOP player in this upcoming clusterfuck of investigations is going to pause and think, "Huh. You're right. I didn't care when George W. Bush did the same or worse. I should end this hypocrisy," you are as delusional as the most extreme Benghazi conspiracy theorists, the ones who think that the IRS thing is Obama's way to distract from the far, far worse Benghazi "scandal." (No, really, Rush Limbaugh believes this.)

Your argument is noted, good liberals who still smart from the lack of prosecution of anyone for the crimes and excesses of the Bush administration. Indeed, it was laughable when today John Boehner asked regarding the IRS asking conservative groups extra questions, "Who's going to jail over this scandal?" Your first instinct might be to say, "Oh, shut the fuck up, Annoying Orange."

There is only one thing that'll end this madness: End the madness of GOP control in the House and prevent them from gaining control of the Senate. All effort on the left needs to be focused on the congressional midterms in 2014. On Morning Starbucks with Joe today, Rep. Charlie Rangel said as much while still saying that he wanted answers regarding the investigation of the AP. As the Rude Pundit said yesterday, that's the difference between the GOP and Democrats: Democrats will actually hold hearings about Democratic presidents. But at least the government will function and this insane impeachment talk will be off the table.

Give up on the Bush comparisons. It will only raise your blood pressure and make you incapable of seeing clearly the path of the next few months. It's time to ask if Americans want a government that gets bogged down in (mostly) meaningless hearings or do they want one that is working on jobs.

If the Rude Pundit was writing an ad for Democrats for the 2014 midterms, he'd ask, "Remember what happened the last time Republicans persecuted a Democratic president and forced him to respond to endless inquiries instead of letting him lead and defend the country?" And then show George W. Bush's face and film of the Twin Towers collapsing.

Late Post Today:
Super-Skrull is fucking up the city's day. Time to flame on and take care of business.

Back later with more impeccable rudeness.

Then We Came to the End (A Preemptive Eulogy for the Obama Presidency):
So it was a fun dream while it lasted, this election of the first black president, the man who would make us heal in the wake of the destruction wrought by the administration of George W. Bush, our complicity in that disaster notwithstanding. You remember those hopeful few weeks, post-2008 election, pre-inauguration? You remember how we were gearing up for greatness, for transformation of our national identity, of our politics, of ourselves? Even those of us who don't believe in divine things had an inkling of what it was like to be born again.

But we knew, those of us who were adults in the 1990s, we knew that there was also an entire industry devoted to crushing dreamers into stark realists, a machine whose sole purpose is to shred your hope and make you feel foolish for ever having believed that change was possible. That machine was ready to go the moment that Obama was elected. And too many of us were allowing our optimism to get the better of us, too many of us believed that, based on the prima facie evidence, Republicans would want to put the presidency of George W. Bush behind them and work to unify the nation. This blog maintained its steady stream of cynicism, but even as he waved his hands and said, "They're coming," the Rude Pundit allowed the soothing heat of hope to be pumped into the femoral artery of his political thinking. He thought there was a chance to evolve. He just bet on the wrong horse.

We needed someone who would lay waste to the political enemies of progress, not try to bring them into the fold. We can't say whether Hillary Clinton would have reached out her hand so much, no matter how many times it was bitten and slapped. We don't know if that would have been her approach, but we know that it was Barack Obama's, and we know that it failed and we know that he stuck to it for too long.

You feel it, don't you? This week marked the end of the Obama presidency. No, he won't be forced out of office, but he will be forced to make do with whatever he can accomplish alone, which, at this point, is extraordinarily little. The Benghazi investigation was worthless to anyone not on Rand Paul's mailing list. But the IRS's questioning of Tea Party groups is mildly disconcerting, even if it doesn't rise to full-blown "scandal" proportions, and the Justice Department's subpoena of the phone records of AP reporters is genuinely scary, perhaps because chances are that it was perfectly legal. Still, what is true, what is legal, and what is real don't matter anymore at this point.

The reason why the Rude Pundit is declaring the Obama presidency done is not merely because the IRS story confirms everything that paranoid right-wingers believe about Obama, as The Daily Show discussed last night. No, it's done because the AP story confirms everything that liberals and libertarians feared about Obama's embrace and expansion of the surveillance state established under Bush and Cheney and his immensely troubling silencing of whistleblowers. The press is gleefully, grotesquely feeding on the outrage.

One of the stark differences between Republicans and Democrats is that, no matter what, Republicans, on the whole, will stand by a Republican president. They will prevent investigations (like they tried to do with 9/11). They will dismiss any allegations. They will go down with the ship. Democrats will turn on a Democratic president, especially when that president is weak. They will demand investigations. They will be outraged. They will run away like rats (like keeping Bill Clinton sidelined during the 2000 election). Neither approach is honorable, but at least the Democratic way is a bit more, you know, democratic.

Now that Democrats are joining Republicans in demanding investigations into the AP and IRS stories, now that writers on the left are calling for Attorney General Eric Holder to resign, just like writers on the right did during the fake Fast and Furious nonsense, we know what's going to go down: Committee hearings that play out like trials, the White House being tied in knots over testifying, demands for more and more information, showdowns with Congress over access, blah, blah, blah. And every speech, every call for compassion, everything Obama does now will be overshadowed, will be tainted, every effort will be stymied by suspicion. This is not to mention the effect of the Senate minority's traitorous war on the functioning of government.

The sad aspect is that it never had to be this way. Obama could have...well, hell, there's all kinds of things he could have done. The sadder aspect is that of course it had to be this way. Republicans were going to have their way no matter what. The saddest aspect is that Obama should have walked away from the forest Republicans created. Instead, he fell right into their trap. They won. Again.

Yes, yes, there will be many things in the next three plus years that we will support Obama on. He's still the president, after all. There will be many times when we will attack at the GOP. And when the increasingly inevitable impeachment hearings happen, we will shout and rend our garments in anger.  But we know that the end is in sight.

Hope dies the death of a thousand cuts.

(Note: The Rude Pundit hopes he's wrong and that he can take this whole thing back at some point soon.)

The IRS "Scandal" Isn't a Scandal, But It Will Get Annoying:
Look, we know how this went down: Post-Citizens United, the Internal Revenue Service was flooded with applications for tax-exempt status for whatever organization a couple of fucksacks with a tricorner hat wanted to start. "Social welfare" groups, they were called, and they could not be involved with specific political candidates or advocacy (although, you know, c'mon). So the IRS told its low-level drones who had to look at all the fucksack applications to flag ones that looked hinky. So the low-level drones, who are overworked to begin with because Congress won't give the IRS the funding it needs to do its fucking job, used some search terms.

It's 2010 and who are the fucksacks who are everywhere? The "Tea Party" groups. So, sure, fine, let's fuckin' search that. Low-level drone 1 tells low-level drone 2 (and for god's sake, they live in the dull, dull, boring, dull city of Cincinnati, so give 'em a little break), "Hey, just use 'Patriot' as a search term and you'll get your job done faster because if there's one thing we know, it's that a whole bunch of these applications are from crazed fucksacks applying for tax-exempt status because they hate them that black guy in office." Low-level drone 2 might have said, "Oh, shit, that'll get us in trouble." But low-level drone 1 had a convincing argument by saying, "You wanna get to the bar sooner?" By the way, chances are that LLD 1 and LLD 2 have been LLDs forever, under at least one GOP president.

Does this narrative need to be completed? Sure, fine: Am id-level IRS drone discovers what's happening and says, "Whoa, whoa, you can't just go after the costumed fucksacks. You gotta look at everyone." At which point at least one LLD contemplated suicide, surely. So MLD went to the higher-ups, like Lois Lerner, director of exempt organizations, who said, "Aw, fuck, don't you know that the fucksacks are gonna cause a ruckus over this shit? Change it up." And then the IRS started to look at any group that criticized "how the country was run." Then, because that stunk of Tea Party bullshit (even though it encompassed many groups), the standard  was then changed to "political action type organizations involved in limiting/expanding Government, educating on the Constitution and Bill of Rights, social economic reform movement." And then, a year ago, that was changed to "organizations with indicators of significant amounts of political campaign intervention."

No group was denied anything because of the extra scrutiny. And as soon as someone higher than a low-level drone found out about what the LLDs were doing, it was addressed and changed. To say that Barack Obama had something to do with that is to say that Rupert Murdoch should be arrested every time Sean Hannity lies on the air.

If you want to call the IRS thing a scandal, well, shit, in this dumbed-down post-Clinton blow job era, the definition of "scandal" is meaningless, so why the fuck not? At least it looks like someone did something knowingly wrong, unlike Benghazi, which is a lonely penis looking for a hole to penetrate.

Hell, the Washington Post went all nutzoid on it, proving its street-cred to keep up the subscription rate among Republican readers: "One line of questioning should focus on how the IRS’s procedures failed to catch this 'shortcut' before its employees began using it. Another should center on how this misguided practice came to light, and on what the IRS planned and plans to do about it." Umm, the IRS caught it shortly after it was used. And did something about it. Isn't that the end of the story?

But, no, really, there should be an investigation. Go the fuck ahead, GOP (and, yeah, Democrats who wanna show that they can be all mightily outraged at a black man, too). Call witnesses. Have mighty inquiries where you can preen for the base. It's not like you're gonna do anything better with your time. At this point, you've cried, "Wolf!" so many times that even the wolves are bored.

Photos That Make the Rude Pundit Want to Eat Magic Mushrooms By the Ohio River:


That's a mighty pretty landscape you've got there, southern Illinois. Too bad you're selling it out to natural gas companies so they can hydrofrack the shit out of it. Said one local old bastard who should be chased out of town like a mad dog, "I don't care whether I get (a well) or not. I got my $60,000." He leased his land to a natural gas company for $50 an acre because capitalism.

There are so many beautiful areas in the most unexpected places in this nation (ever been to the Hocking Hills in southeast Ohio? Crazy lovely, especially in autumn). And, one by one, we're gonna ruin them to squeeze just a little more filthy fuel out of the rocks, just crack 'em open like rotten eggs.

So get out this weekend, Illinois, and take it in. Because, soon, you'll get to see (and smell and taste) this instead (from fracking sites in Pennsylvania):




If you give a damn, there are local organizations trying to fight the destruction of their state's environment.

Not Giving a Shit About Benghazi:
(Note for stupid people: Nothing said below means that the murder of four people wasn't tragic nor that security at embassies and consulates shouldn't constantly be reviewed and modified. It was and it should be.)

Let's put aside the nutzoid conspiracy theories. Sorry, Beck-ers and Alex Jones-ites, put your dicks back in your pants and save it for wanking another day. What is the scandal here? Because the best the Rude Pundit can come up with is that the President, Hillary Clinton, and Susan Rice might have lied on TV, based on changed CIA talking points, about whether or not a terrorist group or a spontaneous mob of film critics was responsible for the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya. And that some bad decisions might have been made on whether or not to send four soldiers from Tripoli to help out during siege (no, really, the "stand-down" order was for four Special Ops soldiers). If you push it, you could says that Clinton lied to Congress in her testimony in December about whether or not it was the bad guys or the shitty YouTube flick, but that'd be pretty hard to prove, but, sure, fine, let's. And that's...pretty much it. No, really, and that's reading conservative sources.

The reason the Rude Pundit can't count the number of fucks he doesn't give about Benghazi is because there is not a goddamned thing that anyone has said that could have prevented the attack from happening (other than the hindsight observation that security in Benghazi should have been beefed up. Yep, and having flying monkeys drop grenades would have been cool, too). And the only possible scandal is that, after the fact, some people said some shit that might not be true. That's it. That's all there is. So, please understand, House GOP members and noted panty-wearer Lindsey Graham, we don't care about Benghazi, no matter how much you want us to. You can bring out every self-aggrandizing State Department employee you want, but, sorry, you have not been able to fluff the flaccid prick of this into a proud, erect Libyagate.

Oh, sure, the truth-seeking and accountability-demanding House Oversight Committee Chair Darrell Issa can hold hearings and release press releases of doom on Benghazi, but even he secretly knows that nothing is happening. In his statement on yesterday's hearing, he gives that away. Yeah, he says that he will keep doggedly sniffing this anus, but one of the purposes of the hearing was to allow supposedly silenced whistleblowers a chance to toot away. Look at what Issa says: "This Committee will stand behind these whistleblowers and will act swiftly if they face further retaliation or intimidation after speaking to us about what they know about Benghazi." You get that? It's subtle. Issa's not saying that he'll do anything about any "retaliation or intimidation" that's happened - and, if it had, that'd be a scandal - no, he's just wagging his finger and saying, "And don't you let me catch you being mean to Gregory."

Tell you what, though, sweet Republicans doing the bidding of your SuperPAC masters: Let's make a trade. We'll agree that, sure, why not, Obama, Rice, and Clinton lied when they said the anti-Muslim video was the cause of the consulate raid. And you can go ahead and pursue whatever investigations you want. But you have to admit that George W. Bush's administration - Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice (Condi), Powell, all of 'em - lied about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. You might remember that a thousand times as many Americans died directly because of those lies. Absolutely no one died because Susan Rice possibly misinformed the public on a Sunday talk show.

So that's the deal: Obama's Benghazi "lies" for Bush's Iraq lies. And then let the chips fall where they may with guilt and prosecution. Then we can swap again. Say Fast and Furious for approval of torture. You might think it's mutually assured destruction, but, dear, dumb GOP, like when you overplayed the Bill Clinton blow job perjury charge, you seem to think that possible lies to cover-up fuck-ups are the same as lies that lead directly to thousands of people dying. You seem to think that low-level incompetence is the same as giving the orders to commit war crimes.

But, no, really, continue with the Hillary Clinton bashing, which is all this actually is. It's just so retro-charming at this point. Make sure that no Republicans even thinks about voting for her in 2016. That's a valuable way to spend your time. And if this one doesn't stick, well, the Rude Pundit's pretty sure you'll just move on to a new fake scandal rather than actually governing.