Grappling with Obama's Un-Liberal Actions: A Voter's Conscience (Part 2):
So perhaps you are pro-Obama and you've come to terms with the drone war being waged in nations we are not at, you know, war with. You figure that it's a distant thing, and, yes, any Americans targeted in, say, Yemen deserved what they got. You know, you want everyone to know that you may be a liberal, but you're not a pussy. But what about your own rights? You're supposedly not a terrorist. And your neighbors are more than likely not.

We have to wrestle with this shit, we who say we're voting for the President. We have to have an answer or at least an understanding. And you have to be willing to accept the consequences of those actions.

In this case, a vote for President Obama means a vote for indefinite detention for Americans who are suspected of having any link to al-Qaeda. In this case a vote for President Obama means a vote to expand the surveillance of all communications of Americans, inside and outside the United States. All of these powers do or would exist without judicial oversight (other than kangaroo military tribunals).

The indefinite detention section of the National Defense Authorization Act, passed by Congress in 2011, says that the U.S. can hold a suspect "without trial, until the end of the hostilities." It was met with a mighty signing statement by President Obama where he pledged to never use his superpower for evil and that no Americans would be treated like filthy foreigners (except, you know, for the whole blowing them up with missiles overseas). But a group of activists and writers sued the administration over indefinite military detention, saying it was unconstitutional, and a judge agreed, putting a preliminary injunction on it.

Considering the signing statement, you'd think, "Well, guess that's game over." But you know how sometimes you're drunk and someone tries to stop you from taking that next shot for your own good? How many times do you say, "You know what? You're right. I should stop"? No, you say, "Fuck you, asshole, gimme the shot. I'm not nearly drunk enough. I haven't puked on myself yet." Now replace liquor with power and you pretty much know what happened.

The Obama administration, just a couple of weeks ago, appealed the ruling, saying that, since it's never happened, it doesn't need to be halted. It's not unlike a company selling a toy for toddlers that's made of razors and nails and refusing to recall it until a child gets hurt.

Where else do you want to go? You want to talk how the administration refuses to say how extensive its surveillance program of Americans is? You wanna head over to Gitmo (remember Gitmo? It got lost somewhere along the way once Republicans blocked any funding to close it)? You wanna talk about how the military is now limiting the detainees' access to their lawyers? You wanna come back home and talk about the brutalizing of any whistleblowers?

You can't ignore this shit. You just look like a fool if you do. Again, this is not just an extension of the very things we took to the streets to protest George W. Bush for, it's an expansion. And it's fucking scary shit. Because instead of reducing the power of the imperial president, an idea he criticized while running, Obama has embraced it. And, no matter how much you trust him, Obama ain't gonna be there some day and all these powers and laws will be.

Coming up in Part 3: Well, what the fuck are you gonna do?

In Brief: No, Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan Won't Tell You a Goddamn Thing:
So yesterday Mitt Romney, sadistic Mormon hair-cutter and ostensible GOP nominee for president, had a fundraiser with evil motherfuckers in the energy industry. He has a big energy policy speech coming up and, by god, he told the people- well, why be coy? - men there that "Your input is something I wanted to retain before we actually cross the t's and dot the i's on those policies." Yes, because no one could predict what oil executives would say. When is Romney's meeting with environmentalists and scientists going to be, just so he can get those t's and i's all crossed and dotted? Let's play Carnac here and say that Romney's speech will say, "Drill, frack, Keystone, clean coal, nuclear, and go fuck yourself with a windmill on top of a solar panel."

There's something else Romney said while he wasn't licking sweet crude off the assholes of his donors. About his possible energy plan, he smarmed, "I know that we have members of the media here right now, so I’m not going to go through that in great detail."

Last week, in his big coming out party on Fox "news," vice-presidential candidate Paul Ryan talked about the shiny tax loopholes they will get rid of in order to magically balance the budget at some indeterminate time in the future. What loopholes? Hey, fuck you with your specifics. Or, as Ryan said, "[T]hat is something that we think we should do in the light of day, through Congress, unlike how Obamacare was passed. We don't want a back-room deal, what the Ways and Means Committee did, what the House passed, is to have a process for tax reform so that we do this in the front of the public...So, no, the point I'm trying to say is we want to get feedback from Americans about what priorities in the tax code should be kept and what special-interest loopholes we want to get rid of." Or, you know, he could have just said, "No, Brit, I'm not giving up my loophole cherry to you."

It is, at the end, of the day, the strategy for Romney. You can't know much about him or his policies. He will reveal nothing. His advisers have said, flat-out, that they will not campaign on specifics. You have to invest with Romney based on your faith in Romney.

It's held as gospel on right that, despite constant media scrutiny and unending digging, Barack Obama has not been properly "vetted" and has therefore gotten away with something. But Romney presents himself as completely inscrutable, existing only in the present, with his past hidden and his future plans deliberately obscured. That's just the way he wants it, though. It's the only way he can hope to win: to be the empty suit that can be filled with whatever figure you want - crazy social conservative, fiscal disciplinarian, whatever.

It's not really what one would call "leadership." It's not really what one can call anything.

Has One CNN Commentator Lost His Fucking Mind Over Akin?:
While other Republicans were throwing Senate candidate Todd Akin under the bus for revealing a bit too clearly what the GOP actually believes about abortion rights for rape victims, some on the right were there to offer a comforting nipple for Akin to suckle at. CNN contributor and Redstate blogger Erick "Erick" Erickson practically ripped off his shirt and yelled to Akin, "Nurse at these man-boobs, misunderstood sir."

There's a couple of camps of Akin apologists: the "let's move on, nothing to see here" camp and the moral equivalency camp. Erickson is firmly in the latter, and his blog post yesterday was the kind of straw-grasping you see an especially desperate defense attorney take in the trial of his serial disemboweler client. "Well, he may have ripped out his victims' intestines and swung them around like lassos, but, really, is that so bad compared to the Holocaust?" he might say. Or perhaps "Yes, but the prosecutor once jaywalked."

See, however smugly doughy he might look on CNN, Erickson allows his freak flag to fly proudly in Redstate. How does he defend Akin? By bringing up a widely discredited allegation about President Obama: "The people horrid (sic) by Todd Akin’s remarks are, I’m sure, thrilled to have a President who defended infanticide...President Obama was the only member of the Illinois State Senate to speak in favor of the position that a child who survives an abortion and fully exits the womb can still be killed by the abortionist."

And that'd be awful if it was true, and Erickson can take quotes out of context all he wants and condemn Politifact, but, fuck him, it's not true.

Erickson concludes, having compared Akin's "legitimate rape" remark to Biden's "chains," with this bit of despairing: "The media barely spent any time on the shooter at the Family Research Council. I bet they’ll spent a whole lot more time on this than either the FRC shooting or even Ted Kennedy killing Mary Joe." The Rude Pundit has to admit that he doesn't get the right's obsession, even postmortem, with Chappaquiddick. It's as if Ted Kennedy's auto accident is the most important event of the last fifty years. And if that's all you've got to give as an example of liberal hypocrisy or whatever, then you've got a pretty empty quiver there.

And as for the shooting at the FRC, well, sorry, but we had already had two shooting sprees with multiple victims in the two weeks before. How much coverage did the Wisconsin Sikh shooting get compared with the Colorado one? Tell you what: you give us that that was racist, we'll give you that the FRC coverage was liberal bias. But what the fuck does this have to do with Akin? It's like comparing apples and ducks.

See, Erickson and others on the right are shit-scared right now, which is pretty much what he said today in asking Akin to heroically put his country ahead of himself and step down. (Dude, he's a Republican. Did you really think he'd act honorably?)

They're scared because Akin opened the door for a discussion of abortion rights and the GOP's attitude towards women, especially as it affects a certain running mate. Oh, how they wanted to concentrate on the economy and ignore shit like the Republican campaign platform that takes Akin and Paul Ryan's pre-VP selection stance, calling for a ban on all abortions with no rape exception.

That part doesn't actually bother Erickson. Writes this CNN contributor, who is given a nationally televised platform on a regular basis, "Congressman Akin said something dumb and inarticulate. But God bless him for trying to explain why so many Christians do not believe in an exception for rape and believe that to have one could see an increase in the number of claims of rape that are not actual rapes ('legitimate' rapes in his words), but are claims of rape used to justify an abortion when abortion is otherwise prohibited." Are clinics overrun with false rape charges in order to secure free abortions? Is this a thing? No, it's hysteria replacing reason.

So, yes, God bless Todd Akin. He did speak the truth. Now let's see where that argument gets the GOP.

What Todd Akin Meant to Say (Updated):
So completely bugnuts cocktard Todd Akin, who really has been elected repeatedly to the House of Representatives by idiots in Missouri and really is the Republican candidate for Senate against incumbent Claire McCaskill, really winning a primary in Missouri, the "Show-You-How-Fucking-Dumb-We-Are" state, really said in an interview yesterday regarding pregnancy from rape, "First of all, from what I understand from doctors it is really rare. If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down." He also said that, even if the pussy's laser beam of justice misses and the woman gets pregnant, she should not be allowed to get an abortion.

When everyone picked their jaws off the floor, Akin's profoundly, demonstrably, scientifically wrong statement was met with a DefCon Katrina level of outrage. At what point is low too low? At a time that demanded true leadership, Mitt Romney's campaign's response was so milquetoast that Fire Island twinks would tell him to butch up. And, like a good little conservative spoogebucket, Akin didn't apologize for his beliefs. He merely said he "misspoke."

So it seems to leave us with a question: What the fuck did Akin mean to say?

1. "I meant to say that rape sperm is too angry to inseminate an egg."

2. "I meant to say that vaginas are like snapping turtles that will bite off a rapist's penis."

3. "I meant to say 'forcible rape.' You know, like Paul Ryan believes."

4. "I didn't mean 'legitimate rape.' Everyone know that a child from a rape is probably going to end up illegitimate."

5. "By 'legitimate rape," I meant a rape that happens because of Obamacare, which is raping the future for our children...That probably didn't help, did it?"

6. "Wait, the penis has to go in the vagina? Eww, gross."

7. "I truly thought I was on the 'Jackoff Report.'"

8. "I meant to say 'from what I understand from my ass,' not 'doctors.' Easy mistake."

9. "I can pretty much guarantee that I'm infertile and that my balls have shrunk to the size of raisins. Yes, that's what I meant to say."

10. "I meant to say that I support a personhood amendment, you know, like Paul Ryan does. It's pretty much just as evil and ignorant, but it sounds less assholish."

Update: Apparently, Mitt Romney discovered that the wind was blowing in a safe enough direction, and his condemnation of Akin has become stronger.

Reacharound Friday: In the Words of Pussy Riot:
First, off check out what exactly Pussy Riot did (and here's the raw footage used for the music video). It's pretty fucking hilarious, seeing masked punk rockers dancing like mad inside a Russian Orthodox cathedral as a protest against the reelection of Vladimir Putin. It's got upset nuns trying to stop photographers. It's got confused and delighted and agitated onlookers. "Our Lady," Pussy Riot chanted to the Virgin Mary, "Chase Putin out." And the song rocks with a great, rap-infused rock tune.

Was it obnoxious? Fuck, yeah. Is it deserving of two years of prison time for the band members who were caught? Because that's the sentence they were just given for "hooliganism against the church." The prosecution had been asking for three years, but, perhaps realizing that crushing the band made him look like, well, a pussy, Putin asked for leniency. Look into his eyes. See his soul. He's a mensch.

The members of Pussy Riot know that their trial has done more to energize the free speech and protest movement in Russia, against the power-hungry Putin, in alliance with the church, than their music and performances alone. And the closing statements of the three women in their trial are ass-kicking acts of defiance against a government that seeks to silence dissent.

Yekatarina Semutsevich talked about Putin's manipulation of people by using the church: "Why did Putin feel the need to exploit the Orthodox religion and its aesthetic? After all, he could have employed his own, far more secular tools of power—for example, the state-controlled corporations, or his menacing police system, or his obedient judicial system. It may be that the harsh, failed policies of Putin’s government, the incident with the submarine Kursk, the bombings of civilians in broad daylight, and other unpleasant moments in his political career forced him to ponder the fact that it was high time to resign; that otherwise, the citizens of Russia would help him do this. Apparently, it was then that he felt the need for more persuasive, transcendent guarantees of his long tenure at the pinnacle of power. It was then that it became necessary to make use of the aesthetic of the Orthodox religion, which is historically associated with the heyday of Imperial Russia, where power came not from earthly manifestations such as democratic elections and civil society, but from God Himself."

Maria Alyokhina attacked Russian society, particularly the conformist approach of her schooling: "And right here, in this closing statement, I would like to describe my firsthand experience of running afoul of this system. Our schooling, which is where the personality begins to form in a social context, effectively ignores any particularities of the individual. There is no 'individual approach,' no study of culture, of philosophy, of basic knowledge about civic society. Officially, these subjects do exist, but they are still taught according to the Soviet model. And as a result, we see the marginalization of contemporary art in the public consciousness, a lack of motivation for philosophical thought, and gender stereotyping. The concept of the human being as a citizen gets swept away into a distant corner. Today’s educational institutions teach people, from childhood, to live as automatons. Not to pose the crucial questions consistent with their age. They inculcate cruelty and intolerance of nonconformity. Beginning in childhood, we forget our freedom."

And finally, and perhaps most eloquently, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova took sympathy on the prosecutors: "Despite the fact that we are physically here, we are freer than everyone sitting across from us on the side of the prosecution. We can say anything we want and we say everything we want. The prosecution can only say what they are permitted to by political censorship. They can’t say 'punk prayer,' 'Our Lady, Chase Putin Out,' they can’t utter a single line of our punk prayer that deals with the political system. Perhaps they think that it would be good to put us in prison because we speak out against Putin and his regime. They don’t say so, because they aren’t allowed to. Their mouths are sewn shut. Unfortunately, they are only here as dummies. But I hope they realize this and ultimately pursue the path of freedom, truth, and sincerity, because this path is superior to the path of complete stagnation, false modesty, and hypocrisy. Stagnation and the search for truth are always opposites, and in this case, in the course of this trial, we see on the one side people who attempt to know the truth, and on the other side people who are trying to fetter them."

The fact that the words of Pussy Riot could be used, with very few changes, about our own political and social systems and level of civic engagement, that we are no longer a nation that can hear something about oppression from other countries and think, "That's not us," is sad beyond words. The biggest difference? In Russia, there have been protests and riots against the treatment of the band. If it had happened here, we'd just roll over and figure that they deserved what was coming.

(Note: The Rude Pundit will get back to his voter's conscience series next week. And thanks to rude reader Alyson B. for the link to the statements.)

Grappling with Obama's Un-Liberal Actions: A Voter's Conscience (Part 1):
The Rude Pundit remembers the moment in 1996, standing in the curtained voting booth in a church hall in the middle of nowhere in godforsaken Indiana. He stared at his choices: the incumbent Democrat, Bill Clinton; Republican Bob Dole; and the jug-eared crazy Texan, Ross Perot. There wasn't a force in heaven or earth, no promise of sex or cocaine, no amount of money, really, that could have made him vote for the despicable Dole or the bug-eyed Perot. And, sorry, historical revisionists who have given Clinton the same buff and glow as Reagan apologists on the right, many of us on the left were pretty pissed at Clinton. Just a couple of months earlier, caving to election year pressure, he had signed into law "welfare reform," which took away the guaranteed safety net for the poor. There were other things: the way Clinton had handled the gays in the military issue, the complete bollixing of the health care debate, the fact that, no, he wasn't the liberal we had fantasized he would be. Ultimately, his stomach legitimately churning, even though he was in a state that was going to go for Dole, he realized he couldn't just walk away without voting. So he voted for Clinton, reasoning that, in the long-term, Clinton might be able to nominate Supreme Court justices who would make up in legacy what damage had been done in governing. He wasn't proud or happy or relieved. He just hoped he hadn't fucked up his karma. He hoped he had made a decision he could live with.

You gotta know what you're doing when you vote. And you gotta accept the consequences of that vote. For instance, here's a consequence of voting for Barack Obama:

That's what's left behind in a town in Pakistan, a country that we are supposedly not at war with, after a U.S. missile drone attack, presumptively launched to take out a "terrorist." Or a "militant." Or something. About 85% of the drone attacks since 9/11 have occurred during the Obama administration, with at least a couple of Americans targeted and killed. The most recent attack in Pakistan killed at least 5 people. According to a Pakistani Senate Committee report, at least 20% of all those killed are civilians (and that's not to mention the damage done to the property of civilians when, you know, a fucking missile blows their shit up).

Just last week, we killed at least 10, in strikes in Yemen, where we are supposedly not at war. And, yes, this is complicated by the fact that, apparently, we do kill those who belong to al-Qaeda, although that's relying on information by the people doing the killing, which is, well, the Obama administration.

Want to complicate it further? Howzabout the rest of that Pakistani Senate study, which says that the drone attacks are destabilizing the nation? Or that the hundreds of air strikes have led to a "generation of resentment" in the Middle East towards the United States? Or that Pakistan's ambassador, in demanding an end to the invasion of his country's air space, has said the actions are creating more militants? Yeah, the United States could be reaping what we've sown under the next President, who might be a Christie or a Bush, not a Nobel Peace Prize winner.

Sorry to piss on you while you're having a nice "Boy, Paul Ryan sucks" buzz. But you gotta grapple with this, with what's being done by the man we voted for, what's being done in our name. And it's not just what's done in the name of war against our "enemies." No, we've also got to wrestle with the executive powers that Obama is defending and expanding, the very kinds of powers we screamed and stomped about Bush having.

More on that tomorrow.

Mitt Romney's Cringe-Inducing Desperation:
At some point in the near future, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney will be standing in front of a crowd, probably in one of those mythical swing states, like maybe Colorado or Pennsylvania, and, his moussed-hair tousling impossibly perfectly in the breeze, he'll be in the middle of a stump speech when it'll happen. He'll raise his fist at the end of his focus group-tested rolled sleeve arm, and he'll say, "You wanna see how much I want to be president?" And then he'll punch himself in the balls. "Is that enough for you to love me?" he'll say through clenched teeth, and then he'll punch his balls again. He'll stagger a moment, but he'll wave off his assistants and guard. "No," he'll cough, "These people need to know how far I'm willing to go." He'll punch himself again, even harder, and again. He'll double over and vomit from the pain. People in the crowd, who might have laughed at first, will instead become appalled, screaming for him to stop. But, oh, no, he won't. "Is Obama willing to punch his balls bloody for you?" he'll ask before he punches his nuts one last time and passes out.

The press release from the Romney campaign that follows will explain that the governor was demonstrating his deep love for the American people and how he hoped his self-induced testicle pain would unify the country as much as President Obama's hateful rhetoric has divided it.

Absurd, no? Ludicrous, huh? But we have truly reached a point in this increasingly idiotic and meaningless campaign where you can only expect the ridiculous from the Romney/Ryan side. There is a desperation for some kind of traction, which you would expect from a man who couldn't manage more than 30% of the motherfucking crazy base of the GOP in many primaries and almost never broke 50%.

For what is left from Romney that can stick? He's spent the better part of the last few months just outright lying about shit. When you say, for instance, that President Obama ended work requirements for welfare recipients in a memo that clearly says that states can have waivers only if they improve employment outcomes, or, as some might put it, the total opposite of what you claim, then you have lost any credibility. Look at the most recent Romney ad, which features serious-looking old people who are going to be stone cold fucking murdered by Medicare cuts that, even in the most generous, Norquistian definition of "cuts," are not occurring under the Affordable Care Act. (Let's not even get into the fact that Paul Ryan's voucherpalooza would cut the hell out of Medicare. And let's all stop talking about benefits not changing for "people over 55," 'cause that's just bribery.)

Yet, with a straight face, Romney told CBS this morning that it was Obama who was running ads with "divisiveness based upon income, age, ethnicity and so forth."

Now that his pick of the magnificently-nosed Paul Ryan has been about as successful in getting squirrely independents to move their fickle votes to him as his dog-transporting abilities, Romney's campaign has gone total fucking nutzoid. In a speech yesterday that stopped just short of those ball-blows, Romney lost his shit, in a scripted way, when he said, in about as self-reflective statement as he could make, "This is what an angry and desperate Presidency looks like." He was referring to Vice President Joe Biden's remarks that "They're going to put ya'll back in chains," which was probably a reference to Wall Street, which he had just mentioned, or perhaps the Republicans. (At this point, Obama and Biden should just avoid off-the-cuff pronouns so no one can misunderstand them.)

RNC Chair Reince Priebus, who previously had said that Obama "has blood on his hands" for "stealing" from Medicare, said that Biden's words were "shameful." Could we just call a moratorium on attacking each other's metaphors?

Romney continued yesterday, "So, Mr. President, take your campaign of division and anger and hate back to Chicago and let us get about rebuilding and reuniting America." The undercurrent of rage, or, you know, "anger," in that statement is kind of stunning, a childish level of petulance. Stomp your feet more, motherfucker, and maybe Sheldon Adelson will buy you a nice White House.

Of course, if it wasn't for super PAC spending, we probably wouldn't even be dealing with Mitt Romney as the nominee. And, as much as the campaigns try to, wink-wink, distance themselves from their super PACs, we know, we know, we all know. Still, it's kind of hysterical that Romney released an ad directly accusing Obama of making that Priorities USA video that says Bain Capital is responsible for a man's wife's death. Okay, so does that make Romney responsible now for every insane anti-Obama super PAC? Or for whatever Americans With - sorry, For Prosperity pulls from Karl Rove's ass?

There's things we could debate and will about Obama's presidency. There's things that Romney could, but won't. Ultimately, people may agree with Romney that Obama doesn't deserve reelection. But what they seem to agree on more is that Mitt Romney ain't who they want in his place. And no amount of desperate flailing is going to convince them that the unlikeable dick is suddenly their best friend.

In Brief: And Then There Was That Time Paul Ryan Said Romneycare Could Be a Model for the U.S.:
This is from an editorial by Rep. Paul Ryan in the conservative magazine The American Spectator, from July 23, 2009, when Republicans feared that Democrats were going to include a "public option," a government-run health insurance program. In the midst of a fainting-couch-needed tirade on how health care reform would make Baby Liberty cry, Ryan wrote: "If President Obama and his party are serious about establishing a radical new government-driven health care program, rather than force an untested program on the whole nation, why not follow federalism by encouraging one or two states to adopt such a plan as a pilot program? Former Governor Romney of Massachusetts, a Republican, led in the creation of a state universal health care program three years ago...The benefits, costs, and satisfaction in these state health care 'labs' would be useful information before we decide on a federal role."

Ultimately, the Democrats and the Obama administration did not go with the "radical" plan (which would have been cheaper and more effective, but, hey, socialism). Instead, they went with Mitt, whose plan's benefits and costs have led to high satisfaction in Massachusetts, an approach that Paul Ryan seems to have, at least in the bad ol' pre-2010 election days, endorsed.

(Note: Regular scheduled rudeness, as in dick jokes and sodomy references, to return tomorrow.)

Paul Ryan's Family Is Rich Because of the Federal Government (Updated):
The Rude Pundit was going to write a snarky, expletive-filled little rant about Rep. Paul Ryan today until he was listening to NPR talk about Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney's selection for his running mate. The report mentioned how Ryan's family has deep roots in southern Wisconsin, and that his family made its fortune with a construction business, Ryan Incorporated, which was once "Ryan Brothers." And that it "built roads."

"Huh," the Rude Pundit thought. "Roads aren't generally built by private funding." So he did a little bit of googling, and what do you know?

The Ryan Incorporated Central webpage on the company's history says, "By the 1940's the Company had become a full-service grading contractor serving both private industrial and public transportation customers, including some of the original work at what would become O'Hare Airport."

But on the website for Ryan Incorporated Southern, headquartered in Florida (there are various divisions of Ryan and, yes, still from the company founded by his great-grandfather that's run by Ryan's cousins), it's a bit more explicit: "The Ryan workload from 1910 until the rural interstate Highway System was completed 60 years later, was mostly Highway construction."

And whose money built the interstate highway system? That'd be ours.

In other words, you know how Barack Obama talked about how your business didn't build the roads that allow you to do business? Well, if you are in the Midwest, chances are that Paul Ryan's family did build some of the roads. And they got to be amazingly successful because the federal government gave them six decades of contracts and millions upon millions of dollars to build them.

Are we clear here? We're talking about Paul Ryan, who, with his wife, is worth as much as $7.7 million and "much of the Ryans’ wealth is in the form of trusts and inheritances." For Rep. Ryan, those trusts and inheritances are a result of money that the federal government spent on infrastructure.

You wanna go further? Here's a list of defense contracts from the 1990s that went to Ryan Incorporated in its various forms. One of them, from 1996, is worth $5.6 million and went to Ryan Incorporated Central.

So, just to get this right, Paul Ryan and his family are beneficiaries of expanded government spending to improve infrastructure. They continue to benefit from government contracts, including state and local ones. That's Paul Ryan, whose budget would inevitably gut most infrastructure spending and who, with Mitt Romney, wants to shrink federal spending to the point where, if the federal government had felt that way throughout a good chunk of the 20th century, his family would not have made a dime and, well, then we would have never heard about Paul Ryan.

That's the depth of hypocrisy in play here.

Of course, now, Ryan Incorporated builds a lot of golf courses. So who needs improved roads when you've got that?

Update: As others have pointed out, like many conservatives who got where they are thanks to government programs, Ryan is all about biting the hands that fed him. 

And sharp-eyed rude reader David C. points out that, if his family was involved in building O'Hare airport, wouldn't the Ryans have been involved in evil Chicago politics?

Friday Reacharound: Mars, Motherfuckers:

Hey, Mars. It's been a while. Nice to see you again.

One of the Rude Pundit's earliest memories is of sitting in his grandparents' living room and watching the first moon landing (note: he can't be sure if it was the first one, but everyone else in that room is dead now, so, okay, sure, why not just say it was Neil Armstrong). He has a latent space travel geekiness that leaps out when things happen like, you know, landing a rover on fucking Mars, which happened on Monday. That's fuckin' Mars up there. We did that, with three other countries. You're allowed to get a patriotic boner every now and then, like NASA administrator Charles Bolden, who said, "It's a huge day for all of our partners, it's a huge day for the nation. It's a huge day for the American people. Everybody in the morning should be sticking their chest out, saying 'that's our rover on Mars'."

And if you can't appreciate the almost inexpressible magnitude of that, then take a moment or two to get your face out of the computer or your nose out of the sandy asses of the beach volleyball players, get outside, and look at those beautiful stars and glistening planets, man.

The Real Reason Mitt Romney Is Losing and Will Lose:
If he were a better man, Mitt Romney would have one of those dark mornings of the soul. He would wake up after a bender on virgin appletinis (known as "apple juice in a fancy glass" to the rest of us), unshaven, viciously moussed hair disheveled, and stagger into the bathroom in only his magic underwear. He'd tiredly root around for his penis and take a sputtering leak, as befits a man of his years. Then he'd look in the mirror, trying to remember what he did the previous night. He'd think about all the conflicting promises he made to donors, all the people he pretended to like. As he stared deeper into his bloodshot, sinking eyes, no longer assisted by copious amounts of highlighter, he might think about the past, think about how he made his money, how he spent it, how he didn't care about all the people who fell by the wayside in his march to demonstrate that he was the king of profiting from the ruins of others, a fancy junkyard salesman who occasionally repurposed the heaps of metal into a working mousetrap, but was just as likely to merely polish the garbage and sell it. Yes, if Mitt Romney were another kind of man, an honestly self-reflective man, he might stare in the mirror, think about why most predictions were that he would lose the election that he had spent over half a decade running for, ponder the situation he found himself in, question his very existence, and conclude, "I am really a dick."

As people begin to write pre-mortem postmortems of Mitt Romney's campaign, you're going to see many question why and how, how in the world, indeed, could a candidate of Romney's vintage be losing. There will be conservatives who are smug about Romney having never been a true crazy right-winger. There will be conservatives who try to throw him a life preserver, like bald demon Reihad Salam at CNN, whose "Why Mitt Romney Is Losing" editorial is full of floaties. For instance, Salam posits a fantasy Romney, one who actually comes up with plans to, say, regulate banks once the weak Dodd-Frank bill is burned by some fantasy Congress. On the left, Charles Blow in the New York Times says of the one-term governor's strategy of just plain, fucking lying about what Barack Obama is doing, "Romney has to find a line of attack that works because there is a creeping feeling beginning to overtake part of the electorate that his candidacy is in trouble. The problem is that these sorts of desperate, baseless attacks only amplify the sense of panic."

But there's one overriding reason that Romney's candidacy was doomed: he is a completely unlikeable prick. And, unlike the fake self-aware Romney above, he doesn't give a shit that he's an unlikeable prick. In the world he existed in before running for president, one can be admired for dealing with others as an unfeeling asshole. That might be how cutthroat investment schemers work, but Romney is fast learning that people are not corporations. We give a damn who we're dealing with and who's fucking us over, and anyone who isn't so deluded by swallowing the Rush Limbaugh chowder on Obama or just being plain racist can see that Mitt Romney is not only not someone you'd want to have a beer with, but he's someone who, given the right circumstances and the right bar, you'd want to punch in the nose for being such a self-righteous cock.

Now, how do you, if you are Mitt Romney, overcome that? Well, short answer is "You don't."

The long answer is that you need to have something that mitigates your innate dickishness. A compelling back story? Um, "privileged son of a politician who bullied his classmates at prep school and who, while Americans his age were bleeding out on rice paddies in Vietnam, spent over two years living in a lovely mansion in France and trying to cajole Parisians into becoming Mormons" doesn't work.

You could have a demonstrated record of doing something other than making money for rich people. Sure, you could push the Olympics experience, but that just makes you look like an asshole for placing yourself above the athletes. A better man, which you are not, could say that providing health insurance for most everyone in Massachusetts is a pretty awesome accomplishment, but your weaselly refusal to say it's a generally good thing just reconfirms that you are a craven, power hungry dickhead.

You could offer a real reason why you want to be president. But other than "That Obama sure sucks," you have offered no reason other than an inferred "Boy, I'd make a great president, for sure." And, again, that seeming expectation, that feeling of inevitability, of both your nomination and your win? That just makes you seem like the awful human being you really are.

A secret source of the Rude Pundit's (yeah, fuck you, Politico, the Rude Pundit's got those, too) said they recently spoke to a bunch of Republican officials who are genuinely embarrassed that they have to support Mitt Romney. One can only imagine the pain of having to grit one's teeth and say that the giant peckerwood next to you should lead the nation. Christ, Romney is such a stiff tool that he makes Bob Dole look like a charmer.

No, this isn't the most sophisticated analysis. But why bother when the conclusion is so obvious? The fact is that most of you reading this, on the left or right, are coming up with another dozen ways that demonstrate Romney is an unbelievable putz. If nothing else, Romney's pricktastic ego and endless supply of money will make the next few months amusing, as he degrades himself and his party further and further with such unsubtle, obvious lies that at some point the word "liar" sticks even more than "dick."

In Brief: Bobby Jindal Gives School Money to Self-Proclaimed Prophet:
So, last week, the Rude Pundit wrote about Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal's scheme to make church-related schools richer. It's a voucher program, by gum. And it means that any meth trailer with desks can call itself a school, and, if it can convince meth-addicted parents to sent their kids there, it can get state money per student. It's a conservative edumacation miracle.

And, it seems, one of the places that over $350,000 of Louisiana residents' tax and lottery dollars is going is the Light City Christian Academy in New Orleans. It's run by Leonard Lucas, Jr. On the webpage for the adult education school he also leads, he is "Apostle Leonard Lucas, Jr., who walks in the fullness of his calling and wears the mantle of an Apostle and Prophet." That would be his "School of the Prophets." Students there must "yield" to his teachings.

Yes, education in Louisiana is fucked beyond fucked. There's Delhi Charter School, which is finally getting sued for its seven year-old policy of forcing female students to take pregnancy tests and then making pregnant students receive schooling at home. There's the insanity that's being taught at the many evangelical schools that have received state money. So your child can learn such useful information as "But instead of this world unification ushering in an age of prosperity and peace, as most globalists believe it will, it will be a time of unimaginable human suffering as recorded in God's Word. The Anti-christ will tightly regulate who may buy and sell."

It wasn't ever a great education system, but the Rude Pundit and all of his friends went to public schools in Louisiana, and they're professors and lawyers and writers and more. In other words, it didn't damage us. And he had some fine, fine teachers (and some shitty ones, as we all did, everywhere).

A couple of weeks ago, Mitt Romney praised Jindal's edumacation policies; he has said they are models for the rest of the nation. When the Rude Pundit was home in Louisiana, he mentioned that he thought that Jindal would be Romney's vice-president nominee. "Romney can have him," said a Republican relative, who had voted twice for Jindal. "He's ruining this state."

Note: One other follow-up to something the Rude Pundit wrote about last week. He discussed Rep. Jeff Landry and his opposition to the University of Louisiana creating a minor in LGBT studies. ULL's dean of the College of Liberal Arts noted that it cost no money to add the program, as the classes in it already existed. As rude reader Shane B. pointed out, Landry's response was truly, classically ignorant and insulting (and available only in the print edition of the local paper): "It's just like some intelligentsia or some academia to believe that no resources were used to put this together." At this point, Louisiana deserves such a man representing it.

The Case for More Allegations and Lies:
The Rude Pundit does not give a happy monkey fuck if Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is lying when he says that someone told him that Mitt Romney paid no income taxes for about a decade. What? You think Romney did? You think deferred compensation packages, offshore accounts, and historically low capital gains tax rates didn't give him a tax burden of "too fucking low for a rich dude"? At best, Reid was slightly exaggerating.

And the best parry the right has to Reid's allegations? To demand that Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid release their tax returns, ignoring the fact that neither is running for president (and Reid is probably in his last term in the Senate). Or, on the only slightly fringier right, to demand that President Obama release his college records, as if whatever grades Obama made in the 1980s is analogous to knowing how the man who wants to be president made money in 2009. Otherwise, what the GOP is left with is to merely assert that Reid's a liar (as scummy little weasel fucker Reince Priebus and unmarried effeminate-but-no-not-gay-at-all Southern gentleman Lindsey Graham called him).

Politics is not an ethical game. Governing should be, but isn't. However, politics is a wallow in filth that'd make farm hogs say, "Whoa, save some shit-filled mud for the rest of us." For years, we on the left have had to sputter and suffer as Republican after Republican has lied willfully and consciously about the records and lives of Democrats. We have tut-tutted and demanded retractions and corrections. We have slapped our foreheads bloody as we've seen the lies become what many, many people believe is the truth, whether it's Dukakis being soft on crime or Clinton having Vince Foster killed or Gore saying things he simply never said or Swift-boating or birthering. Outrageous, easily proven lies, and we have been told to suck on them like they're a candy cane sticking out of the pants of Uncle Sam.

So you know what? What's good for the motherfuckin' goose is good for the motherfuckin' gander. How's it feel, conservatives, to be helpless in the face of both the allegation about Romney's taxes and your candidate's smug refusal to release any information that would disprove the allegation? Pretty sickening, isn't it? Hey, that candy cane actually tastes like cock when you have to put it in your own mouth.

Whatever Reid's motives are (probably boiled down to "God, I hate that fucking Mitt Romney jerk"), it doesn't matter. What matters is that the story, true or not, is alive. The Rude Pundit has advocated that we tell better lies than the right because lies (whether as scurrilous accusations or the creation of a mythology) are what win elections.  Now, you can get all self-righteous and say that we shouldn't sink to the level of Karl Rove, but the ends justify the means, man.

And here's the deal: Chances are that Reid ain't lying. He's playing chicken, and he ain't gonna turn first.  Reid first asserted on the Senate floor, during a "debate" over the Disclose Act on July 12, that Romney "basically paid no taxes in the prior 12 years." No Republican senators rose up in a huff to defend Romney. You know why? Because they all know it's true. And they know that the dirty secret is that they all use the same loopholes and breaks and tax shelters and creative accounting that Romney uses.

So let's stop fanning ourselves and decrying Reid's methods. You're not getting into a polite game of cribbage. You're getting into a bloody-knuckled brawl. And the ex-boxer is who you want to tell to punch hard.

Random Observations on the Day After Another Mass Shooting in America:
1. The other day the Rude Pundit was on the Trash floor of the East Village store Trash and Vaudeville, and he saw a man of about fifty or older, fully decked out in punk gear, spiked leather collar and wristbands, leather pants that only came up to the pubic hair that poked out on top, leather vest wide open. If he had been 20, it might have been so cool it'd be ridiculous. But he wasn't. He was over 50. It wasn't a costume. And he looked like a fucking idiot. Skinny, saggy flesh. And the face tattoo - a spider's web over his whole stupid face. It might as well have said, "I give up."

The Rude Pundit felt the same amount of disgust when he heard that Sikh gurdwara (or temple) shooter Wade Michael Page was a 40 year-old skinhead who played white supremacist music with bands that had other middle-aged skinheads. Really? How pathetic. Next thing you'll find out is that he collected action figures but left them in the packages. Grow the fuck up, you tools.

2. Of course the gun was purchased legally. For years, the mantra of the NRA and its lackeys in government and the media has been "enforce the laws we have." Maybe we need to say that the laws we have are so weak that enforcing them doesn't really help the problem.

3. There is no reasoning with the NRA. It exists solely to advocate for reckless policies that are demonstrably harmful to the nation. If it was run by Muslims, calling for more firepower and ease with which to buy and carry guns and ammo, it would have been designated a terrorist organization. Their power needs to be stripped and they need to be crushed politically. President Obama should state, flat out, that he believes the NRA hurts America and that, while he supports the right to bear arms (because you have to say that), he won't negotiate with terrorists. (Note: He won't say this.)

4. Don't believe it? This is from an article in the latest issue of the NRA magazine My Big Gun Makes Up for My Small Penis advocating for "campus carry," where guns are allowed on college campuses: "What has made the public more receptive to allowing guns on campus five years after the worst mass shooting in American history? Maybe it’s because the public sees the violence continuing and no longer accepts status quo solutions. Maybe it’s that Virginia Tech taught us we’re living in a new world where text alerts, video cameras and stickers on the doors are absurdly insufficient means of securing the lives of our sons and daughters. Or maybe it can be attributed to that peculiar kind of novelty that only liberty can bring." You got that? Guns equal liberty. Otherwise, we are slaves. That's fucked up. That's psychotic.

5. Is it okay now to talk about right-wing violence in this country? Is it okay to label these white people "terrorists"? Is it okay to monitor them without being accused of wanting to put conservatives in concentration camps? They've been on the rise since we elected the first black president, which only confirmed for them that the race war is coming because they're goddamned fucktards with guns who jack off to Glenn Beck while shitty grindcore music roars in their ears, telling them destroy and revolt and most of them are too dumb to actually realize that it's the rich white people who have made them broke and dumb and redneck and hateful and disempowered in any way except cowardly shooting up unarmed people.

6. Here's how the Times of India described the incident: "[T]he gun-rich, trigger-happy country cringed in embarrassment at a what appeared to be a white supremacist hate crime against Sikhs." Although, you know, we're American. We tend to embrace our ignorance, not get embarrassed by it.

7. Jasjit Singh Kang, the head of the Punjabi American Heritage Society in Yuba City, California, where one of the largest Sikh communities in the U.S. exists, said about the shootings, "Although we have relative safety here in our town, we recognize that these are troubling times where violence and death are present everywhere...All Gurdwaras (Sikh temples) are open to everyone without reservation or discrimination and they exist to serve as a sanctuary of peace and meditation for those of the Sikh faith and for anyone else who chooses to enter and attend."

The webpage for the organization celebrates an exhibit, "Becoming American: The Story of Pioneering Punjabis and South Asians." Now, more than ever, with their gun victims still warm, they are indeed Americans.

The Chick-fil-A Thing Gets Even Stupider:
If you sat there slack-jawed, watching this whole Chick-fil-A debacle get stupider and stupider and you thought, "Huh, what could make everyone involved seem that much worse?" Well, you could say that your prayers have been answered.

Yes, you might have seen the lines of cars and people trying to get the tasty chicken sandwich that is dressed with a urine-tasting pickle slice and, in celebration of Mitt Romney's political positions, waffle fries on V Fil-A Day. That was on Wednesday, when Mike Huckabee, who once wrote a book on eating healthy and losing weight, encouraged everyone who hates gay marriage and loves free speech to gorge on deep-fried food. You might have seen last night's hilarious cock-filled take on the whole episode on The Daily Show. But you might not have seen the prayer circles:

In the restaurants and in the parking lots, all over this great nation of ours, people held hands and prayed, not for the souls of the many, many fallen chickens, but for, well, fuck, who cares?

But lest you think that the non-haters have clean hands, here's Adam Smith, who, when not writing economic treatises, harassed the fuck out of some poor low-wage fast food jockey at a Tucson, Arizona, Chick-fil-A. In a move that obvious dickbag Smith hilariously thought of as his effort to "Stand up" to a corporation, he harangues a woman for not confronting her employer about its stand on gay marriage. Smith does not leave his car to, you know, enter the restaurant. In another glorious twist on free speech, his employer fired him.

Look, the Rude Pundit has boycotted products because of who is associated with them. He has never bought a Snapple because, when it was a small company not owned by Dr. Pepper, it advertised extensively on Rush Limbaugh's radio colonoscopy. He won't buy gas at BP because it ruined the Gulf of Mexico.

But you know what? We lost this one because we did everything that the right often does to publicize something and make it more popular. Chick-fil-A and its homophobic, Christ-fellating CEO made a shit-ton of money and will continue to for a while. And you know what they might do with that shit-ton of money? Perhaps fund more anti-gay rights efforts?

No one is clean here. You like going to the Coachella Music Festival, good West Coast activist hippies? Fuck you. It's owned and promoted by the Anschutz Corporation, whose CEO and founder gives millions to anti-gay marriage forces, far more than Chick-fil-A.

Why waste an ounce of energy kissing and marching outside Chick-fil-A? It's been an ultra-Christian joint since before most of the protesters were born. Instead, worry about changing the laws. Make out in front of members of Congress and state legislatures. And fuck the chicken.

Did You Know That Contraception Coverage Is Like Terrorism and War?:
Apparently, yesterday was the "Day Religious Freedom Died," or so said Representative Mike Kelly of Pennsylvania, who is, what do you know, Republican. August 1 is when several provisions of the Affordable Care Act (aka "Obamacare," aka "Stalin's Ghost Dick Fucking You in the Night") went into effect, making sure health insurance plans cover such horrors as breastfeeding support services and HIV screening.

Oh, and contraceptives. Yes, health insurance plans must now cover contraceptives for women, essentially codifying a Bush-era rule. But because religious employers, like, you know, DePaul University and St. Lickataint Hospital, must have health insurance that does so, it's the Day Religious Freedom Died. In a complete misunderstanding of how contraception works, Kelly said that such employers' heath care coverage "includes abortion-inducing drugs or else pay a steep tax."

(By the way, Mike Kelly totally supports voucher education, so it's okay that that your atheist tax money goes to religious schools and that's not anti-freedom at all, so go fuck yourself with your logical extensions.)

Oh, and Kelly also said this: "I know in your mind you can think of times when America was attacked. One is December 7th, that's Pearl Harbor day. The other is September 11th, and that's the day of the terrorist attack...I want you to remember August the 1st, 2012, the attack on our religious freedom. That is a day that will live in infamy, along with those other dates." It's like hitting your thumb with a hammer and saying it's your personal Hiroshima.

Man, Rep. Kelly, who once called President Obama "the Pontius Pilate of politics," has such a big mouth that he can teabag two sets of balls at once.

Kelly was pimp-slapped by Sen. Daniel Inouye of Hawaii, who offered, "I witnessed the attack on Pearl Harbor and had the privilege of serving in the United States Army during World War II and I find the comments made by the Congressman from Pennsylvania to be misguided and insulting. It is complete nonsense to suggest that a matter discussed, debated, and approved by the Congress and the President is akin to a surprise attack that killed nearly 2,500 people and launched our nation into the second World War." Then he challenged Kelly to tell wounded soldiers from Afghanistan that contraception coverage is the same as 9/11. That's the rhetorical equivalent of shoving a pineapple up Kelly's tight ass.

This is who your GOP is right now. Barack Obama can be called a foreigner by sitting members of Congress, but a Canadian-born Ivy Leaguer, with a Cuban father, who believes that George Soros and the United Nations are conspiring to take away golf courses can win a primary and be praised by George Will as positively "Madisonian."And his victory is seen as a warning to Mitt Romney, who has done everything to tack right short of cutting off his left arm and wearing Paul Ryan's skin as a suit, that he better get with the Tea Party program.

Contraception coverage is like Pearl Harbor? Really? What's next? Medicaid expansion is like Auschwitz? Gay marriage is like the Bosnian genocide? Oh, wait, that was about killing Muslims, so it wasn't that bad, right? History is so confusing, probably because it's about facts, which have nothing to do with reality for today's Republicans.

Very Brief: A Single Question for Mitt Romney Based on His National Review Editorial:
The Rude Pundit is traveling today, but he has one question for Romney, as suggested by his sloppy blow job to Israel in William F. Buckley's drool bucket: If Israel is a "world leader" in terms of all the shit you mention because of its culture of promoting awesome freedomness, why is government-mandated health insurance good for them but bad for us?

But, really, the question is: Why don't you go fuck yourself?

Note from a Hometown, Part 2: LGBT Studies and the Congressman:
Here's another interesting story from the Rude Pundit's hometown. Hang in there until the end for the twist.

So you might have seen that Republican (and teabagger) Rep. Jeff Landry from Lafayette, Louisiana, is in a bit of a snit over a program at University of Louisiana at, well, Lafayette. It's a school of roughly 18,000 students, and, in fact, is the Rude Pundit's alma mater. In what was at the time an uncontroversial move a month ago, the sociology department added a minor in Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender studies. ULL became the first university in the state to offer LGBT studies, major or minor. And, just to be clear, "the LGBT minor did not require budgetary allocations or divert resources from other areas."

Landry, who is locked in a reelection battle with a much-better financed and slightly less-crazed Republican, wrote a letter to the president of ULL, telling him to get rid of the minor because "it fails to provide an economic benefit to the participants or financial sense for the taxpayer." What the economic benefit of religious studies, another program at ULL, might be is not addressed by Landry.

Now, obviously, this led to the usual uprising of nonsensical responses from the public in the local paper and eminently rational pushback from most students and faculty, with UL President Joseph Savoie pointing out that 200 other colleges and universities in the United States offer such programs and haven't turned into flaming pits of Gomorrah. Of course, there's always professors like William Simon, who has made his future LGBT students in his engineering courses feel totally comfortable with his letter to the editor where he says, really, "Students do not need courses on how to become better-educated in these types of deviant behavior."

We could leave this alone except for one extraordinary twist in the story you might not have heard. That would be the part with Nicholas Landry, who happens to be Rep. Landry's brother. And he happens to be gay. And he happens to have taken to Facebook to offer a comment:

"In reference to your recent quest to remove the LGBT minor from the UL curriculum, I want to state my opposition publicly. Ignorance is not education. Your constituents, heterosexual and homosexual alike, have made huge inroads in working towards equality in our community. By embracing diversity and acknowledging our differences, we gain understanding. Understanding is education."

Jeff's response? A change of heart? An attempt at understanding or even reconsider? Nope. It's exactly what you'd expect: ""To my brother. I am sorry we disagree, but we still love and pray for you."

And thus Nicholas Landry, an event planner in New Orleans, demonstrated that he is the far worthier sibling to be in Congress.

Notes from a Hometown, Part 1: Your Tax Dollars at Work for God:
The Rude Pundit is on one of his bi-yearly visitations to his hometown, Lafayette, Louisiana. Louisiana, in case you didn't know, is run by the weak-chinned Bobby Jindal, who leaves the state so often to keep Mitt Romney's balls dry that, for a while, he just stopped notifying the Lieutenant Governor, which is in complete violation of the state constitution. But constitutions big or small never stopped Jindal, who is called "Gov. Voucher" by the local independent newsweekly, conveniently named The Independent, for his embrace of education-by-voucher, which will go huge in the next year and shift a shit ton of cash from public schools to private schools.

This upcoming school year, in Lafayette Parish (that's what they call counties here because of, you know, church shit),  $1.6 million in public school funds will instead go to five religious schools: Lafayette Christian Academy, John Paul the Great Academy, Immaculate Heart of Mary School, Holy Family Christian School and Gethsemane Christian Academy.

And lest you think that this is a use of public funds to promote a particular religion, JP the G's headmaster, Kevin Roberts, will put you at ease. "We are selective, selective on both religious grounds, someone has to be Catholic or Catholic friendly to come to the school," Roberts said, "and be able to handle the academic rigor." And his school will get about 300,000 public education dollars to be selective on the basis of religion. Replace "Catholic" with "Muslim" and you will see legislators' heads explode in confusion.

Bonus fun fact: Johnny P to the G hadn't even secured a campus until a month ago. But once the word went out that the academy was in danger of losing the land it was supposed to purchase, and Pope-loving dollars flowed in. "This school has become the cause célèbre for Roman Catholics around the country," said Roberts, who really should shut the fuck up, considering the lawsuits that have been filed against the state's voucher program, saying that it violates the separation between church and state.

Bonuser fun fact: Most of the schools participating in the voucher program are "small, Christian schools — evangelical mostly along with a fair number of Roman Catholic schools — tiny operations with fewer than 100 students," some of which have raised their tuition in anticipation of the state cash.

Bonusest fun fact: The voucher-validated schools do not have to have board-certified teachers, accept special needs students, or have updated technology. Or teach evolution. Because we wouldn't want to encroach on religious freedom, now, would we?

Essentially, you could open up the Oh-Fuck-These-Nails-Hurt Bloody Palms of Jesus Academy for the Flagellation of Children, and, as long as you meet a few basic requirements, you could get thousands of dollars from your neighbors to teach whatever perverted version of history and science and math you could want. (Sample test question for 2nd grade: "If you're reading a verse in Book 12 of Deuteronomy and you need to read a verse in Book 4, how many books would you have to go back?")

Photos That Make...Oh, Just Fuck You, Mitt Romney:

You know, the Rude Pundit could have been an actual superhero, flying around and saving people and defeating villains, like the Trader, a Wall Street executive who was bitten by a vampire squid and now sucks the funds out of the pockets of poor people with fanged tentacles of doom, and if someone had come to him and said, "Hey, we want your approval to sell these pins with a cartoon version of your face on them," he'd have said, "Go fuck yourself."

The pins, as you might or might not know, are from the 2002 Winter Olympic Games in Salt Lake City, Utah, or, as it might as well be known, "That Time Mitt Romney Held Up the Luge Track with His Bare Hands." They were made in China, blah, blah, blah, globalization bad 'cept when it's good.

What the Rude Pundit wants to focus on is the fact that someone came into Romney's office suite overlooking the Fountain of Brigham Young's Face or the Museum of Joseph Smith's Turds or whatever the fuck they have in Salt Lake City. And that toady said something like, "Umm, Mr. Romney, remember how you said you wanted pins made with a caricature of your face that emphasized your manly chin? We've got the mock-up of those."

And then Romney - who would really later be governor of Massachusetts and now really thinks he might become president - of the United States, no, really, hilarious, right? - looked at those pieces of self-aggrandizing shit and said, "Well, golly, those are great. Mormons everywhere...I mean, Americans will want to shell out their hard-earned money for jewelry with the mug of a glorified administrator on them with stoned-smiling anthropomorphic critters partying and talking to me there, too. Put them into production. On the cheap, though, over in China, so we can maximize profit. God bless Mormons...I mean, America...I mean, me."