frouman.net

Oh noes, National Review Online editors are feeling a touch put out that they went to all the “trouble” of holding a group fap session righteously congratulating the Susan G. Komen foundation for cutting off grants to Planned Parenthood and then posted the account of it online only for the charity to admit shortly thereafter that it had decided to restore the funding because of UGH, LIBERALS. “Does anyone on the Left even ask the basic question of whether a private charitable organization has the right to dispose of its money as it sees fit?” demands to know NRO Corner blogger Daniel Foster, sassily. Yeah, why can’t charities just do what they want with their money in PEACE? It is THEIR MONEY, after all, that they collected off the money-growing trees, probably.

God those liberals, always trying to interfere in everyone’s private affairs, always trying to tell everyone else how to live their lives, pretty much that’s all they do is go around yelling about things that are none of their business like who they are supposed to marry or how they are supposed to have sex or what they do with their uteri like how the charity that they are giving a portion of their earnings to then goes and spends those funds:

In the NROHQ kitchen just now, Charlie Cooke wondered aloud, and here I paraphrase: “Does anyone on the Left even ask the basic question of whether a private charitable organization has the right to dispose of its money as it sees fit?” But in fact, that anyone thinks there is a question here is a sign we’ve already lost.

Yes. What idiot would care about how the organization he or she donates to uses those funds. This type of idiot is a bully, as illustrated by the following analogy that helpfully compares breast cancer treatment and prevention access for low-income women to …child’s play:

Imagine I volunteered to run a cub scout troop, and for years, when the annual soapbox derby came near, I knew I could count on Joe’s Deli as good for a hundred dollar donation. If one year Old Man Joe decided he didn’t want to donate any more — because he didn’t like the design of our racer, or because he thought his hundred bucks was better spent on a little league team, or because he disapproved of the scouts’ stance on gays — what on earth would justify me going on public access TV to grill Old Man Joe on why he hates kids? What would justify me hacking the Joe’s Deli web site or maliciously editing Old Man Joe’s Wikipedia page? What would justify me goading a handful of my city councilman into standing up at the next town meeting and publicly calling on Old Man Joe to reinstate his donation?

Ha ha it’s the entire “Susan G. Komen bails on Planned Parenthood” debacle retold as an episode of the Andy Griffith Show. That makes sense. [The Corner]

Attention, President Obama! Mousy Mormon Senator Orrin Hatch would like to have a word with you in the undersea Holocaust-victim baptizing chamber. Hatch will be doing that thing he always does, that raisin-mouthed, monotonous, mild-mannered smug thing he uses to cloak all manner of backwards beliefs and statements. The decrepit senator from Utah is currently offended because Barack Obama had the absolute gall to directly quote a famous Biblical character like Jesus Christ at the National Prayer Breakfast and thereby make this annual networking event/affront to the Constitution tawdry and, what’s worse, political!

OUR STARS INDEED! Did Obama even, like, CONSIDER the feelings of the Breakfast’s long-time sponsors, “a secretive evangelical Christian network called The Fellowship, also known as The Family,” which is alleged to have backed “legislation in Uganda that calls for the imprisonment and execution of homosexuals”?

The Hill covers Hatch’s indignation:

Hatch skewered the president for a remark he made at the National Prayer Breakfast on Thursday morning, during which he suggested Jesus might support his plan to raise taxes on wealthy Americans.

“For me as a Christian, it also coincides with Jesus’s teaching that ‘for unto to [sic] whom much is given, much shall be required,’” Obama said at the breakfast.

Hatch, who is a devout Mormon, suggested Obama was trying to “assume the role of theologian in chief” and said he ought to stick to public policy.

DANG! How exactly did Obama manage to inject that bit of radical free expression into the proceedings?

And when I talk about shared responsibility, it’s because I genuinely believe that in a time when many folks are struggling, at a time when we have enormous deficits, it’s hard for me to ask seniors on a fixed income, or young people with student loans, or middle-class families who can barely pay the bills to shoulder the burden alone. And I think to myself, if I’m willing to give something up as somebody who’s been extraordinarily blessed, and give up some of the tax breaks that I enjoy, I actually think that’s going to make economic sense.

But for me as a Christian, it also coincides with Jesus’s teaching that “for unto whom much is given, much shall be required.” It mirrors the Islamic belief that those who’ve been blessed have an obligation to use those blessings to help others, or the Jewish doctrine of moderation and consideration for others.

Well. How very, very uppity of our president, to drag Moses and Mahomet into this as well, of all people. Orrin, look, just take a deep breath and tell us how we can help:

Someone needs to remind the president that there was only one person who walked on water and he did not occupy the Oval Office.

Dude. You do know Jesus actually stole that line from Spiderman? [The Hill]

The Internet is chock full of dumb two-day fads, but there might be some real staying power in the concept of “Tea Party Jesus,” a Tumblr site that combines images of the Loving Jesus with cartoon speech bubbles full of 100% real quotes from leading right-wing Republicans who self-identify as “family values Christians.”

You click the picture to find out what sociopathic amoral “GOP thought leader” pooped that particular hate blob from their mouth. In the example above, that was how dull crone Ann Coulter suggested peaceful citizens protesting economic distress be treated by the federal authorities: She happily suggested they be murdered by the National Guard, for peaceful assembly. So much lulz, or weeping, if you start to actually think about it all. [Tea Party Jesus]

Have you heard about the strangest new craze in breast cancer charities, the kind that doesn’t actually want to fight breast cancer? This for a brief period was the Susan G. Komen Foundation, the behemoth breast cancer research charity always running around madly putting pink ribbon stickers on everything from yogurt cups to professional football players, after they inexplicably hired rabidly anti-choice wingnut Karen Handel to the Senior VP of Public Policy spot last year (following Handel’s failed run for Georgia governor despite/because of Sarah Palin’s endorsement, hahahah). The foundation then decided they didn’t want to pay Planned Parenthood to help low-income lady people get free breast cancer screenings anymore, in case the ladies might accidentally get an abortion on the way down the hall to the mammography machine. And THEN they lied to everyone about the reason for the decision and said it was because some wingnut Congressman in Florida is “investigating” Planned Parenthood and they can’t give money to organizations being fake investigated by nutjobs. BUT NOW that is all over with, HOORAY, because as soon as the Internet found out about all this a few days ago, it also made a decision, to stop giving money to a pro-breast cancer charity and give all their monies directly to Planned Parenthood instead. So Komen has come back to say NO WAIT DIDN’T MEAN IT WE LURV PLANNED PARENTHOOD.

Here’s the official “shit, sorry” statement from their website, via the AP:

Our original desire was to fulfill our fiduciary duty to our donors by not funding grant applications made by organizations under investigation. We will amend the criteria to make clear that disqualifying investigations must be criminal and conclusive in nature and not political. That is what is right and fair.

Our only goal for our granting process is to support women and families in the fight against breast cancer. Amending our criteria will ensure that politics has no place in our grant process. We will continue to fund existing grants, including those of Planned Parenthood, and preserve their eligibility to apply for future grants, while maintaining the ability of our affiliates to make funding decisions that meet the needs of their communities.

Moral of the story: do not hire Sarah Palin’s friends to run any kind of organization that is meant to help people, children! [AP]

Mittens-hating muffin is noooot too psyched about what happened in Florida on Tuesday. HE LOST. GOODBYE. Oh, you’re still here. Instead of accepting that no one south of the very Southern north of Florida likes him at all, Gingrich has suddenly decided that the winner-takes-all ruling on the Florida primary is about as fair as Mitt Romney being liked by even so much as one person in this world, let alone a couple million. So, following a Hispanic roundtable in Las Vegas on Thursday, Gingrich spokesperson R.C. Hammond told a group of reporters that the Gingrich campaign will be petitioning the Republican Party of Florida to try to get the state’s 50 delegates awarded proportionally. Responded the state’s Republican Party chairman, Lenny Curry, “It is a shame when the loser of a contest agrees to the rules before, then cries foul after losing.” ISN’T IT THOUGH?

Hammond thinks Gingrich might have a case only because very slightly technically, Florida moved its primary ahead of April 1, and any primary moved ahead of that date is supposed to award delegates proportionally. But the Republican Party of Florida “unanimously” ruled that the primary would be winner-takes-all last September, Curry told the Washington Post. “All campaigns and the RNC have known since then that Florida was winner-take-all,” he said. “RNC’s legal counsel has, on numerous occasions, noted their understanding and acceptance of Florida’s rule.”

AND ANYWAY, even though anyone is entitled to dispute this rule, it’s pretty irrelevant if the second-place person was a very large 14 points behind the equally gross and terrible winner! Nevertheless, it’s likely Gingrich’s petition could get some airtime, but not until right before the convention this summer.

Finally, in a truly beautiful moment, when asked by reporters if the Gingrich camp would have contested the rule had Gingrich won Florida, Hammond responded, “Probably not.” [Washington Post]

12) That time Michele Bachmann compared herself to a serial killer.

11) Stress-eating at the mere sight of Chuck Todd’s facial hair.

10) Donald Trump’s very good relationship with “the blacks.”

9) Jon Huntsman speaking Mandarin.

8) “The Original, Famous Ron Paul Survival Kit.”

7) Tim Pawlenty. (He was so benign!)

6) “Life can be a challenge. Life can seem impossible. It’s never easy when so much is on the line. I believe these words came from the Pokemon movie.”

5) Newt Gingrich lecturing black people.

4) Newt Gingrich lecturing journalists.

3) Newt Gingrich lecturing unemployed inner city elementary school students.

2) “I’m proud of my gun. And I pooed in space.”

1) But mostly I will miss you guys! Because I’m sad to say this is my last day at Wonkette: I’ve decided to shutter The Gifzette, which means my days as a daily syndicated Wonketeer must come to an end. Do know that I loved doing it so very much, it’s just that my friends have asked that I kindly figure out a way to be able to stay out at night past 8 p.m.

But! Ken has very graciously extended me the chance to moonlight here in the future, so you guys haven’t heard the last from me just yet (at least, that is, until I emerge from the corner of my apartment where I will be curled up in the fetal position for the next nine months until November 6 has come and gone). Until then, you can always find me ranting about politics on Twitter and even sometimes on that Tumblr thing. Thanks guys!!

EDITOR’S NOTE: This is Sad, but should also teach young people about starting their own daily news service that requires them to get up at 5 a.m. before going to their *real job*. Also, look for that other famous slacker, Jim Newell, in the morning slot as of Monday!

Why is Donald Trump in the news again? Wasn’t he banished for the rest of 2012? Guess not. Besides the dingle-dongle Endorse Newt vs. Endorse Mittens moment of this morning, vulgar hair-weave troglodyte Donald Trump is also planning to bury people in his tacky country club golf course graveyard in New Jersey. Give Trump some credit for trying to sell something most people who “lucked into money” in New Jersey desperately fear: being buried in a landfill by their mob boss.

It is environmentally despicable to be pumped full of poison chemicals and buried in some Costco casket with enough brass accents to be its own little Trump Tower, but if you’re going to go that way because you’re a sleazy old New Jersey country club mafioso, Trump’s golf courses deserve to be dug up and filled with corpses. Better the Donald’s acres of turf than some actual nice natural land, right?

The Associated Press reports:

They say you can’t take it with you when you die, but that’s not necessarily true for the wealthiest Americans — like Donald Trump.

He announced this week he is considering building a 1.5-acre cemetery next to his high-end golf course in Bedminster, where members pay a lifetime fee of as much as $300,000. If they want to stay beyond that, they most likely will pay a membership fee that includes burial.

When the next big earthquake strikes the East Coast, it will be funny when the embalmed oldsters pop out of the golf course and nobody can tell them apart from the golfers who are “still alive.” [AP/SFGate]

O blessed day! Breathing desert mirage Sharron Angle has emerged from her candle-lit study, after a meticulous examination of the remaining combatants for head GOP clown, to anoint the weirdest available clown of them all, Rick Santorum! She shuffled her thoughts about, then stapled them together and literally read them aloud, right there on Fox — just like she imagines the real politicians do! Politico is delicately referring to her endorsement as a “shot in the arm” for the Santorum campaign. Which, HELLO FRIEND, that’s not how Earth works!!! You cannot re-animate the corpse of a chupacabra. Like Santorum’s campaign, it doesn’t really exist, it cannot die, and it will never gallop triumphantly off into the sunset. Just not happening. It will haunt the landscape forever, unseen and yet everywhere.

Since we are obligated to speak ill of the Newt so long as his DVD/merch tour continues, we were all ready to cover the rumors swirling around this morning, that Donald Trump was on the cusp of endorsing his fellow pustule Gingrich in Las Vegas. You cannot begin to imagine our excitement at the prospect of the three most famous heads of fleshy hair in all of America — Callista, Born As A Helmet; Newt With Face Of Rising Dough; and Donald Of The 3D-Printed Combover — together on one stage, and melting under the Nevada sun. But, oh bully for him, Trump had to ruin everything by picking Mittens instead:

Donald Trump endorsed GOP presidential hopeful Mitt Romney in the lobby of the Las Vegas hotel that bears the Trump name.

[...]

Mr. Romney, having a good time, called the endorsement “a delight.” “There are some things that you just can’t imagine happening in your life. This is one of them,” he said.

True, it’s not too hard to believe Mittens never imagined getting propositioned like a down-on-her-luck hooker in the lobby of a Vegas hotel — and then saying, “Yes.” [Politico/WSJ]

Ha ha, your editor promised herself to ignore whatever poop that jaundiced lizard Donald Trump decided to squeeze out of his mouth today (Allah love Kaia, she has braved the cesspool). We would just like to share this bit of heartening mid-January poll fun from the Pew Research Center that Political Wire noted on the occasion of Donald Trump’s pointless endorsement of the importance of himself endorsing Mitt Romney:

An endorsement by Donald Trump would draw a mixed reaction among Republican and Republican-leaning voters: 20% say they would be less likely to support a candidate backed by Trump, 13% more likely and 64% say it would make no difference.

Among all voters, however, more than three times as many would view a Trump endorsement negatively than positively (28% vs. 8%). That is little changed from 2007.

[Pew Research/ Political Wire]

PANIC PANIC PANIC PANIC! John McCain is all hot tears and snot right now over $600 billion in automatic cuts to defense spending triggered by the laughably predictable failure of the debt supercommittee last fall, so WALNUTS and his merry band of warhawks are stomping around the Senate hunting for government jobs to axe from the budget as a sacrifice to the war gods, in hopes of preventing the cuts from taking effect next year. Would five percent of the federal government workforce appease you, o Thor or Huitzilopocthli or Ares or Jesus or whoever wants to listen, COME ON HERE?

Yes, he offers to sacrifice five percent of all federal jobs, or just federal workers if the workers refuse to give up the jobs. The sacrifice of government jobs, obviously, is the only acceptable kind. Higher taxes on the wealthy will not sate the deities, cry the high priests of war:

“Let’s not let a domestic issue such as tax increases interfere with what could be devastating,” McCain said. “Everyone agrees that [defense] sequestration cannot take place. This is a proposal that we think has great validity.”

By “what could be devastating” Walnuts means three fewer $200 billion killing machines, and by “everyone,” he means himself and his adoring girlfriend, who oh look! also has an opinion about not raising taxes and leaving millionaires alone for heaven’s sake:

“We’re not going to use a millionaire tax to fix every problem around here,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.). “If the Democrats have a problem with the way we’re paying for this, surely to God in a budget this big we can find enough money to avoid decimating the Department of Defense.”

Barack Obama FOR NOW at least has told John McCain he will veto this bill if it passes, because it is ridiculous. [The Hill]

OKAY guys Rick Santorum did not want to have to point out something quite so obvious and all, but he’s just going to give it to America as super straight as the super straight microphone-sucker he is: the health care crisis is due to everyone purchasing iPads when they should be buying their medicines instead. Why would Americans consistently choose the latest Apple product over staying alive? Because everyone’s priorities are just MESSED UP. (You can now add the ghost of Steve Jobs to the list of evil gay abortionist warrior heathens conspiring to ruin civilization.) Sure, Rick Santorum. So if everyone saves that $900 for medicine, everyone will then have health care, like in Canada?

OH THE ETERNAL MEWLING:

“People have no problem paying $900 for an iPad,” Santorum said, “but paying $900 for a drug they have a problem with — it keeps you alive. Why? Because you’ve been conditioned to think health care is something you can get without having to pay for it.”

Except that, in regards to the sick child whose mom Froth Face was lecturing:

The mother said the boy was on the drug Abilify, used to treat schizophrenia, and that, on paper, its costs would exceed $1 million each year.

Sure, BUT, if you want to ignore that point entirely and recite standard health care conglomerate PR release gibberish like you’re campaigning for a job with a health care conglomerate when you inevitably drop out of the presidential campaign or something, hmmmm, instead, there’s this rebuttal:

“He’s alive today because drug companies provide care,” Santorum said. “And if they didn’t think they could make money providing that drug, that drug wouldn’t be here. I sympathize with these compassionate cases. … I want your son to stay alive on much-needed drugs. Fact is, we need companies to have incentives to make drugs. If they don’t have incentives, they won’t make those drugs. We either believe in markets or we don’t.”

Yeah, see how it badly things worked out for health care in socialist CANADA? Everyone there is already dead. [ABC News]

Rick Tyler, Newt Gingrich’s former communications director and now the head of his super PAC Bloviating About Our Future, had/created a terrible time on MSNBC following Tuesday’s primary in Florida. Rachel Maddow had Tyler on during her primary coverage to talk about whether Gingrich’s superbly negative Florida not-victory speech was using “racially coded language” to try to “appeal to Southern white conservatives.” Maddow said she personally thought Gingrich was using language “designed to call on resentment of African American achievement in this country.” Tyler immediately accused MNSBC of “race baiting” and then launched into an insane analysis of how the Democrats have failed African Americans. The subtext was that Democrats are racist because they support abortion. EH?

The nugget of Tyler’s remarks:

…the Democrats have failed in the public schools with the African Americans, they abort their babies, they’ve done nothing to lift them out of poverty.

Santorum? Is that you? When Tyler defended Gingrich’s remarks that Obama is the “food stamp president,” post-primary opiner Al Sharpton responded by saying that there were more new food stamp applications under W. than Obama. Also, GLOBAL RECESSION HELLOOOOOOOO. When asked to explain what Republican principles have actually helped lift people out of poverty, Tyler admits that, well, there haven’t been any, but remember Abraham Lincoln? He was a Republican. And also, Gingrich HAS some principles that will lift people out of poverty! Basically he is the first one since Lincoln, if you would just give him a chance!

Maybe we have good intentions too, but our policies haven’t been tried…Maybe we should try our policies, that put people back to work and not … give them a handout, tell them to live in public housing, shut up, collect a check and vote for Democrats…

No word yet on what those policies actually are, despite Maddow’s, Sharpton’s and Lawrence O’Donnell’s endless attempts to get Tyler to explain them. Tyler’s basic gist: EVERYONE SUCKS EXCEPT WE, WHO HAVE DONE NOTHING.

As Tyler and Sharpton escalated to the point where it became really difficult to detect actual English words, Tyler then brought George Lucas into it, just to strengthen his argument, saying that African Americans didn’t have “any” role models until the movie Red Tails (which is about the Tuskegee Airmen).

“They have many,” said Sharpton. “They have doctors, they have lawyers. We have many role models.”

“Sure they do, but Hollywood doesn’t show that.” WHAT DOES THIS HAVE TO DO WITH NEWT? Is Team Newt really trying to somehow take credit for knowledge of the existence of Red Tails, just because he and George Lucas are both sort of cuddly and like space???

So what, for what couldn’t possibly be the last time, but should be, is THE NEWT DEAL? Nobody knows, which is really fine, come to think of it, shhhhh. [Salon]

We were skimming the FoxNews.com website looking for some of those “free Medicare scooter” ads, but got distracted by the important news of terrible writer/awful person Ayn Rand’s 107th birthday. She doesn’t look a day over 106 … objectively. Objectively-ist. Anyway, we hope she’s enjoying being tortured for Eternity in Hell, for not believing in Jesus and denying His one command for all humanity: “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must Love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” Anyway, how are Ayn Rand’s terrible followers celebrating the day a kind woman selflessly gave birth to a child and then cared for it, instead of feeding Baby Ayn to the cat?

Some proud-to-be-a-jerk guy on the FoxNews.com website writes this birthday card to amorality:

Rand is usually thought of as a political philosopher, but that is not how she viewed herself. “I am primarily the creator of a new code of morality,” she once said …. This is the philosophy embodied by fictional characters such as Hank Rearden, the industrialist in “Atlas Shrugged.”

“I work for nothing but my own profit,” he says …. It is this moral outlook that underlies Rand’s advocacy of free markets, and it suggests where those looking for Rand’s influence on today’s politics can see it. Above all, you can see it in the moral outrage of the Tea Party activists, many of whom carry signs championing Rand’s works and ideas.

Recall the Rick Santelli rant that started it all: “This is America. How many of you people want to pay for your neighbor’s mortgage that has an extra bathroom and can’t pay their bills, raise their hand? . . . . I’m an Ayn Rander.”

Happy birthday, you evil worm! And happy birthday to you, too, Ayn Rand! [Fox News]

Why aren’t teachers allowed to earn more money according to Alabama state Senator/ evil leprechaun “Shadrack McGill?” Uh, because it is against the Bible to trick people who are not supposed to be teachers according to God’s will into wanting to be teachers just for the sweet, sweet salary. “It’s a Biblical principle. If you double a teacher’s pay scale, you’ll attract people who aren’t called to teach,” McGill argues alarmingly earnestly for an adult human. That’s cool, so teachers should all think of themselves as wise, poor socialists doing the Lord’s work, like Jesus?

Ha ha shouldn’t it actually be against the Bible for Alabama Republicans to talk about education?

“To go in and raise someone’s child for eight hours a day, or many people’s children for eight hours a day, requires a calling. It better be a calling in your life. I know I wouldn’t want to do it, OK?

“And these teachers that are called to teach, regardless of the pay scale, they would teach. It’s just in them to do. It’s the ability that God give ‘em. And there are also some teachers, it wouldn’t matter how much you would pay them, they would still perform to the same capacity.

“If you don’t keep that in balance, you’re going to attract people who are not called, who don’t need to be teaching our children. So, everything has a balance.”

Because, capitalism has no effect on teachers! No wonder the kids are learning nothing but COMMUNISM in school these days.

And then McGill defended raising legislators’ salaries on the basis that it helps prevent corruption among elected officials: “[The lawmaker] needs to make enough that he can say no, in regards to temptation.” Because lawmakers, on the other hand, are not doing the Lord’s work, no matter what Republicans say. [Times-Journal via ThinkProgress]

Oh how thoughtful, House Republicans are bringing to the floor today a bill to close some kind of sexy-sounding “strip-club loophole” in what, campaign spending disclosure rules or something? No? NO. Oh right, it’s a bill meant to stop all the silly misbehaving poors from spending their welfare money at strip clubs. No wonder they aren’t out getting jobs! Please, bill sponsor Rep. Charles Boustany Jr., tell us more about this terrifying epidemic of taxpayer waste!

From The Hill:

“It’s pretty rampant around the country,” Boustany said of the abuses. “This has really eroded the credibility of the TANF program in the eyes of the American taxpayer — a program that has been successful, by and large.

Is that really what American taxpayers think about when they consider their support for welfare programs? Strip clubs? Only if you are a Republican, maybe, because everything in that case somehow relates to (gay) strip clubs.

Boustany’s office cited reports of welfare abuses in eight states, totaling millions of dollars. His legislation would not reduce spending directly, but would restrict how taxpayer funds can be used.

In one well-publicized example, the Los Angeles Times reported in 2010 that California welfare recipients were able to withdraw cash from their state-issued debit cards at more than half of the casinos in the state.

“We have an obligation to make sure taxpayer dollars are spent appropriately,” Boustany said.

Hahahaha, don’t you always love that one, “we need to make sure taxpayer dollars are being spent appropriately?” Because of “millions of dollars” being wasted by poor people! Wait, hang on…

Okay, let’s see, here we go, after four seconds of Google searching, here is this article about taxpayer waste that we remember reading in Forbes last year:

The Army’s biggest budgetary mis-step was a family of networked air and ground vehicles collectively called the Future Combat System. Although prime contractor Boeing managed to keep the program on schedule and on budget through a series of restructures, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates decided in 2009 that the project wasn’t ready for prime-time and canceled it after a staggering $19 billion had already been spent. Bloomberg Business News subsequently reported that the service had wasted $32 billion on doomed weapons projects since 1995.

OOOH but POINT: the billions of dollars invested in the defense industry create so many JOBS! JOBS EVERYWHERE! Counterpoint: strip clubs ALSO provide jobs — jobs that don’t build giant terror machines used for killing people all over the world, which is true no matter how you feel about strip clubs.

So here’s a modest proposal: maybe instead we should actually expand our taxpayer-sponsored program for strip club visits and allocate $19 billion to give the millions of poors and the six or so middle-class workers still left all the chances they want to go see a mostly-naked person writhe around in front of them LIVE instead of having to sit through all the godawful commercials on TEEVEE to watch the same thing and there might even be ten or so dollars left over to send an Afghan kid to school for a year instead of murdering her. God. [The Hill]

Pepper spray is OVER, folks. Hope you enjoyed all the funny stuff the unemployed section of Internet users put together about the cop from Angry Birds spraying everything, ’cause in 2012, vicious crack downs on Occupy protesters are going to be all about tasering: hard, cold, fast, and indiscriminate. Which means….exciting new opportunities are opening up for third-rate human impersonators like Erick Erickson to interrupt the erectile dysfunction ads on their AM radio shows so as to fatly chortle that “watching a hippie protester get tased [at Occupy DC] just makes my day.”

Savvy taser-promoters will make sure to follow Erickson’s example and direct listeners to some fetid corner of the Internet to enjoy the “hilarious” tasing footage that is “just made of awesome.” And who knows? If you’re loathsome enough, and lucky enough, maybe you, too, can get paid to loud-talk on CNN, just like Erick Erickson! [HuffPo/Media Matters]

Mitt Romney, most undeserving and unexcited winner of the Florida primary since at least 2004, was utterly bored out of his skull during his victory speech in Florida Tuesday, though he at least kept up the practice of being EVIL, my friend, and took the Evil Show to a post-results chat with CNN’s Soledad O’Brien. There, he proceeded to terrify Soledad and the four other people watching CNN by saying how he really feels: “I’m not concerned about the very poor.” This is the real, true, unabashed, unequivocal, undeniable “I like being able to fire people” moment we have all been waiting for (yet have also gotten several other times!!!!) After making it difficult for Soledad O’Brien to know what to say/not kill herself, Romney tried to soften the blow with more terrible rich-man mumbo jumbo, and had some bossy, condescending words for Soledad, too, because she is a woman liberal woman liberal.

The evil goes well beyond the first few lines, but, well, here those are:

I’m in this race because I care about Americans. I’m not concerned about the very poor, we have a safety net there, if it needs repair I’ll fix it.

But Mittbott, who is your tax plan best for again? And how do Republicans like Romney really feel about “safety nets,” once they actually — God forbid (God, are you listening? FORBID IT) — get in office?

And er…so the “very poor” aren’t Americans? Romney goes on to say,

I’m concerned about the very heart of America, the 90 to 95 percent of Americans who are struggling, and I’ll continue to take that message across the nation.

HEY I FOUND THIS MESSAGE ON THE STREET, it’s kind of crumpled and wet and looks like it’s been used by A LOT of other Republican candidates unsuccessfully this year and every four to eight years since the beginning of time, but it’s mine now, effective immediately.

The numbers, when you really look at them, make this sound just diabolical. But then we’ve come to expect this. Romney’s talking about 46.2 million people — the number of people living below the poverty line in 2010 — who apparently have this lovely net that somehow hopefully allegedly magically prevents them from DYING but also probably keeps them squarely under the poverty line FOREVER. Of course, Romney and most of these other guys would prefer that safety net wasn’t there at all, so people could somehow just figure out how to survive on their own (incentive!), even though 90 to 95 percent of the country, along with that 6.7 percent, is also trying to figure out how to survive. Oh, is this trickle-down economics? Or is this just 312 million Americans (minus 3.12 million Americans) all living, striving, barely surviving together, as if inside one modest-sized Tyson chicken coop?

Anyway, apparently we’ve got a new slogan, thanks to this inspiring, breath-of-fresh-air revolutionary of a public figure. WE ARE THE 90 TO 95 PERCENT, SOMEWHERE IN THERE, YEAH. WHATEVER, THE POOR, DO YOUR THING, NICE NET. [The Atlantic Wire]

Well, Florida happened and HURRAH! We may never again have to hear the phrase “Space Coast,” or watch another remote feed from living crematorium and unmanaged-anger community The Villages. Romney managed to not be too deeply loathed by 46 percent of Republican voters while Newt received a non-hatred rating of 32 percent, and vowed to campaign today, campaign tomorrow, campaign forever. So, yes, we will have our little jewelry piglet to kick around a little longer! At least while unhinged millionaires continue to bankroll his little insanity project. Ron Paul was there, -ish, and lost, which is winning in re: the Floridian Republican primary in 2012. Rick Santorum also lost, although slightly less mightily, and accidentally dropped some truth to the frightened drifters hired to fill out the audience for his fourth ‘contrast-filled’ concession speech.

This particular address was notable only for acknowledging the open secret that everyone pretty much can’t stand the Republican candidates:

[It’s] great to be back here on the campaign trail, talking about the important issues of the day. And if that’s — if there’s one message that I think we got from the campaign in Florida is that Republica ns can do better. We can do better than this. We can do better than the — the discussion and the — and the dialogue and the — and the accusations that were going on in the state of Florida. And — and, really, this campaign, you know, went downhill.

Given that 300,000 fewer Republican voters showed up this year compared to 2008 (opting instead to stay home and search for feral cats that might have gotten buried in their hoard), it’s sort of comforting to have one of these dudes finally admit just how repugnant they all are. Even more so since new polls continue to confirm this, every hour, on the 2s, 5s, and 7s. It won’t change how horrid everyone finds these fart hoses but still! [Fox News/NYT]

“Florida is a microcosm of America,” we just heard one of the Romney and/or Gingrich spin-whores say on the MSNBC just now. Yes, because Florida is a limp dick dangling over a sex-slave resort in the Dominican Republic or whatever. Also, America is truly a symbol of America. Just look at the map, and look at it in profile. What you’ll see is a morbidly obese man with a pinhead and a dangling, useless dongle, with a massive ass to the west and a couple of unloved children from his first or second marriage literally “out to sea.” Anyway, how badly will Mittens beat the jewelry piglet tonight? Or will there be a surprise?

7:45 PM — Polls are closed in the “fancy part” of Florida, with the Jews and the Blacks and the Cubanos and the gay CIA retirees, while polls remain open for another fifteen minutes in the “Dukes of Hazard” part of Florida, with the angry 60-year-old thrice-divorced small-time property speculators fuming in their single-wides tonight. Which part of the state is “more American,” anyway?
7:48 PM — The important thing, for comedy reasons, is that Newt WILL NOT DROP OUT, not for many more weeks or possibly even many months. This is *crucial* for the nation’s comedy industry.
7:50 PM — Speaking of the comedy industry, we don’t know who all might be showing up to liveblog tonight’s mini-festival of graft and No Shame. So, perhaps the various contributors will introduce themselves when they take the Relay Dildo of Freedom? Probably not. Probably it will remain mysterious.
7:55 PM — But with the half of the state that has already finished, Romney is apparently leading with 48%. The Newt waddles behind with 31%, Internet joke Rick Santorum has 13%, and all the laser-printed Ron Paul flyers in Florida can’t keep the old newsletter confederate from topping 7%.
8:01 PM — And now it’s “official,” Mittens Moneybags “Willard” Romney won Florida, yayyyy!
8:41 PM — Uhh, and that was all of the news, wasn’t it? We will look for some funny video clips?

8:55 PM — Haha, why is Mormon Frenchman Mitt Romney forcing Holocaust survivors to eat this actual Arab pig meat for Passover? Vote Newt Gingrich to stop the outrage.
9:40 PM — Newt Gingrich refuses to prank call Mitt Romney to congratulate the liberal atheist on his big victory!
9:48 PM — But what did the “web pundits” say about Newt’s frothing speech?