All you really need to know about the last week in politics is that Barack Obama’s prom picture is less embarrassing than yours.
And that yours is less embarrassing than every appearance of money-laundering former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay in the ninth season of Dancing With The Stars.
This Week’s Poll!
Has it ever occurred to you that Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann — the woman who thinks God sends earthquakes to shrink the government, who thinks it’s an “interesting coincidence” when flu outbreaks happen under Democratic presidents — has it ever occurred to you that Bachmann may have a void inside her?
Well, it occurred to the author of “Fires of Siberia,” an erotic novel that imagines what would have happened if, while trying to boost her foreign policy credentials during the 2012 presidential campaign, Bachmann’s plane went down somewhere in Siberia, leaving her stranded with a “sexy stranger.”
We’re on board with the notion that Michele Bachmann becoming stranded in Siberia is the kind of thing that fantasy is made of, but the sexy stranger bursts that bubble right on the book jacket:
“He touched the void inside her,” the book’s cover pants, “pollinating her pink flower like a master bee.”
Ewww. Here we thought that tax cuts for the 1% were the extent of Republican porn.
The author, a poet named Tréy Sager, has changed Bachmann’s name to Danielle Powers. But the press releases make no secret that Powers, a presidential candidate “full of firebrand pluck and red state sex appeal,” is Bachmann. The character even has her own John Wayne/John Wayne Gacy moment.
All of this must be getting Marcus really peeved. Why didn’t anyone tell him about Michele’s void?!
It’s hard to know if basing a sex novel’s character on the malcontent from Minnesota is satire, but it hardly matters – and it kind of makes sense. After all, it’s no secret that conservatives prefer their female representatives to be prettier than average. And, after those rumors of the Sarah Palin look-a-like stripper hired to work at the GOP convention in Tampa, perhaps this is just the next logical step.
So where’s this going? Is this the beginning of a new “GOPorn” literary genre? Should we be bracing for an S/M fantasy about John Boehner titled “50 Shades of Orange”?
Let’s figure this out together. If Sager’s book is a hit, surely there will more of the same. So let’s get him started. All he probably needs is the title. The rest of book will practically write itself!
Take this week’s survey and tell Tréy Sager what titles YOU want to see lining the bookstore shelf next!
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“I can’t give you a brain, but I can give you a diploma.”
~L. Frank Baum, 1856-1919
This Week’s Poll!
Disgraced politicians everywhere are paying super-crazy-close attention to the surprise comeback of Mark Sanford, the studly Republican former governor of South Carolina who just won a special election to Congress. Sanford’s return is remarkable, of course, because of just how far he’d sunk. This is the guy who made “hiking the Appalachian Trail” the most overworked sexual double entendre of 2009.
But it seems that South Carolina voters are all too ready to forgive the “family values conservative” who misused public funds, secretly left the country and lied to his entire staff about his whereabouts and deceived his wife about his sexual affairs with his South American mistress. Sanford was even busted trespassing on his ex-wife’s property during this current campaign — the same campaign that his ex-wife declined to run for him when, unbelievably, he asked her to. This bad ole boy has certainly got some balls.
After all he put us through, Sanford’s latest victory has left much of the country pretty stunned. It really doesn’t seem that long ago that the S.C. legislature agonized for months over whether to impeach him for the 37 violations he was formally charged with. People: this is the same guy who once hopped on a state plane just to get a hair cut. Who was once named one of the worst governors by the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. The guy who made the words “soul mate” cringe-worthy.
Still, some are asking: Is all of this a cause for celebration or despair? Shouldn’t we be kinda sorta happy that the voters in South Carolina chose ideology over Puritanical reaction to all that ugly messy stuff?
Well, Sanford’s 9-point win loses some of that shine when you realize that Mitt Romney took the same district by a whopping 18 points in 2012, and that this district hasn’t sent a Democrat to D.C. since Dick Nixon learned to use chopsticks. And Paul Krugman, on his New York Times blog, argues it doesn’t even matter who you send to Congress, as long as he or she is from the party of your choice.
But, still… Sanford won. And we’re in shock. Come on, this guy was supposed to be done. Maybe his opponent, Elizabeth Colbert Busch — who by most accounts ran a competent campaign — just didn’t try hard enough to appeal to South Carolina voters. Or maybe South Carolinians just happen to like their candidates Sanford-level crazy!
This got us thinking. What’s a Democrat have to do to get elected in states like South Carolina? How can they be competitive in a ring with odds and logic and common decency stacked against them? What do YOU think?
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Now, This Week’s Poll!
So you think being president of the United States is easy? All those pesky press conferences and state dinners? Correctly pronouncing Kim Jong Il and those big words in “My Pet Goat”?
Well, at the brand-new George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum in Texas, everybody’s favorite former president George W. Bush wants you to know he tried really, really hard. And he seems to be asking, would you, Average American, have done any better?
Here’s your chance to find out! The brick-and-limestone museum offers visitors an interactive opportunity to play the role of the Decider, using touch screens (made in China?) to choose: Invade Iraq or no? Let the banks fail or bail ‘em out? Deploy federal troops to Katrina-ravaged New Orleans or just airlift in a few teacups and let ‘em fix things locally?
“It’s unfair for us to assume that an exhibit depicting a president’s administration will be objective when the president is alive,” said Mark K. Updegrove, the director of the LBJ Library, also in Texas. True — but we can’t help feeling like this whole museum is, well, more than a little defensive on Bush’s part.
As the New York Times points out, the 14,000 square feet museum takes pains to juxtapose the presidency Bush wanted to have (tax cuts, education reform, faith-based social services) with the dumb-luck presidency he ended up having (9/11, Katrina, financial meltdown). The exhibits tango around things like, say, the ill-conceived invasion of Iraq, offering guests the vague caveat that, while no W.M.D. were found, “Post-invasion inspections confirmed that Saddam Hussein had the capacity to resume production of W.M.D.”
Condi Rice shows up, hopefully on skates, to defend waterboarding and other interrogation techniques with a claim that, after the World Trade Center attacks, “every day after was Sept. 12.” See how hard it is to be president?
The whole exercise seems to embrace the idiotic idea that, in America, not only can anyone grow up to be president, but, really, just about anyone is qualified. The sneering “So you think you coulda done better?” tone suggests that the president of the richest and most powerful country in the world doesn’t particularly need better deciding skills than anyone else the voters might want to have a beer with. But we think it’s irrelevant that some of the choices a president faces would stymie an average person. The president isn’t supposed to be average.
“The challenge when you’re a former president,” said Bush in a recent interview in Parade Magazine, “is how do you use your God-given talents?” Of all the challenges Bush has faced in his lifetime, really, this one should be a no-brainer.
BUT, if he wants his library to be interactive, let’s all participate. If, according to Bush, any old dope can make decisions just as good as anyone else, let’s jump in and help him design his library! Tell us: What would YOU like to see in the new George W. Bush Library?
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This week, a delusional dictator who inherited political power from his father threatened to destroy the United States. But we’ve all heard that before.
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Now, This Week’s Poll!
We’ve been wondering: Is there anyone out there that the GOP doesn’t hate?
Don’t get us wrong. You don’t have to have a conservative black-and-white view of the world to get a thrill out of cheering heroes and hissing villains. We all enjoy a character we can love to despise! But, with a whopping 36% of Republicans now saying that it’s the people in their own party who are the bad guys, it’s getting awfully hard for conservatives to know who to hiss at.
So they’re getting desperate, even looking back in history. Why else would they be trotting out hippies — yes, hippies! — as the latest examples of evil incarnate? That’s what they’re doing in Bobby Jindal’s Louisiana, where a voucher school is now using an 8th grade “history” book titled “America: Land I Love” to teach kids that “hippies” are really dirty, ragged Satanists! (Check out the link; we’re not exaggerating.)
Just when it started to look like the GOP had run out of contemporary suspects to demonize (union workers, welfare queens, people who don’t like their kids getting shot), along comes Linda Harvey, founder of the Ohio-based Christian Organization Mission:America, to remind us: Everything can be blamed on the gays!
Last Tuesday, Harvey denounced the venerable Girls Scouts of America for promoting lesbianism by featuring homosexuals in their materials, using “radical feminists” as role models, and just overall man-hating! “Unless you have an attitude of suspicion toward males in general,” Harvey accused the GSA of teaching girls, “unless you bring home a paycheck and unless you have a worldview based on self-indulgence with never a notion of sacrifice, you as a woman are really diminished in worth.” Listen up, girls. Linda Harvey wants you to know your place.
Though the GSA angle may be new, Harvey has been obsessed with homosexuality for some time. She previously called gay rights advocates “fascists” and “masters of demonic manipulation,” called the Obama administration’s efforts to promote equal rights a “humanitarian disgrace” and even called the It Gets Better video series — the series that reaches out to young gay kids to tell them that life probably won’t suck forever — wrong, evil and dark. She’s so obsessed with homosexuality that the Southern Poverty Law Center went as far as to designate Mission:America as an active hate group a year ago. But Harvey’s not likely to let it go. We gotta wonder what happened to her as a kid to make her hate homosexuals this much. Did she once have a crush on Rock Hudson?
Well, we decided to have a little fun at Linda Harvey’s expense. Since she’s bound to see a radical gay conspiracy behind almost anything, we’re wondering what will make her explode next. What do YOU think? Tell us!
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From Lester & Charlie’s “GOP Time Machine” Series: Truth in Advertising!
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This week, intrepid Republican voting auditors scored an “I told you so!” after catching Minnesota resident and suspected Obama supporter Margaret Schneider in a voting fraud scheme.
The face of fraud
86-year-old Schneider, who suffers from both Parkinson’s and dementia, admits that she probably did send in an absentee ballot several weeks prior to casting a vote in person during the 2012 primary! She faces up to 5 years in prison and a $10,000 fine.
“Fame is the thirst of youth.”
~Lord Byron
This week, Barack Obama told Congress that he remembers his campaign promises. And Marco Rubio proved that it’s difficult to drink water and recycle bullshit at the same time.
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And in a world of rampant unemployment, a man with lifetime job security quit.
“I put my heart and my soul into my work, and have lost my mind in the process.”
~Vincent Van Gogh
This week, the Bush family emails were hacked!
And if a family that ran the CIA, spent 20 years with an office in the White House, produced a governor of Florida and have Dick Cheney‘s number on speed dial can’t remember to change their Hotmail passwords now and then, maybe they got what’s coming to them.
Unfortunately, the email hacker didn’t find any information whatsoever that would help make sense of the Bush family’s years in government or even tell us where the Bush Twins’ favorite happy hour is.
But it did show us what America’s newest self-portrait artist, George W., has been up to!
