“I think it’s important we have a sense of perspective. In Iran they hang you for the crime of being gay.”

Seriously. This jamoke actually said that. Out loud. I mean, yeah, he said it on CNN (which nobody watches anymore) to Wolf Blitzer (to whom nobody listens anymore), but he still said it. If a fuckwitted tree falls in a fuckwitted forest and there’s nobody but Wolf Blitzer around to hear, does it still make a sound? It surely does.

Here. Listen to Senator Tom Cotton go boom:

So. We don’t treat gay folks nearly as bad as they do in Iran. Yay?

Senator Cotton claims the RFRAs issued by the legislatures in Indiana and Arkansas are ‘modeled’ after the original RFRA signed by President Clinton. Modeled after. Not identical, not similar to — modeled after.

Here’s a fact that for some reason always gets omitted in these discussions about the Republican-based RFRA laws: the original Religious Freedom Restoration Act was written to protect the rights of Native Americans whose worship practices were sometimes in violation of Federal law. Their religion sometimes required them to hold ceremonies on what they considered to be sacred land — but which was considered by the government to be Federal land held under Federal jurisdiction and therefore subject to Federal laws. And their religious rites sometimes required the use of peyote.

Holy peyote

That’s right, the original RFRA — the one Senator Cotton and Governor Pence and Governor Hutchinson keep saying was the model for their RFRAs — was created to allow American Indians to use psychedelic mushrooms on Federal land.

Now that is religious freedom. That protects the right to practice religion.

Can I get an Amen, brothers and sisters.

You guys, former sorta Governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin has had it up to here with your elitist tyranny of sentence structure. In her stirring speech made before a packed audience of fellow patriots Palin cast off the iron chains of syntax, context, and linear thought, as well as grammar, or in other words Free at last, free at last, as Jeebus said on his midnight ride to address the nation on the critical importunation that only drilling for oil can set These Great United States on the right course to prosperity and keeping illegal immigrants from driving, as Ronald Reagan said in the Gettysburg Address.

You can see the entire ‘speech’ here:

And oh, it is quite the speech, yessiree, until about thirteen minutes into it when the teleprompter went toes up and Governoress Palin was given the opportunity to say what exactly was exactly on her mind exactly as she thought it. Insights and wisdoms that, which no doubt, without fear or the burden of the lamestream media were, you know, uttered and uttered boldly.As did our forefathers before us. And Reagan, too also.

The audience sat stunned and amazed as Palin spoke and addressed many of the important issues faced by the world and America, which as you may have used to know is the greatest nation of the planet of Earth, even if Obama bows to Muslim leaders while refusing to negotiate with our own elected leaders in Congress, is that how he thinks hope and change works? Well, it isn’t. Also? Nobody likes Michael Moore. Or his stupid hat.

Not everybody, including some noble Republicans, saw the underlying insights and wisdoms, even among those that are to be found in FreeRepublic. Some were perhaps maybe sorta kinda almost maybe dismissive almost maybe of the former governor.

“I watched it and there were smatterings of applause and some laughter. Palin was all over the place. No real coherence or continuity. Just a bunch of one liners.”

“I listened for a few minutes but Mrs. Palin’s shrill, runaway, ululating voice got to me immediately. My God….just about the worst, most irritating voice I’ve ever heard emanating from any politician’s throat. Pulling myself together, I continued to watch, and it only got worse. I have but one observation….the speech was corny, folksy, trite, lacking form or coherence and almost void of issues with proposed answers presented logically and with craftsmanship.”

But naysayers will say nay, as we all know, just like the Nazis said nay to Patrick Henry who swore he’d not give up the ship until he saw the whites of their eyes. Many stepped up and forward and up again to defend the former sorta kinda governor and her graceful eloquent-like ululating voice.

“My wife and I just watched (Sunday afternoon) your EXCELLENTLY PREPARED AND PRESENTED SPEECH at the Freedom Summit.”

“The theme was she is kicking off her campaign and she laid out the path to victory. The ending was inspiring. She is the only one who can win.”

“Her speech was fine. Anyone who would make a comment such as yours is coming from a Pre-determined animus. You are exposed.”

“I watched the entire Palin speech. She hit on every theme we believe in here on FreeRepublic. It was not incoherent, she was not drunk, she did not ramble. It was entertaining, and that is her informal style of speech. I would rather have that level of reality and honesty than trained speakers who are polished but say nothing that they actually believe in. She is the next Ronald Reagan.”

“Her new speech pattern with her SINCERE gestures in this presentation was tailored to deliver specific information to specific people and not just to persuade potential voters and supporters who were in attendance there. I’m a voice coach. I pay attention to how she’s doing. She nailed it Saturday in Iowa.”

And, of course, there those among FreeRepublic who support near-Governor Palin totally and completely and with all their hearts though not for President of These United States but a lesser and more girlier job, as intended by God and the grand old flag that flew so proudly over Fort Sumter when the Japanese attacked and Francis Scott Card wrote the Star Spankled Banner for. Like this guy:

“She would make an OUTSTANDING Cabinet member. Say Secretary of Energy or Secretary of the Interior. She could make LIBTARD heads explode.”

And who among us would deny the importance of a policy based entirely on exploding Libtard heads? Not the Founding Fathers, no sirree, who wrote the Constitution and protected our rights to carry without having to explain our faith or creed to Harvard elites who would mock and jeer and cast the first fish upon the water. Amen.

Governor-lite Palin is considering, she says, and who could doubt her sincerity, which is an attribute needed to be presidential like Reagan, to run for the highest office in the land or the entire world in 2016 though she hasn’t made a decision yet, and won’t until she prays to Jeebus and also Reagan.

Next Tuesday Barack Obama, President of These United States, will deliver the annual State of the Union address. Traditionally, following the SOTU speech, the opposition party is given the opportunity to respond. This year the Republican response will be given by Senator Joni Ernst.

Who, you are asking, the hell is Joni Ernst? Let me answer that. She’s the newly elected Senator from Iowa. Seriously, she was just sworn into office a few days ago. But who IS she? She’s Sarah Palin Lite. She’s Palin without Palin’s intellect and gravitas. She’s Palin, corn-fed and less coherent. She’s Palin on mood stabilizers. She’s Palin castrating swine instead of shooting at elk. And yeah, that castrating swine bit? I’m not even joking. That’s actually how she got elected..

This was probably the most effective advert run by a Republican in the last election cycle. It put Joni Ernst on the map, and got the attention of the Old White Guys with Deep Pockets. They bought her a bunch of political advisers and media consultants, who managed to tone down her Crazy Quotient enough to get her elected. (And dude, Ernst scores HIGH on the Crazy Quotient — which I’ll get back to in just a bit.)  Once the OWGwDP began to groom her, Joni stopped talking about policy and focused her campaign on the fact that she was an Iowa country mom who wore a uniform, rode a motorcycle, loved guns, and spent her childhood lopping the balls off pigs.

After she was elected, Senator Lindsey Graham gave her a plaque with a pig castration tool mounted on it, inscribed Make ‘Em Squeal, Joni.

Ernst’s other major claim to legitimacy is her military service. She’s a lieutenant colonel in the Iowa Army National Guard, the commander of the 185th Combat Sustainment Support Battalion. That’s the one thing I really truly actually respect about Ernst. She put on the uniform and she served. And don’t knock the logistics folks; a military unit is only as good as its equipment and supplies.

But Joni doesn’t get a free pass just because of her military service — for a couple of reasons. First, her media handlers often refer to her as a ‘combat veteran’ because her unit served in Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003-2004. Which sounds cool. Except that her support unit was stationed in Kuwait, and while her unit did run convoys into southern Iraq, I feel safe in suggesting that as the company commander, Joni never got behind the wheel of one of those convoy vehicles. She isn’t a combat veteran.

Second, despite her long military career, Joni seems unaware of Article 88 of the Uniformed Code of Military Justice.

Any commissioned officer who uses contemptuous words against the President, the Vice President, Congress, the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of a military department, the Secretary of Transportation, or the Governor or legislature of any State, Territory, Commonwealth, or possession in which he is on duty or present shall be punished as a court-martial may direct.

That’s right, it’s a court martial offense insult the president. But just a year ago, Joni said “He (Obama) has become a dictator.” She’s also flirted with violations of UCMJ Article 94, which states that anybody subject to the UCMJ who advocates “revolt, violence, or other disturbance against that authority” is guilty of sedition. In a speech to the NRA, she said:

“I do believe in the right to carry, and I believe in the right to defend myself and my family — whether it’s from an intruder, or whether it’s from a government, should they decide that my rights are no longer important.”

When she joined the Iowa National Guard, Joni swore an oath that she would “obey the orders of the President of the United States and the Governor of the State.” Which, you know, actually IS the government she’s toting a handgun to defend herself from. So she can either be a good soldier or she can be somebody who is arming herself against her own government — but she can’t be both.

But wait…that’s the low end of Joni Ernst’s score on the Crazy Quotient. At the high end? Agenda 21. She believes this is some United Nations conspiracy to usurp democracy in order to deprive US citizens of their property rights in order to…well, that bit isn’t clear. But dammit, foreigners want to kill family farms and take away our golf courses. At a candidate forum, Joni claimed United Nations agents have begun

“moving people off of their agricultural land and consolidating them into city centers and then telling them that you don’t have property rights anymore.”

Joni is also an advocate of nullification — the completely discredited notion that state rights can trump federal law. In a candidate questionnaire she said as a Senator she’d support:

“…legislation to nullify ObamaCare and authorize state and local law enforcement to arrest federal officials attempting to implement (it).”

That’s right — Joni not only believes in a crackpot legal theory, she also thinks it’s okay to arrest and prosecute Federal personnel who are following Federal law. I suppose we should be grateful she doesn’t advocate castrating them.

And let me remind you once again — this woman is a Senator in the United States Congress. Elected right here in Iowa, the heartland and all that (and really, I apologize for all of Iowa). And even though she’s only been in office for less than two weeks, she’s the person chosen to give the Republican Party’s official response to the president’s State of the Union address.

My country, I love it dearly…but we are so fucked.

Jeb Bush. The ‘smart’ one. Seriously, they actually call him that in news articles. The smart brother in the Bush family. He’s running to be the President of These United States. Sort of.

I am excited to announce that I will actively explore the possibility of running for president of the United States.

That single sentence by itself should be enough to disqualify Jeb Bush from ever becoming president. No human being wrote that sentence. It could have been produced by an Announcement Generator app. More likely, though, it was sweated over by a cadre of highly paid public relation monkeys who’d been instructed to come up with something that would convey the aura of enthusiasm without actually committing Jeb Bush to follow through on the announcement. You know, in case it turns out absolutely nobody on the fucking planet actually wants him to be the President of These United States of America. It’s a pissy-pants statement if I’ve ever heard one (and I have).

Let’s unpack this turd burrito, shall we?

I am excited to announce…

Excited, right. C’mon Jeb, you’d probably be more excited looking in the refrigerator late at night and finding there’s still some lasagna leftover. You’re not really excited by this, and neither is anybody else. This isn’t even a real announcement. An announcement is a public notice that somebody is doing something — getting married, having a baby, starting a new job. Nobody ever announced they were exploring the possibility of looking for a different job. “Dear friends, I’m excited to announce I’m actively exploring the possibility of seeking employment.” Jeebus in the freezer, really?

…that I will actively explore the possibility…

See, one of the first things they teach you in the Acme Writing Academy is to avoid passive language. It’s important to use words that suggest excitement and activity. Words like ‘excited’ and ‘actively’. But what this really means is you’re going to have your staff start calling the guys with deep pockets. You’re going to try to find out if any of them might be willing piss away some of their big bucks in an attempt to insert another member of the Bush family into a political position from which he can help the guys with deep pockets get deeper pockets. There’s no ‘exploration’ here; you’re just going back to the well.

…of running for president of the United States.

Yeah, That sounds much nicer than the subtext — which is this: who else are the guys with deep pockets gonna turn to? Mitt Romney, the human blancmange, again? C’mon. Chris Christie? Sure, he’s the guy you’d call if you want to close the bridge from Newark to Tel Aviv, but nobody takes him seriously. Who else have the Republicans got? Jindal, that pencil-necked geek from Louisiana? Rick ‘Oops’ Perry? Ted Fucking Cruz?

I have had it up to HERE with your bullshit — it’s MY turn, dammit.

What Jeb Bush is actually saying is this:

Get on board, bitches — it’s my turn. You ran my brother (who, can I just say this, is so goddamn stupid he couldn’t pour piss out of a boot if the instructions were written on the bottom); you ran crazy ass John McCain, whose only accomplishment was to get shot down in Vietnam; and then you ran Romney. Mitt Dancing Horses Romney, for fuck’s sake. It’s my turn and I’m probably the least embarrassing rich white guy you got (and yeah, we all know it’s going to be a rich white guy, so shut up).

Oh, the 2016 election is most certainly going to be the stupidest election ever. I can hardly wait.