Cranky’s First Law: Whenever a Politician accuses someone else of immorality, they reveal their own Iack of morality.

The whole Teabagger Meltdown over Caitlyn Jenner is just the most recent example of hypocritical moralizers with their own secretly amoral lives: for instance, the many-times-married, closeted gay foghorn Rush Limbaugh lambasted her for, well, being a her. Mike Huckabee responded to the Vanity Fair photo of Ms. Jenner by extolling the joys of showering with underaged girls. And so on. And on. AND on.

Every time a politico excoriates an opponent for conduct unbecoming, we come to find out that they have a related skeleton in their own closet. Like “pro-lifer” Scott DesJarlais, who pressured his own wife and mistress to get abortions. Or David Vitter, who hates all sex offenders except himself? Or the crew of Congressional Sluts (Hastert, Hyde, Gingrich, et. al.) who prosecuted Bubba in Blowjobgate?

Sometimes, a fiscal hawk can indeed be a good money manager. And some defense critics actually have served in combat. But never will you see a preachy poltico or pundit rant and rail about dah gay, or women’s healthcare, or anything related to sexual morality who doesn’t have his or her own little secret sex life. Usually one that they are pretending to hate.

Put another way,Orin Kerr recently said these few pithy words:

“If I understand the history correctly, in the late 1990s, the President was impeached for lying about a sexual affair by a House of Representatives led by a man who was also then hiding a sexual affair, who was supposed to be replaced by another Congressman who stepped down when forced to reveal that he too was having a sexual affair, which led to the election of a new Speaker of the House who now has been indicted for lying about payments covering up his sexual contact with a boy.”

Cranky’s First Law has been proven. NEVER trust a politico, pundit, or plutocrat who claims to hate ANY sort of sex or gender-related activity. Sure as eggs is eggs, they are down with some serious private (and mayhap illegal) naughtiness of their own.

Mr. Blunt and Cranky

So, if Boehner thinks Obama broke the law, why didn’t he take the President to court?

That is, after all, what one does when laws are broken, yes? And Little Johnny Boehner says laws were broken, yes sirree:

” This is not about, actually, the issue of immigration,” said Boehner after a closed-door meeting with rank-and-file Republicans. “What it is: It’s about the president acting lawlessly.”

We’re voting to block the president’s overreach,” Boehner told reporters on Tuesday, when asked about the potential impact on the Latino vote. “His executive overreach, which I believe is beyond his constitutional duty and frankly violates the Constitution itself.”

Ooooh, sounds like quite the crime spree. You’d think the Speaker would have platoons of lawyers clamoring at the doors of Federal courts, demanding that justice be wrought upon the Eeevil Obamanator.

But he hasn’t. Instead, he is trying to deport Hispanics. Uhhhhhh …. How, Mr. Speaker, does that address the Prexy’s supposed extra-constitutional, “lawless”, dictatorial actions?

The answer is, of course, these deportations have NOTHING AT ALL TO DO with any alleged illegal Presidential acts. It’s just Teapublicans being their usual racist, bigoted, corrupt, motherf***ing selves.

Mr. Blunt and Cranky

So, Obama plans to close the border, and tax the s*** out of undocumented immigrants.

And the “Republicans” are pissed off by this? Dafuq? No, seriously, daFUQ?

Obama is pretty much taking a set of classical Repub ideas and putting them into effect. Nothing all that drastic: they all boil down to law enforcement decisions. More cops, more prosecutions, more tax enforcement. Law and order.

Any Teapubbie who is shrieking and freaking over this Presidential speech is a liar and/or a f***wit. The Prexy is taking old-school Republican policies and putting them into effect, and the GOPee are acting like it’s TEOTWAKI.

But then, they did the same thing when he took their health care plan (the ACA), so it really shouldn’t surprise anyone that the lying sacks of s*** are doing it again.

Mr. Blunt and Cranky

The difference between Uganda and Arizona? Not much.

Both states have governments that hate gay people (and anyone remotely resembling gay folk). Uganda’s legislature passed a bill making gay anything a crime, and their prexy signed it into law. Arizona also passed a law legalizing anti-gay hatred, albeit not quite as crazy as Uganda’s.

And lest you think there is no connection between a small country in East Africa and American Teavangelicals, think again. Right-Wing “conservative” “Republican” “Christians” helped get both bills passed. The difference is only of degree: in Africa, you can be killed or imprisoned. Arizona isn’t there yet, but give them time.

Kansas is pushing similar laws, as are other state and local governments, claiming that their “religious freedom” includes the right to oppress and kill anyone their snake-handling (or snake-oil selling) preacher tells them to hate. They forget that the Constitution gave the rest of us religious freedom, too, and most of us don’t really give a single owl pellet who loves whom nor how they love them, so long as we are left alone to likewise conduct our love lives without government interference.

The American West and the African East: havens of hatred. Please, everybody, how about passing some nice “mind your own damned business” laws for a change?

Mr. Blunt and Cranky

OB/GYN Doctors to Politicians: “Get Out of our Exam Rooms”.

The American College of Gynecologists has finally had enough of lying, grandstanding, glory-hound yahoo politicos and their bulls*** anti-abortion laws. In fact, they are calling these “representatives” out, and (rhetorically) whacking them with very large sticks.

It makes sense that people who actually do something would be considered the experts at that thing, yes? So doctors who are trained in a medical specialty and work at it every day would be the authoritative sources, nicht wahr? And those OB/GYNs should be listened to, n’cest pas?

So let’s listen to them (bold text courtesy of the Crankster):

“While we can agree to disagree about abortion on ideological grounds, we must draw a hard line against insidious legislation that threatens women’s health like Texas HB2 (House Bill 2) and SB1 (Senate Bill 1). That’s why we’re speaking to the false and misleading underlying assumptions of this and other legislation like it: These bills are as much about interfering with the practice of medicine and the relationship a patient has with her physician as they are about restricting women’s access to abortion. The fact is that these bills will not help protect the health of any woman in Texas. Instead, these bills will harm women’s health in very clear ways.
We’re setting the record straight, loudly and unequivocally, with these simple messages to all politicians:

Get Out of Our Exam Rooms”

“Facts are very important, especially when discussing the health of women and the American public. And a lot of “facts” are being asserted in this debate. Truth be told, the scientific underpinnings of this legislation are unsound. First, there’s the 20-week ban, which is based on the argument that a fetus can feel pain. Recent and rigorous scientific reviews have concluded that there is no evidence of fetal perception of pain until 29 weeks at the earliest2 (third trimester is 28–40 weeks).”

Yes, these doctors are opening up a big ol’ can o’ Whoop-Ass on the “Republicans” in Texas and elsewhere who are prying into our private lives. And they are calling out these reprehensible scumballs for lying, invading our privacy, and endangering the lives of women and children with their meddling ways.

And the crazy part is, these “representatives” of ours are all too often proponents of “small government” and decriers of “Big Brother government”. People, if there is any more egregious example of Big Brother than a politician trying to stick their fingers into women’s private parts, this writer hasn’t heard of it.

Kudos to ACOG for telling these intrusive, corrupt, lying, sleazebucket politiciians to go pound sand.

Mr. Blunt and Cranky.

One in the Eye for Those Who Want to Steal Your Right to Vote

http://nbcpolitics.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/10/02/14182503-judge-blocks-pennsylvania-voter-id-law?lite

After a key Keystone State Legislator came out and said that their new Voter ID law would allow “Mitt Romney to win Pennsylvania”, one would have thought that any sane judge would have squashed the law out of hand; obviously, it was politically motivated and a bold-faced attempt to rig an election. But noooooooo.

Instead, there have been expensive and time-consuming hearings, rulings and counter-rulings, media circuses and so on. Finally, yesterday morning, a judge put a stay on part of the PA Voter ID Law. Half a loaf for those who believe in free, fair, and un-rigged elections, but you know what they say about half a loaf.

As an Independent, Mr. Blunt and Cranky really dislikes parties. A lot. He thinks, in fact, that they should be outlawed, because they have turned out to be just as insidious an infection as President Washington warned us about (“However [political parties] may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion”).

In this case, one of the parties (“Republicans”) have spent most of the past two years working on behalf of their party’s interest, to the detriment of the nation.The modern “Republican” party bears no resemblance to the party we once knew. The party of fiscal discipline has become the party of Voodoo Economics. The party of minding our own business has become the party of foreign wars of choice. And the party that trumpeted the rule of law has become the party of lawlessness, influence selling, election rigging and voter suppression.

The right to vote is one of the foundational rights of our nation. When one weakens the foundation of a structure, how long can the structure stand? Read President Washington’s words once again, and ask yourself if you really want to vote for people who would take away your rights; using the law of the land to weaken the nation for the benefit of a few corrupt politicos and those who buy them.

Again: “Republicans” don’t want you to vote. They want to take away your right to vote. If you care about your rights, you cannot afford to vote for these crooks.

Mr. B & C

Queen Ann Shoots from the Lip Once Again

Ann Romney hath spoken from Her Queenly Perch O’ Entitlement, telling reporter Natalie Morales that She and Lord Willard will not hand out any more information about Their Royal Selves to the media, or we lowly citizens, for that matter. Clearly She and Her little nancy boy Husband have not grasped the difference between public and private sector employment.

Here’s the deal, Annie-me-lass: when one works in the private sector (like Mr. Blunt and Cranky, say), one can live as privately as one wishes. Where you live, how you live, how much money you have, none of that is anybody’s business at all, unless you choose to share it. Most sane people choose to live thus.

Once you decide to operate in the public sector, any expectations of privacy are gone with the wind. And you had to know that, since this ain’t your first rodeo. The law requires one whole helluva lot of disclosure, and lots of politicians (like your late father-in-law, bless him) have raised the bar higher than the law requires, just to make themselves look good avoid even the appearance of a conflict of interest.

Hey, you’re richer than Croesus: good on you, many of us aspire to that. You used the tax laws to your advantage: so do most Americans. You likely have family tragedies that you might not wish to share: same here. So why the secrecy, why the scaredy-cat fuss, why the stonewalling? Because there can’t be anything that bad in your privileged backgrounds – Hell, you’re probably waaaay cleaner than the majority of your prospective subjects fellow citizens.

 If you wanted a completely private life, you should have stayed out of national politics. A wee bit late for that now, though: no matter how Your Royal Romneyness feels, you are going to have to deal with the demands of the new career you and your lackey-boy husband have chosen. Suck it up, buttercup, and open up. And climb off your throne, you look a jackass up there.

Mr. B & C

Legislators Gone Wild (Not porn. [Well, maybe it is.])

Most of us have no idea where laws come from, or why they exist. Some folks think that laws are the product of a shadowy conspiracy that is bent on enslaving all free people; others think they are produced by lazy people eager to get cushy government jobs. In reality, laws are written based on a perceived need that a legislator hopes to address.

That need might be headlines for the legislator; it might be a real problem experienced by a constituent; it might be a budget shortfall or civil rights matter; or it might be to curry favor with a funding source, especially when the legislator needs campaign cash or another form of baksheesh.

The Help America Vote Act (HAVA) is an instructive example. It was largely written by Bob Ney (R-Cellblock Number 9) with help from a vendor who hoped to make a pot of cash after the law was enacted. It was rushed through, and was woefully incomplete when it became law – standards were not adequately defined, the state and local Boards of Election were not given enough money to implement it, and so on. Quite the Charlie-Foxtrot.

However, some needs were met – the legislators got valuable media exposure and campaign contributions, and the vendors raked in big pots full of cash. And did the constituents benefit? In a word, no.  Because HAVA was never needed in the first place.

HAVA was based on the media-hysteria-fueled notion that American Elections were ‘broken’. And why were they supposedly broken? Because a few counties in Florida had problems with their vote-counting devices. Or so it seemed, after the media, campaigns, political types and the courts got done blathering on about the topic. Upon scenting some of that hot air, Ney and Co. decided that they could profit from the hysteria, thence HAVA. Nobody was willing to wait to find out what the root cause of the problem was: that wouldn’t have made the players any money or added to their influence in Washington and the media scrum.

So, after many millions of dollars were spent (and still are being spent – some of the new election systems do not work, you see), it was quietly disclosed that the reason those Florida counties had problems with their ballots was this: some idiot bought the wrong kind of paper to make the ballots. Cost to fix the real problem –a few thousand dollars.

Remember, laws are written to address a perceived need. The need to further fatten D.C. egos and various bank accounts was the one that Ney and his buddies addressed. The need of the citizens to have free and fair elections? Not so much.

Footnote: You might not consider the degradation of the ability to vote, the money that flowed into and out of legislators’ pockets, the unfunded mandates, or the general stench of greed, incompetence and corruption that surrounded the process to be akin to porn: this writer finds the whole mess to be far beyond pornographic.

Mr. B & C