The Kind-Hearted Smart Aleck

Republican West Virginia delegate Eric Porterfield has come under fire for his recent comments about the LGBTQ community. For those of you who have never heard of him, it's probably all for the best, because the guy is as good as resigned at this point. Over the past week, Porterfield has made the following comments on multiple occasions: - "The LGBTQ - not homosexual, but the LGBTQ - is the closest thing to political terrorism in America." - "The LGBT is the most socialist group in this country. They do not protect gays. There are many gays they persecute if they do not line up with their social ideology." - "The LGBTQ is a modern day version of the Ku Klux Klan, without wearing hoods with their antics of hate." - "Let me very clear with my statement, the LGBTQ - not homosexuals - are the modern day version of the Ku Klux Klan." - "They are socialist in nature, they exercise economic extortion, they terrorize and frighten pe...

Actor, game show host, and right-wing nut job known to put people on speed asleep after talking for 2 minutes - Ben Stein - is at his wacky ways yet again. When speaking on the Fox Business channel, Stein said the following: "We have a society in which there are an awful lot of people who have no idea that Stalin, Hitler, Mao Tse-Tung all came to power promising the same kinds of things that Ms. Ocasio-Cortez is promising. And it led to mass murder, it led to dictatorship, it led to genocide. These promises are old promises and they invariably lead to bad things." He added: "It's not about ordering people around, putting them in concentration camps. What do you do if a person is a richer or poorer person? What do you do? Do you take him away? Do you shoot him? Well, that's what the communists tried, it didn't work very well for them." Really? Stein really wants to go there? He really wants to compare a democratic socialist to Hitler when he is an...

Just last week, I awarded Hill columnist Joe Concha with Douche of the Week for his piece, "Time fumbles another Person of the Year' by excluding Kavanaugh." After posting about this on Twitter, Mr. Concha actually responded. Here's how our brief back-and-forth basically went: Him: "Do you know the criteria for the award?" Me: "'The person or persons who most affected the news and our lives, for good or ill, and embodied what was important about the year.' So, to answer your question, yes." Me: "The only way Kavanaugh affected my life was by prompting immature laughter at a new term I learned courtesy of him - boofing ." Him: "If you have a beef with it, take it up with Time then." Him: "How did Hitler and Stalin win the award then?" Me: "I didn't write a column about a beef I had with it; you did. Project much?" Him: "This has to be the dumbest attempt at a conversation I'v...

Right-wing Hill columnist Joe Concha decided to chime in with his take on TIME magazine's Person of the Year award. The winners of the award were "The Guardians and the War on Truth," with Robert Mueller finishing in 2nd. Before delving into Concha's column, the official criteria for the award is "the person or persons who most affected the news and our lives, for good or ill, and embodied what was important about the year." Having said that, here were the finalists for the award: - Donald Trump - Separated Families - Vladimir Putin - Robert Mueller - Ryan Coogler - Christine Blasey Ford - Jamal Khashoggi - March For Our Lives Activists - Moon Jae-in - Meghan Markle So who did Concha think should have been added to that list? Brett Kavanaugh. The right-wing shill attempted to rationalize this by writing the following: "If Ford is being considered, why not the person she accused of attempting to sexually assault her 36 years a...

Without wasting any time, here's the much talked about back-and-forth CNN anchor Anderson Cooper and Ohio Representative Jim Jordan engaged in over the past week: Jim Jordan: "He's (Trump) always been square with me." Anderson Cooper: "What about the American people?" Jordan: "The American people elected him President of the United States." Cooper: "But I mean, have you ever heard the President lie? That's why I'm asking you." Jordan: "I have not. And the American people feel like what the treatment he's receiving from the top people of the FBI..." Cooper: "I don't think you can talk about all the American people. But I'm asking you -- just yourself, have you ever heard the President lie?" Jordan: "I have not." Wow... Through January 10th, Washington Post fact-checkers Glenn Kessler and Meg Kelly tallied 2,001 misleading claims spouted by Donald Trump through his first 355 ...

Former U.S. Senator and current CNN talking blowhard, Rick Santorum, had a few words of advice for the anti-gun violence protesters who marched in this nation's capital over the weekend. He said: "How about kids instead of looking to someone else to solve their problem, do something about maybe taking CPR classes or trying to deal with situations that when there is a violent shooter that you can actually respond to that... They took action to ask someone to pass a law. They didn't take action to say, 'How do I, as an individual, deal with this problem? How am I going to do something about stopping bullying within my own community? What am I going to do to actually help respond to a shooter?' ... Those are the kind of things where you can take it internally, and say, 'Here's how I'm going to deal with this. Here's how I'm going to help the situation,' instead of going and protesting and saying, 'Oh, someone else needs to pass a law to p...

As long time readers know, I've handed out awards for Douche of the Day, Douche of the Week, Douche of the Month, even Douche of the Year, but today, for the very first time, I'm dishing out an award for Douche of the Century. When speaking with Jim Gray on Westwood One Monday night, former Chicago Bears head coach Mike Ditka let his voice be known about the NFL players National Anthem protest. I'll save the best quote for last, but here are just a few appetizers before I provide the main course: - "Is this the stage for this? If you want to protest, you've got a right to do that. But I think you're a professional athlete. you have an obligation to the game." - "I don't see a lot of respect for the game. I just see respect for their own individual opinions. ... Respect the game, play the game, when you want to protest, protest when the game's over, protest whatever other way you want to." - "I don't care who you are, or ...

About a week ago, Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte came under fire for "joking" with troops, saying, under martial law, "You can arrest any person, search any house. I alone would be responsible for anything you do under martial law. I will go to jail for you. If you happen to have raped three women, I will own up to it." To this, Chelsea Clinton responded via Twitter with the tweet, "Not funny. Ever." Duterte of course couldn't let this go and told Clinton, "When your father was screwing Lewinsky and the rest of the young girls there in the office of the president, on the table, on the sofa, did you raise any criticism?" While I in no way condone former President Bill Clinton's actions in cheating on then First Lady Hillary Clinton, the sexual relations were consensual. Rape is a completely different beast, where one person is forced beyond their will to engage in intercourse. Duterte is making an apples-and-oranges argume...

I hate to be so blunt, but we really need to stop electing idiots. ...and they can't give me that whole "I-wasn't-elected-to-be-a-scientist" routine. No, they weren't, but call me crazy, I think our leaders should be smarter than fifth graders. Yes, my standards may be a bit high, but a guy can dream, can't he? Pennsylvania State Senator Scott Wagner proved that could very well be the case with his recent comments on WITF radio in Harrisburg, where he made the following statement with regard to climate change: "I haven't been in a science class in a long time, but the earth moves closer to the sun every year - you know the rotation of the earth ... We're moving closer to the sun. We have more people. You know, humans have warm bodies. So is heat coming off?" After receiving the inevitable backlash for the stupidity of his comments, Wagner's campaign manager, Jason High, responded with, "He's not running to be the top scientis...

Well, the Lord hath spoken, and it wasn't powerful, pretty, nor even pretty powerful. After Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan criticized presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump's racist comments regarding Mexican-American judge Gonzalo Curiel (he was born in Indiana), CNN commentator Jeffrey Lord decided to defend Trump by saying this: "Speaker Ryan is wrong and Speaker Ryan has apparently switched positions and is supporting identity politics, which is racist. I am astonished." He added: "I am accusing anybody who believes in identity politics, which he apparently does now, of playing the race card. The Republican establishment is playing this, Senator [Mitch McConnell] is playing this. These people have run and hid and borrowed the Democratic agenda of playing the race card. It's just wrong!" This is one of the major problems with the modern-day Republican Party - to put it bluntly, they don't know what in the hell they're talking about. ...

On March 14th, the NFL finally came forward in admitting the link between playing football and chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), as, when asked by Representative Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) if there was such a link, NFL senior vice president for health and safety, Jeff Miller, responded by saying, "The answer to that question is certainly yes." Not everyone's on board with this admission, however. Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, during a speech he gave at the NFL owners meetings in Boca Raton, Florida on Tuesday, said the following about the matter: "We don't have that knowledge and background, and scientifically, so there's no way in the world to say you have a relationship relative to anything here. There's no research. There's no data. ... We're not disagreeing. We're just basically saying the same thing. We're doing a lot more. It's the kind of thing that you want to work ... to prevent injury." When asked if he believ...

While I normally can't stand cable news networks, I'm hooked during election season. This morning, unfortunately, that resulted in me seeing a painful interview on MSNBC's Live with Tamron Hall  between host Tamron Hall and pastor and Donald Trump supporter, Darrell Scott. Here are a few of the highlights (or lowlights depending on how you look at it): - "Inciting (violence)? No, because you don't see Donald Trump supporters fighting each other." - Denied 78-year-old Trump supporter (John McGraw), who sucker-punched an African-American protester as he was walking out of a Trump rally, (before later un-denying it), was actually a Trump supporter, adding, "If he had punched a white man, we wouldn't have had the controversy." - Compared the Trump rally (a white man punching a black man) to a Katt Williams show where a black man stomped on another black man - "If I hear that, I don't throw a tomato. Why would you throw a tomato anywa...

Just this morning I read the following headline, which prompted me to read a bit further: "Political science professor forecasts Trump as general election winner." No, given the fact Donald Trump is the current favorite to represent the Republican Party in the coming election, it's not completely asinine to predict he'll be our next president. However, Stony Brook University political science professor, Helmut Norpoth, decided to take the prediction a step further in order to make it asinine. According to Mr. Norpoth and his can't-miss formula, if Donald Trump winds up becoming the Republican nominee, he has at least a 97% chance of winning the general election, regardless of who the Democratic candidate is (likely Hillary Clinton). Norpoth elaborated by saying, "The bottom line is that the primary model, using also the cyclical movement, makes it almost certain that Donald Trump will be the next president if he's a nominee of the [Republican] party...

I haven't handed out any douche-of-the-day or douche-of-the-week awards in a while, but Missouri state Representative Rick Brattin's recent actions helped snap that severe drought. Last week in the Missouri House, Republican state Representative Rick Brattin decided to propose a bill which would strip scholarships from any athlete who "calls, incites, supports or participates in any strike." The proposal also mandated colleges and universities to fine any coach who encouraged or enabled student-athletes' protests. While Representative Numnutz, I mean Representative Brattin, wasn't available for comment, co-sponsor Representative Kurt Bahr (tweedledum) was, and went on to say the following: "[The aim is to show that] the response that they've had (the University of Missouri) has not been as strong as the Legislature would like, and that we, the General Assembly, expect the leadership of this state institution to actually lead and now allow the st...

In a surprise move, GOP presidential frontrunner Donald Trump, encouraged by his improving poll numbers following disparaging comments he made about almost every single demographic known to man, decided to deliver a speech today, which he called, "Donald Trump Roasts America." Here's the transcript of the speech: "Hey losers. I'm not going to waste any more time here. So let me start with the Mexicans. Why do all of you seem to be named Juan? Is that because you don't 'Juan' to speak no English? When it comes to the Jews, I could give you the most offensive joke ever about them and they'd be cool with it, so long as I gave them something in return. Are there any blacks out there? I don't see too many of ya. The rest of you are probably in prison saying your lives matter, am I right? That brings me to women. Oh how I love women. I love them so much I've married three of them. I should rephrase that and say they love me. One thing I'...

Those familiar with his quotes of the past shouldn't be at all surprised by this, but RedState editor-in-chief, Fox News contributor, and man with the most redundant name this side of Jar Jar Binks - Erick Erickson - decided to strike the head-up-his-own-ass pose once again when being recently asked by Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC) president Russell Moore about America's culture wars and whether or not they were over. He responded with this: "No, I don't think the culture war is over primarily because the people who appear to be the victors right now are the least likely to procreate, so we will eventually breed them out of existence demographically. So the culture war continues and will continue. And I don't mean to be flippant by that statement. But if you look at the demographic trends in this country, in the next 50 years, the country will be filled with young Christian Hispanic families who listen to country music, and that's just - de...

Think I'm overreaching a bit with the title of this post? Sure, I've handed out awards for the Douche of the Day and the Douche of the Week, even the Douche of the Year, but not until today have I had an opportunity to award a person as Douche of the Century. After explaining to you what this person said, however, I'd like to believe your eyes will widen, jaw will drop, and you'll think, "Holy sh*t! He really is the douche of the century!" Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore has always been a ardent opponent of gay marriage rights, but for as ridiculous as he's sounded in the past when it comes to LGBT issues, he really outdid even himself with what he said in a recent interview with AL.com . When Chief Justice Moore was asked if he'd enforce the Supreme Court's decision in legalizing marriage for gay and lesbian couples nationwide, here's how Moore responded: "Could I do this if I were in Nuremberg [at the war crimes trial...

I haven't handed out a douche-of-the-week award in a while, but upon reading an article today, I think it's about time I hand out another, two of them as a matter of fact. In an op-ed for the Canberra City News , Australian Christian Nick Jensen wrote the following: "[My wife Sarah and I would] as a matter of conscience, refuse to recognize the government's regulation of marriage if its definition includes the solemnization of same sex couples. Marriage is the union of a man and a woman before a community in the sight of God. And the marriage of any couple is important to God regardless of whether that couple recognizes God's involvement or authority in it. ...For us, fundamentally, when we got married we signed a contract with the state and that contract was around the current definition of marriage and all the things that comes with it. Man and woman for life, for the sake of children. If it came to be that the definition of the contract was changed, the cont...

I've felt for some time that Mike Huckabee has been veering further and further to the side I like to refer to as "crazy town," but based on his most recent such comments, it appears as if the man has now officially lost it and will now be permanently residing in crazy town. During a recent conference call with conservative pastors, organized by the uber-conservative Family Research Council, Huckabee made the following comments: - "Christian convictions are under attack as never before. Not just in our lifetime, but ever before in the history of this great nation. We are moving rapidly towards the criminalization of Christianity." - "If the courts rule that people have a civil right not only to be a homosexual but a civil right to have a homosexual marriage, then a homosexual couple coming to a pastor who believes in biblical marriage who says 'I can't perform that wedding' will now be breaking the law. It's not just saying, 'I...

On his radio show Friday, Bryan Fischer of the ultra-conservative American Family Association, made the following statement regarding Indiana's RFRA law (Religious Freedom Restoration Act), the public's reaction, and at the time, Governor Mike Pence's thoughts of revising the controversial bill: "I'm afraid Governor Pence is dangerously close to allowing the homosexual lobby to get the state of Indiana, to compel people to provide labor against their will. What do we call it when people are compelled to provide labor against their will? Involuntary labor, what do we call that, ladies and gentlemen? That is involuntary servitude, that is slavery, that is something that is forbidden by the Thirteenth Amendment." He's also made his views about the matter known on his Twitter account, as he's posted the following tweets: - "The pressure Big Gay has put on Indiana is proof they are not about 'marriage equality' but 'homosexual suprema...