Ass of the Week Awards

There just seems to be no end of contenders for the "Ass of the Week" award. 

This week, the Susan G. Komen Foundation (yes, the pink ribbon people) announced it would pull funding from Planned Parenthood under the auspice of "they are under investigation by Congress."   Apparently this is a new rule.  Why was it enacted just now?  By the way, the group that prompted the investigation is a anti-abortion advocacy group that has long criticized Planned Parenthood.  (Whether I agree or disagree with the right to an abortion, the last time I checked abortions were legal so Susan G. Komen is making an morality claim here)

Since the announcement several top officials at the Susan G. Komen foundation have resigned in protest.

The $600,000 annual donation from Susan G. Komen to Planned Parenthood is now being replaced with donations from all over the country.  $400,000 has come in with the first 24 hours after the announcement.  New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg has pledge $250,000 to help make up for the loss.

It is particularly interesting that this decision comes so soon after the Komen Foundation hired Karen Handel, a former candidate for Governor of Georgia, as vice president. Handel ran on an anti-Planned Parenthood platform in her bid for the governorship.

While Nancy Brinker, the chief and founder of the organization, has attempted to explain away the decision to end the funding by arguing that the methods used by PP weren't effective, this only came after the uproar from the public following their announcement that the defunding was occurring because of the politically inspired investigation.

We at SharpDonkey and other websites we interact with have always supported the Susan G. Komen Foundation, primarily through the sponsorship of people participating in their races. However, we can no longer do this and will instead provide monies and support for other organizations.

UPDATE: The Susan G. Komen Foundation just announced that they are reversing their decision to defund Planned Parenthood, although the language of their statement:

"We will continue to fund existing grants including those of Planned Parenthood and preserve their eligibility to apply for future grants",

may mean "We are caving for right now but we'll never give them any more money."

While we aren't arrogant enough to believe that their being named Ass of the Week had anything to do with that decision, we are arrogant enough to believe that it was the outrage of the left that drove them to this. Now if the outrage would just carry over to everything else the right wing does America could come back to the glory we once had…

Boy, it's hard to pick an Ass of the Week right now, there's just so many to choose from!

However, after much soul searching we are going with Meghan McCain. This Repubi-hottie is being chosen more as a representative of a Repug-lican way of thinking than for what she has personally done, but there's some of that mixed in there too.

Meghan McCain wrote a column for The Daily Beast today in which she urged Newt Gingrich to drop out if he loses the Florida primary. While we here at SharpDonkey.com are definitely not Newt fans Meghan's call for him to drop out is based not on the fact that Newt is a dick/troll, but because she thinks R-Money is more likely to beat Obama.

I have lost all respect for Romney. Several years ago I told a Mormon friend that I thought Romney had possibilities, but he has been willing to take any position, sell out any belief, and do whatever is necessary to get the nomination. While he is definitely prettier than the Newt, inside he is just as repulsive.

However, Meghan McCain's point is one being harped by many in the established Republican hierarchy. Romney has the best chance of beating the black guy.

But people…Romney has only won one state. While you trumpeted how he had won Iowa it turns out…not so much. He took New Hampshire but realistically he has been campaigning there for a hundred years and he then promptly got his ass stomped in South Carolina. It also looks like he has a chance of getting whooped in Ohio and PA. IF Newt does drop out it virtually assures R-Money a whoopin'.

I think Newt is probably the worst of the pack running right now, although they are all awful, but give them a chance to run and don't just anoint someone after one small primary win. Or even two or three.

Let them duke it out. I would say that it is the soul of the Republican party for which this battle is being fought but we all know that the Republican soul is divided into pieces and buried in inaccessible Horcruxes.

This one was a little tough. I was going to award it to all mayors and police chiefs in the Occupy cities who are acting like this is China or Soviet Russia. Then Herman Cain dropped out of the race and I was inclined to award it to him because he has removed himself and, at the same time, a lot of the funny stuff about Republicans. Of course, Newt Gingrich is always an ass, so awarding him the Ass of the  Week would require an extra effort on his part. I'm sure it's coming but not just yet. My final contender were the NFL officials who appear to be even more inept than the Republican presidential candidates but then I remembered that this is really a political blog and so it should go to someone at least tangentially related to politics.

But, after careful consideration, Mittens Romney was the winner and proved himself to be the Ass of the Week and likely a contender for the Ass of the Month.

It's not because of the way Mitt will gladly take any position that a voter wants him to. it's not because he's a Mormon and I'm a Baptist. It's not because he has TV preacher hair.

Mitt gets the nod because he has taken the low road and betrayed the thing I liked about him.

I actually thought Mitt was a good guy and relatively honest. Sure, he was born with a silver spoon in his mouth, is so far removed from the people he wants to represent that he will never, never, never understand the problems we face, and his great business experience that he wants to brag about is based (at least to a large degree) on firing people to turn a profit.

But I thought he was honest.

Instead, for his first big television ad he chooses to, for all intents and purposes, lie. A big, bold lie.

You may be familiar with the ad but if not I'm going to put a clip below.

Basically, he has a clip from the Obama-McCain election in which Barack Obama says ""If we keep talking about the economy, we're going to lose."

Unfortunately, Mittens has taken just a portion of the actual statement, in an attempt to make it appear that Obama was talking about himself and his campaign in the present day.

The clip is actually taken from a 2008 speech and the full Obama quote is, "Senator McCain's campaign actually said, and I quote, 'if we keep talking about the economy, we're going to lose.'"

I don't have a great deal of problem with politicians and their teams spinning facts and putting them in a light that is favorable but this really shows just what Mitt will do to win an election. Either he isn't the moral, upright person he proclaims himself to be or he just doesn't care what it takes to win an election.

His campaigns response when someone pointed out the lie? That they mentioned in the press release that he was talking about McCain. Unfortunately, the press release doesn't run with the ad.

Mitt's only redeeming feature was that he was probably a good man. Now that's out the window.

There actually are multiple winners this week, but let's start with Squirmin' Herman.

As I was preparing to write this post, I noticed that now another woman has come forward with allegations of sexual harassment by Cain. My guess is there will be others because once these old goats get randy they can't stop.

However, the Ass of the Week award isn't really based on the allegations, it is based on Squirmin' Herman's reaction to them.

Can has apparently been seeking political and PR advice from that well known intellect on media relations, Sarah Palin. The only time she doesn't put her foot in her mouth is when she is on FOX News and that's only because those viewers believe everything she says anyway.

Herman, blaming the media because you're a lecherous old goat is idiotic. Politico.com, the website that broke the story, gave you a ten day "heads up" to circle your wagons and prepare and yet when the story hit you fumbled and whined worse than the beloved Sarah did when she was unable to name any magazine she had read.

Then, your response that you weren't going to take any questions on it is the equivalent of the ostrich sticking his head in the sand assuming that if he can't see the danger then it doesn't exist.

Yet, even with all that stupidity sprouting forth, on forums such as HuffPo the conservative trolls are screaming that the liberals and media are involved in a "lynching".

Bullshit.

Comparing the breaking of a political story to a heinous act of cowardice and terrorism is not only unforgivable it is ignorance at its basest level.

As I have mentioned elsewhere, we liberals would love, love, LOVE to have Squirmin' Herman as the Re-thuglican candidate. It would definitely prove that not just any black man can win the White House. Herman would be trounced so handily that he would look worse than Michael Dukakis…and that's saying something.

And Hermie, the "I'm the Koch brthers brother from another mother" may get you applause in that forum, but it isn't very intelligent…but I wouldn't expect you to recognize that.

[caption id="attachment_26" align="alignleft" width="150" caption="This week's winner, Boston's Mayor Thomas Menino"]

Well, we're consistent. Now the first two Ass of the Week awards have been given to Mayors for their responses to the Occupy (Insert Geographic Name Here) movement. 

And let me tell you, with the Republican candidates in full swing and making asses of themselves without our help it was awful hard not to choose them or Trump as this week's ass but, after careful consideration, Mayor Quan is really, really deserving of the honor.

Mayor Quan epitomizes all that is distasteful in the world of politics. Two facedness (ok, that's probably not a real word), bullying, abuse of power, and a complete failure to appreciate what this country is really all about.

After the first police crackdown on the Occupy Oakland protesters Quan wrote a statement on her Facebook page praising the police. I would like to tell you that you can read the statement here but, unfortuantely, since the world expressed their outrage at the tear gas, flash grenades, and rubber bullets, as well as the fact that the police are responsible for a protester who is a Gulf War vet now being in the hospital in critical care, Mayor Quan snatched the statement down.

Instead, she now says she supports the movement. You can read the "oops I better take a different position" statement here.

We didn't start this blog to be gentle. It is time for these assholes to understand that people and mad and, rather than using tactics that didn't work during the civil rights era, perhaps they should listen to the grievances and either join in or just acknowledge that the people have a right to be pissed.

Hopefully the Oakland PD gets their ass sued off again, just as they did back in 1983 when the police used the same tactics and ended up having to pay an award of $2 million to 58 demonstrators who were abused. And folks…that's not enough money.

So, a big fart sound toward Oakland where their Ass of the Week can bray all she wants in an attempt to alleviate some of the political damage but she needs to  remember, it's not just her statement that made her an ASS, it's the fact that the police did this under her watch.

Boooo!

In what has to be one of the most ignorant and yet ironic statements ever made, Boston Mayor Thomas Merino told the Boston Globe that "…civil disobedience will not be tolerated." Of course, he was referring to the arrests of a number of Occupy Boston protesters by the Boston Police.

Perhaps he should spend a little less time pandering to the conservatives and look into his city's history. The Sons of Liberty, a group that was either engaged in criminal activity or one of the country's first acts of civil disobedience when they dumped tea in the Boston Harbor (in an event that has been hijacked, bastardized, and contaminated by the current Tea Party), was formed and grew in the heart of Boston. Samuel Adams, Paul Revere, and the other revolutionists were much more akin to the Occupy (insert name here) groups than they were akin to the Republican in reality Tea Party group we have now.

The manifesto for this movement, Henry David Thoreau's tome entitled, amazingly enough, Civil Disobedience, was written on the shores of Walden Pond (or at least during the time he was living there) . The pond is about twenty miles form Boston. Perhaps the Mayor should make a trip there and see if maybe, just maybe the ideals of one of  Massachusett's greatest writers might seep through that hard head. and open that closed mind

I'll close first by stating that Mohandas/Mahatma Gandhi, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Leo Tolstoy, President John F. Kennedy (another favorite son from MA) , Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, and  writers such as, Marcel Proust, Ernest Hemingway, Upton Sinclair, Sinclair Lewis, and William Butler Yeats all looked to Thoreau's Civil Disobedience for guidance.

Last a personal note to Mayor Merino and the Boston Chief of Police: I know budgets are tight but I really, really think it would benefit you to read Thoreau's work as well as the history of your city. So that you aren't put under too great a financial strain, I am going to give you this link which goes to a free Kindle version of Civil Disobedience and if you will drop us an email I will personally buy you a printed copy as well as some history books and have them sent to you.

SmartDonkey gives a big thumbs up to Occupy Boston and the city but hereby awards the ASS OF THE WEEK award to Mayor Thomas Merino, the Boston Police Department, and the city government of Boston, MA. Your ancestors would be ashamed.