Some heavily marinated frites-eating knucklehead thought it was amusing to toss beer on Sven Nys at the Azencross today.
Said knucklehead thought otherwise after the Cannibal of Baal — who was having a very bad day on the job — dropped his bike and ducked through the course tape to have a pointed discussion with him, just before a less restrained individual flew past to flatten the beer-pitcher.
Nys returned to the course, jogging with his bike, but eventually abandoned in disgust. Two crashes and seven dousings with beer apparently were enough for one day. Afterward he tweeted: “Throwing beer each lap is a bit much, so I got it into my head to go & ask why. A little bit of respect, please.” Word.
Rep. John Linder (R-Ga.), the first Dummy of the Day for 2010.
Our first Dummy of the Day for 2010 comes to us courtesy of The New York Times, in a report on the millions of Americans whose sole “income” consists of food stamps.
The NYT reported collecting income data on food-stamp recipients in 31 states, accounting for about 60 percent of the national caseload. “On average,” the NYT said, “18 percent listed cash income of zero in their most recent monthly filings. Projected over the entire caseload, that suggests six million people in households with no income. About 1.2 million are children.”
And what, pray tell, would Rep. John Linder (R-Ga.) do to solve the problem? Why, repeal all corporate and individual income taxes, payroll taxes, self-employment taxes, capital-gains taxes, estate taxes and gift taxes — and replace it with a revenue-neutral personal consumption tax, the “FairTax.”
Quoth Linder: “We’re at risk of creating an entire class of people, a subset of people, just comfortable getting by living off the government. You don’t improve the economy by paying people to sit around and not work. You improve the economy by lowering taxes so small businesses will create more jobs.”
Yeah, that’s just what Isabel Bermudez is doing. When she’s not just comfortable getting by living off the government, sitting around and not working, this victim of the housing bubble distributes résumés by the ream and supports two daughters on no cash and food stamps.
“I went from making $180,000 to relying on food stamps,” she told the NYT. “Without that government program, I wouldn’t be able to feed my children.”
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the Dummy of the Day: John Linder. I hope he was better at pulling teeth out of rednecks’ jawbones than he has been at pulling his own head out of his ass.
Showing His displeasure with psychos in minivans, God turns off the sun.
We’ve missed an installment or two of this special report, so here’s a Tuesday edition for you. According to the local gendarmes via the Gaslight, a Bibleburger who thought he saw someone he didn’t know riding his son’s bike intentionally hit the cyclist with his minivan.
The cops say Timothy Hombs got something of a surprise when he stepped out of the minivan and approached the cyclist. First, he got punched; second, the bike wasn’t his son’s. Hombs was subsequently arrested on charges of second-degree assault.
If convicted, this pootbutt should lose both his driver’s license and his TV, as he has clearly been watching too many vigilante movies. Yo, Timbo, a Trek is a Trek is a Trek — there are only about a jillion of them on the road, and they don’t belong under the wheels of your soccer-mom shitbox, no matter what you thought you saw.
Jesus. And people wonder why I stick to ‘cross bikes and trails.
• Late update: I haven’t seen any minivan maniacs in Holland or Belgium today, but the Vuelta a España peloton is spending an inordinate amount of time on the rain-soaked deck anyway. More crashes than a Cat. 5 crit, including a Saxo Banker who rode straight into the back of a parked tanker truck. Owie.
• Dummy of the Day (Honorable Mention): As Freedumb Communications announces that it will indeed file for reorganization under Chapter 11, cutting its debt to a mere $325 million from more than $770 million, chief financial officer Mark McEachen proclaims, “This gives us a green light to operate the business as usual.” Oh, that’s reassuring. And what constitutes “business as usual” at Freedumb, where our Christmas bonuses once were $15 checks with the tax taken out? Why, stiffing 5,000 current and former news carriers, who were owed $28.9 million as part of the settlement of a class-action lawsuit. Notes The New York Times: “By filing for bankruptcy before a Sept. 14 deadline that would have finalized the lawsuit’s settlement, Freedom retains the right to reclaim those funds in the interest of all its creditors.” Lovely.
That would be Heather Blish, who spoke during a town-hall meeting on health care called by Rep. Steve Kagen (D-Wisc.). According to The Huffington Post, she described herself as a concerned citizen, “just a mom from a few blocks away” and “not affiliated with any political party.”
In reality, she was vice-chairman of the Keewaunee County GOP until 2008, worked for Kagen’s opponent in the last election, and has been a member of the Republican National Committee and the state party, serving as an adviser to the IT committee.
At present, according to her LinkedIn profile, which documents a Sarah Palinesque inability to hold a job for more than a couple of years, she is a “marketing consultant” who helps “small to mid-sized businesses … coordinate their marketing and PR efforts, ensuring an effective and successful campaign.” Hm. “Small to mid-sized” — that would just about describe today’s GOP. But “effective and successful?” That remains to be seen.
As Steve Benen at Political Animal notes in Friday’s mini-report: “If you’re going to appear on camera to attack health-care reform, and you’re going to insist that you are “just a mom from a few blocks away” and “not affiliated with any political party,” it’s best to clean up your online profile — which identifies your extensive work with the Republican Party.”
When Herself worked in the private sector, she had to deal with loons, asshats, feebs, ninnies, ne’er-do-wells and vicious lying swine. Her post-work tales of woe became so common that I took to asking, “So, who was the Dummy of the Day?” There was always at least one, and sometimes more than one.
Now she works with smart people she likes, but I have decreed that the Dummy of the Day shall live on in the form of snark directed at the would-be King of Fucktardia who most amusingly opens his fat yap around a note-taking reporter on Friday.
For our inaugural edition we have a tie — Reps. Mike Rogers of Michigan and Phil Gingrey of Georgia, both Republicans from the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which has been considering health-care legislation.
Under the public option, Rogers oinked: “You will have to call a bureaucrat and hope to God his calculator is more compassionate and smarter than your doctor.” Never mind that America’s seniors and soldiers — among them Rogers, a former Army officer — already enjoy public medical care that in my own personal experience beats the mortal shit out of that provided by the private sector.
Not to be outdone was Gingrey, a pro-life OB-GYN and Star Scout. In addressing a compromise that would not permit the use of public funds to pay for abortions, Gingrey bleated thusly: “We don’t compromise on the use of taxpayer funds for the destruction of human life.” Uh huh. How about all those post-birth abortions we funded in Iraq and Afghanistan, Doc? Whoops, almost forgot — as the late George Carlin once noted, dead brown folks don’t count.
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