ONE: And arrest his ass if he dares to campaign in Maricopa County!
On a hunch, I just did a Google search using the words “sheriff idiot” and six of the first 10 results referenced Sheriff Joe Arpaio, the shame of Arizona’s Maricopa County. In fairness, one of the six used the word “idiot” only to describe some protestors that Arpaio squared off against last year, and in another hit, idiot status was actually being conferred on Sheriff Clarence Dupnik of Pima County, though Arpaio was heavily featured in the article.
Still, my little search is a testament to just how famously objectionable and objectionably famous Arpaio is. “America’s toughest sheriff” (as he likes to describe himself) has been offending people for nigh on 20 years now, but according to fellow idiot Jerome Corsi of WorldNutDaily, he’s just found a way to raise his game to a whole new level:
… Sheriff Joe Arpaio told WND he has assigned a five-member “Cold Case Posse” to investigate the authenticity of Barack Obama’s birth certificate…
“This investigation does not involve politics,” Arpaio told WND. “I listen to all the residents of Maricopa County who come to my office with complaints, regardless what their politics are.”
Yes, you read that right. A county sheriff in Arizona has assembled a team to sniff President Obama’s Hawaiian birth certificate. I guess the oddest thing about this is that it doesn’t seem odd at all these days. Since the right wing has devolved so far down the food chain that it now ranks below plankton, this seemed almost inevitable.
… Arpaio is responding to a complaint brought to his office by representatives of the Surprise Tea Party in Surprise, Ariz., who have expressed in writing their concerns that the voting rights of Maricopa County residents in the 2012 presidential election could be compromised if Obama were to use a forged birth certificate to establish his eligibility under Article 1, Section 2, of the Constitution.
I surely do wish Sheriff Joe had been on this illegitimate president thing 11 years ago, but at least he’s on it now. His crack(ed) team consists of – whoa, not so fast, bub! Their names are secret:
The identities of the five individuals assigned to the Cold Case Posse investigation of the Obama birth certificate are being withheld from the public, in order to protect the individuals involved from both public reaction and from questions that are certain to arise from the media.
Well, whoever the hell they are, Corsi reports that the team consists of:
… volunteers with professional experience in conducting investigations, including individuals chosen because of their professional backgrounds in law enforcement, as well as lawyers who have participated in criminal or civil cases and individuals with specialized skills in fields ranging from accounting to conducting criminal forensic examinations.
Godspeed you, then, anonymous sleuths! You follow in the shambling, frustrated footsteps of intellectual titans like Donald Trump and Orly Taitz, and you are the last faint hope for all those who like their presidents 100% white.
Oh, and because this operation has 501(c)3 credentials, you can actually donate to the effort, dear reader! Corsi helpfully provides a mailing address for just that purpose. Or you could just take that money, shred it, burn the shreds, collect the ashes, put them in an urn, shove the urn off a cliff, sweep up the ashen shards, drop them down a mineshaft, seal the shaft with cement, then take the shuttle and nuke the whole thing from space. Your choice.
TWO: Governing by Hearsay
A week after she was inaugurated the 116th governor in South Carolina history, Take Five noted that Nikki Haley is a big hypocrite. This week, without saying so in so many words, she basically admitted to being a damned liar as well.
A couple of weeks back, a po-faced Haley asserted that half the applicants for jobs at the Savannah River Site nuclear plant had failed drug tests, adding:
“I so want drug testing… It’s something I’ve been wanting since the first day I walked into office.”
I have no idea what sort of drugs Governor Haley herself is on, but apparently it ain’t the good stuff:
South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley said Monday she can’t back up claims that half of the people wanting work at the Energy Department’s Savannah River Site failed drug tests and half of the remainder couldn’t pass reading and writing tests.
Claiming that she was just passing on intel gleaned during a plant tour, a chastened Haley told the Associated Press:
“I’ve never felt like I had to back up what people tell me. You assume that you’re given good information… And now I’m learning through you guys that I have to be careful before I say something.”
Naturally, however, what with her being a Republican and all, this mess can’t possibly be her fault:
“We were on the site. There were multiple people in there. And that comment that they made had a huge impact on me,” Haley said. “It is the reason you’re hearing me look into whether we can do drug testing. It’s the reason you hear me focus so much on job training,” Haley said. “Somebody can’t say that and it not stick you in the gut.”
“Now they’re all backing off saying it. And they know they said it… but now they don’t have the backup.”
Last fall, 51% of South Carolina voters assumed that they were being given “good information” when Haley’s campaign portrayed her as something other than a deceitful, scurrilous, know-nothing disaster for their state. Bzzzt. Guess again, folks.
THREE: Death of Western Civilization Official; Funeral Arrangements TBA
Just as I was getting my head around the idea of Sheriff Arpaio’s Birth Certificate Power Rangers, I ran across this:
Producers of “Celebrity Wife Swap” confirmed Wednesday that [Ted Haggard] the former Life Church pastor and his wife, Gayle, will appear in the new ABC reality series, on which they will swap partners (without sex) with actor Gary Busey and his partner and baby mama, Steffanie Sampson.
My heartfelt thanks to ABC for at least ensuring that this whole thing is sex-free, but that’s about all the positives I can find here.
On the surface, it might seem like an unlikely pairing, but there are several surprising parallels between Busey and Haggard. Busey is a born-again Christian and active minister with Promise Keepers, and Haggard has returned to the ministry as pastor of St. James, a new nondenominational Christian church in Colorado Springs.
Nothing surprises me anymore. Depresses? Yes. Frustrates? You bet. Enrages? All the stinking time. But surprises? Nope, not at all.
FOUR: Bacon Temptation Omelettes of Mass Destruction, Anyone?
First they came for the Split Decision Breakfast, and I said nothing… oh, screw Niemöller. This is serious stuff:
Several IHOP locations are re-opening after seven IHOP locations in Ohio and Indiana were raided early Tuesday morning by the FBI, Homeland Security, Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency and local police.
Officials with Homeland Security tell us the investigation is currently sealed and cannot release any additional information.
Wow! A long-overdue bust of the scoundrels involved in keeping Nikki Haley woefully uninformed? End of the line for those crooks who stealthily reinforce the fiction of President Obama’s citizenship? Or maybe “The Man”TM just wants to stick it to Take Two Combo lovers? Alas, no:
A well-placed source with Toledo Police Department tells WTOL 11 the investigation surrounds allegations of money laundering and possibly undocumented workers.
FIVE: Why is it always in the last place you look?
Arkansans are sleeping a little easier this week after the state’s Goodwill Moon Rock turned up in a box of President Clinton’s gubernatorial papers.
NASA generously presented a hunk of the moon to each state in the ’70s, and Arkansas wasn’t the only state to be careless with theirs:
Other states such as New Jersey and Alaska have also misplaced their Goodwill rocks, which some experts estimate could be worth millions of dollars.
Some states have found theirs in recent years, including Colorado, where former Gov. John Vanderhoof confessed in 2010 he had the rock in his personal collection and agreed to give it back to the state.
It’s unclear just how long the Arkansas rock had been missing, but Central Arkansas Library System director Bobby Roberts believes it could be over 30 years:
Roberts’ theory is that when Clinton became governor in 1978, [former Governor David] Pryor left the plaque in the office. When Clinton lost re-election in 1980, everything in his office was packed up and stored.
Nice try, Mr. Roberts, but it’s pretty clear to me what happened here. The kleptomaniacal Clintons were still in possession of that rock when they went to Washington. Vince Foster witnessed the First Couple snorting cocaine off of it, but before he could go to the press, the Clintons killed him with the rock. Later, Bubba tried to buy Monica Lewinsky’s silence with the rock, but she refused it, so Hillary and her lesbian lover Huma Amedin – Anthony Weiner is a beard! – hid it with the “missing” Rose Law Firm records. Worried that Congressional investigators were on the verge of finding the Rose papers, the lovers took the rock back to Arkansas and dumped it into one of the 2,000 boxes of Clinton papers at the Butler Center for Arkansas History and Genealogy.
As I’m sure Jerome Corsi would agree, it’s the only logical explanation.
