Derp is an expression associated with stupidity, much like the earlier forms of interjections like “duh” and “dur.” In image macros, the subject is typically portrayed with eyes that are pointed to each side and a caption that reads “DERP.” The words “herp” and “derp” are often used in rage comics to replace nondescript names or parts of conversation. [….]

Representative Vicky Hartzler (r) [file photo].

From time to time members of Congress post innocuous “back in the district” stories (usually with a photo) via social media. Representative Vicky Hartzler (r) is no exception. It’s just that, because of her past record and words, Representative Hartzler attracts sarcastic responses. Today:

Rep. Vicky Hartzler ‏@RepHartzler

Great to be back in the classroom today and speaking to students at Versailles High School! #MO04 9:20 AM – 24 Nov 2014

And the single (so far) response:

Fake Vicky Hartzler ‏@VickiHartzler

@RepHartzler Let’s hope the subject isn’t science. #derp 11:07 AM – 24 Nov 2014

Ouch. It’s a cold, cold world.

Previously:

Rep. Vicky Hartzler (r): Sesame Street is too complicated (November 18, 2014)

Rep. Vicky Hartzler (r): cold warrior in the climate conflict  (November 18, 2014)

Rep. Vicky Hartzler (r): just can’t catch a social media break (November 19, 2014)

Rep. Vicky Hartzler (r): sigh… (November 20, 2014)  

Michael Bersin ‏@MBersin

Quip by KSHB-41 TV am anchor after story on NJ Gov Christie leaving early and not attending WH dinner “Hope the traffic wasn’t bad.”

5:43 AM – 24 Feb 2014

Heh.

At the White House petition site:

We petition the Obama administration to:

Deport Everyone That Signed A Petition To Withdraw Their State From The United States Of America.

Deport Everyone That Signed A Petition To Withdraw Their State From The United States Of America.

Created: Nov 12, 2012

Issues: Government Reform

Signatures needed by December 12, 2012 to reach goal of 25,000 5,114

Total signatures on this petition 19,886

[emphasis in original]

Creator

Joshua L

Birmingham, AL

November 12, 2012

Signature # 1

Samantha D

House Springs, MO

November 15, 2012

Signature # 19,881

Mark B

Saint Louis, MO

November 15, 2012

Signature # 19,788

Esther E

Saint Louis, MO

November 15, 2012

Signature # 19,752

[emphasis added]

Is this a great country, or what?

We are a nation of smart asses:

We petition the Obama Administration to:

Peacefully grant the City of Atlanta leave to withdraw from the State of Georgia and remain part of the United States

The City of Atlanta continues to suffer deprivations of economic, civil, religious, and political freedoms imposed upon it by Georgians (who are hostile to Atlanta).

In the event that Georgia is successful in its effort to secede from the Union, we the people of Atlanta wish to remain in the United States. We love our country. We are dedicated to it. And we are committed to preserving its rights and liberties in accordance with the original ideas and beliefs of our founding fathers.

We would also like to annex Athens, Georgia, Decatur, Georgia and the parts of Macon, Georgia made famous by the Allman Brothers.

Created: Nov 13, 2012

Issues: Civil Rights and Liberties, Health Care, Human Rights

[emphasis added]

We petition the Obama Administration to:

Allow the city of El Paso to secede from the state of Texas. El Paso is tired of being a second class city within Texas.

El Paso has little in common with the rest of Texas. Its demographics are more similar to New Mexico. El Paso is also proud to be part of the United States and wants no part of a state whom publicly contemplates secession from our great nation.

Created: Nov 13, 2012

Previously:

Nothing secedes like secession (November 12, 2012)

Schadenfreude, schoener Goetterfunken, Tochter aus Elysium… (November 11, 2012)

…so we sometimes don’t have to:

One Hundred Years of Reagantube: Remembering Reagan In Dumb Videos

Oh can you believe it was only a hundred years ago when Ronald Reagan was born? Which side of the Civil War did he fight on, anyway? (Answer: He didn’t fight at all, but he was an extra at the Ford Theater the night Lincoln was shot, and later claimed to have played the role of Robert E. Lee in James Joyce’s movie Ulysses S. Grant.) Oh, also, back in the 1980s when Ronald Reagan was actually serving as president in some weird state of constant incapacitation? Everybody thought he was a moron. Most Republicans didn’t even support him during the regular lows of his disastrous two terms. He also didn’t defeat the Soviet Union – they ran out of money on their own, just like we’ve done here in America in the past 10 years, in the exact same Central Asian country. But Ronald Reagan did delight America with his constant, idiotic appearances on film and television. Let’s remember the empty suit who led us to a Promised Land of Fox News, Tax Cuts for Multi-Billionaires and the deliberate dismantling of what had been the world’s smartest, most prosperous society in the History of the World….

The Rude Pundit:

2/04/2011

Nine (or So) Ways to Celebrate the Centennial of Ronald Reagan:

….1. Go to Best Buy and max out your credit cards on the most extravagant, useless shit you can find, like 3-D TVs and smart phones that you can implant in your brain so you can only think in Google searches and text messages. Make sure it’s expensive. Then, when you’re tens of thousands of dollars in debt, make sure you die so that your kids have to pay for all of it.

2. If you’re pissed off at your neighbor, but he’s an ex-boxer, go to the local day care center and kick the asses of the children there. Declare that you win, even if no one knows what you were fighting for.

3. Do the following to the local homeless people: Take their coats and shoes. Punch them repeatedly in the stomach. Give crack to their kids. Pawn their shopping cart of possessions. Give the money to the richest family in town. When a homeless woman asks for a coat because it’s cold, accuse her of being both lazy and a thief. And set her war-vet husband on fire….

And, the republican dominated Missouri General Assembly:

FIRST REGULAR SESSION

House Concurrent Resolution No. 14

96TH GENERAL ASSEMBLY

INTRODUCED BY REPRESENTATIVES JONES (89) (Sponsor), NANCE, BAHR, POLLOCK, FRANZ, ASBURY, FRANKLIN, WYATT, STREAM, THOMSON, ALLEN, JONES (117), CURTMAN, CRAWFORD, WHITE, DUGGER, SHUMAKE, DAVIS, HIGDON, BURLISON, DIECKHAUS, LEARA, SCHAD, DAY, BROWN (85), HAEFNER, KELLEY (126), HOUGHTON AND MOLENDORP (Co-sponsors).

0794L.01I

           WHEREAS, President Ronald Wilson Reagan, a man of humble background, worked throughout his life serving freedom and advancing the public good, having been employed as an entertainer, Union leader, corporate spokesman, Governor of California, and President of the United States; and

           WHEREAS, Ronald Reagan served with honor and distinction for two terms as the 40th President of the United States of America, the second of which he earned the confidence of 60% of the electorate and was victorious in 49 of the 50 states in the general election – a record unsurpassed in the history of American presidential elections; and

           WHEREAS, in 1981, when Ronald Reagan was inaugurated President, he inherited a disillusioned nation shackled by rampant inflation and high unemployment; and

           WHEREAS, during Mr. Reagan’s presidency, he worked in a bipartisan manner to enact his bold agenda of restoring accountability and common sense to government which led to an unprecedented economic expansion and opportunity for millions of Americans; and

           WHEREAS, Mr. Reagan’s commitment to an active social policy agenda for the nation’s children helped lower crime and drug use in our neighborhoods; and

           WHEREAS, President Reagan’s commitment to our armed forces contributed to the restoration of pride in America, her values and those cherished by the free world, and prepared America’s Armed Forces to meet 21st Century challenges; and

           WHEREAS, President Reagan’s vision of “peace through strength” led to the end of the Cold War and the ultimate demise of the Soviet Union, guaranteeing basic human rights for millions of people; and

           WHEREAS, February 6, 2011, will be the 100th anniversary of Ronald Reagan’s birth, and the seventh since his passing:

           NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED that the members of the House of Representatives of the Ninety-sixth General Assembly, First Regular Session, the Senate concurring therein, hereby designate February 6, 2011, to be “Ronald Reagan Day” in Missouri and urge all citizens of Missouri to recognize this event and participate fittingly in its observance.

Oh, wait, that last one wasn’t intentional snark.

Just a few facts:

Five myths about Ronald Reagan’s legacy

By Will Bunch

Friday, February 4, 2011

….In 1982, as the national unemployment rate spiked above 10 percent, Reagan’s approval rating fell to 35 percent. At the height of the Iran-Contra scandal, nearly one-third of Americans wanted him to resign.

In the early 1990s, shortly after Reagan left office, several polls found even the much-maligned Jimmy Carter to be more popular….

….Ultimately, Reagan signed measures that increased federal taxes every year of his two-term presidency except the first and the last. These included a higher gasoline levy, a 1986 tax reform deal that included the largest corporate tax increase in American history, and a substantial raise in payroll taxes in 1983 as part of a deal to keep Social Security solvent. While wealthy Americans benefitted from Reagan’s tax policies, blue-collar Americans paid a higher percentage of their income in taxes when Reagan left office than when he came in….

….Federal spending grew by an average of 2.5 percent a year, adjusted for inflation, while Reagan was president. The national debt exploded, increasing from about $700 billion to nearly $3 trillion….

And Rush Limbaugh gets flustered:

I chatted with Rush Limbaugh about Ronald Reagan today (you can listen)

by Mike Stark

Fri Feb 04, 2011 at 06:33:22 PM PST

….STARK:  They’re a fantastic website.  But why are you dodging the question?  I want to know why a tax-raising, amnesty-giving, cut-and-running, negotiating-with-terrorists guy is a hero to the conservative movement.

RUSH:  Well, because you understand Reagan in a way that is flawed. You — ….

And this “active social policy agenda” is worth praising?:

Reagan’s Legacy: Homelessness in America

By Peter Dreier

…Another of Reagan’s enduring legacies is the steep increase in the number of homeless people, which by the late 1980s had swollen to 600,000 on any given night – and 1.2 million over the course of a year. Many were Vietnam veterans, children and laid-off workers.

In early 1
984 on Good Morning America, Reagan defended himself against charges of callousness toward the poor in a classic blaming-the-victim statement saying that “people who are sleeping on the grates…the homeless…are homeless, you might say, by choice….”

Yeah, that’s some legacy. I’ll be busy doing something else on February 6th.

I bow down before the master:

Liberal Media Skewers Kinder For Misfiring On Lawsuit (Again)

I get the Kansas City Star in the morning.  It has a great April Fool’s Day story on its front page.

It begins innocently enough.

JEFFERSON CITY | It’s been a quiet week in Jefferson City.

Legislators writing laws. Debating the budget.

Training with handguns.

Obviously, with the huge budget problem before them, this is clearly a joke.  

More evidence after the fold.

Here is the clincher.

On the same day of the lawmakers’ firearms class, the House gave first-round approval to a bill that would expressly allow legislators, their aides and employees to carry concealed weapons in the statehouse.

“If you stay up with your news and what’s going on in the world, you know bad things happen all over the place,” said Rep. Jeanie Riddle, a Mokane Republican who sponsored the amendment that added the Capitol language. “It would be nice for us to not be a statistic.”

I like the use of a real name of a representative. However, the key that this must be an April Fool’s joke is the line “if you stay up with the news and what’s going on in the world.”  

I like to think I do and I can’t think of a single story about someone entry a state legislature with a gun and killing people.

We saw the Tea Partiers yelling at members of Congress and spitting on Cleaver, but being armed would not have stopped that.  

The last line really show what a joke this story is.

In the class’ final meeting later this month, participants must demonstrate their marksmanship. To pass, they must hit a target with at least 15 of 20 rounds from 7 yards away.

A person is going to feel safe with a pass being 75% accurate on a target that is 21 feet away?!?!

The Star put up a really good April Fool’s story today. It gave me a good laugh.

From a comment at Balloon Juice:

C’mon didn’t you know the real golden rule:

Waterboard your neighbor before they teabag you.

That’s from the Sermon on the Undisclosed Location.

We are not worthy.

What a bunch of losers. It’s symptomatic of the incompetence manifested by republican control over the last eight years. Their supportive vandals can’t even muster enough ability to properly and permanently bring down a  4 x 8 campaign sign. I almost feel sorry for them – to witness how far they’ve fallen.

A 4 x 8 along a well traveled road on a lot in an upper middle class neighborhood in the southeast part of Warrensburg. The sign faces south and greets a significant chunk of the “return from work” traffic in the evening.

In 2004 their sign vandals were properly old school. You knew that they had some self respect. They’d use black spray paint (“Communists!”) on a Kerry/Edwards 4 x 8. And when it got really close to the election they’d just cut the signs apart, leaving only thin strips of sign strapped to the steel posts. It was a different world in the old days. We could count on vandals with a modicum of skill, and even with a sense of panache. No more.

Now all we have to look forward to is this. You can hardly see anything from the road.

I don’t even want to know…

Then again, all that time spent vandalizing signs late at night and sleeping in late means they aren’t working the phone banks or out canvassing for their candidates.

I sent out our first canvassing team an hour and a half ago.

This is perfect, dare I say “sweet”?:

Satire at the ballot box to ‘honor’ Bush

…Admittedly, they’re hard to miss. Someone in the group is usually toting a large American flag, and another is often carrying a boom box blaring patriotic music. Sometimes one of them dresses up as Uncle Sam.

They’re the Presidential Memorial Commission of San Francisco, but don’t let the serious name fool you. The group’s intentions are in the gutter: They want to rename the Oceanside Water Pollution Control Plant the George W. Bush Sewage Plant come January, when the next president is sworn in…

via Steve Soto at the left coaster

We could all flush with pride. If this takes hold we can all figuratively do to him what he’s been doing to the Constitution and to us for the last eight years.

If every community in America pursues something like this then I will know that there is such a thing as karma.