Rejoice, America! George W. Bush is back! And strangely, it’s not the Democrats who are trying to tie the current GOP to him; it’s the GOP themselves.

The chairmen of the two Republican campaign committees defended the presidency of George W. Bush in television appearances over the weekend, a preview of the GOP’s planned pushback against expected Democratic attacks on the last president.

“People had jobs when Republicans were not only in charge but George Bush was there,” said National Republican Congressional Committee Chairman Pete Sessions (Texas) during an interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press”.

Oh right, everyone had a job when Bush was president! I remember that! Except I don’t. Because it didn’t happen. Here’s what the super-liberal Wall Street Journal had to say about Bush’s jobs record 11 days before he left office — from an article titled “Bush on jobs: The worst track record on record“:

President George W. Bush entered office in 2001 just as a recession was starting, and is preparing to leave in the middle of a long one. That’s almost 22 months of recession during his 96 months in office.

His job-creation record won’t look much better. The current President Bush, once taking account how long he’s been in office, shows the worst track record for job creation since the government began keeping records.

To put that in handy chart form, check out the job numbers from George W. Bush next to Obama’s numbers on jobs:

So who’s to blame? Who’s responsible for a complete collapse of the economy? Well, if you ask Americans, they say it’s George W. Bush.

Polling suggests that Bush is still broadly blamed for the current state of the economy, which almost certainly will be the top-of-the-mind voting issue this fall. Fifty nine percent of respondents from a Post/ABC News poll in April said Bush was more to blame for the current state of the economy while 25 percent put the blame on President Obama.

So he’s responsible for the terrible economy, for job loss, for the wars we’re still in, and, oh yeah, he’s wildly unpopular! In fact, the percentage of people who view him positively (29 percent in an NBC/WSJ poll) is lower than the percentage of people who view him very unfavorably.

So we have nothing but praise for Pete Sessions and John Cornyn. We hope they Keep tying themselves to George W. Bush. We hope they keep saying they’ll support extending his tax cuts for the wealthy, while fighting against providing unemployment benefits for out-of-work Americans. We hope they keep saying they’ll return to the policies George W. Bush championed (and John Cornyn voted for 90.8 percent of the time).

Sounds like a brilliant election strategy to us. We don’t miss George W. Bush the president, but it sure is nice to have him back for another election.

Fred Thompson is feeling the effects of climate change -- in his pants!

If you’ve been outside (and not died) in the past month or so, you already know the news, but hey, it’s really hot. How hot is it? According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, June was the hottest June on record — ever. What’s interesting about that is the hottest June on record directly follows the hottest May, hottest April and hottest March!

Again, never in the history of recorded temperatures have we had a hotter March, April, May or June than the ones we had this year. To wit, according to NOAA, “this was the 304^th consecutive month with a global temperature above the 20^th century average. The last month with below-average temperature was February 1985.”

Head over to Drudge, though, and see if it’s being reported. Listen to Limbaugh. Or don’t do either. We’ll spare you. Here’s the top of Drudge right now:

Nope, that’s not David Cameron dying from extraordinary heat; it’s something totally unrelated because, of course, the highest temperatures on record don’t conform with Drudge’s worldview that climate change isn’t real. Snow in Denmark in December, though? STOP THE PRESSES!

To the GOP and the wingnut news outlets, this is all just the ups and downs of weather. If we all weren’t such pussies, we’d just man up and shut up about how hot it is. That’s what the greatest generation would’ve done. That’s what Ronald Reagan would’ve done. Science schmience!

John Boehner – before the bill has passed – is already calling for its repeal.

Why?

Because he’s a total motherfucker.

I think it ought to be repealed,” said House Minority Leader John Boehner, in response to a question from TPMDC, at his weekly press conference Thursday.

Well good luck, fuckstick, but you have some serious problems. 1) This bill is broadly popular with Americans. 2) Some members of your own party like it. 3) Obama will sign the bill and make it law. 4) Even if you win majorities in the House and Senate this fall, Obama will veto any repeal you offer up. 5) You’ll never get 67 votes to override the veto.

So fuck off. Go support the economy by using a tanning bed and paying the 10 percent tax on it, dick.

Two things of note: first, she uses perhaps the greatest argument we’ve ever heard. “Oh, Glenn Beck doesn’t want to be president, you say. Guess who else didn’t? George Freakin’ Washington! CASE CLOSED. Except not really, because guess who else didn’t want to be president. JESUS! BOOM! But he WAS!

Other thing to note: this particular YouTube video actually has a funny comment. It’s oh so rare on YouTube, but kudos to someone named RapscallionRebellion.

[via Gawker]

Problem: You’ve just shot your grandson who was staying at your house and getting up to take a whiz in the middle of the night.

Total hokum, right? Wrong. Check out this totes similar real-life story from The World:

A Gold Beach man accidentally shot his grandson early Sunday morning.

Arthur Harkey, 72, told authorities he was awakened by a noise and grabbed his gun from his nightstand. Harkey said he was startled by a figure in the hallway of his Gold Beach home, and the gun discharged at close range. Harkey realized he had shot his grandson and called 911.

Patrol Lieutenant John Ward arrived at the scene and found 22-year-old Raymond Murray on the floor with a gunshot wound to his lower abdomen.

But there’s no connection between owning a gun and shooting someone with it and NOT owning a gun and NOT shooting someone with it. And you’d be a fool and a communist to think otherwise.

An independent report released Wednesday into the leaked “Climategate” e-mails found no evidence to question the “rigor and honesty” of scientists involved.

The scandal fueled skepticism about the case for global warming just weeks before world leaders met to agree a global deal on climate change at a United Nations conference in Copenhagen last December.

The seven-month review, led by Muir Russell, found scientists at the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU) did not unduly influence reports detailing the scale of the threat of global warming produced by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

In other words, the science was never bad, the word “trick” can be used in more than one way, and Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, and the countless other retards who jumped to conclusions without knowing what the hell was going on were all wrong. Take for example, this guy who blogs for the Telegraph. Here’s what he said on Nov. 29, 2009, after the “Climategate” emails were released:

If you own any shares in alternative energy companies I should start dumping them NOW. The conspiracy behind the Anthropogenic Global Warming myth (aka AGW; aka ManBearPig) has been suddenly, brutally and quite deliciously exposed after a hacker broke into the computers at the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit (aka  CRU) and released 61 megabytes of confidential files onto the internet.

Yes, all of that, except the exact opposite.

Not surprisingly, science wins. Research wins. Thinking wins. And as it should always be (but too often is not) troglodyte Bible-thumpers lose.

"Your custard is not as big a fucking deal as you think."

Okay, fine. We haven’t exactly been on our game lately. On the one hand, this site has sort of turned into a sad video-sharing and tweet-compiling service, but on the other hand STOP WHINING — we still had a better week than Joe Biden.

Granted that’s a low bar, but Jiminy Christmas, what the heck is wrong with Joe Biden? First he took his show to Milwaukee, where he dined on custard — NOT ice cream, you dunce — and called a smartass small business owner a “smartass.” Oooh, scandal! Here’s the thing with that situation: the guy went over to Biden looking to mix it up for the cameras, and did it with a stupid issue — one he’s wrong about. He told the Veep that he didn’t have to pay for the custard he was eating, but if Biden really wanted to pay him back he could just lower his taxes. It’s a bit like if I offered to hold a door open for you, and your compromise offer was that I buy you a car.

Beyond that, though, there are the facts that Obama has cut taxes for 95 percent of Americans, and tax bills are at their lowest levels since 1950. But hey, Joe Biden, if you just lower my taxes, I can finally make money selling custard! Maybe it’s the first time this joker has ever had a chance to talk to anyone in government, because he should’ve delivered that message to George W. Bush. Or Bill Clinton. Or Ronald Reagan. Because they all oversaw higher tax bills than Obama.

That said, shut the goddamn hell up, Joe Biden. You’ve been in politics for 900 years, and you still can’t tell when a camera and mic are near you? When you’re not busy saying everyone at Dunkin Donuts and 7-11 has an Indian accent, you go to custard shops and call people “smartass?” What’s going on?

Best part of this story — Joe Biden was only just getting started. From there he went to Louisville, Ken., where his advance team quickly went to work shutting off all means of cooling, and went right ahead with a sweltering late-June event. The result? This:

The man who comically and slowly crashes to the floor is GE CEO Jim Campbell. He was on hand to say how great the much-maligned Recovery Act has been for America. He was ready to praise the Obama Administration and their work on the economy. It was a pretty nice coup, and a pretty easy event…until the Biden people stepped in.

[GE spokesperson Kim] Freeman says it’s believed Campbell’s collapse was heat related.  The conditions on stage were especially hot because of TV lights and because the Vice-President’s staff had requested some fans be turned off so Biden’s comments could be heard.  Because production was suspended for the event, GE complied with the request, Freeman said.

Very large fans that resemble helicopter blades hang from the ceiling behind the stage where Biden spoke.  The fans are called “Big Ass fans,” named after  the company of the same name based in Lexington, Kentucky.

So you mean turning off all the air flow during a sweltering late-June event wasn’t a good idea?!

Even after all this, there is one good thing we can say about Joe Biden: at least he still hasn’t shot anyone in the face.