By Susan Bankston
Judge tosses suit over broken promises.
Deep in your heart you always knew this was true, but now it’s the law: U.S. District Judge Andrea Woods ruled last month that a politician’s campaign promises are worthless as a four-card flush. Or at least not actionable.
Illinois Republican Congressman Aaron Schock got himself indicted on fraud charges for using his campaign funds and government money to fund lavish trips for himself and his friends. (Schock has long been the subject of gay rumors, and on some of those trips, he was accompanied by a man he referred to as his “personal photographer.”)
Schock was a strong fiscal conservative when it came to his money, but honey, he was going through yours like a fat lady on a milkshake. He resigned from Congress when it all became public.
One of Schock’s political donors, a man by the name of Howard Foster, up and sued Schock for mail and wire fraud for soliciting campaign contributions on the basis that he was an honest politician.
Foster says that you shouldn’t be able to claim you’re honest in your campaign commercials and literature if you are not. Shenanigans like that should be against the law.
Judge Wood scratched her head and decided the following (which I am showing you pretty much in full, because you won’t believe me otherwise):
“. . . But courts reviewing communications in other contexts have long referred to campaign speech as the paradigm of unreliable puffery. Generic claims of honesty and integrity are too vague to be considered definitive representations upon which Foster, or any reasonable person, could rely. The elevated skepticism directed toward political communications only pushed Schock’s statements further into the realm of inactionable puffery.”
“Inactionable puffery”—I’m gonna embroider that on a throw pillow for my bed—or maybe on a frilly ladies’ hankie that I can conveniently drop at political rallies, along with a raging lather of sassy.
Whether or not Aaron Schock eventually goes to jail, he will go down in history for setting the precedent that a candidate’s campaign promises are meaningless—and, in fact, puffery.
There is no truth to the rumor that the champagne was flowing in the White House Counsel’s Office last Thursday, upon learning of Judge Wood’s decision. In addition, there has been no independent verification of this alleged quote from White House counsel Don McGahn: “Judge Wood is a brilliant jurist. The president is relieved to know that the Trump fortune will always be protected from the legal claims of 50,000 unemployed coal miners.”
Bless his heart, Trump’s campaign promises have more twists than a pretzel factory.
Stop with the Hitler Stuff
Having learned absolutely diddle-squat from the April Hitler festivities hosted by White House press secretary Sean Spicer, the very next day North Carolina Republican state representative Larry Pittman compared Abraham Lincoln to Hitler.
I am not freekin’ fooling with you. Look it up.
As a sophomore letterman in the Facebook Debating Society, Pittman dropped this jewel when a Facebook commenter reminded Pittman that gay marriage is now the law and that Pittman should “get over it,” instead of wasting time repeatedly trying to re-introduce a bill to ban it.
Pittman’s response: “And if Hitler had won, should the world just get over it? Lincoln was the same sort [of] tyrant, and personally responsible for the deaths of over 800,000 Americans in a war that was unnecessary and unconstitutional.”
I’ve been thinking about this, and y’all, please. . . SOMEBODY HELP ME! My eyes are rolling so fast and hard that I’m screwing myself to the wall.
By the way, Pittman is the pastor of Ridgecrest Presbyterian Church, which makes me deathly afraid to ask what the Baptists think about Lincoln.
Hitler: everybody you disagree with is just like him. This divisive message is brought to you by Pettiness. Pettiness: now available at a store near you. Get yours today.
Happy May, and Hunker Down! This ain’t gonna be an easy time to be a citizen.
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