What comical attempts at cliché villainy do we have out of New Jersey’s ranks of local crony politicians today? Here’s one: the FBI has hauled off West New York’s Democratic mayor Felix Roque and his son on charges of hacking into a website associated with a movement to recall the mayor and then calling up the website’s owner to notify the person that “everyone would pay for getting involved against Mayor Roque.” OOOOOH– ha ha, just kidding. Sarah Palin makes better threats to her own in-laws.

Here is the sordid-and-yet-lame tale of Mayor Roque and his double life as Foursquare mayor of spending time in front of his computer hate-fapping to his enemies’ mean Internet comments about him, via the Star Ledger:

The alleged hacking began in February, when [Felix Roque's son] Joseph Roque was able to access the e-mail account of one of the recall organizers and used that to hack into Go Daddy, the internet service provider that was hosting the website www.recallroque.com. Prosecutors say he then cancelled the account without authorization, taking it down.

The next day, the mayor is charged with making a phone call to another individual associated with the recall movement with the intent of harassing him, telling him that he was aware that he had contributed information to the website.

…

According to the criminal complaint, Roque called up another recall organizer and intimated that he had the connections to take down the recall website by “highly placed government officials and that everyone would pay for getting involved against Mayor Roque.”

He wasn’t shy about boasting of those contacts, according to the complaint.

“A friend of mine. he works in the — I can’t tell you — three letters — CIA. You know. That’s how I get information. So what I’m doing is not very kosher,” the mayor was quoted as saying.

Oh man, that last one. This guy just sounds like the Gob Bluth of New Jersey politics. [New Jersey Star Ledger]

Handsome Old Joe Biden explained the other day that being a Bain executive doesn’t make you any more special or ready to be president than would being a plumber. Maybe we are wrong (we are not wrong) but it sounds to us like Handsome Old Joe is standing up for the working man, the middle class workers or blue collar workers, and saying being a fat-cat corporate vulture doesn’t give you any more special expertise than those other Joes have! You’re not so special, Mr. Fancy Pants, we hear Joe yelling, all sexy like, in our perfect shell-shaped ear. “Joe” “the Plumber” took great offense to this, because he’s a fucking idiot. Here, watch Mr. the Plumber try to use words and sentences to pick a fight.

“It was insulting … for Joe Biden to sit there and say who can be president and who not, who’s qualified and who isn’t, is just asinine, especially with the track record they left behind them,” Wuzelbacher told Fox News. “If I was this administration or Joe Biden himself I wouldn’t want anyone looking at my record and sitting there talking about how great we are and you should be sitting down there.”

“The middle class workers or blue collar workers, we can do it, and, this election cycle we’re going to do it,” he said. “People are going to see it happen and it’s going to be great, so they’re going to be eating those words.”

Good sentences, “Joe”! You got Sarah Palin feeding you lines through your special George W. Bush Debate-Bulge 3000?

Will Joe the Biden respond to this bald-headed attempt to get attention? DON’T BE RIDICULOSE. Joe the Biden is way too Fonzie to even pay attention to such blithering. Nope, he’d let him tire his own self out, and then POW RIGHT TO THE KISSER.

[Politico]

All poor Mitt Romney wanted to do was show some “compassion” to a group of African American schoolchildren in West Philly and explain to them that they are only poor because their mothers are sluts and their fathers are deadbeats, and what kind of thanks did he get? No thanks, that’s what kind!

Seeking to broaden his appeal heading into the general election, Romney was venturing for his first time in this campaign into an impoverished black neighborhood to hear the concerns of local educators and community leaders. But here in the streets of West Philadelphia, the emotion surrounding his contest with the nation’s first black president was raw, as dozens of neighborhood residents shouted, “Get out, Romney, get out!”

Well I say, old chaps, that is not the kind of welcome His Lord High Hairgel was expecting! So Romney is at this charter school, and trying to brag on his education record in Taxachusetts and he gets just cold interrupted and given a total lecture from the charter school’s founder about how in Boston when they tried to integrate, little black children were pelted with eggs. He answered, presumably, “Errrrrrrrr.” Then he talked some total bullshit about how class size doesn’t matter, and everybody in the room jumped down his throat and yelled GIVE ME SOME MORE ICE TEA, M-FER! (Maybe.)

But what was happening outside the school that Romney was having such a swell time visiting?

Outside, meanwhile, some brick row houses across from the school were boarded up. Police had cordoned off a full city block to protect Romney and his entourage. Residents, some of them organized by Obama’s campaign, stood on their porches and gathered at a sidewalk corner to shout angrily at Romney. Some held signs saying, “We are the 99%.” One man’s placard trumpeted an often-referenced Romney gaffe: “I am not concerned about the very poor.”

Madaline G. Dunn, 78, who said she has lived here for 50 years and volunteers at the school, said she is “personally offended” that Romney would visit her neighborhood. “It’s not appreciated here,” she said. “It is absolutely denigrating for him to come in here and speak his garbage.”

Oh dear. Anything else, most perfect Washington Post story of all time?

Although Romney has not focused on the black community in his campaign so far, his father, George, reached out to African Americans and pursued policies designed to help lift blacks out of poverty during his service as governor of Michigan and secretary of Housing and Urban Development as well as in his 1968 presidential campaign.

Right. Because Republicans used to be Kenyan Maoist Mau-Mau Anti-Colonial Socialist Communists!

Let us wrap up with this sad image of poor Mitt Romney trying desperately to get out of West Philly in one piece. Here he has just watched children sing a song about smiling, while bopping his head off-rhythm.

“You just sang a song about smiling,” Romney told the kids. “You’re all smiling right? Smile! Oh, that’s great.”

[WaPo]

The Iranian Navy says it saved an American ship from pirates, all ‘Unhand that frigate, villeins! What ho, tea, chappie, lorries, Madge, the sun never sets on the British Empire,’ or something, whatever, arrrr. So now we can all be best friends forever! Yay Iran! Yay us!

An Iranian warship responded to a distress signal from the US-flagged Maersk Texas, a cargo ship of 150 metres (500 feet) and 14,000 tonnes, which was besieged by “several pirate boats,” the navy said in a statement reported by the official IRNA news agency.

The pirates “fled the scene as soon as they spotted the presence” of the warship. Maersk Texas “thanked the Iranian navy and sailed towards its destination safely,” it added.

So what the official IRNA news agency is saying is the Maersk Texas basically was as grateful as an American ever is when someone saves its ass, which is to say the captain probably gifted the Iranian Navy with a cold dead stare, sneered ‘Yeah. Thanks,” in its best Jorge Boosh, and then hotfooted it the fuck out of there to pick up its payload of Burmese-baby-made lead-coated bisphenol A candy cigarettes.

Anyway it’s not like they should have been too grateful.

The US navy patrolling the area have on a number of occasions rescued Iranian ships. The latest incident was in January when a US warship secured the release of 13 Iranian fishermen near the entrance to the Gulf who had been held captive by pirates for 45 days.

Look at us all just cold gettin’ along! Do we smell a Wonkette Geopoliticker coming on? [AFP]

Perennial top contender for America’s most fervently incompetent governor Rick Scott is working hard for the title even on a trade mission to Spain: He managed to earn immediate ridicule from the country’s 47 million residents within actual seconds of meeting the King of Spain. He’s efficient! King Juan Carlos has lately been in hot water for taking a fancy elephant-murdering trip to Botswana while the country’s economy shrivels under a banking crisis and a 24% unemployment rate, so much so that he issued a first-ever public apology for his actions. This provided a no-fail comedy setup for Florida’s dipstick governor, whose first words upon meeting the king were, “I’ve ridden elephants. I’ve never tried to shoot one.” Don’t stop there, Rick! (He doesn’t.)

This is what a king looks like when he wants to slap the person whose hand he is shaking:

From the Miami New Times:

Scott apparently didn’t understand that the King didn’t want to talk about the trip, and keeps blabbing on about it. Scott asks that King how he was injured, and talks about his own travels to Botswana. Scott’s wife Annette begins talking about how they were in a Jeep that was being chased by elephants in Botswana, and that she wished that the King had been in the Jeep with them. The last thing the King wants right now is to be back in Botswana.

The King meanwhile kept shaking other people’s hands as the Scott blabbed on about Botswana.

The incident has become fodder in the Spanish press, and El Intermedio, something sort of like the Spanish version of The Daily Show, lampooned the exchange.

Your move, Jan Brewer. [Miami New Times Blogs]

It’s been a fun few years, but now Levi Johnston, once and future sperm gifter extraordinaire, has joined every other 22-year-old in America and become broke and a tenant in his mother’s home. According to a report in US Weekly, Levi has already (“already”) squandered his $1 million winnings from being Mr. Playgirl Winter 2010 on guns, ATVs and other beacons of manhood. This has caused him to cease paying child support to Bristol Palin for Tripp, allegedly, but has not prevented him from naming his impending second child after a gun. But IS IT ANY WONDER a boy-man with not really that much money, in modern B-list terms, has lost it all years before he even becomes ineligible for his parents’ health insurance plan? One person, at least, is excited about this: HIS MOMMY.

Johnston “hasn’t paid child support in nearly two years,” according to some “insider” quoted by Us Weekly, and he has a deep fondness for “guns, boats and four-wheelers.” He is now at home with them in Alaska, and also recently broke with his Alaska-based rep, whose name is obviously Tank. Tank Jones. TANK IS OUT OF THE TANK! Sorry. Tank insists that things are fine between them. Tank says Levi is actually GREAT (which does not mean not broke!) “I wanted to work on other projects [ACTUAL PROJECTS],” said Tank. “This was a mutual decision,” he told Us.

Meanwhile…

LIFE’S A TRIPP STARRING THIS BEAUTIFUL CHILD WITH THE EYELASHES, TRIPP, PREMIERS ON LIFETIME ON JUNE 19 AT 10/9c!!!! [Us Weekly]

Breitbart hologram Mike Flynn has been feeling the warm breeze of change that causes the flag of America to gently billow across his cheek, and also has been sifting through the history books, poring over some of the most improbable scenarios that have ever befallen America, and has decided that because history repeats itself, as long as that history is conservative-leaning, President Obama is completely going to drop out of the race the way Lyndon B. Johnson did in 1968, so weakened was LBJ by Senator McCarthy’s presidential efforts (which turned out so well)! It’s going to happen! Whoever takes Obama’s place, it does not matter, because the ensuing madness and weakness will ultimately portray Mitt Romney as a supreme being, much the way a fly looks supreme when standing next to a flea. This is a great theory. Flynn would just like to add another thing: Senator Eugene McCarthy was “a serious candidate running on an increasingly popular anti-war message.” Yes.

Here’s Flynn’s remarkable insight into the future:

In 1968, the political world was shocked when President Lyndon Johnson, running for reelection just four years after a landslide victory, was held beneath 50% of the vote in the Democrat primary in New Hampshire. Sen. Eugene McCarthy scored a shocking 41.5% of the vote against the incumbent President. The result confirmed Johnson’s weakness going into the November general election. Within weeks, Sen. Robert Kennedy announced he would seek the Democrat nomination for President and Johnson announced that he would not. LBJ was bowing out of his reelection bid.

ONE CAN DREAM.

Flynn goes on to describe the Obama campaign as “reeling” from his primary performances Arkansas and Kentucky. McCarthy, 1968′s “serious candidate,” provided some stiffer competition than Obama now faces in those states, and YET, let us be reminded that Obama was up against:

a guy in prison, an unknown lawyer, and, well, a ghost, essentially.

Ghost of AB?? Surely no. But in any case, this proves the president is a shithead.

I don’t think Obama will have the self-awareness of LBJ and drop out of the Presidential campaign. And, I certainly don’t believe the media will revisit their old contention that an incumbent president losing 40% of his own party’s vote is a sign of vulnerability. I expect they’ll sweep it under the rug and pretend it doesn’t mean anything special.

Then Flynn gets SERIOUS WITH GRAMMAR.

But. It. Did. Happen.

Cool, continue to stomp your feet figuratively in WordPress, child! [Regrettably]