Tim Pawlenty: Another Motherfucker for America:
What is it with Republican governors of the upper Midwest? Tim Pawlenty, for instance, and Scott Walker both have the soulless, inbred, half-mast eyes of pedophiles staring at a school playground and masturbating inside a van. Seriously, if you saw one of these bastards in the woods, you'd fuckin' run because you'd feel sure that he'd saw off your head and skullfuck you.

Pawlenty announced yesterday that, no, really, seriously this time, he's a-runnin' for president (or, in the popular parlance, "losing to Barack Obama"). In a short video with choral music, like angels want him to be in the White House, Pawlenty tells us all about how he's not going to tell us he's running for president, except in the way that he's telling us he's running for president, and, boy, doesn't Obama suck, and, hey, look, he used Google to tell him how to announce. Go, Team T-Paw, go.

It's easy to dismiss Pawlenty as mind-thuddingly dull, but that doesn't give him near enough credit for how much of a typical Republican motherfucker he actually is. Not only was he elected governor twice with less than 50% of the vote (that's right: Tim Pawlenty couldn't even get half his own state to vote for him), but when it comes to taxes and budget cuts, the safety of rich people's wallets is more important than the safety of the lives of his citizens.

'Cause T-Paw (and that ain't mocking - this motherfucker calls himself that idiotic nickname, as if he's a rapper straight outta Eden Prairie) is goddamn proud of his budget-wrangling prowess. His website declares, "Tim set a record for vetoes and for using executive power to force necessary spending cuts." And what kinds of bills did he veto? Well, shit, ones that affected public works, like, you know, bridge repair.

See, Pawlenty was governor in August 2007, when the I-35 Mississippi River bridge collapsed in Minneapolis, killing 13 people and creating a huge economic headache for the region. As has been well, well-documented, the bridge was one of hundreds in Minnesota that were ranked as "structurally deficient" by inspectors.

So, no, Pawlenty couldn't have known that it would be that bridge that would collapse. But when a thousand or so bridges in one's state are fucked up, you'd think repairing them might be something you wouldn't scrimp on (and Pawlenty's not the only politician that sees infrastructure as a waste of money that offers no dividends in the next election). T-Paw, though, either spent way too little or just outright vetoed shit. In January 2007, Pawlenty proposed a budget for transportation needs that borrowed millions of dollars and contained no new gas taxes (which hadn't changed in 20 years). Hell, even after the bridge went underwater, Pawlenty vetoed a new gas tax.

There's lots of reasons Pawlenty's a motherfucker, like his pardoning of a child molester because the guy later married his victim. And there's a telecom bribery scandal that could bite him in the ass.

But, instead, the Rude Pundit just wanted to concentrate on the actual governing that Pawlenty did. If Pawlenty's major accomplishment is that he saved his state's citizens some coin while the infrastructure literally crumbled, then perhaps it says something about the craven, greedy Republican establishment that, at this moment, Pawlenty is one of the only viable candidates they have.