Iowa Congress Spares Masturbatory Drivers

Masturbating motorists across Iowa were relieved to hear that the Iowa Senate did not include “masturbation” as part of its bill outlawing texting-while-driving. Unlike the Iowa House’s version, the Iowa Senate passed a tougher bill that would not only ban texting while driving but would put the kibosh on reading text messages as well (although the bill made no explicit distinction between texting and sexting).

Despite lawmakers pleas for including other dangerous activities while driving, the Senate spared the following language from its bill: masturbation, playing Suduko, paddle ball, thumb wrestling, changing baby or senior citizen’s diaper, spinning records on turntable, juggling, balancing checkbook, doing laundry by hand, thumbing through seed catalogues, playing Guitar Hero, journaling, tying a Windsor knot, opening CD packaging or using common sense.

(This is a dramatization: The driver is a professional actor and certified stunt man and you should not try this in you own car while driving, even though it is not illegal.)

Lobbyists representing MAMD (Mothers Against Masturbatory Drivers) said they were disappointed neither bill included masturbation but vowed to keep up pressure on lawmakers. “How many victims of auto-eroticism will it take before lawmakers realize that driving and masturbating don’t go hand-in-hand,” one lobbyist said.

Opponents of adding “masturbation” to the bill argued that there’s no significant difference between masturbating and driving a manual transmission, admitting, however, that the former may lead to carpal tunnel.

Political Fallout Public Service Announcement:

Remember: Friends don’t let friends masturbate and drive. Reach out and give a hand; the life you're saving may be your own.

Rants Seduces Pettengill to the Dark Side

Christopher Rants: "Come, Dawn...come to the Dark side of the Minority Force..."

Big Tobacco’s Major Player, House Minority Leader Christopher Rants, used his behind the scenes charm* to seduce Dawn Pettengill to the Dark Side of the Minority Force. Dawn’s supporters are hailing her defection as courageous. Meanwhile, her opponents are calling her move an act of betrayal, while Kevin McCarthy, House Majority Leader of the Democratic Empire dismissed her move as “…more of a shift on paper…” Ouch, even in the cutting edge world of a paper-shuffling bureaucracy, that analogy had to hurt.

*Rants’s behind the scene charms consist of frequent temper tantrums, labor union bashing, and writing “Democrats are a bunch of poo poo heads” on the state house bathroom stalls with water-soluble markers.

Dawn Pettengill captured in a Rants Trance after watching him work his Svengali powers on House floor by throwing a hypnotic temper tantrum.

Mark Twain once said, “There are several good protections against temptation, but the surest is cowardice.” Tempted by the loss of power, it looks like Dawn may have succumbed to Rants’s Svengali powers. (Extracted from George du Maurier’s 1894 novel, Trilby, the word "Svengali" means a person who, with evil intent, manipulates another into what is desired.) Sounds like we have the ingredients for shooting another adaptation of Tribly here in Iowa. Now all we have to do is woo Hollywood, manipulating them with Iowa’s new film tax exemption.

The following is a dramatization of Rants working his hypnotic Svengali powers on the susceptible Dawn Pettengill. (I repeat: This is a dramatization. Do not try this at home or work, unless you’ve received your official degree in the Fine Arts of Manipulation from the Karl Rove School of Svengali.)

Tribly II: Dawn of the GOP

Rants: Look into my eyes Dawn, and imagine my eyeballs are dollar signs.

Dawn: (entranced) Yes, Mr. Rants. Dollar signs.

Rants: Focus, focus on the dollar signs.

Dawn: (still entranced) Yes, Mr. Rants

Rants: Now imagine watching me every single day, working my magic on the House floor and behind the scenes with the GOP.

Dawn: Yes, Mr. Rants.

Rants: Your Party no longer loves you, Dawn. Not like Mr. Rants’ssssssssssss Party.

Dawn: Yes, Mr. Rantssssssss…

Rants: Come join the Minority Force and watch me, yes me, work my magic by evoking my almighty procedural powers.

Dawn: Yes, Mr. Rants. You do have the power to clog up the bureaucratic machine.

Rants: If you come, Dawn. Others will follow and we will control the House next year (sinister laugh here).

Dawn: Oh, Mr. Rants, you truly are amazing.

Rants: I know, I know, Dawn. You are so wise. Now come to the Dark Side. Shall we dance?

Dawn: Yes, Mr. Rants. I would love to dance with you.

(They dance the forbidden dance.)

FADE OUT

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More Fallout...

Pettengill's Defection Finally Pays Dividends for GOP (Iowa Independent)

Pettengill Voting Record Conflicts With Switch (Iowa Independent)

48 Hours: “The Heat is ON” for VOICE

Are my eyes deceiving me, or did House Speaker Pat Murphy just stick a banana in the tailpipe of the 'Clean Elections' bill?"

With less than 48 hours left in this year’s Iowa legislative session, there’s no time to look back, especially with regard to the fate of VOICE (Voter-Owned Iowa Clean Elections). By the way, how come you never hear anyone complaining about lawmakers having summers, falls and half of springs off? But I digress --unless you answered this rhetorical conundrum: “So they can raise barrels of money for the next election.”

Despite the heat from activists or what Yepsen calls “L*beral H*otheads,” the bill (HSB 105) has been sitting on a House Appropriations subcommittee backburner for weeks.

It’s time to turn up the heat and make one final push to keep VOICE from suffering a tragic and untimely "Death by Committee." The Horror! The Horror!

Speaking of which, let’s take time for yet another mini-round of…

“Deconstructing Yepsen: Tales from the Intellectually Lazy”


In Yepsen’s latest diatribe, “Get more from Legislature: Sell ideas to people first,” Yepsen comes down from the burning political bush (stoked with old clippings of his previous columns I’m sure) and attempts to impart some words-of-wisdom to Iowa Lawmakers – before they depart for home.


1. VOICE: Who’s selling what and to whom?

Yepsen: "There are a lot (of*) things this Legislature could have done to make Iowa a better place. They didn't do them. Why? The answer is the people of Iowa weren't sold. The gestation period for good ideas in this state is often several years. Groups that take their case to the people often have more success than those that don't."

*added by Political Fallout editor

Lazy Intellectual Response: The problem with VOICE is that lawmakers, especially leaders on both sides of the aisle, had already been bought, so they weren’t in the market for buying VOICE. Had VOICE been marketed by the Democrat leaders, especially in the House where it’s been shelved indefinitely, this bill would be on Governor Culver’s desk, awaiting his landmark signature. Regarding the gestation period for good ideas, Yepsen’s clearly projecting; your readership is still waiting, David. Any day now…

2. VOICE: A Cautionary Tale

Yepsen: "Lesson: If you can mobilize public opinion for an issue or cause, the hearts and minds of legislators will follow - or you'll be in a better position to get new legislators."

Lazy Intellectual Response: Agree. Although, Yepsen left out "pocketbook" (the hearts, minds, and pocketbooks…). Should VOICE fail to even make it to the floor for a debate and vote, it will come back to haunt some legislators. This is precisely why it hasn’t made it to the floor: Who wants to be on record for having voted against “Clean Elections,” eh?

3. The Peoples’ Purchasing Power?

Yepsen: "The lesson for those trying to get the Legislature to do something is simple: Sell the voters first."

Lazy Intellectual Response: Without VOICE, it’s a Buyer’s Market for legislators, not the other way around. It's time for Iowa Voters to flip the equation.

4. The debate about debates

Yepsen: "Other issues in Iowa lend themselves to a few years of debate. Iowa's income, sales and property tax systems need overhaul. Each year, lawmakers tweak here and there, but comprehensive change seems elusive. The same is true for local control of hog lots, or using public dollars to pay for political campaigns or tax breaks for rainforests."

Lazy Intellectual Response: But how can a debate occur if the issues are held in captivity by Senate and House leaders? Not to mention, Pam Jochum has introduced a public campaign funding bill every year for over 10 years, so when does it merit a debate? Besides, preserving logic and Democracy is not like preserving fine wine, but rather, only serves to erode both of them, eh David?

5. "Never put off until tomorrow what you can do the day after tomorrow." ~Mark Twain

Yepsen: "While there were many disappointments and shortcomings to this session, there's time over the summer and fall to correct some of them. Democratic lawmakers should use these months between adjournment and the start of next January's session for an aggressive series of interim studies on a host of issues facing Iowa. Do the research. Hear from the experts. Draft well constructed bills."

Lazy Intellectual Responder: That goes double for political pundits writing for major corporate newspaper outlets. The beauty of being a lazy intellectual is not having to do the research, or at least being held accountable by shareholders, or worse, special interests’ contributors. By the way, VOICE is a well constructed bill and has been successful in states with smaller gestation periods (e.g. Maine & Arizona).

Note to House Speaker Pat Murphy: It's not too late to pull the banana out...

Iowa Civil Rights Bill FINALLY Hits House Floor

In the 2007 Iowa legislative session, the Democrat Majority stood up for human corpses, protecting them from mutilation. They took a stand against the widespread epidemic of flag desecration, amending Iowa’s unconstitutional law to make it less unconstitutional. And just yesterday they vowed to protect “sleepy smokers” from burning to death, while sleeping when they enacted legislation that would mandate self-extinguishing cigarettes.

And now, FINALLY, after considerable pressure from civil rights activists, the Iowa House is going to debate SF 427 today. The amendment will extend rights to gays, bisexuals, and transgendered individuals, protecting them from discrimination in employment, housing, education, credit, and public accommodations. The amendment will add “gender identity” and “sexual orientation” to the existing law. The amendment defines these terms as follows:

"Gender identity" means a gender=related identity, appearance, expression, or behavior of a person, regardless of the person's assigned sex at birth.

"Sexual orientation" means actual or perceived heterosexuality, homosexuality, or bisexuality.

Despite these proposed changes, some members of Iowa congress still have some reservations, hence the prolonged procrastination of the long-overdue debate on the House floor. Why the delay is dumbfounding, but not surprising -- given the new Democrat Majority’s Trifectaphobia. Apparently, protecting one’s political longevity trumps the protection of one’s human dignity. Lawmakers had no problem adding “sexual orientation” to the Bully Bill, which already passed with flying colors, but extending the same protections beyond the K-12 classroom walls ran into some roadblocks.

Besides, homophobia and the closeted fear of committing political suicide, the amendment ran into a few other obstacles, especially from members of the business community. The last barrier lawmakers had to break down, thus paving the way for today’s debate was what I’ll call the “Klinger Conundrum.” Employers wanted to maintain sovereignty of their “dress codes as they see appropriate.” Imbibed with watching too many M*A*S*H reruns, employers had unsubstantiated fears that the amendment would lead to a surge in cross-dressing at the work place.

The Klinger Conundrum: Posterboy of Homophobia in the Work Place?

Even in the closeted Underworld of Homophobia, I guess you have to draw the line somewhere. Right?
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Stop the Fallout NOW!...

Move to Act (Bleeding Heartland)

Civil Rights Bill Update (J. Deeth)

Rants Gives Rep. Tomenga “Out of Statehouse Suspension”

Christopher Rants: Your Big Tobacco 'Ho

Big Tobacco ‘Ho and Iowa House Minority Leader, Christopher Rants, suspended fellow GOP representative, Walt Tomenga, from their party’s caucus meeting next week. No wonder Rants was so vehemently opposed to the anti-bullying bill. The subject of the meeting is the cigarette-tax increase, which Tomenga and the majority of Iowans support. According to Tomenga, “Christopher believed a more candid conversation could be had if I wasn’t there.”

And by candid, we all know that Rants, the Big Tobacco ‘Ho, means telling his minions what his Pimp is telling him: “You bitches best keep them cigarette taxes down, or I’m gonna have to slap you around.”

Democrats heard about Tomenga’s suspension, found him sitting alone in the Statehouse lunchroom (see pic on right), and invited him to speak at their caucus meeting instead. Inside reports indicate that the Democrats offered Walt some of their tots, thus bringing a smile to Walt’s face, who confessed to his new friends, "I admit I'm probably an unusual Republican, but you could make the case that anybody who calls themselves a Republican is unusual, so I fit right in."