BETTERS’ READING: No one has any money anywhere oh God the zombies are going to eat my flesh.

Sadly belated things that people better than you worthless lessers have been reading.

-A man fainted yesterday while standing in line at the Jefferson County Courthouse, and there are eyewitness reports that another man did the same last week after standing in line for four hours.

This comes after a sobering New York Times report over the weekend that states the grim obvious: Jefferson County and its people may never fully recover from its bankruptcy.

But hey y’all, at least Scott Beason stood on the broad, make-believe bullshit principle of not letting y’all have revenue to stave off bankruptcy and keep municipal services somewhat decent so he can brag about fighting against taxes in his failed run for Congress.

And I’m sure folks like this elderly gentleman who fainted yesterday understand why they had to make that sacrifice.

-In completely unrelated news, a Senate panel actually believes that Jefferson County may need revenue to do its job.

-Speaking of government cutbacks:

Most new Alabama governors appoint a task force to write a report on streamlining state government and then let it collect dust. Gov. Robert Bentley and legislative leaders say they are determined not to let that happen.

Suuuuure.

Governor Riley’s report? Currently being used as a doorstop by the Mississippi Indian Gambling Overlords that exist in Bill Johnson’s head.

Don Siegelman’s? His advisers folded hundreds used to bribe their way out of speeding tickets in between the pages and handed them to State Troopers to be discreet.

Fob James ate his.

But wait:

Bentley has already targeted some programs in the executive branch, including one of his own Cabinet members, for merger and says there will be more.

“Streamlining government will save money. If one agency duplicates the services of another agency, we will merge those agencies. We will look for excess and cut it out,” Bentley said.

Awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww daaaaaaamn.

Merry Christmas, you bastards.

Santa Claus, seen here stealing from poor children to fund a vote-stealing scheme in Sumter County.

With the Political Parlor apparently stuck on Permanent Independence Day, it appears to the Cockfight Family that no Alabama Weblogger would be recounting Alabama political leaders’ wishlists this Christmas.

So, the Family has happily decided to step in so that the lessers may not be denied their knowledge of the needs of their elected betters. And Scott Beason.

White knight on a white horse.

Possibly putting some bad ass back into Republican presidential politics. You know, without any of that pansy-assed, weepy Vietnam war-hero bullshit.

Former Governor Bob Riley, only a few weeks into his post-gubernatorial White Republican deification, is supposedly “actively considering” a run for the White House in 2012 after being courted to do so by “Republican insiders.”¹ Riley’s pro-business whoring background, his general competence as an administrator six out of eight years, at least, and his close relationship with emerging leaders in the national party such as Mississippi Tobacco Overlord Haley Barbour in which Barbour, simulating Mississippi’s place in the South, frequently acts as Riley’s subservient bitchpiece would likely be boons to any presidential bid. The fact he once glaringly recognized that taxes aren’t just there to be cut and could actually help turn around the most moribund of governments? Less so.

Come one, come all.

Extraordinarily white Republican Governor-Elect Robert “Sean-John” Bentley will be sworn-in this afternoon.

Alabama’s inaugural events have a rich tradition, but with so many events and so few of them involving fucking sheep while listening to The Doobie Brothers (pre-Michael McDonald), it is a tradition of which many of the lessers may be unaware.

As a service to them and an ego boost to ourselves because of our personal invitation to many of the festivities, the Cockfight Family is proud to share with you a schedule of today’s events:

We do things around here a certain way.

Ladies and gentlemen, we’re going to be talking about a Republican runoff here.

It’s time we move beyond funny pictures, and bring some class to the election commentary around here.

Like with a funny video:

In the race that’s so boring and repetitive I keep waking up and hoping that it was over three weeks ago, Dr. Robert Bentley, who will gently rub his fingers over Alabama’s skin to make sure that it’s in good working order, has apparently pissed on the shoes of the State’s Republican leadership by not being Bradley Byrne and making a terribly offensive comment that was clearly a direct attack toward our White Christian Republican Governor Bob Riley:

We are going to clean up Montgomery and it’s going to start in the Governor’s office. No longer are we going to have lobbyists in this state that will take kickbacks. We’re not going to have that. I will not benefit from my office. Not any of my children will benefit from my office. We are going to have an ethical administration.

Motherfucker.

Keep an eye out.

The Cockfight Family has compiled the following 2011 watchlist for the coveted Friends of the Cockfight Family Steely Dan Fan Club “Alabama Politics Asshole of the Year” Award.

The list is not presented in any sort of order or priority — because the Cockfights are assholes too:

Way down in the hole.

"Agents advised that they were deeply concerned about which eye is the one that actually works..."

From The Birmingham News:

At least two state lawmakers have worn listening devices — commonly called wires — to eavesdrop on conversations with fellow lawmakers, lobbyists and others interested in passage of gambling legislation.

The lawmakers agreed to wear the devices during the current legislative session as part of a federal investigation into corruption surrounding efforts to pass a bill allowing electronic bingo machines across the state, according to sources familiar with the investigation.

They agreed to wear the wires after going to federal authorities to report offers of substantial campaign contributions in exchange for their votes in support of bingo legislation, the sources said.

The lawmakers told authorities that they felt the offers went far beyond the normal lobbying efforts they have experienced and that they considered the offers bribes. Federal authorities asked the lawmakers to wear wires in an effort to gather evidence of such bribes, sources said.

Some thoughts:

I want to believe.

"Legislators advised that they had been compelled to support legalizing bingo by a mysterious man on a riding lawnmower who lives in a strange, far-off world called 'Tennessee'..."

Since Monday’s disorganized bingo/corruption rant, we’ve had some more time to think.

Also, there’s this:

Alabama Sen. Paul Sanford says that, shortly before he was elected last year, a lobbyist representing electronic bingo interests offered him $250,000 if he would commit to voting yes on a bingo bill.

Sanford identified that lobbyist as Jarrod Massey, whose clients include the Country Crossing electronic bingo casino in Dothan.

Meanwhile, a second state senator told The Birmingham News on Monday that Massey offered him a ‘substantial’ campaign contribution in return for a yes vote on “any bingo bill” that came before the Senate in the current legislative session, which began in January. The senator said he considered the offer by Massey to be a ‘bribe.’

Massey’s lawyers in a statement Monday said the allegations were ‘completely without basis in fact and solely an attempt to scare our legislators from voting on the bingo bill.’

And this:

Denton held a news conference Sunday night, where he said four FBI agents visited his Montgomery hotel room the night of March 30. He said the agents asked why he changed his vote and whether he received anything for the vote. They also asked whether he had talked with country singers George Jones and Randy Owen, who are involved in the Country Crossing development, and whether they offered him anything, such as a guitar

Oh, and also this:

A federal prosecutor probing state lawmakers’ handling of a gambling bill is herself under investigation for her role in the failed corruption case against former U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, records show.

Brenda Morris, a trial lawyer for the U.S. Department of Justice’s Public Integrity Section, worked as a lead prosecutor against Stevens.

Morris was identified as ‘senior litigation counsel’ in the Alabama investigation in a recent letter to state officials.

A federal judge threw out the Stevens case, held Morris and others in contempt for their handling of it and named a special prosecutor to investigate the government’s prosecution team. The Department of Justice also opened an internal investigation.

‘In nearly 25 years on the bench, I’ve never seen anything approaching the mishandling and misconduct that I’ve seen in this case,’ U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan said when he threw out the Stevens case about a year ago, as quoted by the Associated Press.

This is mostly unrelated, but he likes gambling and it’s funny so…:

The man known as the pro-gambling candidate in the Democratic race for governor has decided to gamble with his looks. On April Fool’s Day, he had a Birmingham barber shave off the mustache and restyle his hair with a shorter cut and a part that moved from the middle to left side.

On Saturday, he switched his glasses from dark frames to light wire ones.* …

So far, the 57-year-old candidate said he’s been getting a lot of favorable comments about how he looks younger with the gray mustache gone.

‘It’s Ron with a new look, but the same heart,’ he said.**

So, we guess you’re wondering who’s winning and losing here. Glad you asked…

The truth is out there.

State Senator C.G.B. Spender (R-Elba)

It’s like one of the best plots from The X-Files*: Wearied, but expert FBI agents come to Alabama to investigate allegations that a group of mildly-powered State legislators who once voted against bingo legislation changed their minds after absorbing thousands of small but powerful mysterious green rectangular objects that are as thin as paper.

When we first heard about this last week, we weren’t buying the Democrats’ allegations that this is all a ploy set in motion by Anti-Gamble Jesus/Governor Bob Riley to halt the bingo bill in the House and build Republicans’ case for taking over the Legislature on fresh exposure of legislative Democrats ultimate guilty pleasure: Lucrative governmental corruption.

But after hearing about the Riley federal connections suggested in the article linked above, reading the (Democratic) head of Riley’s Gambling is Illegal and  I Ain’t Fer No Illegal Gambling Task Force attempt to re-brand its work as not being “Gambling is bad” but “Corruption is bad” over the weekend, and noticing how the pieces fit together for salvaging the Republicans “DEMOCRATS SUPPORT ILLEGAL SHIT!” election campaign strategy — well, this conspiracy theory Kool-Aid tastes a little better than we initially thought.

Only a little longer for us not to really care.

The Cockfight Family reminds lessers they only have about nine or so hours left to vote in the Alabama Politics “Asshole of the Year” webpoll to the right of this post.

At last check, Congressman Parker Griffith had just narrowly broken a tie with Governor Bob Riley, but Riley is still only one vote away from splitting the cheeks of “The People’s Asshole” title with P-Griff.

Meanwhile, Attorney General Troy King has stormed to be only a handful votes away from proving that, to the People of Alabama, he is not only the State’s top “law” man, he’s its top asshole as well.

Keep in mind that the winner of this poll will have three-fifths of a vote in their favor when Cockfight Family members enter the sacred Parliament of Cockfights in April and elect winner of this year’s Friends of the Cockfight Family Steely Dan Fan Club “Asshole of the Year” Award.

And remember, three-fifths is better than one-fifth.

…

Since most of you lessers don’t know how to do math, we assure you there’s a difference.