Rand Paul airs political grievances for Festivus: GOP rivals, Democrats, government waste

Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul has a lot of problems with his political rivals — now you’re going to hear about them.

The Republican presidential candidate took to Twitter on Wednesday morning to participate in Festivus’ “Airing of Grievances” again. This is the third time Paul has used Twitter to celebrate the parody holiday, which was introduced in a 1997 episode of “Seinfeld.”

First, Paul took aim at GOP frontrunner Donald Trump for his dubious command of Yiddish and for his Chinese-manufactured Trump ties.

Then Paul made a light-hearted joke about his friend Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, who was born in Calgary, Canada.

Apparently, retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson’s soft speaking voice was the only grievance Paul had with him.

Paul focused on New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s somewhat bizarre football loyalty: The fiercely proud native New Jerseyan cheers for the Dallas Cowboys despite the fact that the New York Giants and New York Jets play at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J.

The teasing of Florida Sen. Marco Rubio was a bit more substantive, mentioning his less-than-stellar voting record. After examining the voting records of every sitting congressman, Vocativ and GovTrack.us named Rubio “least likely to show up for work.”

Paul decided not to post the grievance he originally had planned for South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham after he dropped out of the race for the Oval Office earlier this week.

The grievance for former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush focused on his at times less-than-eloquent pauses during the GOP debates thus far.

It’s not exactly original to joke about the elocution (or lack thereof) of the Bush siblings.

To insult Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, he paraphrased a famous quote about socialism’s flaws that is often attributed to former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher: “The trouble with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money.“

For former secretary of state Hillary Clinton, Paul joked about the Democratic presidential frontrunner’s long bathroom break during last weekend’s debate.

Former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina, who was mentioned in the tweet, appeared to like the joke and wished her rival for the Republican nod a happy Festivus.

After a break, Paul returned with more pointed and serious grievances about what Washington’s failure to rein in government waste. He said that he has proposed multiple balanced budgets but that his colleagues in Congress have not supported his efforts and are not serious about reducing the size of the federal government.

People often ask Paul, he said, where he would start cutting so he compiled “The Waste Report,” which catalogues more than one billion dollars of what the libertarian-leaning candidate considers profligacy.

Rand Paul speaks during a meeting of the Economic Club of Las Vegas at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas on Dec. 16, 2015. (Photo: Steve Marcus/Las Vegas Sun via AP)

The report contains additional “Seinfeld” jokes. For instance, he mentioned a fake charity that the show’s character George Costanza made up to avoid buying gifts for his co-workers.

“Our investigations into federal spending may not have uncovered any government contributions to something called The Human Fund (Money for People),” it reads, “but we did find Uncle Sam putting taxpayer dollars to work creating a foreign made-for-TV cricket league, paying for federal yoga classes, developing a climate change video game, and studying whether being in space changes the effectiveness of golf clubs.”

Paul’s actual grievances include $188,000 going toward a study to understand why Americans don’t want to adopt the metric system, $150,000 going toward yoga classes for federal government workers and other similar expenses.

Paul also joked about the National Security Agency, the Federal Reserve System, the Transportation Security Administration and President Barack Obama, of whom he’s not exactly a fan.

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