Political suicide and restaurants that can kill you.

In this post: Putz of the Week, death traps, scandal in New Jersey.

Before I leap into my first major topic of importance I thought I’d share tonight’s dinner menu. The food of the gods! I had braunschweiger on low-carb white toast with sugar-free relish, half a container of leftover Jalapeño Shrimp from China City, a couple of Russell Stover sugar-free peanut butter cups and a Marcytini. I briefly considered a can of Vienna sausages between the first and second courses but decided not to press my luck. I know you understand.

And now for our latest Putz of the Week ... although there are so many candidates lately that I’ve considered changing it to Putz of the Day. In the meantime, our current honoree is Jack Kingston, a Republican congressman from Georgia who bills taxpayers for his meals but wants poor schoolchildren to scrub floors for theirs.

Kingston is running for a Senate seat with the slogan “there’s no such thing as a free lunch,” touting a plan to require poor children to mop and clean the school cafeteria in order to qualify for the federal school lunch program. “One of the things I’ve talked to the Secretary of Agriculture about is, why don’t you have the kids pay a dime, pay a nickel to instill in them that there is, in fact, no such thing as a free lunch? Or maybe sweep the floor of the cafeteria. Think what we would gain as a society — getting the myth out of their head that there is such a thing as a free lunch.”

What an ass. According to WSAV-TV, during the last three years Congressman Putz filed expense reports for $4,182 worth of lunches for his office staff, received $4,289 in free meals billed to third-party groups such as the Georgia Bankers Association, traveled overseas on congressional business at a taxpayer cost of $24,313 and filed expense reports for $145,391 in meals for campaign events. I hope somebody spreads this story across the front page of every newspaper in the United States.

And speaking of douchebags in the news, Democrats and right-wing Republicans nationwide are having a collective mass orgasm right now as New Jersey governor Chris Christie digs himself the world’s largest political grave at the foot of the George Washington Bridge.

Know what? Congressman Kingston would approve of Chris Christie. I think the governor pays for all his own between-meal snacks.

My final topic of the day? RESTAURANTS THAT CAN KILL YOU. I’m referring to “sit down” chain restaurants that are more damaging to your health than their drive-thru counterparts thanks to insane portions and enough salt and fat to explode Paula Deen.

An analysis published in the Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior included more than 2,600 menu items from all the usual crapfest eateries like Red Lobster, T.G.I. Friday’s, Chili’s, Olive Garden, Claim Jumper and Bubba’s Bullshit Hoedown Grill. Researchers discovered that most plate-and-fork restaurants overfeed their customers BIG TIME, and the average shared appetizer, entree and side dish contained 1,495 calories, 28 grams of saturated fat and 3,312 mg of sodium. With drinks and dessert most meals easily surpassed 2,000 calories. Unless you’ve got the metabolism of Michael Phelps those frontage road dining options are DEATH TRAPS.

I once ate at a Claim Jumper restaurant when I lived in southern California and they served me a baked potato bigger than a loaf of bread. Who the hell eats a three-pound potato?

So here are the Howdygram’s general rules for dining out: 1) cloth napkins don’t make calories disappear; 2) food described with an apostrophe — sizzlin’, bloomin’, artery bustin’ — is designed to give you a heart attack; and 3) any restaurant that advertises “Never-Ending Pasta Bowl Month” is way more dangerous than a drive-thru that sells four-ounce hamburgers for 99¢.

Thank you for reading this. Tell your friends.