Ladies and other people, check out how sad-emoji this is. Rick Perry, whose presidential campaign obituary we already wrote, and then we wrote again, apparently wants us to do it a third time, because he just really likes that number, we guess, though we can't remember why. He's all out of money, and he's damn near out of campaign staffers too, and not just because Donald Trump is stealing them to Make America Great Again. Piss-poor poop-broke Rick Perry can only affordone staffer in Iowa, which is one of them supposedly important states (every four years, anyway):

Presidential candidate Rick Perry now has just one paid staffer left on his Iowa team, but plans to continue seeking Iowans' votes for the GOP caucuses, aides told The Des Moines Register Monday morning.

But please hold your applause and laughter for the end, because it's even sadder than that:

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Karen Fesler, Perry's Iowa co-chair, has moved back to the team for presidential candidate Rick Santorum, the candidate she supported in the 2012 cycle.

Dude, when you are losing people to frickin' Rick Santorum, who is polling somewhere around negative 5 percent and is still crying about how he was Miss Iowa Runner Up in 2012, so that should count for something, you are pretty much dead. Deader than dead. Buried dead. But Perry? He remains unaware of his state of deadness. So on Saturday, Perry made his campaign pitch to conservative Christians at the "We Stand With God" rally on the steps of the South Carolina capitol, which sounds like a great place to get some sinnerific strange on the Q.T., because you know how all those Christian conservatives really are. (They are a bunch of closeted dirty sexers is what they are.) Perry's really ramped up his fire and brimstone stump, because, oddly, just being Rick Perry isn't really doing it for, um, anyone:

Literally, the foundation of America is under attack from those on the left. It's under attack from Washington DC. You know, talking about Washington DC -- early in the ministry of Jesus Christ, he saw corruption in the temple. And he got angry about it. And he did something about it. He went in there and he overturned the tables of the moneychangers. He saw corruption, just like today. We need somebody that's got the backbone to go to Washington DC and turn over the tables of the moneychangers, of the corruption, of the greed that we see in Washington DC.

And the question is, will you join me in that effort? Will you load up? Are you ready to sacrifice? Are you ready to stop the corruption, the crony capitalism, the greed that we see in that temple of government in Washington DC?

Not to be rude, Rick, but that question has been answered with a resounding "no." See, for example, thy staff who has forsaken thee, and the emptiness of thy campaign coffers. Also -- and we'll need to look this up later to be sure -- we do not believe Jesus "loaded up" before overturning the tables of corruption. But hey, we are a Jewish, we don't know the sequel, Bible II: Jesus Christ Electric Boogaloo, like Perry does. Maybe we're wrong.

But the comparisons Perry is awkwardly attempting to make between how Jesus cleaned up Washington DC and how Perry would like to the same, if only someone -- literally any one person -- would give him the chance, don't end there.

"Jesus was angry," Perry said. "I'm angry." Man, with that kind of odd similarity, it's hard to tell the two apart! Now, to really inspire the folks, Perry gets his preacher on:

What are you willing to die for? What are you willing to sacrifice for?

Probably not the election of Rick Perry to the White House. But anyway:

Are you willing to rise up and stand for God and to go forward and deliver the principles and the values that this country were based upon? Are you ready to do that? Are you ready to truly go sacrifice? We can leave the steps of this state capitol. We can start forward. We can be a part of a movement that will go all all across this country. This nation can be renewed. We can have a revival in this country again. Renew the values that de Tocqueville talked about, what he saw as the core of what is great about America.

ARE YOU READY? ONWARD! CHRISTIAN! SOLDIERS!

And with that, the assembled crowd of conservative Christians did as Perry asked of them, and descended upon Washington DC to throw out the corrupt and greedy moneychangers in Congress. Or, rather, they grunted a bit and then went home to worship their Confederate flags in private, because mean leftists took their heritage away from them, at least in the public squares.

And ... now you may applaud and laugh.

[RightWingWatch / Des Moines Register]