I was reading an article about possible cuts to HUD, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and a catchy phrase caught my eye:

Marc Morial, president of the National Urban League, said such cuts would be... "a slap in the face of working Americans, urban communities, to suggest that you should make all these cuts to buy more tankers, aircraft carriers and missile systems."

Cutting public housing, purely a local government function, and transferring the funds to national defense, would somehow be a "slap" to working Americans who pay taxes for this?  It didn't make any sense.  Can you imagine Trump smacking someone in public housing in the face and saying, "Put down that crack pipe and pay your own rent!"?

But the "slap in the face" struck me as familiar.  I had seen it before.

Officials in one Arizona border town are opposed to President Donald Trump's border wall to restrict illegal immigration.

"A wall would only represent a slap to the face of our Mexican neighbors," John Doyle, mayor of border town Nogales, Ariz.

This guy fantasizes about Trump slapping Mexicans.  I think he fantasizes about Trump personally coming to the border and smacking each illegal alien as they are put on the bus back to Mexico.

Here's what some liberal thinks about possible cuts to the National Endowment for the Arts:

Even apart from the essential resources at stake, the signal sent by this gesture is a slap in the face to artists, writers, researchers, and scholars who are learning that the Administration seems to consider their work worthless.

This lady seems to fantasize about Trump slapping artists in the face.  Do you think there are some in Hollywood who would secretly enjoy it?

Here's another example, what a National Park worker thinks about Trump's hiring freeze for park workers:

Personally, I feel like this hiring freeze is a slap in the face to me and all my coworkers who pulled ourselves up by our own bootstraps to get this far and intend to continue to do so.

This guy pulled himself up by his bootstraps...with a taxpayer-funded job!  He fantasizes about Trump slapping park rangers in the face.  Whack, whack!

And here's what an enviro-nut thinks about Trump appointing a normal person as head of the EPA:

"It's really a slap in the face appointment to people who care about the environment, people who worked at EPA for 30 years to try to make the air and water better, people who are still at EPA trying to do a credible job and be actual public servants, people who care about public service in general," Eric Schaeffer, executive director of the Environmental Integrity Project who served as director of EPA's Office of Civil Enforcement[.]

An appointment can be a slap in the face?

The common denominator for most of these face slaps is money – specifically, taxpayer money, and even more specifically, withholding taxpayer money from groups who feel entitled to it.

Exit question:

1) Why do liberals fantasize so much about being slapped in the face?  Do you think they were more likely to have had abusive childhoods?  Studies have shown that gay people are more likely to have been molested as children; do you think liberals are more likely to have been smacked in the face as kids?

Ed Straker is the senior writer at NewsMachete.com.