Toxic marshmallow man Glenn Beck rants and raves at his low IQ viewers and then once he’s gotten them good and mad about what a Communist (possibly Muslim) BAD, BAD, VERY VERY BAD MAN Chief Justice John Roberts really is, he offers to sell them a “COWARD” tee-shit for a mere $30!

The “TRAITOR” design is sure to follow.

Controversy sells, of course, but this is probably the single best use of inciting-rage- in-thick-people-as-a-marketing-tactic as I think I have ever seen! Get an idiot worked up into a lather, then go in for the close.

Motherfucker is slick, Rick!

Damn he’s good!

I’m starting to think that I have underestimated Glenn Beck over the years. It must be really galling for Alex Jones to see Beck bite his act so blatantly and then rake in the millions (Beck made over $80 million in 2011 alone) selling shit like this to pea-brained old farts!
 

 
I love watching Republicans playing the absolute WORST possible hand they could have been dealt. There is no schadenfreude quite like Republican schadenfreude. Those assholes were caught so off guard, and it has been bust-a-gut hilarious to watch them scramble. Thurston Howell III Mitt Romney and “Team Backwards” are royally fucked, so what’s their plan? ANOTHER “symbolic” repeal vote!

You lost, GOP clown boys… Now move on, you pathetic dickheads.

NOPE, that’s not gonna happen!

The Hill: 120 Republicans Introduce Bill To Repeal The Health Care Mandate
Just hours after the Supreme Court upheld the requirement to buy health care insurance or face a penalty, 120 House Republicans proposed legislation to eliminate the mandate. The bill’s sponsor, Rep. Michael Turner (R-Ohio), called the mandate a tax, since that is how the court justified keeping it around. The Supreme Court said the government had no right to require the purchase of health insurance under the Commerce Clause, but said the mandate and its penalties could stand as a tax on people who choose not to buy health insurance.

Politico: The Republican Recipe For Repeal
Republican hopes to repeal the health care law may come down to a bank shot: A GOP sweep in November and a simple Senate majority—along with some arcane budget procedures—could kill the individual mandate in 2013. The House will hold a symbolic vote to repeal the law on July 11, but the real long-term strategy for rolling back the law is already under way. Republicans are stoking voter anger over the law until Election Day, which they hope will produce a Mitt Romney presidency and an all-Republican Congress. And it ends by employing budget rules that would allow a fast-track repeal with a 51-vote majority in the Senate, circumventing a Democratic minority and potential filibuster.

CBS News: Cantor: Health Care Repeal Vote Coming July 11
The Supreme Court gave some validation to the Affordable Care Act on Thursday when it declared the law constitutional, but House Majority Leader Eric Cantor is ready to move forward with yet another House vote to repeal the controversial law. “We know that most of the American people don’t like this law,” Cantor said on CBS’ This Morning Friday. The House, he said will “look towards the kind of health care people want,” which he said is “patient-centered.” Cantor said that the Republican-led House will take up a repeal vote on July 11th, after Congress comes back from its July 4th recess. The House first voted to repeal the law in January 2011, soon after Republicans took control. The move, however, was essentially symbolic .

Exactly HOW MANY American families with dependent children under the age of 26 do they really think are going to vote for them this year? Even some of the staunchest older Republican voters are going to rethink their commitment to the “party of Reagan” between now and November, if only so their young adult grandchildren won’t be thrown off their parents’ health insurance. Many of them won’t go to the polls at all, preferring not to vote against their party, but not wanting to vote against the benefits their own families will be receiving as a result of healthcare reform.

It might surprise the Republican leadership, that for many red state voters, standing up to the black guy isn’t their highest priority. Their families are.

Methinks, the comically flailing GOP might want to do some “internal polling” on the matter! Having to watch their leadership and their glass-jawed nominee dig an even deeper hole for themselves must be very depwessing for old school Republicans to witness. Talk about being caught between a rock and a hard place and none of them saw this coming! Liberals and conservatives alike were shocked by yesterday’s SCOTUS decision, there is no denying it, but it’s plain for all to see that the GOP had no “Plan B” by their flat-footed response and scheduling of a July 11 public hissy fit! They must want to be mocked by late-night comedians, judging from their behavior.

It’s fun to watch the Republican Party engaging in a Mexican standoff with itself. This quagmire will be very difficult for them to wiggle out of before November. Casting yourself as the party who wants to pull the rug of healthcare out from under a public who is only too well aware that the guarantee of employer-provided insurance is a thing of the past, is a difficult position to be put in, but they did it to themselves, plain and simple. And now they have to deal with the consequences of that.

If you look at the incredible zig-zag trajectory of the political landscape after just 3 1/2 years of an Obama presidency, it’s striking to see how how truly “transformative” of a figure he’s been, just NOT in the way it looked like he would be on January 20th, 2009…

Below, hapless-looking lick-spittle waterboy to the rich and powerful, Eric Cantor, lets the American people know which side of the class war he and his party are on. God, I hate this guy’s fucking face….
 

Behold the face of a fuckin’ dummy

Matthew Davis, an attorney in Lansing, Michigan—and the former spokesperson for the Michigan Republican Party—sent out an email this morning that posed the question “Is Armed Rebellion Now Justified?” now that the Supreme Court has ruled to uphold Obamacare.

Davis sent the email just moments after the Court’s decision was announced to conservative activists and he even sent it off to several media outlets.

Is Armed Rebellion Now Justified?

Implicit in Benjamin Franklin’s fabled response at the conclusion of the Constitutional Convention was a dire warning: That the Republic would one day devolve into tyranny unless we the people prevented it.

In 2008, we the people elected Barack Obama as president, and the 100-year progressive trek to tyranny begun in 1912 with Woodrow Wilson’s election was complete. It cannot be said too many times — for the purposes of emphasis and clarity — that the Constitution was possible ONLY AFTER the American Revolution; and that the war itself would not have been possible without the collective agreement, as so eloquently articulated in the Declaration of Independence, that the course of human events will sometimes justify one group of people to sever themselves from their oppressors.

In other words, America itself was possible only after its people summoned the will to risk their lives and their futures — as well as those of their children — for a freedom they did not enjoy but knew was their gift from God. Along with their desire to be free came their willingness to engaged in armed rebellion for their freedom.

If government can mandate that I pay for something I don’t want, then what is beyond its power? If the Supreme Court’s decision Thursday paves the way for unprecedented intrusion into personal decisions, then has the Republic all but ceased to exist? If so, then is armed rebellion today justified?

God willing, this oppression will be lifted and America free again before the first shot is fired.

Davis added his own personal note saying, “… here’s my response. And yes, I mean it.”

Ohhhhhh big man talkin’

Clearly Davis wanted the attention this will bring him. Let’s hope he gets what he so richly deserves!

Via Michigan Capital Confidential

 
No moss grows under Republican feet!

WASHINGTON—Citing a mutually shared vision of health care in America, congressional Republicans and the deadly bone-marrow cancer leukemia announced a joint effort Wednesday to repeal the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the historic new bill that extends health benefits to 32 million Americans nationwide.

“Republicans have no greater ally in this fight than leukemia,” said Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC), who was flanked by Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH), and the abnormal increase in white blood cells. “Denying insurance to Americans with preexisting conditions and ensuring that low-income Americans stand no chance of receiving quality health care are just a few of the core beliefs that the GOP and leukemia share.”

“And believe me, if anyone is angrier than the Republican Party that children can no longer be denied coverage for having preexisting conditions, it’s leukemia.” DeMint continued. “We’re a match made in heaven.”

In the coming weeks, Republicans and leukemia will travel the country in an effort to diminish support for the increasingly popular bill, which GOP sources said goes against everything that Republicans and the massive accumulation of toxic cells stand for.

Cancer, apparently was left stunned by the Republican snub!

Read more at The Onion

Below, Yertle the Turtle weighs in on SCOTUS decision. He seems a lil’ down, don’t cha think? He’s lost that pep in his step…
 

 
Just watch!
 

 
Below, Suze Orman on the ridiculously high cost of higher education in America, predatory lending practices and why it’s no longer worth it to go into debt up to your eyeballs when there aren’t going to be any good jobs when you graduate anyway.
 

 
Via OWS Posters

 
The Texas Republican Party has published its 2012 platform online and scanning through it, it appears to be gleeful manifesto of pig ignorance and backwards, country bumpkin fear of progress in any form. Whatever it is, they’re agin it!

It contains the following sentence which is going to see them mocked mercilessly for the next week or so:

We oppose the teaching of Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) (values clarification), critical thinking skills and similar programs that are simply a relabeling of Outcome-Based Education (OBE) (mastery learning) which focus on behavior modification and have the purpose of challenging the student’s fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority.

Well, they’ve finally come right out and said it. In plain English. They want the population to STAY STUPID. That way they don’t question things like why poor people don’t have health insurance, why billionaires need to pay less in taxes and the middle class pay more, how fracking might poison the water table and you know, shit like that.

Wonkette’s Doctor Zoom encountered a fifth-grade Language Arts lesson on “Fact and Opinion” while doing graduate studies in the mid-80s. Zoom recalls from memory how the lesson explained the critical thinking task:

A fact is an observable reality, something that can be quantified or measured, or God’s Inerrant Truth as revealed through the Bible.

Examples:

* The table is made of wood.
* Washington DC is the capital of the USA.
* Water freezes at 32 degrees F.
* Jesus died to take away all our sins.
* God created the world and all life in seven 24-hour days, less than 10 thousand years ago.

An opinion is a matter of taste, a view or judgement about which people might reasonably disagree, or a “scientific” claim that contradicts Biblical truth.

Examples:

* Blue is prettier than yellow.
* My mom bakes the best chocolate chip cookies in town.
* Mr. Jones is a better candidate for Mayor than Mr. Smith.
* The Universe is several billion years old.
* Humans evolved from apes.

Red state public schools are teaching an organized system of ignorance, nothing more, and nothing less. How much longer can the center of this country hold when folks who believe that the Loch Ness Monster disproves evolution hold sway over the education of so many of the nation’s children?

Doctor Zoom concludes by bringing up the very question that caused my wife to question what she was being taught in Sunday school as a young girl when she began to suspect that the whole Noah’s Ark thing was nothing more than mythological bullshit:

So, yes, think critically, kids, but don’t think so critically that you ask any inconvenient questions, like “wouldn’t two of every animal species on Earth produce so much shit that the Ark would be full to the top within a matter of days?” (Beyond the obvious Biblical nonsense, there’s also some empirical evidence that the particular methods in ACE’s curriculum leaves students less well prepared for college entrance exams than conventional high schools.)

Let us be clear about this: Texas is only against the wrong kind of critical thinking — the dirty librul kind, which isn’t even really thinking at all, but indoctrination, you see. As college-degree owner Rick Santorum knows, too much education will only turn you into a commie and an atheist. Texas Republicans promise they’ll nip that thinky-learny shit right in the bud.

Once those kids start pulling on the thread of KNOWLEDGE the whole sweater becomes unraveled. We can’t have this, can we?

And while we’re on the subject of Republicans being more, um, straightforward on things, did you catch the clip of this asshole from Pennsylvania stating the obvious about the state’s voter ID law?
 

 
Legal election fraud to prevent voter fraud. NICE WORK GOP!!

If you can’t get elected because of your ideas, it’s because your ideas SUCK.

 
How does this buffoon keep track of his own “convictions”?

“There’s something to be said for having a Republican who supports civil rights in this broader context, including sexual orientation.”

“Convictions” are confusing things!

Slippery too, like greased eels.

Via reddit/r/politcs

 
Via The Herald, Scotland (abridged):

Schoolchildren in Louisiana are to be taught that the Loch Ness monster is real in a bid by religious educators to disprove Darwin’s theory of evolution.

These private schools follow a fundamentalist curriculum including the Accelerated Christian Education (ACE) programme to teach controversial religious beliefs aimed at disproving evolution and proving creationism.

One tenet has it that if it can be proved that dinosaurs walked the earth at the same time as man then Darwinism is fatally flawed.

The textbooks in the series are alleged to teach young earth creationism; are hostile towards other religions and other sectors of Christianity, including Roman Catholicism; and present a biased version of history that is often factually incorrect.

One ACE textbook – Biology 1099, Accelerated Christian Education Inc – reads: “Are dinosaurs alive today? Scientists are becoming more convinced of their existence. Have you heard of the ‘Loch Ness Monster’ in Scotland? ‘Nessie’ for short has been recorded on sonar from a small submarine, described by eyewitnesses, and photographed by others. Nessie appears to be a plesiosaur.”

Another claim taught is that a Japanese whaling boat once caught a dinosaur. It’s unclear if the movie Godzilla was the inspiration for this lesson.

Well, If you believe in the existence of one mythical being, why not believe in them all?

Perhaps one day the popular BBC kids show The Family Ness will be revered as gospels:
 

“Wasilla makes Twin Peaks look like a walk in the park. It’s a devout evangelical community. Sevety-six churches with a population of only six thousand, and the crystal meth capitol of Alaska.”

The movie that I’ve been raving about to everyone since I saw it on Netflix last week, and that I want to recommend to you, too, dear reader, is Nick Broomfield’s mind-blowing documentary Sarah Palin: You Betcha! When the film played festivals last year, it got a lot of attention, but then it was promptly forgotten about before most people ever had a chance to see it. I had forgotten about it myself, but when I saw that it was on Netflix, I couldn’t hit play fast enough.

First off, it’s not that it’s a “good film,” per se, because it’s most certainly not, but man is it entertaining. Nick Broomfield is a canny and yet extremely lazy documentarian, and Sarah Palin: You Betcha! is chock-a-block full of Broomfield falling back (again and again) on his standard Broomfieldian tropes (chasing people with a microphone as they drive away from him; implying that anyone who tells him to fuck off has a hidden agenda; having doors literally slammed in his face; asking “inopportune” questions in public). But Nick Broomfield, a pioneer in the “You get a documentary PLUS ME” school of film-making and his annoying shtick IS NOT THE POINT of Sarah Palin: You Betcha!!

Sarah Palin and her family are the point, of course. And let me tell ya, the fuckin’ Kardashians of Wasilla do not come off like very well-adjusted people here… No, not at all.

We’ve read about many of the things covered in the film and the narrative arc—a dim, but steel-willed former beauty queen becomes the mayor of a small Alaska town and rules over it like a peevish mean girl fascist dictator, then becomes governor of the state and then the GOP’s VP nominee in short order—is a familiar one, but to actually see and hear people talk who have known her for years (or their entire lives, some of them) and who line up tell their fucked-up Sarah Palin war stories with venom dripping from their fangs (or alternately like kicked dogs) is nothing short of breath-taking, riveting as hell and bust-a-gut funny, too.

With his usual pseudo-bungling charm Broomfield even manages to talk his way into an on-camera interview with Sarah Palin’s father (who quickly sours on the British film-maker), her former brother-in-law (who viciously goes to town on her ass. I found him quite credible) as well as various people Palin has fucked over, froze out or back-stabbed over the years, such as her loyal chief of staff and one time campaign manager. Certainly there is no shortage of former friends and colleagues who have been cruelly thrown under a bus by the imperious Queen Sarah, who comes off TEN TIMES MORE CRAZY than you’ve ever dared to suspect in Sarah Palin: You Betcha!

Of course, the notion of how frightening it was that this idiotic ignoramus got as close as she did to accidentally occupying the Oval Office is by now a only an academic—and yet no less nightmarish—consideration, making the in retrospect “what if?” implications of Broomfield’s Sarah Palin: You Betcha! all the more powerful (and yes, fucking funny in a gallows humor kind of way). What we didn’t know at the time, could have really hurt us. Let me conclude here by saying that Sarah Palin: You Betcha! would make a damned good double bill with Stanley Kubrick’s slightly less unnerving Dr. Strangelove.

This trailer gives away precious little of what delirious insanity awaits you in Nick Broomfield’s Sarah Palin: You Betcha!.