I posted about longtime Republican strategist Frank Luntz and the rhetorical tips he gave to GOP governors the other day (say “economic freedom” instead of “capitalism,” for instance) but until I heard Ed Schultz mocking it on his MSNBC program, it didn’t really jump out at me how incredibly offensive and insulting Luntz’s OWS talking points truly were… for Republicans!

It’s long been obvious that the GOP leadership in Washington has had a condescending attitude towards the loonier/lower IQ members of the party’s Fox News-watching base, but when you get right down to it, reading between the lines of what Luntz said, the Republican elite must hold them in utter contempt. The entire context of the remarks Frank Luntz made indicates strongly that there is an a priori assumption on the part of the GOP that their supporters fall into the category of “low information voters.” That’s breathtaking in its cynicism!

“Hey dumbshits!” they seem to be saying.“Vote for us!”

When will these people learn? Or are these tactics, once so effective, becoming too threadbare to matter much anymore?
 

 
This is THE BEST: Hapless Wisconsin governor Scott Walker wants people who protest his administration to pay for their First Amendment rights! He even wants them to post a bond in advance. I thought Walker’s big hero was union-buster Ronald Reagan? Turns out it’s Il Duce!

This fuckin’ guy is—clearly—on an all out political suicide mission. How else could one possibly process the following news, as reported yesterday morning in the Milwaukee Wisconsin Journal-Sentinel?

Move aside, Herman Cain, it’s Scott Walker who is the real “Andy Kaufman” of the Republican party:

Gov. Scott Walker’s administration could hold demonstrators at the Capitol liable for the cost of extra police or cleanup and repairs after protests, under a new policy unveiled Thursday.

The rules, which several legal experts said raised serious free speech concerns, seemed likely to add to the controversy that has simmered all year over demonstrations in the state’s seat of government.

The policy, which also requires permits for events at the statehouse and other state buildings, took effect Thursday and will be phased in by Dec. 16. Walker administration officials contend the policy simply clarifies existing rules.

State law already says public officials may issue permits for the use of state facilities, and applicants “shall be liable to the state . . . for any expense arising out of any such use and for such sum as the managing authority may charge for such use.”

But Edward Fallone, an associate professor at Marquette University Law School, said the possibility of charging demonstrators for police costs might be problematic because some groups might not be able to afford to pay.

“I’m a little skeptical about charging people to express their First Amendment opinion,” he said. “You can’t really put a price tag on the First Amendment.”

Well, this fascist doofus already has: $50 an hour per member of the Capitol Police, or whatever it costs for freelance security, plus clean-up details!

I mean… WHAT?!??! This is laugh-out-loud hilarious for this idiot-faced goober to think he could get away with this! Of course it’s only had the effect of incensing the unions... and REALLY turning off the people who were undecided about Walker!

My god is this man a loathsome buffoon… but more power to ‘im, I sez!

Give Walker enough rope and he’s going to take down the entire Republican party in the state with him! This stiff won’t even be able to back-peddle away from this in any way, shape or form. He’s so screwed it’s just… superb!

Bonus douchebaggery: Tonight Walker is going to light the Christmas tree in the WI capitol that was put up with prison labor instead of hiring union workers. Let’s hope that tonight Walker enjoys his first—and last—time lighting the tree,

 
There is probably only but one man in America who seriously believes that Newton Leroy Gingrich could ever become the President of the United States and that one man also happens to be named Newton Leroy Gingrich. The idea that this repulsive, hypocritical turd will ever be in a position of elected power again, is, of course, as ridiculous and as preposterous on the face of it as, well, Gingrich himself. More people loathe him than can tolerate him. He polls about as well as Sarah Palin nationally.

It’s hard to even get worked up or irate when this doofus says things like he says in the below video, to a rightwing Christian audience, because A) he’s a joke, so who cares what this pudgy prick thinks? and B) WHO in their right minds would think electing Newt Gingrich president would be a way to “take back” America from the “minority elites, in the first place, even this audience? That doesn’t make… any sense (As Paul Krugman recently quipped Gingrich is a “stupid man’s idea of what a smart person sounds like.” He went on to add “but he is more plausible than the other guys they’ve been pushing up”! How true, how pithy! How very Idiocracy...)

It’s amazing to contemplate that this universally disliked, self-satisfied “conservative intellectual” is currently the front runner for the GOP nomination. Who’d have thunk this was possible? How low will they go? Bachmann. Perry. Cain. Gingrich? You’re joking, right? Will Sarah Palin jump into the race to “save” the party from these people? Will ole “frothy mix” Rick Santorum get his day in the Republican sun? What about the least influential man in the world, Tim Pawlenty? If Gingrich can rally a comeback, why can’t he? (Imagine being T-Paw and seeing a no-hoper like Gingrich in the cat bird seat. Even it it only lasts a couple of weeks, that’s gotta be pretty galling!)

Don’t get me wrong, it would be fantastic to see Newt get the GOP nod, strictly from the lulz perspective of seeing the Republicans utterly destroyed in a national election, but you’d have to sift through trillions upon trillions of alternate universes to find the one in which the disgusting toad that his pretty blonde “Stepford wife” Calista kissed would turn into the POTUS (it’s a parallel dimension where gravity has failed, “fun” has been outlawed and Snookie is the Secretary of Spray Tans). It’s never, ever going to happen. Scott Walker has a better chance of holding on to his job than Gingrich does of taking Obama’s. These are the cold and clammy facts.

The mainstream media taking Gingrich seriously again as a candidate, has got a shelf life of how many… days do you think? Anybody want to start a betting pool on how long his front-runner status lasts?

And one more question: What EXACTLY does well-fed fascist mean by the curious phrase “Classical America” when he’s saying it to an audience comprised of Christian evangelicals?

“But we have allowed ourselves to be bullied, harassed, intimidated, and dominated by a tiny elite using the courts, using the news media, using the entertainment community, using the bureaucracy to coerce the American people against their will. It is fundamentally anti-freedom, fundamentally anti-democratic and the core meaning of the 2012 is to stand up and say “no, the eighty percent of the country that actually believes in classical America is now about to take back power from the minority elite.”

Whatever, dude… I just… can’t be bothered getting worked up about you or even to take you seriously.
 

 
And have you seen this harsh video that Ron Paul’s campaign just dropped on Gingrich’s big fat head? Ouch!
 

 
UPDATE: I have to admit that I laughed with Newt on this one...

It really just doesn’t seem that funny anymore, does it, Scott?

Things are not looking too good for the hapless prick running the state of Wisconsin into the ground. As yet another group of craven Republican shits supporting this son of a bitch have been outed, and as anti-Walker groups announce that they’ve already got more than half of the signatures necessary to trigger the recall election, now Scott Walker gets this news!

Via The Cap Times:

Under Walker, Wisconsin now leads the nation in job losses.

In fact, of the states that the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics described as experiencing “statistically significant unemployment changes” in October, only one actually lost jobs: Wisconsin.

Wisconsin lost 9,700 jobs in October, almost all of them in the private sector.

But that is not the worst news. The worst news is that the job losses are part of a pattern that began around the time that Walker’s “reforms” took hold.

Wisconsin did not just lose jobs in October.

Wisconsin lost jobs in September.

Wisconsin lost jobs in August.

Wisconsin lost jobs in July.

Back in May, when Walker was bragging about how he had “fixed” Wisconsin, the latest figures put the state’s unemployment rate at 7.3 percent.

Now, the latest figures put the rate at 7.7 percent.

How does that compare with the national average? During the same period when unemployment went down one-tenth of a percentage point nationally, it rose four-tenths of a percent under Scott Walker.

There are a lot of reasons why Wisconsinites are lining up to sign recall petitions. Citizens are concerned about the governor’s assaults on basic rights and his undermining of the authority of elected schools boards and town boards. They are angry that he said one thing on the campaign trail in 2010 and did something else altogether as governor.

But the damage the governor’s policies have done to Wisconsin’s economy is no small factor in the popularity of the recall movement. When Illinois is creating jobs while our state is losing them, it is clear that Walker isn’t working for Wisconsin.

So this is what REALLY happens to a state when those union-busting, tax-cutting Republicans control the statehouse? Numbers don’t lie, as the saying goes.

Scott Walker with his dumb, Charlie Brown face, and through his own idiotic efforts, has become one of the most notable human punchlines in the crowded field of today’s completely insane, increasingly divorced from reality, Republican Party. Because of fucking ridiculous people like Walker, Bachmann, Cain, Perry, Gingrich, and Florida’s Gollumesque governor Rick Scott, etc, it must be a humiliating time to be a GOP voter. I sometimes feel sorry for Jon Huntsman, but it’s his fault for being a Republican, isn’t it?

The GOP “philosophy,” such that it is, is but an an organized system of ignorance, an anti-science religion of flaming stupidity and rampant cupidity. Such a pleasure to see a cretinous jerk like this about to be tossed out on his ass by informed people making an INTELLIGENT decision about what type of place they want to live in. And the motherfucker knows it, too. Walker’s blood is in the water. The unions and the Democrats can taste it.

The Republican party, so obviously on the wrong side of history, seems so limp and silly and so impotent, that it’s hardly even worth becoming irate about them anymore. After next year’s election is over and done with, and the Reichwing has been beaten up good and put in its place, then it’s going to be high time to start getting irate with the fucking Democrats.

Read more of
Under Walker, Wisconsin is No. 1 job loser (The Cap Times)

Via Wonkette

 
Simply one of the best television advertisements of all time. The way this taps into the tenor of the historical moment is very, very clever. Directed by Dean Blumberg.

From Time magazine’s blog:

It must be lonely at Robert Mugabe’s during the holidays. That’s the premise of a new ad from South Africa–based fast-food chain Nando’s, which has scored a viral hit by depicting Zimbabwe’s president (or rather, a lookalike) all alone at a festive dinner table once crowded with his fellow dictators. Luckily, memories of sunnier days past — making sand angels with Saddam Hussein, karaoke with Chairman Mao, hitting the swings with P.W. Botha — keep Mugabe’s spirits up. (So does, presumably, the promise of a delicious Nando’s 6-Pack Meal, which includes 1 ½ flame-grilled chickens, two large portions of fries, a pile of bread and some Liqui-Fruit for the equivalent of about $20.50.)

Via Time/Stephen Fry’s Twitter feed

 
There’s a lot of these photoshop jobs doing the rounds, but this is my favourite so far. Via Matt James.

 
Fairleigh Dickinson University’s PublicMind Poll found that some news sources actually make us less likely to have a full picture of the world we live in. Did I write some? I meant Fox News. Yep, according to the poll (which was conducted entirely in New Jersey, and so to my mind could skew the IQ results a tad higher than the overall US) Fox News viewers are more ignorant of current and international events than people who pay no attention to the news!

If Fox News was an evil Russian conspiracy to consciously try to dumb down the conservative population of the US, then they’ve done a job that the fictional SMERSH would envy! Facts? Who needs facts when there are smelly Marxists who need to get a job, Ground Zero mosques that need to be protested, whatever word salad Sarah Palin feels like puking up via satellite that day and you know, shit like that?

Intelligence is so overrated! Look at Sean Hannity. Guy’s making millions and he’s only got half a brain! See what hard work aggressively inflicting ignorance on senior citizens and thick people can get you in this country, dirty hippies? Get with the Ronald Reagan free market, Occupy weirdos! And get off my lawn!

Among other topics, New Jerseyans were asked about the outcome of the uprisings in North Africa and the Middle East this past year. While 53% of New Jerseyans know that Egyptians were successful in overthrowing the government of Hosni Mubarak, 21% say that the uprisings were unsuccessful, and 26% admit they don’t know.  Also, 48% know that the Syrian uprising has thus far been unsuccessful, while 36% say they don’t know, and 16% say the Syrians have already toppled their government.
 
But the real finding is that the results depend on what media sources people turn to for  their news. For example, people who watch Fox News, the most popular of the 24-hour cable news networks, are 18-points less likely to know that Egyptians overthrew their government than those who watch no news at all (after controlling for other news sources, partisanship, education and other demographic factors).  Fox News watchers  are also 6-points less likely to know that Syrians have not yet overthrown their government than those who watch no news. 

I’ll repeat that: People who get their news “by osmosis,” walking past a newsstand, or via “the drum” know more about what’s going on in the world around them than people who watch Fox fucking News!

“Because of the controls for partisanship, we know these results are not just driven by Republicans or other groups being more likely to watch Fox News,” said Dan Cassino, a professor of political science at Fairleigh Dickinson and an analyst for the PublicMind Poll. “Rather, the results show us that there is something about watching Fox News that leads people do worse on these questions than those who don’t watch any news at
all.”

Of course this is one study Fox New viewers will never, ever hear about…

Read more at Public Minds

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By Richard Pace, via badhaven.com. Click here to enlarge.

Previously on DM:
Frank Miller posts idiotic, reactionary rant about Occupy Wall Street

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UK Uncut describe themselves as “a grassroots anti-austerity network”. In the footnotes to this video, this is how UK Uncut they describe the boss of Her Majesty’s Revenue & Customs:

Dave Hartnett, head of HMRC, has spent the last few years shaking hands on sweetheart deals with multinational corporations. Vodafone were let off upwards of £6bn in tax, Goldman Sachs were let off over £10m in tax. By pure chance, Dave Hartnett also happens to be Whitehall’s most wined and dined civil servant, accepting expensive dinners and drinks from companies such as KPMG, Ernst and Young, PWC and, of course, Goldman Sachs.

On 9th November Dave Hartnett was delivering the keynote speech at the Corporate Tax Conference, the biggest annual gathering of everyone who’s anyone in corporate tax. Some UK Uncut activists dressed up as Vodafone and Goldman Sachs execs and surprised Dave to say a huge thank you for his kind favours.

Here’s what happened when they met:
 

 
For more info on UK Uncut, visit their website

 
Robert Greenwald of Brave New Films was on MSNBC’s The Ed Show last night to discuss the completely idiotic way Fox has bashed Occupy Wall Street.  (My former company released several of his documentaries on DVD including OutFoxed: Rupert Murdoch’s War on Journalism, a project I was proud to have put some money behind).

Watch the opening montage: How could anyone save for a totally uninformed pisshead take Fox News and what these people have to say seriously? It’s simply dishonest reporting yet the Geritol set and thick people all over the country take this shite as the gospel truth. Who benefits from keeping the common man ignorant and infuriated? (The 1%?)

It’s just bizarre to watch this, having visited Zuccotti Park several times personally. What they describe bears little to no resemblance to what I saw with my own two eyes on several occasions. They are flat out liars and fabricators.

Why NOT occupy Fox News? It would give them something legitimate to complain about and man, would that be a whole lot of fun.
 

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