“Don’t you just look good enough to eat? Nom nom nom.”

Must-read essay over at Daily Kos today from Jack Cluth, who asks a question that’s been on a lot of our minds over the past few years: “What happens when an entire political party embraces the Dark Side?”

By the definition of today’s GOP, compassion is synonymous with weakness as charity is with enabling sloth and indolence. If you’re unable to do for yourself, whatever your situation might be, you have no right to expect government to do for you. Ill? Disabled? Uninsured? Unemployed? That’s too bad, but it’s not the responsibility of government to do for those unable to do for themselves.

It’s as if Republicans have decamped from anything resembling compassion and migrated en masse to the Dark Side. They’ve rejected anything that smacks of humanity and embraced a Darwinian view of America as a place where the strong rightfully survive and the weak get what they deserve. I don’t know about you, but this philosophy has nothing to do with the traditional Conservatism that Republicans profess to revere. Traditional Conservatism doesn’t reject the social contract. It doesn’t genuflect to the oligarchy and the military-industrial complex. It doesn’t traffic in fear, hatred, and loathing. It doesn’t reject science. It doesn’t embrace fundamentalist Christianity as the ultimate and only authority on what America should be.

Then again, this isn’t about Conservatism. It’s about doing whatever it takes to acquire, maintain, and increase power and control. It’s about enforcing Social Darwinism and Fundamentalist Christianity as the basis of the American experience and the law of the land. It’s about using fear, hatred, and propaganda in order to manipulate the American Sheeple into doing your bidding.

The guy nails it. Read more of The GOP: The party of pain, punishment, misery, and death (Daily Kos) and check out this amazing, snarling anti-GOP rant courtesy of Chris Matthews: “Does the GOP enjoy the misery of others?” Matthews makes a pretty clear argument that indeed they do…

My compliments to both chefs!
 

 

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Image via Tee Fury

Last week I posted one of the BEST things I have ever posted here, certainly one of the best Beatles posts ever on Dangerous Minds, but for whatever reason, it didn’t get shared that much.

This video clip, however, by the same director, Oscar-winning animator Charles Braverman, probably will get shared. It’s the outstanding opening montage he made for the dystopian sci-fi classic Soylent Green in 1973.

I think it’s quite relevant to today’s activities, don’t you?

Isn’t it about time for Hollywood to remake this with Mark Wahlberg or something?
 

 
I realize that this post is one of those, “Hey smell this, it smells like shit” kind of things, but really, it’s worth it to sample the idiotic wares of Victoria Jackson’s new alternate reality conservative version of The View, if only for a minute.

I know, just what you were waiting for. You and the rest of the world:

The PolitiChicks are here! Finally, Conservative Americans will have an alternative to those other liberal-based talk shows in which women scream over each other and call Conservatives vile names.

The PolitiChicks are former Saturday Night Live alumni and Tea Party favorite Victoria Jackson, pro-life speaker and activist Jennique Stewart, editor and activist Jennie Jones and Ann-Marie Murrell, columnist and host of The Patriot Update video show.

Some of the topics covered in their first episodes will be illegal immigration, gay marriage, abortion and the Occupy movement. Each of the women have their own strong points of view on each of the subjects and aren’t afraid to speak up—or sing up, as Victoria Jackson tends to do throughout the episodes. In the first episode of PolitiChicks, the ladies discuss gay marriage, Islam and the intolerance of the left toward anyone who disagrees with them.

How bright can the other hosts of this shit sandwich be (or desperate for money, I suppose) to debase themselves professionally by sharing a forum with one of the single dumbest people in America today? If you lie down with dogs you get fleas, right, so what happens to your career when you hitch your horse to Victoria Jackson? Each of her fellow co-hosts MUST have had such thoughts cross their minds after being offered the gig. And they took it anyway! (Watch the look on their faces as she sings. What could they be thinking?)

It’s telling that many of the ads running on their YouTube channel are for payday advance places. A lot of Tea party types must be living paycheck to paycheck these days… (And the other ads are for bail bondsmen!)
 

 
A grand total of THREE, yes, three assholes stage their own completely witless counter-protest today in lower Manhattan.

“Get a job”?

Seriously? THAT is the best you can do? The very BEST and smartest and most clever thing you can think of? In a SEA of clever, funny signs you come up with lameness and you’re the ones who still have a job???

Apparently so. When you’re an apologist for a failed economic system… yes, THIS is the best you can do.

There are no jobs, lickspittle dummies! That’s one of the reasons these people are keeping you from getting to work today, Republican fools! Occupy everywhere!

UPDATE: Listen to one of these cretins, a fool named Derek Tabacco. UPDATE 2: They’re related!
 

 
Via Adam Gabbatt’s Twitter feed

 
She says what she means and means what she says. She’s also got a snowball’s chance in Hell of making it to the White House and everyone—EVERYONE—except for her knows it.

Still, that’s not going to stop quixotic crazypants Rep. Michele Bachmann from making sure that none of the other Republican candidates get there, either!

She really kicks her opponents in the nuts here. The DNC ought to chip in so she can run more of this one. Rick Santorum and Jon Huntsman should pony up, too!

Bachmann is burning quite a few bridges with this video and stands to gain almost nothing from it. I laughed out loud at the audaciousness of this move. From her point of view, she’s entirely correct, of course, that she’s the most consistent conservative candidate—albeit the most batshit crazy in a field full of some real lulu’s—running. The problem is that she’s contrasting her own completely insane positions as the opposite of these goofballs, blow-hards and idiots at their most reasonable!

Too much pork for the fork!
 

 
H/T Daily Kos

Above, “fair and balanced” Fox News graphic. Apparently even the art department there is staffed with braying assess.

Casey Neistat put together this “music video” of this week’s eviction of the Zuccotti Park protesters, cut to the music of guess which Frank Sinatra standard?

My office isn’t far from Zuccotti Park and when I heard it was being cleared I went down with my camera. I ended up filming for 18 hours until the Park was reopened at 6pm on November 15, 2011. The police presence was overwhelming, more than I’ve ever - more than during the blackout, more than the days after September 11th.

 
Via Glen E. Friedman

Dorli Rainey 84, after being pepper sprayed at Occupy Seattle protest: Photo by Joshua Trujillo, SeattlePI.com

An 84-year-old woman pepper-sprayed by cops during the evicition of Occupy Seattle has become the accidental poster girl for the movement in a photo that’s getting seen around the world this morning:

Via the Keep Your Boehner Out of My Uterus Tumblr blog:

I have only posted about OWS one other time. I just can’t let this go by. 

This is what can happen to you and your body if you just show up, place your body somewhere that freaks out the establishment, and actively protest the problems inherent and rampant in the system. This type of over-reaction by the authorities is something that people of color and minorities face ALL THE TIME simply for being, let’s remember. But seriously, Holy Fuck.

We owe it to this woman to look in her eyes, to see her face, to SEE her. We owe it to her to hold her gaze, to not move our eyes away because it is hard to look. We need to keep looking at her specifically BECAUSE it is hard to look. 

Meanwhile, Occupy Wall Street ain’t going anyplace... Here’s a nifty history lesson via Rachel Maddow. This is some damned good reporting.
 

What’s NEXT

Watch live feed via the Occupy Wall Street network. You can also listen live on WBAI radio.
 

 
Thank you Glen E. Friedman!

How much MORE hapless-looking can someone GET than beleaguered WI Governor Scott Walker?

The historical efforts to recall Republican Gov. Scott Walker will be kicking off Tuesday in Wisconsin with a late-night rally and early morning pajama parties. One hundred events across the state are planned for tomorrow as Democrats and unions begin signature gathering in earnest to recall Walker,  Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefsich and at least three more Republican state senators in addition to the two who lost their seats earlier this year.

“I fully anticipate there will be signatures collected in every single Wisconsin county tomorrow,” said state Democratic Party Chairman Mike Tate, adding that he hoped to collect at least 600,000 signatures by the January 17, 2012 deadline. 540,000 names are required to trigger the election.

“We’ve made a lot of progress,” muttered the increasingly hapless-looking, politically tone-deaf Walker. “It’s a new day in Wisconsin.”

It’ll be a new day in Wisconsin when Gray Davis is buying you a beer, asshole!

Donate to the Recall Walker effort via ActBlue.
 

 

 
In an effort to, uh, I dunno, maybe make a bid to become the Al Capp of his generation, (or follow in the footsteps of Ayn Rand-worshiping Steve Ditko?) comics writer, illustrator and film director Frank Miller vented his cranky, bitter, reactionary “opinions” (if you can call them that) regarding Occupy Wall Street on his blog:

The “Occupy” movement, whether displaying itself on Wall Street or in the streets of Oakland (which has, with unspeakable cowardice, embraced it) is anything but an exercise of our blessed First Amendment. “Occupy” is nothing but a pack of louts, thieves, and rapists, an unruly mob, fed by Woodstock-era nostalgia and putrid false righteousness. These clowns can do nothing but harm America.

“Occupy” is nothing short of a clumsy, poorly-expressed attempt at anarchy, to the extent that the “movement” – HAH! Some “movement”, except if the word “bowel” is attached - is anything more than an ugly fashion statement by a bunch of iPhone, iPad wielding spoiled brats who should stop getting in the way of working people and find jobs for themselves.

This is no popular uprising. This is garbage. And goodness knows they’re spewing their garbage – both politically and physically – every which way they can find.

Wake up, pond scum. America is at war against a ruthless enemy.

Yeah, and that enemy is called the capitalist system, Frankie boy… and people LIKE YOU

This creep is supposed to be a celebrated writer? His dumbass screed reads like it was written by Michele Bachmann or Michael Savage! (“Frank Miller, the Michele Bachmann of comic books” is a shitty way to brand yourself, Frank-a-dank. Really.)

I’d like to spit right in Frank Miller’s fucking face. You can let Miller know how you feel about the idiotic bile he puked up in the comments section of his blog. Many people already have!

Below, the Frank Miller of the 1960s, Al Capp confronts John Lennon and Yoko Ono at the Montreal Bed-In and makes a complete and utter ass of himself.