After the past week of just painfully pathetic public prat-falls capped off by the devastating new Obama TV spot released over the weekend that left Mitt Romney’s patrician glass jaw smashed into tiny bits, you’d have to imagine that the Tea party-led rightwing shock troops, having pinned ALL of their post-2010 electoral hopes and dreams on the deeply flawed shoulders of one Thurston Howell III Willard Mitt Romney, is more than a little worried.

Who wouldn’t be? The man is an excruciating embarrassment as a candidate. Mitt’s a self-parody who jumped the shark before he even became the official nominee! What a “Debbie Downer” on the GOP morale he must be! It’s hard to keep rooting for the home team when the quarterback is such a witless plonker, isn’t it? The GOP is terrific at getting the vote out, but will the faithful line-up to vote for a tax-dodging plutocrat with Cayman Island bank accounts like Mitt Romney? If you know, for sure, that your vote will count for nothing, would you even bother making the effort to vote? If the very act of voting is perceived as a waste of time? What if it’s a little rainy that day? Can even a superior ground game on election day (the GOP always has a better ground game, always—it’s a lot easier when your base voters are easily-herded, authoritarian-loving sheeple) make a difference with Mittens? It will be interesting to see. My gut tells me there will be lower GOP turnout this year than in 2008. Not that much lower, but lower, crucially lower.

Mittens looks like a sad, ineffectual “Richie Rich” who just had his pants pulled down in front of the entire class and then a plate of school lunch spaghetti dumped over his head (Karma’s a bitch, Thurston!). Romney seems undignified, unsure and weak. He’s (quite obviously) the worst candidate one of the two parties has nominated since hapless Democrat Michael Dukakis back in 1988.

THIS bungling sacrificial lamb in khakis is the best candidate all of that sweet, sweet Republican money can buy? Mitt Romney? Seriously?

After last week, it wasn’t just the Democrats and Independent voters who were asking that question, the Republicans are asking it aloud now, too.

Scanning the rightwing blogshere in the aftermath of that weekend YouTube bomb Obama lobbed into Romney’s lap (more a nuclear warhead), it’s incredible to the extent that the rightwing is wringing its collective hands over “the Romney problem”: From FreeRepublic’s redneck red staters to Breitbart editor John Nolte (who called the Obama ad a “kill shot” aimed at Romney), let alone East coast “establishment” Republican stalwarts like William Kristol (the man who extolled the virtues of Sarah Palin to the McCain camp, don’t forget) and the increasingly barmy George Will (Why does anyone care what he thinks? Why the hell did I just mention him if no one forced me to???) Republicans, clearly, are starting to hit the panic button.

Even the dumbest, doofiest Fox News-watching flag-waving, red, white and blue Republican true-believer dipshit can recognize a loser when they see one, smell the blood, and predict the inevitable November outcome as they take a look at Thurston Howell III Mitt Romney. Romney’s GONNA LOSE and the entire country knows it, or at least strongly suspects it. Even Romney must realize his performance is getting panned and why. The guy has NO GAME, zero, none, no charisma, apparently no empathy, just… bales of money. It won’t be nearly enough. I’ve never seen a poorer-looking national candidate in my life. (Michael Dukakis must be watching his fellow former Massachusetts governor with glee as Romney erases his reputation as a nightmare national ticket political punchline with each newly reported misstep and ineffectual response to Obama’s repeated kicks to his balls. (“Is (fill in the blank) the ‘Mitt Romney of 2___?” will be a cliche in the punditry for years to come, mark my words).

So what happens next? Well, this could get interesting.

Memo to the mainstream media: It probably won’t.

Among credible Republicans who is gonna be dumb enough to want the gold-plated booby prize that an open convention—something that was discussed for MONTHS leading up to Romney’s week from Hell—could bestow upon them? Newt Gingrich must be having quite a good “I told you so” chuckle, not that a desperate GOP is (ever) going to be desperate enough to give that slimy amphibian another look.

Cain, Santorum, Perry… you all probably shouldn’t sit by the bat-phone holding your breath, either, fellas.

Who could or would step up for the good of the Grand Old Party, to carry that tarnished brand’s sword in November, even unto certain career-ending defeat, if Romney were to be pushed aside? Besides mentally deficient, unhinged attention seeking halfwits like Sarah Palin, Allen West, Michele Bachmann, Steve King, Louie Gohmert, etc., etc. who is that, ahem, white knight going to be? Well, not one of these folks. It’s useless speculation.

Ron Paul? He’d take the sword into battle, but it will never be offered to him. Not worth discussing him, either. They won’t even let him speak at the convention and that seems to be the big reason he ran, to influence the GOP platform. Not gonna happen.

Rep. Paul Ryan? Rep. Eric Cantor? Chris Christie? Bobby Jindal? Jeb Bush? Scott Walker? Think any one of them is jealous of the nationally televised dick-stomping Mitt Romney is getting? Marco Rubio knows he’s not ready, even for the VP slot. Maybe John Boehner will run? Orin Hatch? Who then? Someone you’ve never heard of? Will James Baker III come out of retirement at 82? John Sunnunu? Is a picture starting to paint itself?

WHO among the Republicans save for Mitch Daniels or Tim Pawlenty—would even have a tiny chance of taking enough blue states to flip the race if pulled in at the last minute to replace Shit Romney? Christie is the governor of one, but as a former resident of the Garden State myself, I wouldn’t even bet on Christie getting a second term. His popularity is already dropping. Besides that, any smart Republican would just stay out of it until 2016, it just stands to reason. This go round is a strategic non-starter.

Thaddeus McCotter?

Fred Karger, maybe?

HEY, WHAT ABOUT DONALD TRUMP!?!?!

John McCain?

My point, if there is one, is that the Republicans have no plan B. Any speculation that there will be an open convention, I think, is utter poppycock. There is no one on that team that can beat Obama. There is no one on that team with half a brain that really wants to try. They’re stuck with Mitt Romney, what choice do that have now? I hate to say it—I mean I really, really hate to say it—but Newt Gingrich was 100% right about Mittens and the GOP should have taken his advice and looked for a Romney alternative while there was still time. Not that I think they should have picked Newt (he’d have been slaughtered) but it’s so apparent what a loser Romney is, that, in truth, practically ANYONE would better.

If someone offered you—at a great bargain, too—a lotto ticket guaranteed not have the winning number, would you buy it? Look how many Sheldon Adelson bought and now he wants to buy some more. I say let him!

(I used to think that Citizens United decision was the worst thing that could happen to this country. Now I’m looking at it more as a “give ‘em enough rope” kinda scenario. Many Republicans might tend to agree with me by the time the 2012 election cycle is over. A billion dollars spent advertising a faulty (Fawlty?) product such as the candidacy of a buffoon like Mittens is a billion dollars spent reminding the American voters why they don’t want this blue-blooded nincompoop in the fucking White House. “Hey smell this, it smells like shit” amplified with a billion dollar advertising spend might backfire badly with a derp like Romney topping the ticket…)

The Obama campaign has defined Mitt Romney in the eyes of America as a whiny blue-blood with too much money made from sucking the blood of the little guy. Maybe a felon? Sounds about right to me. That classic commercial is so smart, and so vicious that it is positively thrilling. It’s what the Democratic base wanted to see and what John Nolte fears it was: a “kill shot.” Tell me that Obama doesn’t look like Muhammad Ali about to take down well, take down Thurston Howell the fuckng third? What else can really be said about this situation?

And the best part of it will be the batshit crazy reichwing reaction everyone is bracing for after Romney is crushed in a landslide defeat. How long will it take until after the vote is in before a crazed sheriff from Arizona or a freakish fuck like Rick Scott of Florida is shooting his mouth off on Fox News about election fraud and that’s the next new dumb dumbly dum-dum thing we’ll have to listen to until 2016???

A wasp’s nest got stirred up in 2008 that still won’t get put to rest during the second Obama term, and expect full retard from the GOP in 2016, but I’m getting ahead of myself…

 
This is a guest editorial from Dangerous Minds reader Em, expanding on some pointed commentary he’s made elsewhere on this blog. Em—who’ll keep his last name to himself, thank you very much—works in the financial industry:

One day you’re going to arise from your habitual feast

To find yourself staring down the throat of the beast they call The Revolution

“They Call It Democracy”—Bruce Cockburn

When Bruce Cockburn sings these lines during a performance, his largely left-leaning audience will often cheer, apparently not comprehending that this is intended to be a cautionary tale. In They Call It Democracy, Bruce is informing the international 1% that time is running out, and that if they don’t use their disproportionately vast resources to reform and truly democratize access to goods and services and capital, then the 99% are going to lose faith in the system itself and eventually overthrow it. And Bruce is fully aware of the fact that The Beast isn’t well represented by romantic notions and Che Guevara T shirts. The Beast is often ugly and brutal and doesn’t always bring in something better. But by the time it comes to that, the 99% will be fully aware of the risks but just won’t give a shit anymore.

That’s why the LIBOR issue is so damned dangerous.

Back in 2009 I was working at a “Too Big To Fail Bank” on Canary Wharf in London, and during my lunch hour walked over to where LIBOR is set and took the above photo. (LIBOR is housed in that building on the left.) Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine, however, that the setting of this key rate upon which the price of mutual funds and derivative securities are indexed, could be easily manipulated by a tiny number of coked-up traders. Although I worked on the retail half of that TBTF Bank, for one summer, I did actually utilize the famous Ho-Lee model to analyze derivative securities for volatility risk. So I knew enough about LIBOR to understand that it is in some ways as important as the prime interest rate, set by the Fed. But I naively assumed that the US and UK governments, along with the Big Banks, would tightly control the LIBOR process because a loss-of-faith in LIBOR could set international markets into chaos.

And that’s the last thing we anyone really wants right now. Right?

But I was wrong. And who knew? Who knew LIBOR could be impacted by such a slipshod and unregulated process? What the hell? Conflicts of interest seem to be practically built into the system, but it only hands out benefits to those in special positions of power. And if I, a banker, can begin to view the system as this deeply corrupt, how will rank-and-file investors feel? Will they put their money into real estate? Hide it in mattresses? That can only accelerate a possible collapse or, worse yet, a revolution.

Revolution? Hah. No one in the US would seriously consider a socialist much less a communist revolution. But those aren’t the only kinds of revolution. The Islamic revolution in Iran in 1979 proves to us that even moderate and reasonably urbane and clever people will sometimes simply choose the devil they don’t know when the Devil they do know (in that case the Shah) has proven beyond all doubt that his system won’t work for most people by design. On purpose. Like the American version of capitalism.

And is that what we really want? OK, maybe in the US we won’t have an Islamic revolution. But who knows what our idiotic science-denying masses might come up with? Maybe the Tea Party was just a first try and all that’s needed now is some less idiotic reformulation that appeals to a wider audience. And remember, it doesn’t have to work in reality, it just has to be able to convince enough people that it might or could be better than the corrupt and closed system most people believe operates today. All it has to do is make a few promises while providing a sort of “purity code” that allows the rank-and-file to throw off outside influence. And for all of its bloodshed and hostages, the Iranian revolution at least returned Iran’s destiny back into the hands of the Iranians, rather than the US and UK-backed torturous regime that was impoverishing practically everybody outside a tiny cabal of the well-connected. And if the Iranians can do it (ie, create a populist strain of Politcal Islam that freezes out external meddling influences), there’s no reason to believe the Americans can’t come up with something of their own in order to lock out and dismantle predatory economics and access structures.

Back in the late 1990s and during the Bush II era, The Fed continued to lower interest rates in order to boost the housing sector. They did this precisely because it worked, and because the traditional industries that provided wealth and capital to the working classes had been strip-mined of value by not only upper-level managers but by Private Equity firms (such as Bain Capital) that searched for value and then capitalized it into their own pockets by moving jobs and manufacturing overseas. As the “Mighty Trucks of Midnight” (another lefty Bruce Cockburn ref there) moved whole industries overseas and Labor imploded, there were fewer and fewer investment opportunities for fund managers. So the steroidally pumped-up housing sector took up the slack while the level of personal indebtedness (to the banks, of course) skyrocketed. We were, in effect, borrowing chunks of our future in order to pay the bankers that colluded with an unregulated system to enrich a very few but without the creation of real new wealth.

When the Great Recession hit, we had to pay the piper for all that debt we had amassed but, Lo! We had no money left. A lot of the money we had been spending had come from debt but now we couldn’t borrow anymore, because the banks were failing and couldn’t make any more loans. And yet, no one really wanted to change anything because it looked like the system was essentially fair so we just had to let it recover a bit so we could all continue on our merry way.

But now, perhaps, we know that wasn’t the real story. And that the system was rigged. We are slowly becoming aware of the fact that only a tiny minority benefit from it while the rest of us work our asses off and still suck shit and struggle every day to feed our families and keep a roof over our heads. As awareness of what LIBOR-fixing really means begins to penetrate popular consciousness, more and more people will begin to question whether the system is even reformable at all. What the 1% and their Walking Dead-like minions do not comprehend, however, is that even if there is a way to reform the system and keep this party rolling a little longer, we are rapidly passing the time where anyone will still believe the system can be reformed. In other words, the window of reform and long-term survival of a system that resembles our current one is closing, and closing rapidly. It will have to be the 1% who choose to utilize their resources in order to give themselves (and their privileged families) a shot at longer-term survival.

That is the only chance the 1% has of keeping the 99% from invoking The Beast, in some form or another.

About the author: After living in China in the late 80s, Em worked in the physics and electrical engineering space until 2002, at which time he moved into the financial world. In July of 2010, Em returned to the US after living in London for several years.
 

 
“The Great Red Dragon and the Beast from the Sea” by William Blake

 
Wonkette’s Doctor Zoom posted something absolutely marvelous today that I wanted to call your attention to: The unhinged, hateful, and dumbly crass comments left on Glenn Beck’s website, The Blaze, in “honor” of beloved, all-American actor Andy Griffith, a man who, in a sense, once symbolized how America liked to think of itself.

Or he was “a progressive piece of shit,” whichever you prefer…

Take a gander, in the above image, I skipped the first comment, but these were the ones that followed. I could have dipped in anywhere and gotten similar results. Here are some of the ones Doctor Zoom cherry-picked at Wonkette:

Progressive POS. Have fun burning in Hell for eternity. — Red Meat

Good people don’t promote laws that will directly lead to the death of millions, hope someday I get to spit on his grave. — Swampy

So long Andy [smiley emoticon] You are a total sell out to this great nation. You are a communist piece of garbage and you will not be missed. — Truthbeliever2

Sadly, my first thought when I saw the headline was “if he’d passed away at age 82 I would have missed him so much more” … Now, I only feel angry the old shill didn‘t live another year or two so he’d have to face a “death panel” before kicking it. The old bastrd died too soon to reap what he helped sow. I feel cheated that we’ll never get to hear him lament his decision to be a wh0re for the socialist DNC. — Wool-Free Vision

Another dead Democrat…today’s shaping up to be a better day than expected. — teddrunk

America’s sheriff? Maybe he was Maryberry’s, but Arpaio is America’s sheriff!!!! — catholicextremist

The guy that was the spokes person for Obamacare dies 1 week after it is upheld, 1 and counting. — Love The Kids

I had hoped that he would live long enough to be denied the healthcare that he helped shove down America’s throat. — Posterchild

So how did that Maobamacare you were pimping a couple of years ago work out for ya? Gee did the death panels keep you waiting too long? — Sweetrae

Doctor Zoom also found some more goofball reichwing “zingers” aimed at Griffith at Free Republic and Brietbart’s Big Government.

The best quote of all, though, was this gem:

Ever see a lib blog after one of ours dies? Ever seen the unbridled filth and hatred in which they roll around like pigs? I for one am sick and tired of playing nice with commies. We will never win if we continue to allow them to play by different rules.

IF ANDY GRIFFITH, DEAD, IS THIS CONTROVERSIAL TO THESE ASSHATS, SERIOUSLY ASK YOURSELF: HOW MUCH LONGER CAN THE MIDDLE HOLD???

Below, evil communist pinko—and probably SECRETL KENYAN socialist dogfucker—Andy Griffith “betraying the country” in a 2010 ad promoting healthcare reform:
 

 
To the extent that he can be said to ‘think’ at all, very few people would mistake Wisconsin Republican Senator Ron Johnson for an intellectual. Johnson is, apparently, even dumber than he looks.

Dumb or evil? BOTH!

Via ThinkProgress:

KEYES: I know Richard Murdock had said even though businesses should give people, for instance, with cancer, health coverage, they shouldn’t be legally required by the federal government.

JOHNSON: They shouldn’t. Listen, our rights are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And when we start expanding beyond that realm, when you create a right for somebody, you create an obligation for somebody else, and then you’re taking away that person’s right. And that maybe doesn’t seem all that great, but it’s just true. Our nation was based on the foundation of freedom and limited government.

There is no “life” or “pursuit of happiness” present in the equation here, is there, just the freedom to die in the fucking gutter? Unless you’re stinking rich, of course, like Ron Johnson is.

Human dignity: Too much to ask for from today’s GOP.

Hooray for fucking freedom!
 

 
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

 
I read a comment this morning suggesting prank phone calls to conservative radio talk shows.  The commenter had heard one such call where the caller just started laughing hysterically once they put him on the air.

Childish? Sure.

Fun? You betcha!

So in an effort to encourage this form of merriment, we’re going to hold a contest for the next 48 hours to see who can make the best, funniest, or even just the most childish prank phone calls to reichwing radio shows. All you have to do is record your prank phone call, post it to YouTube, link from the comments on this post and then DM’s readers will select the winner.

It’s that simple. We don’t know what the prize will be yet, but we’ll try to make it a good one. I don’t think the prize is actually the lure here, but we’ill update the post once we figure it out.

(If you can get on Rush, Glenn Beck, Dr Laura Schlessinger or on Michael Savage’s show, you’ll get extra points!)

PLEASE SPREAD FAR AND WIDE VIA SOCIAL MEDIA!

 
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

 
All it took was Kraft Foods merely posting an illustration of its Oreo brand cookies in the “pride” colors of the gay rights movement on their Facebook page, and this brought out the wingnut hater bots.

Via the Washington Post

The post on Oreo’s Facebook page encouraged a high-volume debate rife with misspellings, indignation and hysterical punctuation.

One commenter: “this is absolutely disgusting!!! Vote with your dollar, I will NEVER buy anything Kraft Foods again.”

Another: “Don’t worry about them people boycotting you Oreo - I never bought a single cookie from you and now I will.”

Christians with no objection to same-sex marriage dunked the issue in Matthew 7 (“Judge not, that ye be not judged”). Christians opposing same-sex marriage cited Romans 1 (“Males committed indecent acts with males, and received within themselves the appropriate penalty for their perversion”).

And cookie fiends were more concerned with what the graphic means for their dessert options: “So like are we actually getting rainbow Oreos?”

That was honestly MY first thought. Fine print under the picture reads: “Made with creme colors that do not exist.” I was disappointed to find out that it was not happening. I wanted to make Slutty Brownies with them.

Note to Kraft Foods, even a limited edition of the pride Oreos would make millions.

Considering that these newly-minted Oreo haters (whose number apparently include Jesus himself) were interested enough in fuckin’ Oreo cookies to follow them on Facebook in the first place, I really can’t imagine that many of them will continue their goofball boycotts for very long.

Big win for Kraft Foods. Kudos to them for hiring marketing professionals who know which way the wind is blowing.

Somebody might want to explain to these bigoted asshats that there are some other LGBT-friendly companies who they might want to include in their boycotts. If you’re going to refuse to give your money to Kraft Foods, what about Levis, Nike and Google? What’s that you say? You’ll just use Bing as your search engine? Guess again…. And if it comes down to your computer, are you going to toss out your PCs and Apple products, too?

No iPhone for you, closet case!

HT Esquire Politics

 
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.