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Conservative Republican tanning addict airhead explains why she’s for voting for Mitt Romney
10.22.2012
06:59 pm
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Pneumatic tanning addict Trisha Paytas—who hasn’t missed a day of tanning in ten years—was recently featured on TLC’s My Strange Addiction for her obsession with tanning.

In the clip below, she explains why she’s voting for Mitt Romney. First and foremost? He’s “super hot.”

Oh, wait, no, it’s actually her Catholic faith. And something about Hitler and Obama.
 

 
Don’t miss: Obama or God?

Via Joe.My.God

Posted by Richard Metzger
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10.22.2012
06:59 pm
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Conservative PAC says women should vote for Mittens because HE can’t overturn Roe v. Wade!
10.17.2012
01:47 pm
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Pregnant Mitt by Tom Tomorrow

The conservative “Concerned Women for America” PAC is floating a ridiculous new bid to bring more ladies into the Romney fold(er): Denying that the Republican presidential wannabe can do much of anything to eliminate a woman’s right to choose in a new television ad. The spot is an “answer” of sorts to an ad featuring Scarlett Johansson, Eva Longoria and Kerry Washington that was produced by MoveOn.

Of course, Mitt Romney has repeatedly stated that he would choose Supreme Court justices who would overturn Roe v. Wade throughout the 2012 election cycle. He might even be able to appoint THREE Supreme Court justices should he best Obama in November. The thought of this turns my blood cold and it should scare you, too.  You can’t really get rid of a Supreme Court Justice, they’re appointed for life. Imagine three more Republican-appointed numbnuts joining Scalia and Clarence Thomas on the bench, and then hanging out there for a few decades (perhaps for the rest of your life on this planet). Not a pretty picture.

Lately, ignoring his own previously held positions (and the various flip-flopping he’s done on the matter during his political life, all of it a matter of public record), Romney himself has attempted this tactic, claiming that there is nothing he would do to restrict abortion rights. Today a New York Times editorialand Romney’s own website, whoops-a-daisy—blew a hole in that lie. The Romney campaign is even airing a new TV ad that portrays the “severely conservative” politician as a moderate on abortion... because… WHY NOT? At least a few dumb-dumbs might believe him!

The inanity of this ad is awe-inspiring, especially the tag line:

Don’t Let Hollywood manipulate your vote!

Nope, let some lying liars manipulate your vote, instead!

Creepy, creepy stuff. How fucking dumb would you have to be to buy into any of this, or be swayed by this specious argument? Having said that, it’s not like Republicans don’t win elections all the time by appealing for the votes of America’s ignorant masses…
 

 
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Posted by Richard Metzger
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10.17.2012
01:47 pm
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Home-schooled kid’s letter to the editor about homosexuality
10.15.2012
11:57 am
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There’s no response to logic like this. None.

Via Wonkette, by way of Bi-Polar Bear

Posted by Richard Metzger
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10.15.2012
11:57 am
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Idiot at VP Debate calls Obama a ‘Communist,’ yet can’t define what a Communist is
10.12.2012
12:41 am
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Via TPM

Posted by Richard Metzger
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10.12.2012
12:41 am
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Rick Santorum calls conservatives stupid*

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(*No, that’s not what he said at all, but hey, Matt Drudge can do it, so why can’t I?)

I was as much amused by Rick Santorum’s comment yesterday—“We will never have the elite, smart people on our side”—during his speech at the ultra conservative Values Voter Summit as I was by this paragraph—or some variation thereof—that invariably followed without any need for further comment or elaboration:

“Rep. Michele Bachmann, Glenn Beck, Kirk Cameron, Gov. Jan Brewer, Sen. Rand Paul and Rep. Steve King are among other scheduled speakers.”

On nearly every blog, the ingredients of the report were the video of Santorum (see below) and a mention of some of his fellow far-right fuit loops who would be speaking at the conservative Christian political confab. Perhaps they were trying to be droll—I decided to take it that way—or maybe they were just dryly reporting the facts. Either way, a list of those particular Republican names speaks volumes, doesn’t it?

Former GOP presidential candidate Santorum’s full quote was:

“We will never have the media on our side, ever, in this country. We will never have the elite, smart people on our side, because they believe they should have the power to tell you what to do.”

Well, Rick, that’s one way to look at it, but there’s an obvious—or what should be obvious—flip-side to that equation that you might want to take into consideration: WHY do you reckon that it’s difficult for these “elite, smart people” to acquiesce to the will of a bunch of folks who they perceive as a bunch of ignorant hicks who have decided that they’re going to “take back our country” and so forth?

Take it back from…? And where will these science-denying dumbshit Tea party Taliban types take it back to? Before African Americans had the vote or before they were allowed to play Major League Baseball? Just how far back are we talking, here?

His delightfully candid remark calls into question how Mr. Santorum and other Christian conservatives define “freedom,” a word and concept that was thrown around—and shit on—by at least half of the Values Voters Summit’s speakers: Should “the elite, smart people” stand silently by and do nothing and simply allow, without protest or objection, a group of people they consider to be rank ignoramuses and dangerous buffoons to run roughshod over what they see as THEIR OWN RIGHTS (or the rights of others)?

If you take only the example of marriage equality, one groups wants to get married for a variety of benefits that will have virtually ZERO effect—none—on the lives of conservative religious straight people, so why A.) do the people who attend the VVS even care and B.) why do they think that THEY should have final say over what gay people do, simply because they “don’t agree with it”?

Because… Jebus?

That’s not a reason!

What I don’t get, and what is making me laugh, is how it doesn’t seem to phase Rick Santorum even one tiny little bit that he’s is, in essence, defining himself as being a member of the STUPID TEAM that the evil smart elite people want to subjugate with stuff like gay marriage and insurance being required to cover birth control. His argument isn’t “We’re smarter than they are so they should listen to us,” it’s more like… well, to be honest, I don’t even know, really, how the fuck to parse what Santorum believes. Once someone admits that they’re hositle to intelligence itself, I don’t really feel it’s incumbent upon me to search out the nuance of their blinkered, unsophisticated worldview.

Mr. Santorum doesn’t seem to have noticed the causality between his own position of being against birth control and the fact that he lost—and lost miserably—to a man who now seems set to lose handily himself in the general election. But he has made an important observation: “Smart people” and Republicans don’t have a whole lot in common anymore.

In any case, why aren’t the right wing bloggers and peanut gallery commenters at Breitbart, The National Review and WorldNetDaily absolutely up in arms about Santorum calling them stupid?

Tee-hee! Personally, I think Rick Santorum has inadvertently hit on THE defining reason for the GOP’s problems with “the elite, smart people”: Intelligent, NON-GULLIBLE voters will, never, ever cede the control of their lives to the likes of Michele Bachmann, Steve King or Todd Akin. Any Republican politician who could carry Mississippi, Alabama or Arkansas in a national election IS GOING TO LOSE in the more populous, better-educated coastal states. You can stuff your face with Chick-fil-A until you puke, but nothing is going to change that fact, bunky. The GOP has backed itself into a demographic corner, a demographic that’s literally dying off.

So what advice will those multi-million dollar consulting and marketing firms come up with to help the GOP keep winning elections after they get absolutely trounced this November? Forget about them, I say to you, Republican overlords: It was those top dollar marketing smarty-pantses that gave you guys Mitt fuckin’ Romney in the first place

Nope, Rick Santorum has already got it all figured it out for ya, you shadowy reptilian Republican druids who pull the levers of power behind the curtain: It’s all coming down a simple matter of smart vs DUMB and Santorum defined the battle yesterday in a single sentence of crystal clear truth:

“We will never have the elite, smart people on our side.”

That’s right, NEVER.

Gutting the educational system is the far right’s very last chance of even holding the ground they have now. The Republican establishment pretty much knows that they can’t win national elections strictly along racial demographic lines anymore. Richard Nixon’s so-called “Southern Strategy” is kaput after this current election cycle. But since blockheads tend to vote as a bloc, in the long game, taking advantage of “The Great American IQ Stratification” (which is inevitably how history will see it, unless history is written by future David Bartons) and trying to encourage deeper ignorance and more widespread stupidity is the GOP’s only hope.
 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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09.16.2012
07:03 pm
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Michele Bachmann: Obama & Hillary Clinton are brainwashing America with radical Islam ‘speech codes’
09.14.2012
01:28 pm
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Issue #2 of False Witness: The Michele Bachmann Story

At least that’s what I think she’s trying to say, but what does that even mean???

It’s hard to tell. Via Right Wing Watch:

Speaking this morning at the Values Voter Summit, Rep. Michele Bachmann dedicated her remarks to attacking the Obama administration for supposedly catering to radical Islam and that Muslim Brotherhood, citing a decision by the FBI to purge hundreds of anti-Muslim documents from its training materials as proof that the administration was enforcing “Islamic speech codes here in the United States.”

This fool is on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. SHE is one of the politicians who oversee of the CIA, the NSA and the rest of the U.S. intelligence community.

She’s a tinfoil hat-wearing buffoon who can barely string a coherent sentence together and yet she’s privy to intelligence briefings. A loose cannon like Bachmann? There’s not an ounce of intelligence to be found in her entire body. It’s nothing short of madness to trust her with classified information. We have House Speaker John Boehner to thank for this appointment. He could have just as well given her some crayons and she’d have been distracted for months, but no, he’s got to go and appoint well-known crazy lady Michelle fucking Bachmann to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence! Way to go, uh, Bonie!
 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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09.14.2012
01:28 pm
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15% of Ohio Republicans think Mitt Romney deserves the credit for killing Osama bin Laden
09.12.2012
04:28 pm
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A poll released Monday by Public Policy Polling shows that Mitt Romney is at a distinct disadvantage in the highly important Electoral College swing state of Ohio, polling just 45% to Obama’s 50%, but one of the ancillary questions the pollsters mischievously slipped in sheds some light on how pathetically misinformed—or willfully ignorant—some Ohio Republicans really are.

Does this seem like a trick question to you?

“Who do you think deserves more credit for the killing of Osama bin Laden: Barack Obama or Mitt Romney?”

63% percent said Obama, 6% said Mitt Romney and 31% of the respondents said they were not sure.

If you break it down (see cross tabs), about 15% of the Ohio Republicans who rated themselves “very conservative” actually believe that Mitt Romney deserves the credit for the killing of Osama bin Laden.

That’s more than one in ten!

Mitt Romney obviously can count on, and receive, the support of the most blinkered ignoramuses in the country. No wonder the GOP is so virulently anti-education. Without the low IQ buffoon bloc standing so square-headed in their corner, they’d never win another election, EVER.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying “Democrat” = “smart,” because that’s a whole ‘nother can of worms, but self-identifying as a “Republican” is an admission of one of two things: that you are either throwing your lot with the fucking idiot brigade or that you are a fucking idiot yourself.

Pick one. It’s not a trick question.

Posted by Richard Metzger
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09.12.2012
04:28 pm
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It’s A Small (Minded) World After All: Republicans ‘offended’ by Mexican worker at Disney World

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Those fucking Disney Obama communists also serve FRENCH fries at the American Pavilion! FRENCH fries! Call the Tea party!

GOP delegates Mark and Irene Harris, of Snyder County, Pennsylvania, were “highly offended” to see a Mexican employee working at the “American Pavilion” of Disney World’s Epcot Center, as Irene posted on their “Rock Star GOP” blog from the GOP national convention in Tampa:

Prior to National Republican Convention we visited Disney for three days.  During our time at Epcot we visited the different countries.  It was neat seeing each country and the employees were from that individual country.  Then we visited America . . . one would think you would find American employees.  We were offended to find a person from Mexico working in America.  Mark spoke up and told them he was highly offended after visiting the other countries and seeing employees from that country and then come to America and find a Mexican.  He was very civil but his point was well made.

I’ll bet it was. Imagine being the manager who had to absorb that piece of Mark’s tiny mind… I can’t currently think of anything that could be more painful. Or stupid.

According to their website, “Mark and Irene are both pro‐life, believe marriage is between one man and one woman, are for open records and transparency, believe in very conservative principles and the Republican platform.”

Sounds about right to me! To this information, I have nothing, absolutely nothing, to add.
 
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Via Think Progress

Posted by Richard Metzger
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09.06.2012
04:48 pm
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Dumb as a cow Tea Party Express leader puts Sarah Palin into perspective

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As an unapologetic IQ snob, I was both appalled and yet amused by the abject stupidity and irrational xenophobia exhibited by Tea Party Express chairwoman Amy Kremer over the weekend when she was asked a direct question by CNN’s Soledad O’Brien about something idiotic that she had posted on Twitter.

As is obvious from the video, Amy Kremer was ready, willing and quite able to inflict her aggressive ignorance on CNN’s global audience. Watching her strain to verbalize her tiny thoughts like turds that would just not plop out was nothing short of incredibly painful… but funny.

Kremer says Mitt Romney “loves America” whereas with the black guy currently occupying the Oval Office it’s “about more a global — having, uh, global, um, oh what’s the word? Being more global, one-world, with other countries, and it’s not about the shining city on the hill, the greatness that has always been America that our Founding Fathers were all about.”

Sarah Palin herself would have winced if she’d have witnessed Amy Kremer’s nincompoopish attempt to Madlib her way out of O’Brien’s question. The muted, comical reactions from the bemused newscaster and the other guests is fairly priceless, especially the reporter who calmly tries to school the inarticulate buffoon sitting beside him. Normally, you would expect to hear the rest of the panel vociferously rebutting such ridiculous, unintelligent statements of questionable “facts” but in the case of the shockingly brain-dead Amy Kremer, it’s obvious that none of them seem to think she’s worth much of an effort! (They’re right.)

A question for CNN’s bookers: What value (besides the lulz) does someone as utterly devoid of intelligence as Amy Kremer OBVIOUSLY IS bring to your newscast?

Then what the fuck is she doing there?

Hey, CNN, why not just invite Jessica Simpson on to see what she thinks about politics and shit? I’d much rather see her on CNN, because at the very least she’s got one up on Kremer since she’s probably figured out the difference between tuna and chicken by now!
 

 
Via Wonkette

Posted by Richard Metzger
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09.05.2012
01:11 pm
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The Whitest Old Farts U’ Know: 92% of the Republican Party is ______?

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Didja guess?

There’s much to ponder in Washington Post opinion writer Harold Meyerson’s piece in yesterday’s paper, “In modern GOP, the old South returns,” but the take-away for me was his brittle characterization of the Republican philosophy as “We’re old, we’re white and we want our country back.”

The Republican ticket may hail from Massachusetts and Wisconsin, but Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan head the most Southernized major U.S. political party since Jefferson Davis’s day. In its hostility toward minorities, exploitation of racism, antipathy toward government and suspicion of science, today’s Republican Party represents the worst traditions of the South’s dankest backwaters.

No other party in U.S. history has done such a 180. Founded as the party of the anti-slavery North and committed to deep governmental involvement in spurring the economy (land-grant colleges, the Homestead Act, the transcontinental railway), today’s GOP is the negation of Abraham Lincoln’s Republicans. It is almost entirely white — 92 percent, compared with just 58 percent of Democrats. It is disproportionately Southern — 49 percent of Republicans live in the South vs. 39 percent of Democrats.

The beliefs of the white South dominate Republican thinking. As the white share of the U.S. population shrinks and the Latino share rises, Republicans have passed draconian anti-immigrant laws and opposed legislation enabling immigrants brought here as children to gain legal status. They also exploit racist resentments in a way not seen since the Willie Horton spot of 1988. Consider the Romney campaign’s ads falsely attacking President Obama for gutting welfare reform. “Under Obama’s plan, you wouldn’t have to work and wouldn’t have to train for a job,” proclaims one such commercial. “They just send you a welfare check.” Obama’s plan, as several media fact-checking monitors have noted, does nothing of the sort. The spot clearly seeks to resurrect the kind of resentment of African Americans that the GOP exploited back in the days when welfare was a major program. The Romney campaign has evidently concluded, since virtually its entire pool of potential voters is white, that it must rouse the sometime voters among them with such expedients — which explains why it is running more of these ads than any others.

To that Meyerson is eager to add, there is a strong tradition of straight-up Southern-fried idiocy (which has nothing to do with racism) that the GOP establishment cynically embraces, religion and her superstitious handmaiden, scary, “burn the witch”-style anti-intellectualism:

In the anti-government column, the Ryan budget, which House Republicans enthusiastically adopted, would cut taxes disproportionately on the wealthy and halve the share of spending on every domestic, non-entitlement program. It would decimate education, transportation and funding for college students and scientific research. It would bring the nation down to the developmental level of the anti-tax, anti-public-investment Southern states of yore.

The ghosts of Dixie — of the Scopes Trial and the underfunding of public education — also pop up in Republicans’ willful resistance to science and, more broadly, simple empiricism. Global warming? Evolution? Homosexuality’s causation? How babies get made? Find a robust scientific conclusion and you can find a significant number of Republicans — adducing pseudo-science and faith — who oppose it.

Don’t tread on me, modern GOP.

Meanwhile, last night in Tampa: RNC Attendee Allegedly Threw Nuts At Black CNN Camerawoman, Said ‘This Is How We Feed Animals’.  (CNN has confirmed that this did happen, so the “alleged” part is past-tense at this point. Keep it classy, GOP.)

Posted by Richard Metzger
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08.29.2012
12:49 pm
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Old Fart Rants: ‘Why worry about the Taliban with Republicans right in our own backyard?’
08.23.2012
12:00 pm
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“Say cheese!”

The “Old Fart Rants” videos are my new favorite thing on YouTube. Old Fart is the best! A man after my own heart and a fellow resident of Hollywood, CA.

Old Fart is my new homie. How could I resist a line like:

“To call this guy [Todd Akin] a stupid fucking piece of shit is an insult to shit.”

Sounds (exactly) like something I would say!

“Why worry about the Taliban with Republicans right in our own backyard? The once proud Republican Party has become a complete clown show - all that’s missing is the seltzer bottles! No wonder they’re trying to rig the 2012 elections - they wouldn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell otherwise! And anybody who can’t see it should be put into a mental institution. If anybody’s vote should be suppressed, it should be anybody stupid enough to vote for a Republican!”

Meanwhile Todd Akin claims to have pulled in over $100,000 in donations yesterday. How stupid would you have to be to give him your money?

Take the test: Taliban or Republican?

Subscribe to the Old Fart Rants YouTube channel.
 
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Posted by Richard Metzger
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08.23.2012
12:00 pm
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Dumbshit GOP Judge in Texas asks for tax increase to ‘fight back’ against Obama’s ‘U.N. army’!
08.22.2012
06:38 pm
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“Eh, what’s up, doc?”

Judge Tom Head, a Texas Republican who chairs Lubbock County’s Commissioners Court told a local talkshow on the Fox 34 station that the county needs to increase the property tax rate by 1.7 cents in coming fiscal year so that the sheriff’s department is adequately prepared to fend off the U.N. troops who will be sent to Lubbock County if President Barack Obama is re-elected and “the people” revolt. Yes that’s what he said.

A judge! An important man who makes important decisions about other people’s lives… Via Fox 34:

Head said he and the county must be prepared for many contingencies, one that he particularly fears, is if President Obama is reelected.

“He’s going to try to hand over the sovereignty of the United States to the UN, and what is going to happen when that happens?” Head asked.

“I’m thinking the worst. Civil unrest, civil disobedience, civil war maybe. And we’re not just talking a few riots here and demonstrations, we’re talking Lexington, Concord, take up arms and get rid of the guy.

“Now what’s going to happen if we do that, if the public decides to do that? He’s going to send in U.N. troops. I don’t want ‘em in Lubbock County. OK. So I’m going to stand in front of their armored personnel carrier and say ‘you’re not coming in here’.

Ooooohhh, big man! I love how the Fox newscaster on the Lubbock station looks like he’s about to bust about laughing at Head’s “heroic” bravado. What a fucking idiot, oy vey!

Do you know how people as dumb as Judge Tom Pinhead here get into elected office?

First they decide to run.

Second, more people vote for them than voted for their opponent.

Sometimes more stupid people than smart people vote in certain parts of the country and that would explain why Tom Head is a judge.

It’s that fuckin’ simple.
 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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08.22.2012
06:38 pm
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‘A New New Low’: Jon Stewart gleefully tweaks Sarah Palin
08.16.2012
10:44 am
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Don’t drink anything as you are watching this. You have been duly warned.
 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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08.16.2012
10:44 am
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‘Goodbye, Dad’: Son comes out as gay; father does something shitty and small

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Redditor RegBarc posted a scan of the seriously misguided letter that his father sent him when he revealed that he was gay on reddit/r/atheism:

“5 years ago, I was disowned via letter when I came out to my father. This is how hate sounds.”

If you’re having trouble reading the letter, you can find a larger version here.

The most popular response came from the father of an adopted gay son, who goes by the handle, newvideoaz, apparently his first post on reddit. I think you’ll agree that it’s a pretty remarkable retort:

RegBarc,

I’m the adoptive dad of a kid who came out when he was about 15. Yeah it’s sometimes difficult when this happens because no parent wants to see a kid we love get hurt - and like it or not - being gay can mean some people will wish you ill simply for who you are.
And that’s hard for any parent. But it’s no excuse.

As an adoptive parent, I’m not my kids “father.” That’s biological. But I am his Dad. Because “Dad” isn’t something that’s actually biological, it’s something you have to earn.

With my son , I started to earn it the day he was born, but it was pretty easy until his second year when he had an accident and got hurt. The doctor in the ER strapped him to the “papoose board” to immobilize him and was about to start stitching up his head when he told me it was time for me to let go of his little hand. He looked up at me and whatever he saw in my face, he instantly said “or you can stay I guess.” I have no clue what he saw, except the fact that getting me to let go of that tiny hand was about as possible one of us jumping up through the ceiling to the moon.

The lesson for me that day is that any idiot can be a father (and clearly many are) but you’ve got to EARN being a Dad.

When my son came out to us, same deal. I was concerned, because I never had to deal with it before in someone I love. But we simply hooked him up with 1 in 10 and went on with our lives.

So here’s the opinion of someone who’s been in your dad’s shoes, but didn’t have his sad mental baggage.

Your dad failed a really huge parenting test. Period.

So now he’s self selected to be your father, but not to be your Dad. That sucks. And the really sad thing is that he has absolutely no freaking clue about the real value of what he’s tossed away.

He’ll always be your father. That’s biology. But biology is fickle. We know this because while he has perhaps passed a lot to you via DNA, he did NOT pass along intolerance or stupidity. He can “disown” you in his brain all he likes, but that doesn’t mean much because he’s already proved that whatever his strengths might be, he’s allowed his thought processes and natural instincts to become seriously flawed. How you feel about him. Hurt, sad, angry, disappointed, that’s yours to shuffle as you see fit.

But trust me, this is about him, not you. I actually hope that someday he gets a change to look deeply in his heart and comes to understand how horribly, terribly he screwed this up. If so, he’ll maybe have a chance to start some personal redemption and healing. But he needs that. You don’t.

Cuz there’s nothing wrong with you. At all.

Stay strong. Take care. The world is changing fast. And for more people than ever, gay and straight, it’s changing more toward love and away from fear - at least in this particular area.

Take care.

As they say on the Internet: ONIONS!

Of course, reddit being reddit, a couple of quipsters threw in some zingers:

“You should to his funeral and read that letter as your speech.”

“This would be the greatest ‘fuck you’ ever. Oh my god I’m so giddy right now.”

“And have it buried with him.”

“Burn it. And while it’s on fire, throw it in his casket. That guy doesn’t deserve the casket he’s in.”

Can’t say I disagree. What a fucking small-minded dickhead. I sincerely hope that he is made aware of how he’s being ridiculed. He, at the very, very least deserves that knowledge.

Posted by Richard Metzger
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08.07.2012
03:15 pm
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How to save the Republican party from itself

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A terrific older essay by Esquire’s Charles P. Pierce on how fucking insane Republican Party has become (it appeared in the magazine’s May 2012 issue) has been resurrected on reddit/r/politics. I must have missed this one when it went around the first time, but it has not dated in the least since then (if anything it’s more true with each passing day). A gem, courtesy of one of the very best political writers in America today:

Not to put too fine a point on it, but the Republican party, root and branch, from its deepest grass roots to its highest levels, has become completely demented. This does not mean that it is incapable of winning elections; on the contrary, the 2010 midterms, as well as the statewide elections around the country, ushered in a class of politicians so thoroughly dedicated to turning nonsense into public policy that future historians are going to marvel at our ability to survive what we wrought upon ourselves. It is now impossible to become an elected Republican politician in this country if, for example, you believe in the overwhelming scientific consensus that exists behind the concept of anthropogenic global warming. Just recently, birth control, an issue most people thought pretty well had been settled in the 1960s, became yet another litmus test for Republican candidates, as did the Keystone XL pipeline, to which every Republican presidential candidate pledged unyielding fealty despite the fact that several prairie Republicans and an army of conservative farmers and ranchers are scared to death of the thing.

In Washington, there is no leadership anymore, no “Republican establishment” to which anyone can appeal. The ferocious strength of faith-based know-nothingism in the party’s base has resulted in a stubborn refusal to adopt even those ideas — like an individual mandate for health care, or cap-and-trade as an energy policy — that began as Republican ideas.

In the states, we have seen a staggering overreach on the part of Republican governors in the Midwest regarding labor rights, wildly restrictive voter-ID laws aimed at solving a problem that doesn’t exist, immigration statutes that are leaving lettuce to rot in the fields because nobody’s left to pick it, and a welter of preposterous antiabortion statutes. And behind all of that, a party base that has constructed its own private history, its own private language, its own private logic, and its own wholly rounded private universe.

That’s how Sarah Palin can tell people that Barack Obama wants to bring us “back to days before the Civil War” because Obama once hugged Derrick Bell, a law professor at Harvard. That’s how an insurance-friendly health-care bill can be declared to be socialism when it’s not being called the first step toward fascism. That’s how Mitt Romney came to tie himself in a bowline trying to run for president, even though he was the only real candidate in a field of crackpot poseurs, and even though he was running the only real campaign as opposed to tent revivals, exercises in brand maintenance, and extended book tours. Too late did Romney realize that the path to the nomination led through an alternate reality.

This was a development long in the making, and one of which we may well never see the end. It began with the vicious, truthless campaigns run by the National Conservative Political Action Committee in the late 1970s. This initiated the creation of a conservative network that was outside the formal party structure. To this was added independently financed think tanks, Christian colleges and (later) Christian academies and organized home schooling, and conservative boot camps that produced young people, and young candidates, whose primary allegiance was to conservative ideology and not to the Republican party. Eventually, as was proven by the failed candidacies of Christine O’Donnell and Sharron Angle, which helped lose the Republicans a golden chance at controlling the Senate as well in 2010, these people cared less about whether the party succeeded than they did that their ideology was kept pure and their private universe invulnerable. In trying to control the uncontrollable and to appease the insatiable, forcibly locked in with itself, like the Beales in Grey Gardens, the party gradually lost its mind.

That last sentence is quite simply… prose perfection. Pierce deserves a Pulitzer prize based on that line alone*.

He concludes:

The Democratic party has an obligation to beat the Republican party so badly, over and over again, that rationality once again becomes a quality to be desired. It must be done by persuading the country of this simple fact. It cannot be done by reasoning with the Republicans, because the next two generations of them are too far gone.

The whole thing is most definitely worth your time. While you are there, you should bookmark the Esquire Politics blog, it’s an essential daily read for political junkies.

His post this morning about Harry Reid and why he’s letting it rip so hard on Mitt Romney is also a must read.

Let’s Stop Being Upset with Harry Reid Already (Esquire Politics)

(*If it were up to me, I’d award a Pulitzer to Charles P. Pierce, if for no other reason, his snarling use of an all-purpose, southern-fried epithet my grandmother used to employ with great disdain: “dipshit doodlebug.”)

Posted by Richard Metzger
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08.07.2012
11:13 am
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