Rumors have been floating about for a few weeks now that Chick-fil-A’s CEO Dan Cathy has been interested in wiping the shit he stepped in earlier this year—when he declared himself “Guilty as charged” for supporting anti-LGBT political groups like Focus on the Family and the National Organization for Marriage, including some that heave been called “hate groups”—off his corporate shoes.

Although I commend Mr. Cathy for stopping his multi-million dollar donations to anti-gay groups—if this rumor is in fact true and doesn’t turn out to be a Yes Men-style prank aiming to “punk” the delicious fast food chicken sandwich chain preferred by bigots, homophobic Christians, Fox News viewers, Drudge and Breitbart readers and talk radio fans—I can’t help but wonder how this news will play in red states and in the far right blogosphere.

The Civil Rights Agenda (TCRA), Illinois’ leading lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) civil rights advocacy organization, has learned that Alderman Moreno has finalized his negotiations with Chick-Fil-A.  Alderman Moreno has confirmed that Chick-fil-A will no longer give money to anti-gay organizations and that they have clarified in an internal document that the company will treat every person equally, regardless of sexual orientation. The Civil Rights Agenda worked closely with the Alderman in an advisory role as he negotiated these concessions with the executives at Chick-fil-A.  Additionally, members of TCRA spoke directly with executives at Chick-fil-A during negotiations to aid in educating their decision makers about anti-discrimination policies and issues affecting the LGBT community.

—snip—

Additionally, they have sent an internal memo to franchisees and stakeholders that states that as a company, they will “treat every person with honor, dignity and respect-regardless of their beliefs, race, creed, sexual orientation and gender” and that their “intent is not to engage in political or social debates.”  This statement was placed into an official company document called “Chick-fil-A: Who We Are.

Last Friday, Tara and I went to see Aziz Ansari’s wicked good stand-up show at the Orpheum Theater in downton Los Angeles. At one point, he was riffing on the whole Chick-fil-A controversy and lamenting that he could no longer, in good faith, eat there and indirectly support bigoted organizations that oppose full civil rights for his LGBT friends. Many of you reading this feel his pain.

As he did the bit—I’m embarrassed to admit to this, but it’s true—I did the mental calculation in my head of how much of the price of a single peach milkshake would end up going into the coffers of an anti-gay group and debated on whether or not it was okay if I had one, just one, on the way home (My beautiful wife nixed this idea before it even got all the way out of my mouth, incidentally).

So if this new news is true, then Aziz Ansari and I can eat at Chick-fil-A again with clear consciences. Bearing this in mind, the flipside of feeling GOOD about the today’s announcement, or the widely-reported rumor I should say, that Chick-fil-A will no longer donate to anti-LGBT groups, is how this information might be processed by the far reich crowd?

Tell me that the likes of Dana Loesch, or Michelle Malkin won’t feel BETRAYED and FIRE-SPITTING FURIOUS by the fast food chain COWARDLY WITHDRAWING FROM THE FIGHT FOR ‘TRADITIONAL CHRISTIAN VALUES.’ It’s gonna happen.

All the assholes who giddily participated in the Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day, waiting hours in line to stuff their faces full of fried chicken sandwiches to stick it to them uppity gays (and in support of “free speech” and Jeebus of course) are going to feel, well, butthurt by the news. Can a Sarah Palin-led Chick-fil-A backlash be far behind?

I hope Palin goes for the (fool’s) gold. It’s probably her very, very last chance to be relevant again. Her fifteen minutes of fame has about five seconds left, but leading a populist revolt against Chick-fil-A could re-start the clock for the fading celebrity of the half-term Alaska governor. Glenn Beck is probably wondering how he can hop on this train himself. Mike Huckabee, Herman Cain, Rush Limbaugh, Rep. Allen West, Michael Savage… who will be the first one of them to go there and accuse Chick-fil-A of cowardly betraying Christian Conservatives?

I’m also counting down the seconds before I get an “email alert” from wingnut central, WorldNetDaily, asking (because they always phrase things in the form of a question there, just like I did with the title here, in their honor): “GUESS WHO is no longer supporting the traditional Christian marriage definition of “one man, one woman”? The answer will SHOCK YOU” and then you’ll have to link to their website for the answer.

Five, four, three, two, one…

 
I love how Romney is heard in the tape saying:

“The thing I find most disappointing about this president is his attack of one America against another America.”

Pointing out the obvious irony, Dylan Matthews commented at The Washington Post’s website:

Mitt Romney will probably get 95 electoral votes from ‘moocher’ states. Obama will probably get 5.

Maker states vs. taker states?

Go to The Tax Foundation’s website for more.

HT Joe.My.God.

Rep. Eric Cantor of Virginia. I hate this fucking guy

In this 100-second “trash compactor” prepared by TPM editor Michael Lester, you can get a pretty good idea of what went down at the Value Voters Summit last Friday.

The thing that usually strikes me about any grouping of Republicans is not how blindingly white they all are, but rather how pinch-faced, nasally and shrew-like most of them seem to be. They’re a very specific type of Caucasian, I suppose. “Cowardly” isn’t the exact word I’m looking for, but Republican men have always struck me as the opposite of what I picture a “hero” to look like.

Anyways, no wonder “the smart, elite people” want nothing to do with them…

Yesterday on Dangerous Minds
Rick Santorum calls Conservatives stupid*
 

(*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.
 

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!
 

 
A common refrain seen in comments across the blogosphere of late is that an Obama win in November would be the best thing that could possibly happen for “opposition” Fox News.

I’m not so sure about that.

Even as but a “casual consumer” of what Fox News has on offer—I’m someone who usually only sees the gnarliest Fox clips belched up by the Internet—I can’t help but notice just how fucking tired it all seems lately. The same people saying the same damned things over and over and over again. It goes without saying that Fox News viewers tend not to be the sharpest, or best informed, marbles in the bag, but I would imagine that even those low IQ Jim-Bobs and Billy-Joes are getting tired of hearing the same people saying the same damned things over and over and over again. The obvious repetition of Republican talking points and constant, never-wavering anti-Obama kvetching—can it really go on like this for another four years without a major reinvention and a totally clean slate of new faces?

Fox’s audience share, while still strong, has been falling for years. Even if its audience doesn’t exactly desert Fox News, it’s an unavoidable fact of the yawning grave awaiting us all that their audience is dying off in great number with every passing year. Cranky old white guys aren’t being generated by the gene pool fast enough anymore. Certainly not in number enough for the Republican Party to survive, that’s seems demographically assured, so why should Fox News be any different?

Not only is Fox News becoming mind-numbingly repetitive—or even MORE mind-numbingly repetitive than it’s been for years, I should clarify—which is quite difficult, if you think about it, being a business which should theoretically thrive on novelty, it’s increasingly feeling completely anachronistic, like seeing the Spice Girls turning up again at the Olympics. Moving forward who is going to advertise on the network save for Geritol, Depends adult diapers or those “Help, I’ve fallen and I can’t get up” informercials? Fox News has a demographic every bit as, um, finite, shall we say, as print newspaper subscribers.

Fox News saw an overall 17% decline in viewership in March 2012 and there was a 27% drop with younger viewers from the year before. In May, Fox News was down about 21% during prime time in the 25-to-54 group. The only demographic sticking with Fox seem to be Social Security beneficiaries. I’d love to see the numbers for the percentage of Fox News viewers puttering around with portable oxygen tanks or who drive one of those scooters you always see advertised on the network.

Sean Hannity? Sarah Palin? Laura Ingraham? Ann Coulter? Who the fuck cares anymore what these people think? We already know. They must be bored saying this shit. Are you in the least bit curious, or do you really wonder how much Sean Hannity will hate on anything and everything that Obama says or does? Do you expect any surprises from his show? EVER? I mean this is some of the worst, weakest shit on offer. No one watches CNN anymore (it’s good for the treadmill as far as I am concerned) but compared to Fox News, it’s like at least they try!

Doesn’t this clip from last night’s O’Reilly Factor feel like you’re watching some sort of “nostalgia” news channel for old people? How much longer will Fox News president Roger Ailes think Sarah Palin is doing his network more good than harm?  AIles should try to renew his network’s mission and inject some fresh blood into the team before it’s too late. If he’s legacy-conscious, it’s imperative that he act now. Ailes needs to get rid of the deadwood and dead-brained Fox “talent” who still think it’s 2009. If he doesn’t reinvent Fox News soon, at 72, he runs the risk of seeing his brainchild croak before he does.
 

 
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.

 
Kos, the majordomo of liberal blog Daily Kos, cracked me up with his blunt assessment of what is perhaps Mitt Romney’s most difficult to surmount problem with the American electorate: Even after $180 million in TV ads, too many voters still think the guy’s a fucking dick.

And at this late stage of the game, Romney has little time, and few options left, to change their minds…

So if money isn’t doing it, and Romney’s personality isn’t winning him converts, what’s left?

The debates. They start in early October, then it’s bam, bam, bam: 10/3, 10/11 (veep), 10/16, and 10/22. They will present Romney with his last chance to gain points from Obama.

However, he can’t score points by playing it safe. If he tries to be nice and gracious and not touch Obama like he touched Gov. Rick Perry in one of those early-season debates, he might earn brownie points, but Obama will remain unscathed.

So he has to attack.

But remember, people think he’s a dick. So Romney has to attack in a manner that doesn’t reinforce the narrative that he’s a dick. And who really thinks Romney has the chops to pull that off? He can’t interact with NASCAR fans or picnicking ladies or British prime ministers without coming off as a dick. He’s now supposed to deftly attack—with a convincing smile—the guy who is standing between him and his birthright presidency?

Meanwhile, Obama can play it safe. He is winning. He can be gracious and accommodating, all the while rising above any nastiness with presidential bearing. He doesn’t need to win these debates as much as not lose them, and that makes his job so much easier.

It seems pretty clear cut. If Romney plays it safe, he continues to lose. He has to throw that Hail Mary. But by going on the offensive, he’ll remind people that they think he’s a dick. Because he is.

Watching Thurston Howell III Mitt Romney and the Marie Antoinette Republicans flailing this hard—like fish on the sand, right?—is such good fun. I’m not that all hot on the Democrats or Obama, but I would very much like to see Mitt Romney’s richie rich nose rubbed in dogshit in November.
 

Illustration by Scott Anderson

It might. Since there is no third party candidate to split the vote this time around, kooky Michelle Bachmann of Minnesota, one of the best conservative fundraisers in the Republican party is starting to look extremely vulnerable in her district for the first time since her 2006 election to the House. Although Bachmann is still in the lead, her margin over Democrat challenger Jim Graves has completely collapsed in two months. Via Salon:

Despite her national fan base and a massive war chest, Rep. Michele Bachmann may be in more danger than most suspect, with a new poll showing her lead diminished to just 2 points. Independent voters have swung against her by nearly 20 points in just two months, from a 4 percent advantage to a 15 point disadvantage. The internal poll, conducted by Democratic pollsters Greenberg Quinlan Rosner at the behest of Democrat Jim Graves’ campaign and shared with Salon, shows that Bachmann’s favorability rating has tumbled since their last survey in mid-June, and finds Graves gaining ground with independents as his name recognition grows.

Overall, the poll shows Bachmann leading Graves 48-46 percent, within the margin of error. The race has moved significantly among independents, with a 20-point net shift toward Graves, from a 41-45 percent disadvantage in June to a 52-37 percent lead now. Among independents, Bachmann’s favorability rating has slipped 4 points while her unfavorability rating has jumped 7 points. Overall, she’s viewed mostly negatively. Among all voters, 40 percent give her a positive job rating, while a sizable 57 percent give her a negative one, with a plurality of 35 percent giving the most negative answer possible — “poor.”

Graves’ campaign manager (and son) Adam Graves told Salon that the numbers show his candidate is well positioned to beat Bachmann. “Obviously, we’re very excited about it. The first thing that’s notable is that obviously her recent comments, the stories that she’s created for herself, have really hurt her among folks in the middle,” he said. Bachmann, who had tried to keep a lower profile after aborting her presidential bid, grabbed headlines this summer for her implication that Muslims in the U.S. government may be secret agents of the Muslim Brotherhood.

As Salon points out, there has been no other public survey of the district’s voters, although one might expect that the Bachmann campaign has commissioned its own polls. That none have been released might be an indication that they aren’t exactly what the zany Republican congresswoman wanted to hear. Bachmann, the former GOP presidential candidate who claimed that God “told” her to run before dropping out of the race, performed poorly in the Republican primary last month.

 
Mitt Romney makes me want to puke. He’s a bald-faced liar whose shameless, morally and intellectually-bereft candidacy will hopefully be rejected soundly by informed American voters in November.

I was especially annoyed watching this clip of him this morning on Fox News. If you need convincing that he’s lying as he claims credit for giving Obama the advice that saved the auto industry, have a quick read of Romney’s own editorial, “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt” which was published in The New York Times on November 18, 2008.

Then watch in horror as he says THIS:

Well, there’s a nice chance in debates to talk about truth and fiction. I don’t think many people understand that the president took the car companies into bankruptcy. They went into bankruptcy, exactly as I proposed. So the difference between us is that I would have done it earlier than the president did, and saved the American taxpayers about $20 billion.

The thing is, if you follow Romney’s face closely and you are aware that what he is saying is a bold-faced lie, his eyes seem to give it away that he, himself, is all too well-aware that he’s telling a “liar, liar, pants on fire” kind of fib.

The question was never if the Big Three car manufacturers should be restructured in a managed bankruptcy, but whether the automakers would go through that process with the backing of the federal government.

Or without it, as Romney himself advocated in the fucking New York Times!

The problem is, that 2008 editorial follows Romney around like a wet sulfurous fart on hot, humid day. Even Fox News reporters are fully aware of what’s going on. Tell me Bret Baier doesn’t know that Romney is lying through his teeth here. Of course he does! Listen to how he phrased the question. He assumes that even his viewers have enough bare-minimum recent historical context to understand what’s being left unsaid (why? BECAUSE IT’S SO OBVIOUS, THAT’S WHY).

It was a gross move when Mitt Romney, the son of the man who was credited with turning American Motors around in the 1950s and who was a popular governor during Michigan’s heyday, wrote that editorial in the first place. That he is now claiming credit for turning around the auto industry, it makes me fantasize about hocking up a big, fat greener and spitting it right in his lying face. The man deserves NO respect. Never in my lifetime has a more repulsive, morally bankrupt character topped the national ticket of a major political party.

Say what you want about Sarah Palin, at least she was sincere! Nixon seems like a idealist compared to a cynic like Romney.

YouTube commentor rodneyriddnauer remarked:

Understand one thing: you may not “like” President Obama, but Mitt Romney is a complete, all-out, unapologetic LIAR. Even the few details he does offer are simply made-up gibberish that Fox then has to try and bolster.

Folks, it ain’t about is The President 100% perfect and unflawed…it’s about which of these two men is worse for YOU, the average working American.

Romney/Ryan will GUT every safety net in our framework, and send your job to China or India. Believe that.

Watch in disbelief as Romney claims Obama copied his idea to save Detroit. Is it ANY WONDER why the Republicans have already conceded Michigan, Romney’s home state, and pulled all of their TV ads?
 

 
Via Daily Kos