Not content with the humiliating—and apparently “shocking” if Fox News is your sole source of intellectual nourishment—shellacking they got just last week, some impotent, rage-filled rightwing blowhards have a new “thing” to support to stick it to that Kenyan Muslim socialist in the White House and his commie plot to give poor people healthcare.

And wouldn’t you know it, it involves eating shitty, artery-clogging fast food (again).

Welcome to America!

A Facebook group calling itself “Rebooting America” is touting an event on the social network, planned for this Friday, Nov. 16, to protest the Affordable Care Act (ACA) due to centi-millionaire, “Papa John” Schnatter, founder and CEO of Papa John’s Pizza—and a big Mitt Romney donor and fund raiser—ostentatiously whining that he’ll be jacking up the price of his lousy product and passing that cost off on to his customers because Obamacare.

Hooray? I guess some people just get off on seeing their fellow man suffer, and it causes them to work up an appetite for disgusting pizza that tastes like cardboard topped with Alpo and burned Velveeta, but with Friday’s call for a “National Papa John’s Appreciation Day,” I don’t think the reichwing knuckleheads really thought this one all the way through, as Daily Kos Labor reporter Laura Clawson writes:

You know who I don’t take seriously when they say they really want everyone to have health insurance and it’s a shame Obamacare isn’t the right way to insure more people? People who run businesses where only a third of workers are insured. Like Darden Restaurants (the parent company of Red Lobster and Olive Garden, among others), which also said that Obamacare was what would be causing it to cut down on the 25 percent of its workers that got the 30 hours a week qualifying them for health insurance, Papa John’s is one of the 50 largest low-wage employers, and it’s a highly profitable one. So, no, “I’m so concerned that I might have to cut hours for some of the one in three employees I currently insure even though my 2011 revenues were $1.22 billion” is not the thing that makes me, personally, think “gosh, Obamacare really is putting intolerable burdens on businesses that want to take care of their workers but just might not be able to afford it.”

But I’m not the target for this kind of talk. Will Republicans mobilize in Schnatter’s defense? Failed Delaware Senate candidate and non-witch Christine O’Donnell wants to bring back that Chick-fil-A magic.
&nbsp:

Papa Johns CEO’s getting heat for saying Obamacare costs will force layoffs. Papa Johns support day this Friday #TCOT

— Christine O’Donnell (@ChristineOD) November 12, 2012

 
People who think low-wage, no-health-care jobs are a great thing should definitely go to Papa John’s on Friday to make the political point that the company would be right to cut workers’ hours. What’s more, everyone who heeds O’Donnell’s call should be sure the workers know why they’re ordering this pizza on this day. Alternatively, they could just leave a “please spit on this pizza repeatedly” note when ordering each one.

Admittedly, this was the first thought that came to my mind, too (I guess it’s a good thing I don’t work at Papa John’s). The second was fantasizing about spitting in John Schnatter’s face…

The question is, how will Schnatter’s dickish politicization of raising his prices impact his shareholders and the Papa John’s franchise holders around the country? I don’t think this is another Chick-fil-A protest that will end up as a net positive, or neutral event for Papa John’s (keep in mind that Chick-fil-A’s food actually tastes good, whereas Papa John’s pizza tastes, in the memorable words of Stephen Colbert, like the ‘ass of a raccoon that drowned in your birdbath’).

When the Chick-fil-A support day occurred, there was at least a threadbare cover of “traditional Christian values” and all that implies, whereas this is just a mega-rich JERK shooting his mouth off. Centi-millionaire Schnattar’s peevish pronouncements about raising his prices make him look poorly, the way Donald Trump’s deranged ass clown rantings make him look. And like Trump, Schnatter is not a sympathetic character, he’s just a fucking super-rich asshole.

If you’re so stupid that you think purchasing some low-grade junk-food to show your feeble support of some CHEAP Republican bastard with over a hundred million dollars in the bank who doesn’t want the people who work for him to have health insurance is a good idea, hey, by all means order some Papa John’s Pizza this Friday, just cross yer fingers that no one spits on your pie, dipshit!

Bon appetite!
 

 
David Frum. During the Bush administration, I used to really hate him, but now, kinda like how Bruce Springsteen has a grudging respect for NJ Governor Chris Christie, I think he’s pretty good (for a Republican). Pretty astute. Frum says really smart things.

Things the GOP ought to listen to.

David Frum’s instantly published new e-book, Why Romney Lost grabs the lapels of shell-shocked Republicans and attempts to talk some sense into them.

His article in The Daily Beast today, “How the GOP Got Stuck in the Past,” is a must read, an absolute must-read:

The ratification of the Obama agenda will understandably enrage and depress conservatives. Yet if there is any lesson conservatives ought to have learned from the past four years, it is the danger of succumbing to angry emotion. We’ve had four years of self-defeating rage. Now it’s time for cool.

Those who would urge the GOP to double down on ideology post-2012 should ask themselves: would Republicans have done better if we had promised a bigger tax cut for the rich and proposed to push more people off food stamps and Medi­caid? Would we have done better if we had promised to do more to ban abortion and stop same-sex marriage? If we had committed ourselves to fight more wars? To put the country on the gold standard? Almost half of those surveyed on voting day said they wanted to see taxes raised on Americans earning more than $250,000. Exit polls do tend to oversample Democrats, but the tax result is consistent with other polling that has found that even Republicans would prefer to raise taxes on the rich than see cuts in Medicare.

Some combative conservatives may wish that Mitt Romney had talked more about the various plots and conspiracies they believed Obama to have launched upon the land: Fast & Furious, ACORN, Pigford, U.N. bike lanes, Obama’s imagined plan to abolish the suburbs. But while this kind of angry talk may gain eyeballs on Hannity, it’s not the stuff that swings undecided voters in Colorado and ­Virginia—­especially not the women voters who formed 53 percent of the electorate on Tuesday; or the moderates, men and women, who formed 41 percent of it; or the nonreligiously observant, who formed three quarters of it. Only 34 percent of the vote Tuesday was made up of white men. The share of the vote that was made up of older, conservative white men must have been much smaller still. Fox Nation never was more than a very tiny slice of the American nation, and it was only sad self-delusion that ever led anyone to think otherwise.

Interesting to note how much agreement David Frum and Rachel Maddow would find themselves in, post election, isn’t it? I’d love to see Frum as a guest on her show and being interviewed by Bill Moyers, too.

How the GOP Got Stuck in the Past (The Daily Beast)

Do yourself a favor and watch this video clip at least until the end of Frum’s first answer to the big question: “Why did Mitt Romney lose?” He also gets a very good point in at around the 11 minute mark about how Republican voters were exploited and fleeced for their donations with apocalyptic, “death of America” rhetoric. Fellow Republican Joe Scarborough strongly agrees with him.
 

 
I don’t imagine listening to a smirking lib’brul lezbean school them is exactly what distraught reichwingers want to hear right now, but Rachel Maddow’s post-election wrap-up rant is a stone classic:

Ohio really did go to President Obama last night. And he really did win. And he really was born in Hawaii. And he really is legitimately President of the United States. Again. And the Bureau of Labor Statistics did not make up a fake unemployment rate last month. And the Congressional Research Service really can find no evidence that cutting taxes on rich people grows the economy. And the polls were not skewed to oversample Democrats. And Nate Silver was not making up fake projections about the election to make conservatives feel bad. Nate Silver was doing math. And climate change is real. And rape really does cause pregnancy sometimes. And evolution is a thing! And Benghazi was an attack ON us, it was not a scandal BY us. And nobody is taking away anyone’s guns. And taxes have not gone up. And the deficit is dropping, actually. And Saddam Hussein did not have weapons of mass destruction. And the moon landing was real. And FEMA is not building concentration camps. And UN election observers are not taking over Texas. And moderate reforms of the regulations on the insurance industry and the financial services industry in this country are not the same thing as Communism.

Listen. Last night was a good night for liberals and for Democrats for very obvious reasons. But it was also, possibly, a good night for this country as a whole. Because in this country we have a two party system, in government. And the idea is supposed to be that the two sides both come up with ways to confront and fix the real problems facing our country. They both propose possible solutions to our real problems. And we debate between those possible solutions. And by the process of debate, we pick the best idea. That competition between good ideas, from both sides, about real problems in the real country should result in our country having better choices, better options, than if only one side is really working on the hard stuff. And if the Republican party, and the conservative movement, and the conservative media is stuck in a vacuum sealed, door locked, spin cycle of telling each other what makes them feel good, and denying the factual, lived truth of the world, then we are all deprived, as a nation, of the constructive debate between competing, feasible ideas about real problems.

Last night the Republicans got shellacked. And they had no idea it was coming. And we saw them, in real time, in real humiliating time, not believe it even as it was happening to them. And unless they’re going to secede, they’re going to have to pop the factual bubble they have been so happy living inside, if they do not want to get shellacked again. And that will be a painful process for them, I’m sure, but it will be good for the whole country - left, right, and center. You guys, we’re counting on you. Wake up.

There’s real problems in the world. There are real knowable facts in the world. Let’s accept those and talk about how we might approach our problems differently. Let’s move on from there. If the Republican party, and the conservative movement, and conservative media are forced to do that by the humiliation they were dealt last night, we will all be better off as a nation. And in that spirit, congratulations everybody. Big night.

Here are some interesting election factoids: Romney predominated only among older white men; Obama won 55% of womens’ votes, 93% of African Americans’, 71% of Latino ballots and 60% of voters ages 18 to 29.

The GOP is fucked. Well and truly fucked. It’s only going to be worse for them in 2016 as more of the old farts who make up the Republican Party shuffle off this mortal coil and more and more young Latinos join the voter rolls as Democrats.
 

 
Nugent, we’re calling your bluff. In the video below, you said you’d be dead or in jail if Obama got re-elected. Well, guess what asshole?

As far as we’ve been able to tell, the rock neanderthal hasn’t demonstrated the strength of his convictions yet. He’s only mustered up the courage to tweet. He’s got until April 16, 2013 (one year after he appeared at the NRA convention where the video was shot) to make good on his promise. I’ve got a special bottle of bourbon for the occasion.
 

 
After Diane Sawyer’s incessantly giddy slurring began to annoy me too much (”...and the swimmer in South Carolina is Jim Beams!”), we switched over to Fox News for the lulz we knew would await us there and never changed the channel after that.

It was riveting stuff.

As a connoisseur of Republican schadenfreude, it was pretty obvious that Fox was the place to be on this election night.

Megyn Kelly was clearly shell-shocked by the incoming results and you could tell with her, fairly early on, that she knew what was happening by a look of deer-in-the-headlights PANIC that crept over her face in real time during the broadcast. Also, they had her vamping constantly, but she’s just so unfunny, stiff and strident (and was so clearly off-put by Romney’s looming loss) that this fell completely flat and even I felt sorry for her. It was almost as if Fox News didn’t have much of a contingency plan when Obama won other than asking Megyn Kelly to wing it!

When Fox finally called it for Obama, it was like lacquer-haired Bret Baier, the one who blurted it out, had farted loudly behind the desk and the rest of them just looked down in embarrassment, shook their heads and muttered something. THAT was how the election results got called on Fox News last night: “Oh shit… he won.”

It was hysterically funny and SO REAL. I only wish that Sean Hannity had been on camera at that point, but alas, ‘twas not to be.

But did you hear what Papa Bear, Bill O’Reilly had to say earlier in the evening when the writing was already so clearly on the wall for R. Money:
 

 
And then there was supposed evil genius Karl Rove, who looked like he was trying to start a push-back against Fox News’ own “war room” of data analysts. He sort of scolded Kelly for calling Ohio too soon. It was a borderline nerd freakout, as if you could see the gears turning in his head as he realized that his days as one of the most influential people within the Republican party were coming to an abrupt end. That was a pretty extraordinary thing to watch:
 

 
After the commercial break, Rove came back on the air and basically said “Uh, okay, well, yeah, never mind.” Some evil genius “Turd Blossom” turned out to be this go-round. Rove couldn’t even buy an election (and this might be the GOP’s last election where they even get to try). Karl’s gonna have a lot of essplaining to do to the Koch Brothers, Sheldon Adelson and the other members of the Billionaire Boys Club about how he pissed their money down a black hole. Rove got fucking skunked last night, and he’s well aware of it, too, there’s no doubt about it.

For a little perspective: This was the widest vote to return an incumbent president to the White House since Ronald Reagan won 49 states in his 1984 reelection bid. That’s not a statistical fluke, no matter what the “know nothings” at Fox News, Breitbart and the Drudge Report want you to believe. What’s more, Frenchman John Kerry got over a million more votes in 2004 than Romney got on Tuesday.

Here’s what Fox News DIDN’T REPORT ON last night, at least not as long as we were watching:

• Liberal hero Alan Grayson won his House seat back (Hell yeah!)
• Wisconsin elected Tammy Baldwin, a proud lesbian woman, to the Senate, beating Tea party-backed former governor, Tommy Thompson.
• Marijuana was decriminalized by Colorado and Washington voters.
• Maryland and Maine became the first states in which the voters chose to legalize same-sex marriage.
• Left for dead Democrat Senator Claire McCaskill of Missouri beat Republican goatboy Todd Akin.
• Liberal hero Elizabeth Warren won handily in Massachusetts.
• Michele Bachmann, who raised more money than any other member of the House, barely squeaked by in her reelection.
• Cuckoo Tea party favorite Col. Allen West lost his seat in the House.
• Joe Donnelly beat Richard Mourdock in Indiana. God’s will?

Well then God must hate the Republicans’ fucking guts this year, that’s all I gotta say.

Other than the token liberal (I can’t recall her name) the only person on Fox News last night who actually appeared to pick up on the core message of what had transpired (other than Bill O’Reilly, I suppose) was Brit Hume who mused aloud that perhaps America has simply become more liberal than conservatives want to believe:

“Many of us have believed — and I still basically do — that that this is a center-right country. And a lot of conservatives have taken the view that liberals are really on the wane. If you look at tonight’s exit polling that we’ve seen so far, those that self-identified as liberals are about 24 percent, self-identified conservatives 35 percent, moderates 40 percent. Now, this apparent outcome tells you one thing about those moderates, that there are in that category an awful lot of them who are actually liberals.”

“Now, liberal became kind of dirty word, that’s when the word progressive came into use. But I think that — but I don’t think — you take the conservative number, 35 percent, it’s certainly a share of those moderates that are moderate to conservative, you’ve still got a center-right country, but it’s more liberal than many may have thought looking at those numbers. It’s got to be.”

Well, there’s that, and they also happen to think the Republicans are batshit crazy lunatics.

I’m expecting Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert to come up with time capsule-level shows tonight, aren’t you?

Required reading:
Welcome To Liberal America (Buzzfeed)

2012 or Never: Why 2012 is the Republicans’ Last Chance (New York magazine)

The Republicans Bet Everything, and Obama Won It All (New York magazine)
 

 

True the Vote‘s Catherine Engelbrecht actually sees herself as a defender of democracy!

The Tea party-affiliated group True the Vote has been barred from monitoring polling places in Franklin County, the second largest county in Ohio — which includes the state capital, Columbus—after allegedly submitting fraudulent forms.

True the Vote claims that its campaign is non-partisan, yet its website touts “vote fraud is nearly an exclusive crime of the left” and claims that the left—I think they mean Democrats here—wants “to be able to steal elections at will.”

But forging signatures on official forms? Can’t you see they had to bend the rules to save democracy from… people like themselves???

It doesn’t get any more ridiculous than these assholes! I don’t know what the hell these dipshit doodlebugs think they’re up to and I don’t think they do either.  That’s why they’re Tea baggers, I suppose. If their IQs were any higher this sort of lowbrow activity would have no appeal…

Via Raw Story:

“The Franklin County Board of Elections did not allow Election Day polling location observer appointments filed by the True the Vote group,” board spokesman Ben Pisctelli told The Columbus Dispatch in a statement. “The appointments were not properly filed and our voting location managers were instructed not to honor any appointment on behalf of the True the Vote group.”

Plunderbund reported that True the Vote had likely falsified or forged election observer forms submitted to the Franklin County Board of Elections. Board member Zachary Manifold told Plunderbund he was “amazed that a group that goes to such extreme lengths to claim voting fraud in Ohio would knowingly forge or misuse signatures to try to gain access to Franklin County polling locations.”

You’d think!

True the Vote President Catherine Engelbrecht denied the allegations, insisting that no one trained by True the Vote had done anything illegal or unethical. Engelbrecht said the incident was the Ohio Democratic Party’s “final, desperate attempt to deny citizens their right to observe elections” and vowed to take legal action.

Isn’t that what any completely insane, reality-denying  person would say when confronted with the fact that members of her organization had been caught red-handed forging signatures on official government papers? Committing felonies!

I think it is.

The group had hoped to place poll watchers in predominately African American areas. True the Vote had asked to send poll watchers to 28 precincts in Franklin County — which includes the capital, Columbus. African Americans comprise more than half the population in 20 of the 28 targeted precincts, though they make up only about 12 percent of the state’s total population.

Left-leaning groups have accused True the Vote of seeking to intimidate Democratic voters.

I wonder why that would be? These True the Vote-types seem like such honest, patriotic Americans!

If you can’t trust people who wrap themselves up in the American flag, who can ya trust?
 

 
Tea Party freak Elmer Williams Jr. (The Angry Black Man) runs a blog called “Whatever Happen To Common Sense” (spelling is his, not mine). Williams is living proof that it doesn’t take a shitload of intelligence to operate the machinery of the Internet. He also seems to have gotten the hang of Youtube as well. In this particular rant he goes after Bruce Springsteen and predicts a future in which The Boss is under the thumb of Ayy-rabs in some sort of Ayy-rab concentration camp.

Riding around in his bigass pick-up truck and wearing a pair of mirror shades that would make Erik Estrada envious, Williams’ worldview is a pungent mix of stupidity and arrogance and would be funny if it weren’t so damned pathetic.
 

 
The best video of the campaign? Gotta be in the top five, for sure.

They should have released this one on Halloween. Frightening
 

 
Jon Stewart skewered Paul Ryan’s obviously staged photo op Monday at an Ohio homeless shelter, where the Republican VP candidate washed dishes, already CLEAN dishes:

Someone really needed to say this (and say it just like this):

“Do you know how hard it is to make volunteering at a homeless shelter look like a negative thing?” Stewart said. “And how dead inside does a national presidential campaign make you that you could be handed clean dishes and instead of saying, ‘Uh, you know these are clean right?’ You go, ‘Where’s my scrubby sponge?’”

If Ryan intends to manipulate the public’s emotions with staged photo opportunities, at least do it with a little “oomph,” Stewart added. “Even if you don’t really give a shit about the homeless, at least give a shit about making us think you give a shit. Don’t phone in your cynicism.”

One of the soup kitchen’s volunteers, Juanita Sherba, told Youngstown’s Viddy.com:

“It was the phoniest piece of baloney I’ve ever been associated with. In hindsight, I would have never let him in the door. They couldn’t have cared less.”

Sherba also said that Congressman Ryan seemed to no interest in talking to the homeless who depend on the shelter. Reporters were prevented from covering the exchange that Ryan had with a handful of homeless men outside of the facility.

What a nauseating little dingle-berry Paul Ryan truly is. Can you imagine if Ryan had shown up just a little earlier and he was obliged to sit down with the poors and EAT THEIR FOOD?

That would have been fuckin’ COMEDY GOLD.
 

 
Via TPM

 
From Salon:

The head of a charity in Ohio is not pleased with Paul Ryan’s photo op at a soup kitchen in Ohio, saying that the Romney campaign “ramrodded their way” into their facility unannounced.

The president of the Mahoning County St. Vincent De Paul Society, Brian J. Antag, told the Washington Post: “We’re a faith-based organization; we are apolitical because the majority of our funding is from private donations. It’s strictly in our bylaws not to do it. They showed up there and they did not have permission. They got one of the volunteers to open up the doors.”

He added:  “The photo-op they did wasn’t even accurate. He did nothing. He just came in here to get his picture taken at the dining hall.”

The Post reports that Ryan made the unscheduled stop after an event at Youngstown State University, and was there for about 15 minutes. But though the pictures taken shows Ryan apparently doing dishes, the food had already been served and everything had already been cleaned before he got there.

“Had they asked for permission, it wouldn’t have been granted. … But I certainly wouldn’t have let him wash clean pans and then take a picture,” Antag said.

I’ve always hated Paul Ryan’s guts and the more I know about the sonofabitch the more I hate him. What an ugly little man. He’s the perfect running mate for Shit Romney.