Dan Cleary

Four-Point Shot, the Hard Way: Kid Dunks Ball...and Self

Via the entire Internet by now, judging from the number of YouTube hits - but also Ace of Spades.

Cross-posted at JWF.

"If You're Eating Chick-fil-A, You're Eating Anti-Gay"

Bet you didn't even know that was possible.

ATLANTA — The Chick-fil-A sandwich — a hand-breaded chicken breast and a couple of pickles squished into a steamy, white buttered bun — is a staple of some Southern diets and a must-have for people who collect regional food experiences the way some people collect baseball cards.

New Yorkers have sprinted through the airport here to grab one between flights. College students returning home stop for one even before they say hello to their parents.

But never on Sunday, when the chain is closed.

Nicknamed “Jesus chicken” by jaded secular fans and embraced by Evangelical Christians, Chick-fil-A is among only a handful of large American companies with conservative religion built into its corporate ethos. But recently its ethos has run smack into the gay rights movement. A Pennsylvania outlet’s sponsorship of a February marriage seminar by one of that state’s most outspoken groups against homosexuality lit up gay blogs around the country. Students at some universities have also begun trying to get the chain removed from campuses.

“If you’re eating Chick-fil-A, you’re eating anti-gay,” one headline read. The issue spread into Christian media circles, too.

The outcry moved the company’s president, Dan T. Cathy, to post a video on the company’s Facebook fan page to “communicate from the heart that we serve and value all people and treat everyone with honor, dignity and respect,” said a company spokesman, Don Perry.

*****

Among some customers who are not religious, the outcry seems like overkill.

“I’m not a fan of Jesus at all, but I still go to Chick-fil-A maybe once a week,” said Tony Parker, 25, of San Antonio. “Your reason for not going to a fast-food place is bad customer service and poor food quality, not religion.”

But Douglas Quint, a concert bassoonist who operates The Big Gay Ice Cream Truck in New York during the summer, said he believed that people should make informed decisions about their food.

“It literally leaves a bad taste because I know the people who are putting this food in my mouth actively loathe me,” he said. “I’m all for freedom of religion, it’s just that I know where I want my money to go and I don’t want my money to go.”

Of course, there is no evidence that Chick-fil-A "actively loathes" gay people, and last time I checked its employees don't go around force-feeding Chick-n-Strips to homosexuals.

What's the problem here, again?

h/t: Mitrebox. Cross-posted at JWF.

VIDEO: Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) Reports From Afghanistan

This has been out for a few days now but shouldn't be missed.

Obligatory snark: Let's hope a certain someone is taking notes.

h/t: Amanda Carpenter. Cross-posted at JWF.

Krugman Confesses: "I Don't Know Anything"

Three weeks ago, you may recall that Paul Krugman did a spectacular belly-flop into an empty swimming pool when he linked the shooting in Tucson to Sarah Palin's whackadoodle - nay, dangerous! - right-wing rhetoric, without a shred of evidence.

Today, he is uncharacteristically reluctant to even dip his toes in the water by commenting on a situation he says he knows nothing about: Egypt.

Translation: He's still trying to figure out how to implicate Palin in all this.

I don’t know anything, have no expertise, haven’t even ever looked at the economic situation. Hence, no posting. If there comes a point when I have something to say, I will.

Via Mediaite. Cross-posted at JWF.

Olive Pit - 1, Dennis Kucinich - Nice Try

Well, it certainly didn't take long for Dennis Kucinich to fold like a cheap suit.

The saga of the dangerous olive pit-filled sandwich seems to be winding down. Rep. Dennis Kucinich, who has a long track record of getting what he wants in life -- be it a hot young vegetarian wife or money for a treacherous meal -- has settled his case against the Longworth House Office Building cafeteria, which served him a sandwich that split his tooth in half.

He announced the development in a statement detailing his dental heroism.

"Although the pain was excruciating, I shook it off and I went right back to work," he writes in the press release. He also clarifies that "this was not about aesthetics" and shares lots of cringe-inducing tidbits about the resulting infection, which went all the way to the bone, ultimately requiring the replacement of six teeth (not covered by health insurance).

Unfortunately for Kucinich, C-SPAN now maintains an extensive, searchable on-line video archive. And lo and behold, here we have footage of the shameless demagogue on April 22, 2008 - just five days after the incident. You won't see much pain, suffering, or "loss of enjoyment" here - just 90 seconds of buffoonish Big Oil-bashing.

No wonder he settled.

Cross-posted at JWF.

Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) Discusses Balanced Budget Amendment with Mark Levin

Unlike that perennial Democrat favorite 'PAYGO' - a budget "constraint" that basically just means we pay as politicians go on bacchanalian spending binges - the balanced budget amendment that Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) and Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) are proposing actually has teeth.

Of course, even a balanced budget amendment won't prevent every halfwit who manages to win a seat in Congress from trying to spend money that hasn't even been minted yet - but it should stop enough of them to put America back on a path to fiscal solvency.

Cross-posted at JWF.

Rep. Danny Davis (D-IL) Already Forgets His Republican 'State of the Union' Seatmate

Sounds like some real bipartisan bonding took place last night at Obama's "Date of the Union" address.

Via Breitbart. Cross-posted at JWF.

Jim Moran (Moron-VA) Chalks Up November's Republican Landslide to Knuckle-Dragging Southern Racists

Never mind the Gene Simmons Factor, which clearly played a role in delivering Obama the White House in 2008.

Americans are back to being racist jerks again, according to the miserable curmudgeon from Virginia, Jim Moran.

“It [the Republican successes in the 2010 elections] happened for the same reason the Civil War happened in the United States. It happened because the Southern states, the slaveholding states, didn’t want to see a president who was opposed to slavery.

“In this case, I believe, a lot of people in the United States don’t want to be governed by an African-Amerian, particularly one who is liberal, who wants to spend money and who wants to reach out to include everyone in our society….”

Actually I think Moran is unwittingly partially right. A lot of people do oppose Obama because he's a liberal spendthrift of historic proportions. However, they don't hold his skin color against him - in fact, the self-described mutt's enigmatic hue is one of his precious few political assets.

The others, of course, being his perfectly creased pants and chiseled pectorals!

Indeed, Americans apparently don't mind at all being governed by an African-American President - even when his actual policies consistently poll lower than root canals and that "nails-on-a-chalkboard" sound. If someone could please explain that one to me, I'm all ears.

The Right Scoop has the video. Cross-posted at JWF.

Obama Holds Pre-SOTU Huddle With Chris Matthews & Other Select Sycophants

Expect leg tingles and racial amnesia to dominate tonight's post-SOTU media narrative.

President Obama met with several top news personalities and pundits on Tuesday before his State of the Union Address.

Per a White House pool report, the president met with the group for lunch at the White House this afternoon.

Among the figures reported to be meeting with the president were CNN's Wolf Blitzer, Diane Sawyer and George Stephanopoulos from ABC, Brian Williams from NBC and Chris Matthews from MSNBC. It wasn't clear whether there were more attendees at the meeting.

The president has been known to meet with journalists occasionally for informal chats. The discussions are typically off the record, meaning that the content of Tuesday's discussion will likely remain unknown.

Via The Hill. Cross-posted at JWF.

Obama Head-Fakes to the Center, Jukes a Handful of Especially Slow-Witted Leftwing Miscreants Out of Their Sneakers

Did Politico even bother letting these guys in on the joke that Obama is "moving to the center"?

Apparently not.

It's all part of the MSM's grand plan though. Articles like this are key if Obama is going to keep up the ruse that he is suddenly the most altruistic, non-partisan centrist since [INSERT NAME OF SOME MEMORABLE 'CENTRIST' POLITICIAN HERE].

President Barack Obama plans to play up a bright future with congressional Republicans by channeling his 2008 campaign message of post-partisanship in his State of the Union address — but the liberal wing of his party isn’t quite seeing the light.

As the president touts spending austerity, deficit reduction and extension of the Bush-era tax cuts, some Democrats worry Obama will pivot too hard away from the party’s core principles and concede too much to the new House GOP majority that campaigned on destroying his agenda.

Now mind you, since Obama took office he has spent money hand over fist and up the wazoo, exploded the deficit beyond recognition, and vowed to campaign against the Bush-era tax cuts in 2012 - the same cuts he's allegedly "touting" now. And yet Anthony Weiner, Bernie Sanders, and Dennis Kucinich can't even tolerate lip service to such common sense notions of spending within a budget, reining in the deficit, and maintaining the status freakin' quo on income tax rates.

And they wonder why their party got slaughtered last November.

Cross-posted at JWF.