The Olive Garden stuck me with one of the worst nights I’ve ever had in my life.
I knew better. I knew this was a dirty chain restaurant that cut corners.
But I never knew what awaited me next.
After a lengthy wait, I was seated at my table.
What followed was ten excruciating minutes where we looked at our menus over and over again to determine what thirteen-cent-actual-cost meal we wanted.
Then we asked for it, along with some drinks.
My martini tasted like turpentine and we finally got our meals.
It was adequate–for three dollars. Too bad it cost $15–and $90 for everyone.
Then we were done, and after gazing at the filthy carpet and the obvious frustration of our neighboring customers, we realized one thing:
The Olive Garden is fast food with a table. They don’t like you, they don’t love you, they don’t care. They are serving you laboratory-tested meals that appeal to the worst side of our palettes.
I mean, I know the food tastes good! But… doesn’t Dominos and KFC taste good? Isn’t a Big Mac tasty? For much lower prices?
If you want that kind of food, just get a Whopper.
Ignore the Olive Garden… not only is their food cheap, their service is awful.
And, most of all, they are robbing you blind pretending their cheap ingredients are somehow premium.
Matt Kennard of Salon has written an explosive exposé of the recent ambivalence armed forces recruiters are showing towards potential soldiers that may be involved in white supremacy and the Neo-Nazi movement.
One of the biggest complaints by those on the right about the DHS Report on Rightwing Extremism was the insinuation that a soldiers returning from overseas may become targets for militant right-wing hate groups that are looking for well-trained veterans to bring experience and strength to their ranks. The right referred to this as an offense to the troops, ignoring the salient fact that Timothy McVeigh was himself exactly the kind of person this report was talking about.
The DHS report focused on soldiers that may be converted to the movement due to tough economic circumstances. Kennard’s story goes one step further, revealing that white supremacists radicalized BEFORE enlisting are finding obstacles to joining far fewer than before. The Iraq and Afghanistan wars have put far more pressure on recruiters to enlist more dubious characters into the armed forces, including those with obvious Neo-Nazi tattoos.
Previously, the military was more selective and avoiding recruiting such soldiers. Things have changed.
The openly racist nature of the fight in Iraq does much to contribute to the atmosphere, with even the highest ranking officials using derogatory terms like “hajji” and “sand nigger” without a second thought.
The combination of radicalized, well trained soldiers, hard economic times, and overt, rabid demonization of an African-American president makes the far-right atmosphere an obvious powder keg and something that needs to be addressed.
What I fail to understand is why so many of the right-wing pundits and politicians would denounce the DHS report so vociferously. Shouldn’t they also be concerned with their radical fringe? Doesn’t it give them a bad name? Why would they move so quickly to defend these potential domestic terrorists, especially when this nation has already been scarred by the Oklahoma City bombing?
The only answer is that it hits too close to home. The radical right-wing fringe is closer than we imagined to the center of the right, and any repudiation of this radicalism is potentially dangerous to anyone hoping to keep their job or make their name in even mainstream conservative circles.
It’s sad that the United States armed forces, filled with men and women that put aside differences to form the strongest fighting units in the world, have to associated with this kind of nastiness, but putting the evidence aside is too dangerous for the safety of this country.
Short post here: but I notice ESPN talking to us about how great Kobe is for being up 3-1 in the NBA Finals.
I love Kobe, and I really understand the respect he’s being given for getting eight or more assists in every Finals game, but two of those games were overtime games that Orlando could have easily won.
The difference in these games has come down to missed lay-ups and free throws, for Orlando. It could easily be 3-1 Magic. And if one or two of those shots had gone in, would the sports journalist be talking about how Kobe can’t really finish, or is having trouble taking over the game? Probably.
And this extends throughout sports: coming close doesn’t count, and it should it team sports. Coming close doesn’t have as much value in head-to-head sports like tennis, but to exalt one player’s performance in a team sport in which his team has barely scraped through is misleading.
And it is way worse in sports like football and baseball.
UPDATE: Frank Rich asks if someone on the Right will step forward to repudiate the far-rights incendiary rhetoric. I would argue that they do so very much at their own peril, as any criticism of the nutjob wing would be career suicide. First of all, it would take a harsh rebuke for it to really take hold. Second, with even Republicans not really sure who leads their party, it would probably take more than one voice to go anywhere in drowning out the demented chorus. But if there is one politician the right-wingers are truly passionate and united about, it’s Sarah Palin. She is inexorably tied to a large segment of the wingnut nation.
So there’s your answer, Frank Rich: Sarah Palin must come out against the craziness. Of course, this is going to be difficult as she is touring the nation lying about David Letterman for sympathy, in a repeat of the stupid “lipstick on a pig” scandal from the election.
Additionally, Rush Limbaugh and others on the right are calling for Fox News’ Shepard Smith to be fired for suggesting Janet Napolitano may have been correct in her DHS report warning of right-wing domestic terrorists.
I’m sure somebody has mentioned this before, but it occurs to me that a lot of the garbage that comes from the likes of Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, and Limbaugh is nothing more than a sort of gruel that they feed their listeners and viewers. First and foremost, the job of these men is to get ratings and generate money, and they don’t get ratings without telling their clientele what they want to hear.
Therefore, reacting to news such as James Von Brunn’s Holocaust Museum murder by bizarrely claiming the Buchanan/Ron Paul-esqe far-right nativist was somehow a left-winger is par for the course.
Since there is such a high bar of delusion set by the kings of the cartel, those who don’t fall into lockstep with the drivel are cast away. Being reasonable is not an option, because any who attempt a measured, thoughtful response that differs from cartel will find themselves cut off, their livelihood in ruins. In the Right-Wing Industrial Complex, reasonableness is bad for business.
This is why such obvious idiocy is so common in these circles. It’s merely a commodity designed to appeal to a hungry, fervent consumer. What Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity say doesn’t mean anything, they’re just hucksters selling their particular ware.
It’s all about the money, because as Fox News has shown, there is lot to be made off these people.
But the money-trail isn’t just about getting advertising dollars: the far-right fringe of the party is also responsible for a large percentage of contributions to campaigns, PACs, and other organizations that in turn use those dollars to affect change in Washington and around the country. In order to get this money, supposedly mainstream Republican politicians have to buy into the venomous rhetoric to maintain power and get elected.
A fringe group of greedy nuts making up hateful things is bad enough, but the kow-towing that goes on to wealthy far-right donors by Republicans ends up becoming America’s problem. They don’t give their money up without concessions. The fact that Republicans are forced to apologize for criticizing Rush Limbaugh is all the evidence we need to see that honest criticism on the right-wing FROM the right-wing is suicidal.
David Letterman’s jokes about Sarah and Bristol Palin aren’t far different from what a lot of comedians have been doing. When you parade your pregnant daughter and former fiancee around and then send her out on an abstinence tour, she is fair game. What is different is the misleading, slanderous reaction by Palin, her husband, and her subordinates.
“Any ‘jokes’ about raping my 14-year-old are despicable. Alaskans know it and I believe the rest of the world knows it, too.”
- Todd Palin
“Concerning Letterman’s comments about my young daughter (and I doubt he’d ever dare make such comments about anyone else’s daughter): ‘Laughter incited by sexually-perverted comments made by a 62-year-old male celebrity aimed at a 14-year-old girl is not only disgusting, but it reminds us some Hollywood/NY entertainers have a long way to go in understanding what the rest of America understands – that acceptance of inappropriate sexual comments about an underage girl, who could be anyone’s daughter, contributes to the atrociously high rate of sexual exploitation of minors by older men who use and abuse others.’”
- Governor Sarah Palin
To suggest David Letterman was making jokes about rape and pedophilia–that is the real outrage here. He has been on television for nearly 30 years and has never even come close to making a joke on that level. It is simply misleading, dishonest, and opportunistic to paint him in that light. It is perhaps the worst thing that can be said about a man.
To top it off, Palin spokeswoman Meg Stapleton said this morning, “The Palins have no intention of providing a ratings boost for David Letterman by appearing on his show. Plus, it would be wise to keep Willow away from David Letterman.”
The suggestion that Letterman is some kind of danger to Willow Palin is so scurrilous it defies all explanation.
First of all, Willow Palin wasn’t even dragged into this until somebody from Palin’s side decided to throw her name out there. You think Willow would have ever heard her name mentioned had the Palin’s not decided to float this phony, opportunistic idea that Letterman was talking about her? This would have blown over. They are the ones responsible for putting her out there. They could have had a little bit of sympathy and gotten on with it. But instead they’ve decided to milk the outrage for all it’s worth, thus amplifying any potential damage that would supposedly have been done to Willow and Bristol.
It’s obvious Palin doesn’t really care about the joke: she cares about generating outrage and publicity.
The Palins owe Letterman an apology. He should fight like hell against this witchhunt. I doubt he really can, but I wish he would.
UPDATE: Palin’s lunacy continues, droning on about it all day on TV. Here is the right-wing take from Michelle Malkin, ignoring the fact that a) the jokes were funny as hell and b) every woman I know laughs harder at these jokes than the men. Palin represents the kind of beauty-queen feminism of pervy Conservatives that have elevated the likes of Coulter, Ingraham, and Malkin as their female public faces, while they lob their Chelsea Clinton, Janet Reno and Janet Napolitano jokes without a second thought. I guess it’s okay to make fun of less attractive women who are merely competent.
UPDATE 2: Will the right demand Rush Limbaugh issue a retro-apology for his treatment of Chelsea Clinton who, unlike Bristol Palin, was NOT thrust into the public eye? Limbaugh referred to Chelsea, who was 13 at the time, as the “White House dog.” This is far worse than what Letterman did, but no GOP outrage. Only when dear Sarah is involved to Republicans give half a rat’s ass about feminism.
UPDATE 3: Unfortunately, Letterman has issued a full-throated apology, even taking responsibility for the Palin’s laughably false interpretation of it. Best to get it out of the why, I guess, but I’m still disappointed she got away with this preening crap. Oh well.
UPDATE 4: A commenter below laments the “hate” she sees from left-wingers like me. I’ll admit I get a little bit rude sometimes, but nothing compared to some of the venom at the “Fire Dave” rally. Here’s a nice clip. Feel the right-wing love.
UPDATE 5: If Letterman must be fired, then so should Conan O’Brien. Here is a joke Conan made during the campaign:
Saturday night, Sarah Palin is going to drop the first puck at the Philadelphia Flyers’ hockey game. Then Palin will spend the rest of the game trying to keep the hockey players out of her daughter’s penalty box.
Well, Bristol wasn’t even at this game. It was Willow and 7-year-old Piper, who Palin took out onto the ice. Was Conan knowingly joking about hockey players gang-raping a 7-year-old girl? By Palin’s logic, he was.
So should Conan be fired? Leno made this joke:
Gov. Palin announced over the weekend that her 17-year-old unmarried daughter is five months pregnant. And you thought John Edwards was in trouble before! Now he has really done it.
News today of a robbery in Pittsburgh where a a person described as a “6′ 4″ dark-skinned African-American male” allegedly robbed a young, white woman at an ATM and carved a “B” on her face when he found out she supported McCain.
This horrific individual act is now being played up by the Drudge Report and the right wing media as somehow emblematic of the supporters of Barack Obama. The only thing it will do is incite racial division and open up the flood gates for those who harbor racist sentiments to let it all out.
This is beyond dangerous. This is all that the Republicans have left: one isolated incident of black-on-white crime as a reason white people should somehow fear a black president.
The awful man who did this should be punished by the full extent of the law, and I hope the poor woman makes a recovery. But if the right wing media plays this up as somehow a reason not to vote for Obama, they are making a grave and dangerous error.
Using this for political gain would make the Willie Horton ads of 1988 seem downright fair and would demonstrate just how low the Republican party is willing to go to win this election.
That said, if indeed this happened the way the young woman described (presumably we will be getting videotape from the bank as it is heavily secured), this man should be put in prison for a very long time. This is beyond disgusting.
UPDATE:The Politico and a host of right-wing blogs have picked this up. Ezra Klein has a good take on it. Apparently, the victim is named Ashley Todd, and she has a Twitter feed that is somewhat interesting: before she was attacked, she Tweeted that she was looking for a Bank of America ATM to “avoid ATM fees” and then Tweeted that she was “Pretty sure I’m on the wrong side of Pittsburgh.” Right now, there’s no reason not to believe her but this does seem a strangely clairvoyant to Tweet about going to an ATM on the wrong side of town and then getting attacked. Well, it’s a shame what has happened to her and it’s good to hear she’s phonebanking for McCain at the moment, it must mean she’s going to be okay.
UPDATE 2:Here is Todd’s Flickr photostream (UPDATE: this may just be lifeinthefield.com’s photostream, it’s hard to tell if Todd took any of the photos). She is certainly a very hardcore McCain supporter. She’s been to tons of rallies and even dressed up like Obama as a baby being carried by Hillary Clinton. (UPDATE: This appears to be someone else, I got this off the same page as her Twitter stream and assumed it was her’s. Apologize for the error.)
UPDATE 3:Michelle Malkin doesn’t think it’s real, and points out that the reversed “B” suggests it was done in the mirror. A cop Malkin knows doesn’t think it’s real either. I have to admit, Malkin, as nutty as she can be, has done a hell of a job with this post.
UPDATE 4: Almost nobody seems to believe this is real at this point. Here is Ashley Todd’s MySpace page, with the line, “Lying is the most fun a girl can have without taking her cloths off, but its better if you do.” Oh boy…
Increasingly, the real story here is the original take I had on it: Matt Drudge is willing us put out any kind of salacious story, regardless of the facts, in order to blow up this campaign. FoxNews has a small blurb up about it, and I don’t know of Klannity picked it up or not.
I don’t believe the point of this story is whether or not it’s true. I shudder to think of what is going to happen to this young girl if she faked it. She will be ridiculed for life.
The real story here was how quick Matt Drudge was to take an unsubstantiated story with deep, DEEP racial implications and go red-font front-page with it, using words like “mutilated.” This follows a pattern Drudge has been following in recent weeks, putting a picture of Obama kissing a white woman and letting a group display an ad showing Obama with Mohamed Atta.
I wonder if what the mainstream media types that still put Drudge as their homepage are finally going to start having second thoughts? Washington Post’s Chris Cillizza still rates him highly. Is it over yet?
Even Drudge himself had a schizophrenic relationship with this story, starting out as a front page red-font story, then moving to the upper left with a story about Bloomberg, then back to the front with the photo of Todd, and then back to the upper left with a story about how al Qaeda isn’t planning an October surprise.
As of now, 7:04PM Pacific, the story is still up with a photo of Todd in the upper left. He wants to put it front-and-center, but knows now it’s probably bogus, but doesn’t want to look ridiculous by taking it down altogether.
He already looks dumb. On the same page, he trumpets the “most accurate pollster from 2004″ with a poll showing the race close, even though the poll has 18-24 year olds voting for John McCain by a 74% to 22% margin. Admittedly, if everybody in this demographic votes like that, McCain will probably only be barely losing.
Drudge even took the time to display a Nickelodeon online kids poll where McCain was barely losing last week. Is he drinking? Has he become a caricature of himself?
He has certainly jumped the shark. No doubt about that.
Police planned to administer a polygraph test to Ashley Todd, 20, because her statements about the attack conflict with evidence from the Citizens Bank ATM where she claims the incident occurred, police said.
Already with the polygraph? A lot of conservatives are going to be looking silly. But I still feel bad for the girl. This is what happens when supporters get stoked into a paranoid frenzy. I’m sure, if indeed she faked this, it was because she really believes Obama is dangerous.
UPDATE 6: 1:30AM, Pacific. Still up on Drudge. Here’s what he’s got in the upper left:
Hasn’t changed in hours. Malkin, oddly, is a sea of sanity on her own site, which has many commenters suggesting that Todd is a closet Obama supporter who inflicted this injury on herself to make Obama look bad and then make McCain look bad because she faked it. Get out your white tennis shoes and your tin foil, folks: the wingnuts are in top form.
Ms. Todd told police during at least five hours of questioning last night that her attacker said to her, “You are going to be a Barack supporter.” She told police the man then sat on her chest, pinning both her hands down with his knees and used what she believed was a dull knife with a roughly 5-inch blade to carve the B. [emphasis added]
If he sat on her chest, why would he carve the backward B? I though maybe he somehow got her from above her head, but this just makes the “carved it in the mirror” scenario all the more plausible.
UPDATE 8:It’s officially a hoax. Drudge cops to it with front page “She Made It Up.” Let’s see how long that lasts up there.
But let’s remember, still: this is a 20-year-old girl who, if it’s true or not, is not going to be in a very good place for awhile. Hopefully, Obama supporters won’t go crazy on her if it turns out she staged it. Best to blame the messengers who put the nutty, paranoid thoughts in her head.
As if this race hasn’t gotten scummy enough, a new ad courtesy of the scum merchants from the National Republican Trust.
It sucks even showing the ad, but anybody with a quarter of a brain knows what these clowns are doing.
But Matt Drudge is showing these ads on the Drudge Report. Shouldn’t all of the beltway insiders that have his page set as their homepage on the their Internet browsers know that Drudge is making his money off of these ridiculous scum merchants?
We know Drudge drives an anti-Obama narrative, but this is beyond the pale.
But I almost feel like the joke is on me: perhaps Drudge wants people to get worked up about it, talk about it, bring it out, because then the ad gets publicity. This ad won’t likely change any minds of people that already support McCain: they are not going to all of the sudden abandon him because they are appalled by some dirty ad.
It may not play well in the media, that is for sure, but they have pretty much repudiated all of these attacks anyway.
The hope is that this ad will get attention, will receive the due consternation, and plant a kernel of doubt in at least a few people’s minds that somehow Obama is dangerous for the country.
The ad itself is ridiculous and is part of a complex issue for states and cities with high populations of illegal immigrants: we are obviously not going to deport them all tomorrow, so isn’t it best to at least get them partially under the purview of the law when it comes to driving?
Okay, there is no real evidence that Sean Hannity is in the KKK…
But wait, an early shot of the new Hannity and Colmes from Fox News ad has filtered to the surface!
Sean Hannity and Alan Colmes have never looked better, Klannity himself fully dressed in the Ku Klux Klan garb that we always suspected him of having…
While Sean Hannity’s hate-filled rants make the blood of his half-wit hate-squad boil, we must realize that only now is the time to ridicule the man before his recklessness makes it too distasteful to do so.
He is truly dangerous, and we’ve already seen how ugly his supporters have gotten. Let’s just hope and pray it doesn’t get any worse and they realize how dangerous and unAmerican their actions are.
First of all, ACORN? Give me a break. Classic GOP bull: claim non-existent voter fraud (only ACORN is getting ripped off by the phony registrations), then do it yourselves, and continue to survive because the Republican party only exists because of low voter turnout amongst the poor.
You’ve jumped the shark. Now, in the most hilarious day of the campaign yet, the far-right nuts reap the whirlwind as the lunatic rabble step forward and announce their bizarre prejudices to McCain’s face, and he has to admonish them, and gets booed for it.
You did all did this! Hannity! Limbaugh! Fox! You went too far, and now the dittoheads are an abject humilation that McCain has to _apologize_ for, only to get BOOED BY HIS OWN SUPPORTERS FOR SUGGESTING OBAMA IS NOT AN ARAB TERRORIST! This is what you get!
To put the cherry on top of this shit-sundae, Palin turns out to be crooked. I guess violating ethics is mavericky and un-Washington. Your empty vessel (or is it tabula rasa?) is a joke and her approval ratings are lower than OJ Simpson’s. Now you’re sending her to West Virginia because you can’t even lock up a state where people actually admit to being racist.
What McCain/Palin is offering their supporters is anger, fear, and paranoia, while Obama makes people actually feel positive about themselves and their country, after eight long years. He’s the Democratic Reagan.
Don’t be so scared, you’ll all be fine. Take a deep breath! You don’t want to win this election anyways, or else the Republican party might cease to exist in eight years.
Perhaps I’m crazy, but I want to at least give one of these bad boys a try. I went on Digg tonight and most diggers are railing on the doughnut hamburger.
But, like the description says, it’s not unlike the McGriddle. The McGriddle, of course, is what the Greek gods would have eaten if they ran out of ambrosia. Why is it that we don’t get bent out of shape when the sausage touches the maple syrup? It’s because sweet + salty + fat = thank you homey.
I would like to hear some real eyewitness accounts of the doughnut burger so we don’t have to rely on haters for our opinion of this divine looking piece of foodcraft.
If anybody has one of these authentic beauties, please let me know. I will send you a self addressed stamped envelope. I suppose I could go to Dunkin Donuts, then hit Jack and the Box. But fuck that shit.
All I have to say is this: don’t hate the playa, hate the game.
The Olive Garden stuck me with one of the worst nights I’ve ever had in my life.
Matt Kennard of Salon has 
UPDATE: 
