Look! Out in the right wing echo chamber! It’s a tax cut proposal?! It’s a birth control ban?! No! It’s another appeal to conservatives to seem reasonable without changing a God damned thing!

Yes, the “let’s all speak nicely about Latinos”: argument from a fantasy land far away, come to reality hoping to obfuscate, distract, and deceive the American people.

Katrina Trinko over at National Review writes, Huntsman’s Problem Wasn’t Just That He Was Perceived as a Moderate. That title gives you the wrong impression, however. Really what’s she’s saying is that Huntsman’s policies were mostly to the right of Romney. The problem was that he just seemed too damned reasonable!

Trinko goes on to note that Huntsman didn’t run a good campaign, but this is a minor complaint. He could easily run a stellar campaign next time. After all, if he had just stayed in the race, at some point, like all the others, he would have surged ahead in the polls. And given that he actually was a real politician, he might have stayed there.

What Trinko seems to be offering is the idea that if Republicans can just hold their noses and vote for a candidate who doesn’t pander to their vile ideal, they might get a really conservative candidate who can win. This all comes down to the argument conservatives have been making since the election: it is the style rather than the substance of their policies that are scaring minority voters away. But no: it’s really is the substance.

I’m not one of those who think that the Democrats are home free now. Republicans will continue to win low-turnout elections. But for the majority of voters, their ideas are toxic. And it doesn’t matter how much they dress up these ideas. Even in a Superman cape, they just won’t fly.

Matt Yglesias has been writing a bit about about these business owners who are whining that the ACA (Obamacare) is just going to destroy their businesses. In particular, he highlighted John Metz, owner of more than 30 Denny’s restaurant franchises, he said he was going to add a 5% “Obamacare surcharge” on all customer bills. Because he’s such a charming motherfucker, he added that the customers could take the surcharge out of the server tip, because after all: they’re “the primary beneficiary of Obamacare.”

These comments didn’t sit too well with the CEO of Denny’s. John Miller had a private meeting with Metz and afterward said that he was “disappointed” in Metz. Yesterday, Metz released a statement that he regretted his remarks. There is a proximate reason for Miller’s swift action, of course: people were talking boycott and were generally pissed off at Denny’s. But I think there’s more to this. So does Yglesias.

Matt Yglesias puts it this way:

I agree with all of this, but I don’t think this is the main issue—or at least this isn’t the way that I would put it. This is all about demographics. If everyone in this country voted, Democrats could win every election by a landslide. Everyone doesn’t vote, of course, so Republicans do okay. But everyone does go out to eat from time to time. What’s more, the people who go out to Denny’s tend toward the poor. These are people who are going to be most hostile to a partisan Republican stunt like blaming part of the cost of the mean on President Obama.

Yglesias is correct, that everything that Metz said is likely to offend everyone—even Republicans. But had he said nothing and just added the surcharge, it might have tickled the 30% of his clientele who are Republican. But the 70% Democrats would find it offensive and perhaps choose another of the similar low-cost dining choices.

But I’m still planning to boycott all Denny’s in Florida just in case the money might go to this fucktard John Metz.

Do you remember Jules in Pulp Fiction, when he’s talk to Big Brain Brett? “You read the Bible, Brett? Well there’s this passage I got memorized—sort of fits this occasion. Ezekiel four nine: take wheat and barley, beans and lentils, millet and spelt; put them in a storage jar and use them to make bread for yourself. You are to eat it during the 390 days you lie on your side.” Don’t remember it? Well, that’s because he didn’t say it. He quoted Ezekiel 25:17, although most of what Jules quotes if not actually in the Bible.

Why do I bring up Ezekiel 4:9? And why would someone lie on his side for 390 days? Frankly, I have no answer to the second question—it has something to do with surviving a siege. But the answer to the first is: bread. Andrea told me she came upon some bread in the grocery store from a company called Food For Life with a product line named “Ezekiel 4:9.” That got me interested.

I figured the company must either be Jewish or right-wing born again Christian. If the former, I was okay about it. If it was the latter, I figured it was some company trying to make a point, and I was not okay about it. Does that make me anti-Christian? No. I’m just as much against literalist Judaism; it’s just that one doesn’t see such nonsense very often in modern America.

So I went over to the Food For Life website, and I found that I was probably wrong. If I had to guess, I would say that they are hippy Christians. They’re all animal, yeast, and gluten free. They specialize in foods so good for you that you could eat marble and still be able to set your watch by your bowel movements.

They also offer a product line called “Genesis 1:29.” (I’ll let you look up that one!) So these people are pretty serious about this stuff. Then again, they aren’t that serious about it: they’ve trademarked both Bible verses. And they have a dove as part of their logo. So I’m sticking with the hippy label. Of course, this doesn’t mean these are defenders of the poor. I know a number of hippy business owners and they’re are still, you know, business owners.

I won’t be buying any Food For Life products, however. It isn’t because of their religious beliefs. I once tried to be healthy by eating only sprouted wheat and all of that. It almost killed me.

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