This happened…
And this:
A Mighty Prankster Is Our God (Afternoon Open Thread)Post + Comments (104)
by Betty Cracker| 104 Comments
This post is in: Open Threads, Politics, Republican Stupidity, Assholes
by Betty Cracker| 181 Comments
This post is in: Domestic Politics, Media, Politics, Republican Stupidity, Assholes
Much as Tom Friedman gleans man-on-the-street wisdom from the cabbies who ferry him to and fro, I sallied forth from the Cracker Cloister yesterday to mingle with the common folk, securing priceless insights that I will share directly. Unlike Friedman, I didn’t board a G6 and fly to Aspen to pick up a $75,000 speaking fee.
Rather, I played hooky along with my teenage daughter to visit a couple of theme parks, including a park that has a section devoted to a fictional young sorcerer. The fiction-based city to which we traveled for this purpose should be renamed “Or-LINE-do” since visitors spend the majority of their day languishing in queues. There were lines to access the $15 parking lot. Lines to pay an outrageous sum to visit the parks. Lines to have our bags searched. Lines to hear a sales pitch before paying $29.95 for a plastic replica of a wizard’s wand.
There were even lines for lunch seating at The Three Broomsticks tavern and the privilege of paying $40.00 for a bagged salad that reeked of chlorine, a dollop of runny mac ‘n cheese accompanied by a sad cluster of grapes and souvenir tankards of “Butterbeer” (which turns out to be cream soda topped with an oilier incarnation of Cool Whip). Anyhoo, it was at The Three Broomsticks that I obtained “cabbie wisdom” by briefly eavesdropping on the conversation of a pair of 20-something women at the adjacent table.
As they consumed THEIR $20 bagged salads, the young women’s discussion turned to the upcoming Republican debate. They admitted to one another that they hardly pay attention to politics at all and hadn’t watched the previous debates, but both expressed interest in seeing that evening’s tussle. Why? Because they were alarmed about what they’d heard regarding the Republicans’ wholesale assault on women’s rights and birth control.
So what did the young women see if they tuned in last night? This and this and this and this, etc.
Thanks to the monsoon that greeted us as we exited our final ride of the evening and the extraordinarily long line in the parking garage that resulted when everyone fled the parks at the same moment, we didn’t get home in time to see the entire debate, though we did catch the tail end of it and the silly Republican gasbags analyzing it on CNN. There was the one with the Friedman-like mustache, sans “understanding.” There was Eponymous Eponymouson of RedState — whose vertical cranial dimensions have expanded alarmingly or else I need to adjust my TV settings. And there was that sallow scold who used to collect a paycheck for lying to the press on behalf of the Bush administration.
If I recall correctly, this trio — to a man — acknowledged that all this talk of separating sluts from their contraceptives might redound to the discredit of the party in the short-term. But all expressed hope that the empty-headed trollops would be consumed with more pressing issues come election time, like the cost of the fuel they expend as they drive their Camrys from one irresponsible sexual tryst to the next.
One of the women on the panel threw cold water on that hope, saying that women “don’t forget” and pointing out that the GOP already had a gender gap problem before its presidential slate decided to channel the town fathers in The Scarlet Letter. If my chance encounter with the formerly apolitical young women at The Three Broomsticks is any indication, she’s right.
[X-POSTED at Rumproast]Or-LINE-do: My Very Own “Cab Driver” Anecdote with Profound ImplicationsPost + Comments (181)
This post is in: Election 2012, Open Threads, Republican Stupidity, Jump! You Fuckers!
Almost certainly, positively the last of these debacles, since the Super Tuesday debate’s been cancelled. A reminder of progress to date, per Paul Constant at The Stranger:
In case you haven’t been paying attention up till now, the Republican presidential race has been a steaming turdgasm featuring sexual harassment, the joyous applauding of state-sanctioned murder, racism, xenophobia, idiocy, anti-gay bigotry, the lusty booing of uninsured people who dare to get hit by cars, and detailed discussion of how much control the government should have over the uteruses of women. Depending on who you ask, the current front-runner is either a malevolent Ken doll with a quarter-billion-dollar personal fortune, a white supremacist with a rock-hard boner for Ayn Rand who’s trying to overthrow the party using some tricky delegate math, or a gay-and-woman-hating religious demagogue who, according to internet folklore, was named after a vile, frothy mixture of lubricant and bodily fluids.
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In short, the only winner of the Republican primaries to date has been Barack Obama.
CNN livestream here, if it doesn’t crash your system.
Richard Adams’ invaluable Guardian liveblog here.
I agree with this statement from Adams:
9.04pm: So far this debate is like watching three drunks trying to start a fight and falling over.
… but I’d add the modifiers “mean, violently-inclined, stupid drunks”.
Excellent final summary from Mr. Adams, too also:
10.05pm: And that is. Thank god that’s over. A couple more hours of this and the Republican party could go the way of the Whigs. (Some of you may think that’s not a bad thing.)
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So 20 years from now we’ll find that all these Republican debates were secretly funded by the Obama campaign, code-named “Give them enough rope”.
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Here’s my one-word summary right now: beer.
(The question from John King to the candidates: What one word would you use to describe yourself? The answers: Paul, “consistent”; Santorum, “courage”; Romney, “resolute”, and Gingrich, “cheerful”.)
This post is in: Domestic Politics, Republican Stupidity, Vagina Outrage
Gov. Robert F. McDonnell is backing off his unconditional support for a bill requiring women to have an ultrasound before an abortion, focusing new attention on one of the most controversial pieces of legislation in Virginia’s General Assembly this year.
Until this weekend, McDonnell (R) and his aides had said the governor would sign the measure if it made it to his desk. McDonnell, who strongly opposes abortion, will no longer make that commitment.
But delegates and governor’s staff were scheduled to meet Tuesday night to strike a compromise after learning that some ultrasounds could be more invasive than first thought, according to two officials who were aware of the meeting but not authorized to speak about it publicly. Many of the bill’s supporters were apparently unaware of how invasive the procedure could be, one of the officials added.
Imagine that. Here are the chief sponsors of the bill in the Virginia Senate:
Jill Holtzman Vogel (chief patron)
Ralph K. Smith (chief co-patron)
Richard H. Black
Charles W. Carrico, Sr.
Charles J. Colgan
Thomas A. Garrett
Ryan T. McDougle
Jeffrey L. McWaters
Stephen D. Newman
Phillip P. Puckett
Frank M. Ruff, Jr.
William M. Stanley, Jr.
Here is the list for the House sponsors:
Kathy J. Byron (chief patron)
David B. Albo
Richard L. Anderson
Richard P. Bell
Robert B. Bell
Benjamin L. Cline
Mark L. Cole
Anne B. Crockett-Stark
L. Mark Dudenhefer
C. Matt Fariss
T. Scott Garrett
Chris T. Head
Gordon C. Helsel, Jr.
Riley E. Ingram
Joseph P. Johnson, Jr.
L. Scott Lingamfelter
Daniel W. Marshall, III
Robert G. Marshall
James P. “Jimmie” Massie, III
Rick L. Morris
Israel D. O’Quinn
Brenda L. Pogge
Charles D. Poindexter
Lacey E. Putney
Margaret B. Ransone
Nick Rush
Tony O. Wilt
Does something stand out about those lists of names to you? And again, let’s review what the bill does:
The ultrasound legislation would require women to undergo a test to determine the gestation age of the fetus, hear the heartbeat and be given an opportunity to see the images.
A woman who refuses to look at the ultrasound would have to sign a statement, which along with a print of the image would become part of her medical file.
The bill also would require women who live within 100 miles of their abortion provider to wait at least 24 hours before having the procedure, except in emergencies. Those who live farther would have to wait two hours.
Supporters of the ultrasound measure say it would provide crucial medical information to women seeking abortions; opponents say it would subject women to unnecessary tests and invade their privacy.
It is unclear whether insurance companies would cover the procedure.
Basically, you have a sausage-fest of obnoxious old men with nothing better to do than fuck with women simply because they can. That’s all this bill does. It won’t provide any additional information, it serves no medical purpose. It’s simply a way to screw with women who want to have an abortion. That’s why people who live 99 miles away have to wait 24 hours, but people who live 101 miles away only have to wait two hours. What changes in that two mile stretch? Nothing. It’s just a totally arbitrary way to fuck with women who want to control their own lives. That is all this bill does. It will save no lives, it will just make life miserable for some women who really just need to be left alone by the state. That’s all these assholes are doing.
Because Jeebus told them to.
This post is in: Election 2012, Open Threads, Republican Stupidity, Assholes, Jump! You Fuckers!
(Jeff Danziger’s website)
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When EventheNewRepublic says “Mitt Romney’s Presidential Prospects May Not Be Salvageable“, and yet in terms of scaring off swing voters “Senator Santonarola Can’t Help Himself“, what’s the GOP to do? Fortunately (for horserace political reporters and satirists in all media), Charlie Pierce at Esquire perceives hints from a certain D-list celebrity:
Princess Dumbass Of The Northwoods… favored us with a President’s Day message on YouTube that has been interpreted as her ever-coy announcement that she’s willing to accept a draft at a brokered convention in Tampa, provided it comes with a car and a driver, and a clothing allowance, and 229 days paid vacation, and that she’ll be glad to accept just as soon as they pry the Republican National Committee (and Todd) out of the Mons Venus in time to start the convention….
Bonus only-in-America points: Lap dancers rated on Yelp!
What other cheerful happenstances are on the agenda, this evening?
by Zandar| 44 Comments
This post is in: Fables Of The Reconstruction, IOKIYAR, Republican Stupidity, Vagina Outrage, I Reject Your Reality and Substitute My Own
The NY Times has a very interesting article this morning on the socioeconomics of women and child-bearing. It states that evidence (that goes along with women having children later in life now) points to women under the age of 30 who do have children are now more likely to have them outside of marriage rather than in one.
It used to be called illegitimacy. Now it is the new normal. After steadily rising for five decades, the share of children born to unmarried women has crossed a threshold: more than half of births to American women under 30 occur outside marriage.
Once largely limited to poor women and minorities, motherhood without marriage has settled deeply into middle America. The fastest growth in the last two decades has occurred among white women in their 20s who have some college education but no four-year degree, according to Child Trends, a Washington research group that analyzed government data.
Among mothers of all ages, a majority — 59 percent in 2009 — are married when they have children. But the surge of births outside marriage among younger women — nearly two-thirds of children in the United States are born to mothers under 30 — is both a symbol of the transforming family and a hint of coming generational change.
One group still largely resists the trend: college graduates, who overwhelmingly marry before having children. That is turning family structure into a new class divide, with the economic and social rewards of marriage increasingly reserved for people with the most education.
“Marriage has become a luxury good,” said Frank Furstenberg, a sociologist at the University of Pennsylvania.
Now this has some proclaiming that Charles Murray’s latest screed on the decline of White America is now “vindicated” along with conservative scolding of women in general, but it seems to me that the actual theory one can take away from this is anything but.
Having children as a single parent is tough on both the parent and the child. There’s plenty of evidence that there is a definite socioeconomic effect here. But please note that Republicans are running on removing the most obvious options societies can use in order to prevent that from becoming more widespread.
Republicans are increasingly against birth control. Republicans are increasingly against same-sex marriage. They are against adoption by same-sex couples. They are against changing laws that would give the legal and economic benefits of marriage to same-sex couples and civil unions. They are against changing deportation laws that would break up families. They are against strengthening domestic violence and abuse laws. They are against the notion that the government should ensure men and women are paid the same for the same job. Oh, and yes, Republicans aren’t real fans of abortion, either.
So you tell me, which party actually wants to do something about the income inequality that’s caused by this? All the evidence I see is that Republicans want to perpetuate this mess, if not completely reverse what progress has been made.
by Betty Cracker| 111 Comments
This post is in: Beer Blogging, Media, Politics, Republican Stupidity, Assholes, General Stupidity, Wingnut Event Horizon, WTF?
James Poulos cranked a particularly stinky nugget into Tucker Carlson’s cat box Thursday, a column entitled “What Are Women For?” that was at once so offensive, pretentious, incoherent, clueless and just plain dumb that it attracted hoots of derision from every corner of the internet. Balloon Juice commenter Clark Stooksbury summed it up pithily as follows:
I think that English is his second language, and perhaps Earth is his second planet.
Yup. Stung by the “wave of anger and condemnation” occasioned by his column, Poulos apparently decided to spend Friday afternoon masticating and swallowing an unabridged thesaurus along with a freshman introduction to philosophy textbook and wash it down with a liter of Everclear. The resulting geyser of vomit was pixelated into a dripping rebuttal to his critics that contains half-digested chunks such as this:
It’s not very controversial to point out that sex and gender are foundational to the culture wars. But it is apparently extremely controversial to claim that we can’t make sense of how and why they’re foundational without acknowledging that the root of the battle is over reaching — and enforcing — a consensus about the relationship between what women do and who women are.
And…
The same [Meh, never mind; it doesn’t really matter what is allegedly “the same”—ed.] is true for the meaning of the relationship between women as sovereign individuals and as beings with female bodies.
But its conclusion may contain a kernel of truth that the incredulous and exasperated reader espies with wonder similar to that of a janitor engaged in mopping up a binge drinker’s pool of sick upon finding a single kernel of undigested corn, whole and recognizable, in the barf on the frat lounge floor:
Difference doesn’t presume or ordain inequality. I’m not alone in thinking that women are uniquely able to help humanity avoid becoming enthralled to the more sterile cultural creations of men. But this sort of insight is far more circumspect and modest than the central principles of virtually all social conservatives. If my claim is doomed to be met with an avalanche of contempt, it seems likely that in our lifetimes social conservatism as we know it will be mocked, despised, and shamed right out of existence. You might be deeply uncomfortable with that even if you do hope to see an America without a social conservative movement.
I think he means “Après moi, le déluge” or something. But I’m not sure why I’m supposed to be “deeply uncomfortable” with the extinction of social conservativism that Poulos’ blogular rogering is supposed to portend. Say bye-bye to all-male panels of sanctimonious, god-bothering pricks deciding women’s healthcare issues? Bring it on, I say.
[X-POSTED at Rumproast]