Feed: One Utah - AggScore: 72.9

The Christian Sausage Fest and the Conservative Reality

This is fast becoming the story that will define the conservative movement in my mind until I die. It may or may not matter to anyone else, but it crystalizes a lot of things to me. So I thought I would share it. ‘Cause I know you are all awaiting my thoughts with baited breath. Or not.

The House Oversight Committee held a panel. And you knew this would be good, because the committee is chaired by Darrell Issa. This is a guy who lied about his military career, has a couple of police cases about auto-theft in his history, and likes to carry concealed weapons. He also has more money than god and votes about as straight party line as you could ask for, including voting against the Employment Nondiscrimination Act. He also likes to staff his teams with people from the industry they are supposed to regulate. Try to act shocked. He is also against helping first responders. He has faced ethics complaints that he uses his office for financial gain.

…so basically, he is a republican.

Today he held a panel about women’s access to birth control. Did he do this to take into consideration the fact that most Americans disagree with his position on the matter? Did he convene the panel to study the effects it would have on women’s health? Was it because he needed the input of women, since after all this is a health issue specifically about women?

I will let you judge, based on the photo of the witnesses.

Now when this first came out the complaint was that only men are at the witness table. I know that we are such an enlightened society, and we are so beyond sexism, that we can easily find at least one woman to be able to talk about how birth control might be a health issue (he said sarcastically) but they were all busy.

Issa responded that this was about religious concerns about the matter, and so it is appropriate that these men are the witnesses. Forget for a moment that that he couldn’t find a single female religious representative. (Like say the women who run the Catholic Health Association) Forget even that he couldn’t just find a female incase we wanted to hear other sides to the issue. He couldn’t even find other religious representatives. He found four christians and a Jew. Muslims? Buddhists? Atheists?

Nope, couldn’t find any of them either.

Instead 5 men spent the panel talking about how birth control is a violation to their conscience. As if the bill being discussed forced them to take the pill rather than seeing to it that religions have to act like real employers when they provide insurance.

But the fun doesn’t stop there. Other members of the panel tried to get a female added to the witness group. Issa stated that she had no expertise to speak to the panel. Except she was chosen because her personal experience with cancer and birth control made her a valid witness. So we don’t need her information, because after all she is just a girl, what could she know. Unlike the witnesses, who when asked if any of them had any health care background or experience answered no.

But wait, there is more.

On twitter today Issa compared his actions to (wait for it) Martin Luther King Jr.

Seriously.

Because King dreamed of a time when the daughters of former slaves and the daughters of former slave owners would come together… and be denied birth control. In fact I believe he wrote that. I believe it was right before he wrote that the government should appropriate “large sums of money” to educate people about birth control, and just after he joined a Planned Parenthood committee and described a “kinship between our movement and Sanger’s efforts.” I am unsure about the timing of the Margaret Sanger Award he won.

Which really, as I said, crystalizes the modern conservative movement for me. Policy has nothing to do with facts. Or the opinion of voters. Or actual morality rather than mindless dogma pretending to be moral code. Or the affected minority. It is just done to add fire to the burning of culture that has occurred during the culture wars they created to grab power. They don’t consider science, or reality. They have no respect for minorities, and ignore logic. The only thing we should consider seems to be their magic invisible stuff. The magic and unseen hand of the market. The magic and invisible trickle down that their tax cut policies (don’t) generate. The magic sky man who says that birth control is totally evil.

This isn’t a different policy perspective. This isn’t the loyal opposition testing ideas for the common good against the other party. This isn’t the give and take of rational discourse.

What this is, has been since Reagan, and shows no sign of changing from, is sheer unadulterated insanity. This is why you can’t hold a rational discussion about the economy, birth control, or climate change, or… anything. This is an entire party that is so divorced from reality that they can claim that a movie about a children’s book about nature is a violation of the establishment clause, (I shit you not, look it up) but having special christian education time in schools or healthcare dictated by churches is just fine thanks. These are people who can’t see how the climate is changing despite actual data, but who think bananas fitting into your hand mean the world was created in 6 days. They are, as a friend of mine likes to say, f’ing nutters.

And you want to have a discussion about military spending with people like that? You want to try and talk about optimal tax rates with that? It is like discussing the finer points of Taming of the Shrew with a monkey while it throws feces at you.

…except that is somewhat insulting to the monkey.

Mame! Life’s a Banquet and Most Poor Sons-Of-Bitches are Starving to Death

I don’t share Camille Paglia’s inflated opinion of Patrick Dennis’ novel Auntie Mame (“more interesting and important than any “serious” novel after World War II”) but it remains one of my favorite novels.  Patrick Dennis created a shrewdly caustic, at times bitterly ironic and genuinely funny novel of manners; cloaked in satire and biting wit, he provided a shrewd commentary on post-World War Two American values and manners.  Where “serious” writers of the era embraced a self-conscious high seriousness, Dennis delivered a witty, urbane novel marked by an almost insane attention to detail; brand names, fashions, designers, and cultural touchstones fill Dennis’ pages.

Published in 1955, Auntie Mame spent 112 weeks on the best seller list.  It was made into a stage play and then a movie (both starring Rosalind Russell).  In the 60s, it was adapted into a musical (starring Angela Lansbury and Bea Arthur on Broadway), then a movie version of the musical (starring Lucille Ball).  The play and movie were successful and popular; the musical is a staple of American theatre.  Lucille Ball’s film version of the musical has been widely panned (Ball, in her early 60s, was considered too long in the tooth to play Mame and she couldn’t sing and wasn’t doing much dancing).  The sequel, Around The World With Auntie Mame, was published in 1958 and was a best seller as well (the reissued edition includes a chapter that was left out in the original in which Auntie Mame goes to mother Russia and lives in a collective, working a farm and so on; at the height of the 50s red scare the humor would have been lost on too man people).

The basic outline of the story is well known – eccentric Auntie Mame takes in her orphaned nephew Patrick and raises him, introducing him to all sorts of eccentric, creative and colorful people and involving both characters in a series of wild and crazy shenanigans.

Dennis’ novel is episodic, using a framing device.  The book opens with the narrator reading a well known magazine in which a famous author recalls the Most Unforgettable Character he knew.  This unforgettable character is usually a spinster woman who takes in an orphan child and goes to battle on the child’s behalf.  Mame and Patrick’s story follows the sequence of events in that bathetic tale – the spinster must do battle with the school board, must find a way to support herself financially and so on, but with a comic twist.  Mame’s outsized personality and eccentricities turn the normal events of Miss Unforgettable’s life on their head.  Unlike her archetype, Mame fails as often as she succeeds, she demonstrates incredible bad judgment, self centeredness and as often as not is unreliable.

Dennis’ narrator is the most intriguing aspect of the novel; clearly in love with Mame and keenly aware of her shortcomings and faults.  He doesn’t try to apologize for her or cover up her failings, he knows she’s frivolous, self-involved, even silly; he describes her frivolities and indulgences with a wry, sardonic insight.  In one passage, as for example, he describes her bemoaning her poverty and wondering how she’ll pay his bills (which are paid by his trust fund); he comments that of course she knew none of her complaints were real and she could live quite comfortably on her annuity if she made a few economies.  Unwilling to make those economies, Mame tackles the Temple of Mammon.

Divided into eleven chapters, each details an episode in Patrick and Mame’s life. 

In chapter seven, Patrick recounts his college years, charting a course as neither one a campus intellectual or a college denizen forever sporting school colors.  Patrick cultivates a sophisticated persona, playing the right records, dressing suavely, drinking the right booze.  Finding himself involved with a widly unsuitable woman at a major college event, Patrick spends the entire weekend dodging  Mame who found herself in the midst of a roman with one of Patrick’s peers.  The whole episode crashes down when the two of them escape campus promising to never speak of the weekend again.

Chapter Eight  Auntie Mame and My Punctured Romance tells the story of Patrick’s engagement to Gloria Upson.  Several of the movie’s famous lines (beastly babbity bourgeouis snobs on the eastern seaboard) appear in this chapter.  Interestingly, the character of Gloria is far more palatable in the book than on screen where Joanna Barnes plays Gloria as a shallow, pretentious girl who speaks in perfect Northeastern lockjaw.  In the book, Gloria is simply a manipulative, spoiled, pretty young woman; in the movies, she’s a bigoted socialite.  Her parents, booming voiced Claude and simpering Doris, are textbook versions of old style WASP snobbery, affluent with a keen eye on the neighbors to make sure they were keeping up but never stepping out of line.  In the book, Claude’s virulent anti-semitism alienates Mame and Patrick, ending the engagement.

While the play/film/musical tended toward the sentimental, the novel it resolutely unsentimental.  Beau’s death in stage and film version is tragically romantic.  In the book, he drops dead so quickly you can hear his body thump to the floor – ” . . . the day of their housewarming – just thirteen months after they were married-Uncle Beau met a poetic end.  He was kicked in the head by a horse in Central Park.  In an hour he was dead.”  And that’s pretty much the end of Beau.  Mame’s insane grief lasts about a paragraph and she’s ready for a New Outlet which is writing.   In another departure from, the play/film/musical treat Agnes Gooch as something of a frump; in the novel she’s a lot more interesting and says “Hotcha” several times then elopes with an Irish poet, who knocks her up and dumps her.  Mame’s novel Buffalo Gal is never published. 

My favorite chapter in the book – some of Dennis’ most unapologetically vicious writing – is chapter ten, Auntie Mame’s Golden Summer.  The chapter – left out of the other versions – is a lengthy and bitterly funny chapter telling Mame’s efforst to Marry Patrick off.  In the chapter, Mame tricks Patrick into meeting three truly awful sisters (Margot, Melissa and Miranda Maddox) with artistic pretensions and enough snobbery to kill off a charge moose at a 100 yards.  In a series of painful misadventures, Patrick follows Mame to Maddox Island, where the locals deplore him because he’s there with the Maddoxes.  He meets Pegeen, “a statuesque redhead with a figure that made your temperature rise and a manner that made it fall.  Talk about a cool article, that girl was a glacier.”  Pegeen and Patrick have what is today a textbook romance – the very model of Moonlighting or a dozen forgettable sitcoms.  They fight, they feud and they’re clearly meant for each other.  After an abortive engagement to one of the Maddox sisters (whose awfulness defies description beyond rapacious, conceited, gold diggers), Patrick escapes, leaving Mame to her own devices to escape the horrors of the Maddox sisters.  He runs into Pegeen and the chapter ends with the two of the in each other’s arms watching Maddox island retreat in the distance.  The story ends with Mame absconding with Patrick and Pegeen’s son. 

I mentioned before the lack of sentiment in Dennis’ novel.  That lack of sentiment is central to the book’s success.  Rather than crying over spilled milk, the characters repeatedly shrug and move on.  Mame’s charms often prove enough to get her out of trouble and when they don’t, her money buys her way out of trouble.  Patrick and Mame share a deep bond – they love one another effortlessly and even though they fight, their fights are short and superficial – never about anything that matters like fashion or music.  They are stalwart allies, standing slightly outside the world watching it with an amused glance and ready witticism, followed by a good stiff drink.  The sequel, Around the World with Auntie Mame, is just what it sounds like – Patrick’s around the world adventure with Auntie Mame involving Soviet Russia, fascist Italy, gun runners and an unfortunate relative of Uncle Beau’s. 

Patrick Dennis (it was a nom de plume) would go on to write a host of other novels.  Perhaps my favorite of those novels is Little Me : The Intimate Memoirs of that Great Star of Stage, Screen and Television, Belle Poitrine (as told to Patrick Dennis).  Filled with staged and modified photos by Cris Alexander, the book tells the story of Belle Poitrine, a talentless, clueless, self-absorbed gold digger from her birth to her sixtieth year.  Again and again, Belle puts her best foot forward while revealing the truth (her mother was a prostitute and a thief, for instance but Belle describes her as an entertainer and business woman).  Belle marries an English aristocrat gets divorced and chased out of England, then manages to trick a move mogul in marrying her, after her death she marries her costar, Letch Feeley, who proceeds to sleep around and run off with a younger woman.  Beginning with her birth in 1900, the book tells the story of Belle’s life through WW1 WW2, through the fifties and a failed TV show; the final chapter is entitled Frankly Forty even though she’s simply sixty.  It’s a weird little book, a cultural artifact of an era that is both very much like our own and a foreign country all at the same time.  The cover photo alone is worth the price of the book – a gaudy, frowzy woman with too much cleavage and too much makeup holding a martini (slattern may be too harsh a word for Belle but it’s hard to miss the implication).

Patrick Dennis’ novels are at once filled to overflowing with a pre-Stonewall gay sensibility, a sly wink and a nod to convention while delightedly smashing it to bits.  Dennis’ style embodies ironic vision – seeing the world two ways at once.  Dennis’ loves outsized personalities but sees their hollowness as well; they have to be big to fill a room but their bigness betrays a personal emptiness, a decentered person using artifice and theatre to compensate for their lack of self-awareness.  He also looks into the conventional world and at once wants to be welcomed there and to mock it for its pretension and superficiality.  The ironic vision of a gay man in the conformist post-war era, Dennis’ novels of manners are a bit dated today, though no less fascinating for it.  The Upsons with their social climbing ways and careful mimicry of good taste aren’t that far from the denizens of today’s preplanned McMansion suburbia with their SUVs and designer dictated color schemes – almost an imitation of style rather than the real thing. 

Too old to be part of the Stonewall generation, Patrick Dennis spent his final years as a butler to wealthy families; during the 1970s his novels largely fell from favor and it’s only been in the last few years new editions have appeared.  Yet, the underlying message of his greatest creation, Auntie Mame, remains true – life is a banquet and most poor suckers are starving to death.  Interestingly, the phrase never appears in the novel.  In the novel, Auntie Mame is a shrewd woman, fashionable, wealthy, charming and in love with the world; she might think life is a banquet, but she’d never be so tasteless as to say so.

Why is it so hard to talk about the “isms”?

Last week, while attending the Art of Hosting, one of the Open Space sessions was “Why is it so hard to talk about the isms?” (racism, sexism, heterosexism, classism, faithism, and so on).

I had a moment of extreme frustration when the conversation fell into the liberal cliche of “we just need to love each other.”  I go back to Adam Kahane’s explanation in his book Power and Love in which he describes love without power as sentimental and anemic; in a word, it is degenerate.  By contrast, low with power is abusive, tyrannical, and degenerate.  To use the model Kahane adopts, love is the drive towards unity and power the drive towards self realization. 

We address and try to redress and undo the various isms for the simple reason that they become institutionalized and result in the loss of individual’s ability to self realize.  If racism keeps a person from getting an education or a job, then it directly negatively affects that person’s ability to self realize.  Love in its degenerate forms tells us we need to simply “love one another” or “practice tolerance” but doesn’t do anything to empower persons to achieve their goals in life.  Doing away with racism or sexism as an attitude is only valuable if we match such actions with correcting institutional dysfunctions which limit the ability of women or persons of color to realize their goals and meet their needs.  To pick a timely issue, denying same sex couples the right to marry with both its legal protections and responsibilities denies those couples the rights to realize the fullness of their relationships and damages the persons involved. 

When we talk about sexism, racism, heterosexism or any of the other systemic forms of discrimination we run into roadblocks.  Those roadblocks are sometimes obvious (i.e. blatant bigotry and discrimination) but it can also take more subtle forms such as claims that attempts to assist targeted groups amounts discrimination (i.e. claims that affirmative action programs constitute an attack on the rights of the majority).  A favorite tactic is claiming that a certain statement was a joke and that the problem is that women/black people/gays whatever have no sense of humor. 

What’s going on here?  Why are the isms so hard to talk about?  Part of it, of course, is that attitudes and statements and actions that not so long ago were socially acceptable are no longer acceptable.  No one wants to be accused of saying or doing something bigoted or discriminatory; certainly no one wants to be identified as a bigot.  So the pretense of a joke happens – the problem isn’t what they said, it’s how people heard it.  Although this tactic is nothing more than a dodge to avoid taking responsibility, it also allows the aggrieved party (i.e. the person being accused of having said something raicst or sexist) to avoid examining what they said and why it’s offensive.  At the same time, some people genuinely don’t know that a certain term might be loaded with history (I heard a story of a group facilitator using the term flip chart and being told that flip is a derogatory term for Filipinos; the faciliator plotzed but managed to pull herself together, apologized and switched to easel pad/easel paper).

In the past, I’ve discussed what is sometimes called colorblind racism and quoted a post of Paul Rosenberg’s at the now defunct Open Left:

The point is, individualism and isolated incidents are defining elements of how colorblind racism construes the world. If you cut the world up that way, then it’s very hard to see much evidence of racism, because we tend to think of “evidence of racism” in terms of the KKK, or separate drinking fountains–that is, in terms of the now-vanished racist elements of a previous era. In much the same way, a new racism took shape after the Civil War that didn’t involve slavery, and so there were many who simply assumed that racism had been done away with, and any problems that blacks encountered were problems of their own making… or their innate inferiority. Nothing racist in that, right?

But if you cut the world up a different way, in terms of institutions, and statistical analyses of patterns of how people are treated, then a very different picture emerges. Then you see that racism still persists and has very pervasive impacts. Then you see colorblind racism in the world, rather than seeing the world through colorblind racist glasses.

The mental world of colorblind racism discounts the importance of race and focuses very tightly on issues of individualism and treats outbreaks of open racism as isolated incidents, while discounting or dismissing the systemic and institutional nature and long term effects of racism. 

But even people who get the idea of systemic and/or institutional discrimination have a difficult time discussing the isms?  So what’s going on?

Tea Bagger express pulling out

Shorter Orrin Hatch: please let me be a factually challenged tea bagger!

“Look, we all know that Planned Parenthood does 400,000 abortions a year or more, and yet that’s supported by the federal government. They claim that money isn’t, uh, they don’t use federal funds, well, about 95 percent of all they do, from what I understand, is abortion.”

Facts: your words have no relation to them.

The Mormon Church Still Can’t Figure How to Not Conduct Proxy Baptisms of Victims of the Holocaust

Seriously? The Mormon church can’t freaking figure out how to NOT do this?

How many times is the Mormon church going to apologize for this practice but not change it?  At some point, their apologies simply lack credibility.

I can’t understand how correcting this constant oversight is so difficult.  Whether or not you believe the Mormon church’s baptism for the dead is a meaningful ritual or not, it shouldn’t be difficult to suss out why this practice offends many people, especially Jewish families who lost relatives in the Holocaust.  The sick paradox is that the people performing the rite mean well; I seriously doubt there’s any malice intended.  But that doesn’t make it any less offensive.

Mormon leaders should figure out a solution and soon.

S.B. 63 Would Give Utah’s Electoral Votes to Winner of National Popular Vote

Senator Howard Stephenson (R-Draper) has introduced S.B. 63, which proposes that Utah join with a coalition of other states totaling 270 electoral votes in order to allocate them as a block to the presidential candidate who wins the popular vote. This coalition, called the National Popular Vote, would effectively change the way we elect a President when the electors meet after Election Day in December at the state capitols (constitutionally, that’s when it’s decided). In fact, if this system had been in place in the 2000 election, Utah would have been helped make Al Gore the President — despite the fact a majority of Utahns voted for George W. Bush.

The National Popular Vote law has been enacted by states possessing 132 electoral votes — 49% of the 270 electoral votes needed to activate it.

In an e-mail to constituents, Rep. Greg Hughes supported S.B. 63, saying:

The electoral system does create some unintended side effects. Since the number of electors varies greatly by state (Utah has 6, Florida 29, California 55) consistently red or blue states are accepted as such, and taken for granted in a presidential race. For example, no Republican candidate spends much time in California, and no Democrat candidate spends much time in Utah. As a matter of fact, no candidate spends much time in a state that has historically leaned strongly to either party, instead dedicating most of their time to the eleven or so swing states which could go either way and deliver large numbers of electoral votes. As a consequence, smaller states get ignored –along with states whose majority can be easily predicted. That’s two strikes against a state like Utah.

If the focus were on individual votes (which a mechanism like S.B. 63 would provide) instead of ten swing states, “fly-over land” would suddenly become infinitely more valuable.

S.B. 63 raises an interesting constitutional question.

How can a coalition of states do this without a constitutional amendment that would allow for direct election of the President? States have the right to set the rules governing electors, who are free to vote for anyone eligible to be President. Utah’s electors are not bound to follow the majority popular vote. However, electors traditionally vote for the winning candidate in their state. The few who have broken this unwritten rule are referred to as “faithless electors”.

Given the difficulty of amending the Constitution, it makes sense to try to reform the electoral system on the state level. The National Popular Vote coalition would ensure that that every vote in every state will matter in every presidential election. OTOH you can say the new system would be as undemocratic as the present system, and an election such as the 2000 election would still be highly controversial, except in a different way.

Under the proposed new system, presidential candidates would likely concentrate their campaign efforts in the most populous states instead of the swing states. Utah would not be totally ignored any longer (and would keep its disproportionate 6 electoral votes), but the two major party candidates still might not come here.

Utah Democrats and progressives could go to the polls in the knowledge that their votes might make a difference. At the same time, third-party candidates might lose votes. Voters could worry that voting third-party might hurt the chances of one of the major-party candidates.

Is S.B. 63 a good idea? Any thoughts?

Rape, all the Feminists fault

When you are too sexist for Faux News…

From the February 12 edition of Faux News, discussing rules for women in combat:

ERIC SHAWN (co-anchor): So this is now causing a controversy?

LIZ TROTTA (Fox News contributor): Well, it’s a controversy that won’t be a controversy because of political correctness. But we have women once more, the feminist, going, wanting to be warriors and victims at the same time. So what is the news?

I don’t know, why don’t you tell us? You are on the “news” after all. Inform us all about the feminists and their desire to be victims!

The news is that the Pentagon is going to add 14,000 more jobs for women in the military, but the overall ban against serving in the infantry, in special operations units, and combat tank units, is still in place. Well, you may ask, why did 140 women die in Afghanistan and Iraq if this ban was in place?

Actually I would ask why anyone died in Iraq or Afghanistan, mostly because aside from giving W’s oil friends something to buy into, the wars did not one damn useful thing. But that is just me. Where were you? Carry on.

Well the whole way we wage war has changed enormously. No front lines, no clear delineation of where troops are. Women can be attached to battalions, but they can’t actually be in battalions. That would get down to the real guts of how we fight wars — and that is being a member of the infantry.

So these women who where not in battalions are dead because we have no front lines. Got it.

Imagine how fun that is for the civilians. How many have we killed over there now? Do we care? Is anyone counting that? No? Nothing?

But while all of this is going on, just a few weeks ago, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta commented on a new Pentagon report on sexual abuse in the military. I think they have actually discovered there is a difference between men and women.

Yep, no men in the military suffer sexual abuse. Like the reported 50,000 male vets who screened positive for “male sexual trauma.” But do go on.

And the sexual abuse report says that there has been, since 2006, a 64% increase in violent sexual assaults. Now, what did they expect? These people are in close contact, the whole airing of this issue has never been done by Congress, it’s strictly been a question of pressure from the feminist.

…where by “feminist” I guess she means “those stupid bitches who want to be able to serve their country.”

And the feminists have also directed them, really, to spend a lot of money. They have sexual counselors all over the place, victims’ advocates, sexual response coordinators.

Wasted money, all of it. After all, isn’t that what women are for? To be victims? What do they need advocates for?

Let me just read something to you from McClatchy Newspapers about how much this position on extreme feminism

Not just feminism, extreme feminism. It will be in the X games next year. You will need a helmet, but no bra! Harr de har har!

is costing us. “The budget for the Defense Department’s Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Office leapt from $5 million in fiscal 2005 to more than $23 million in fiscal 2010. Total Defense Department spending on sexual assault prevention and related efforts now exceeds $113 million annually.” That’s from McClatchy Newspapers.

And really, couldn’t that money be better spent? We could be using that to kill some brown people maybe. Or even just mailing it straight to Halliburton. Why use it to prevent rape? They where just asking for it anyway. How tight was her uniform, lemme ask you that. Was she coming on to him? Leading him on? I thought so.

So, you have this whole bureaucracy upon bureaucracy being built up with all kinds of levels of people to support women in the military who are now being raped too much.

Which is a very good point. After all, if they had been raped “just enough” there wouldn’t be any issues here. It is when the rape schedules get in the way of performing your duties that we should start worrying. You need to let them know their place, but raping them more than that is just a waste of time.

SHAWN: Well, many would say that they need to be protected, and there are these sexual programs, abuse programs, are necessary –

Yes, many would. Many commie feminist pinko man haters would. Are you one of those Eric?

TROTTA: That’s funny, I thought the mission of the Army, and the Navy, and four services was to defend and protect us, not the people who were fighting the war.

Got that Eric? They are protecting us! We don’t need to give a shit about them. They are there to be raped and die. That is why we didn’t need to have armor for them in Iraq. It was likely feminist commie pinkos that wanted them to have gear back then too.

SHAWN: Well, you certainly want the people fighting the war to be protected from anything that could be illegal.

TROTTA: Oh, look, I mean, that’s — nice try Eric. This whole question of women in the military has not been aired properly, and it’s the great sleeping giant.

Nice try! No we need to air this question out properly. After that we can sweep these raped men and women under the carpet where they belong.

Walks like a duck, talks like a duck, looks like a duck…

…..it must be a fish.

After all, it can’t be bigotry, ’cause they keep telling us how they aren’t!

The Conservative Political Action Conference, going on right now, will not include pro-equality Republican group GOProud, which was ousted after fury from religious right groups involved in the conference. But it did include white supremacists.

I bet the GOP candidates spring from the woodwork to decry this injustice!

…any second now.

…seriously.

…just waiting for the right moment.

*crickets*

How long can the loony right maintain that they aren’t racists bigotted homophobic hate mongering jerks? Forever it seems. The shear amount of intellectual acrobatics would tire me out, but it actually seems to energize the right. How else can you refuse a group like GOProud but invite white supremacists to speak for you? You would have to want to argue about it!

Look, they held a panel about “how diversity is weakening American identity” with a man who runs a white nationalist web site. They may as well get out their hoods and start burning crosses…

The guy is urging republicans to stop courting minority voters and focus on the white vote. So basically the current GOP southern strategy, but in all 50 states. I mean listen to the guy.

Brimelow (the vdare head and panalist) has also stated that NYC subways are like Immigration and Naturalization Service waiting rooms, “and underworld not just teeming, but almost entirely colored.”

How dare you suggest that people who would invite him to speak might be bigots! How. Dare. You!

His website, VDARE, which I will

link to, also posts writings by people such as Robert Weissberg, a charming guy who blames Americas educational system woes on black and Hispanic students. (Where have i heard that before?) But that isn’t all! In fact reading their list of authors at VDARE is like reading a whose who among racists jerks.

It is great site. If you like gay bashing, immigrant bashing, jew bashing, and general loathing of all people not white and male. Yes, they even throw in some good old fashioned sexism.

Great people. Speaking at CPAC. But not to GOProud, because thay are too poorly behaved to be allowed in.

…I guess you have to do something to make Ron Paul feel at home. And yes, they are HUGE Paul supports at VDARE. But I still don’t recommend reading it. Just this once I really will argue that you should just take my word for it. Trust me, you don’t want to read that sewage.

Rick Santorum Calls For Regulating the Internet and Believes Freedom Should be Limited

GOP Presidential candidate Rick Santorum has a freedom problem. He says there is too much freedom on the Internet and it should be regulated. He was the only candidate that did not take a strong stand against SOPA and PIPA and called for regulating the Internet and said freedom should be limited. He called those that want limited government “radical individualism”. Rick Santorum is no conservative. Don’t be fooled by this authoritarian masquerading as a conservative.

“They have this idea that people should be left alone, be able to do whatever they want to do, government should keep our taxes down and keep our regulations low, that we shouldn’t get involved in the bedroom, we shouldn’t get involved in cultural issues.

That is not how traditional conservatives view the world. There is no such society that I’m aware of, where we’ve had radical individualism and that it succeeds as a culture.”

- Rick Santorum

See also Rick Santorum is tired of you people wanting the government to leave you alone on Hot Air.

Freedom is limited and Internet should be regulated

Santorum defends SOPA

CPAC Day One: ‘We Outnumber The Stupid People’

TPM’s Day In 100 Seconds: CPAC Day One

Utah Senator Mike Lee served up the Tea Party rhetoric (unsweetened). The National Debt is a “pit of despair,” he said, neglecting to mention that President George W. Bush doubled it in 8 years. Senator Lee held out the prospect of a Balanced Budget Amendment: “Get Washington to put down the federal shovel… The shining city on a hill should replace the city in a hole. Walk away from hole-digging hell.” Never mind the fact that economic recovery (which is necessary every time GOP ideology causes an epic recession or depression) requires deficit spending.

More: Herman Cain: Stupid people and ignorant people are ruining America’ (says the guy who proudly proclaimed he didn’t know the “President Of Ubeki-beki-beki-stan-stan” and couldn’t explain why our attack on Libya was a mistake because “I gotta go back to — got all this stuff twirling around in my head.”)

In today’s session, Newt Gingrich is slated to give more details about his plan to make the Moon our 51st state.