News Roundup for 7/20/09

I blame that "rock and also roll music" young people listen to

-Headline of the day-
"Teen pregnancy and disease rates rose sharply during Bush years, agency finds."

My headline would've been "Jesus sucks at preventing STDs, pregnancy."

According to the Guardian, "In a report that will surprise few of Bush's critics on the issue, the Centres for Disease Control says years of falling rates of teenage pregnancies and sexually transmitted disease infections under previous administrations were reversed or stalled in the Bush years." The report tells us that while teen STDs and pregnancies "had been in decline since 1991," they're "up sharply in more than half of American states since 2005."

Which half of the states are the worst off? The Bible Belt, of course.

"The CDC says that southern states, where there is often the greatest emphasis on abstinence and religion, tend to have the highest rates of teenage pregnancy and STDs," we're told. Turns out that what I always say is right -- at least, in terms of teen sex -- the only difference between praying and doing nothing is intent.

Still, the abstinence-only types aren't admitting defeat... Well, they are, actually. They're just saying that it's not Bush's fault. It's your fault, you pervert, with your buttshaking on the TV and your Britney Spears and your Desperate Houswives and your porno on the internets and stuff.

"It is ridiculous to say that a programme we nominally invest in has failed when it fails to overcome the most sexualised culture in world history. Education that emphasises abstinence as the best option for teens makes up a minuscule part of overall sex education in the United States," says Kristi Hamrick, a spokeswoman for some ineffective organization called American Values. "In every other area of public policy -- food, drugs, alcohol -- we tell children what is the best choice. It seems very bizarre that the sex education establishment rejects the idea that we should talk to kids about what is best for them. We don't take vodka to drivers education because children will drink and drive."

No, we just advertise vodka on that same TV machine you're blaming for all the sex, Kristi. Just to clear things up -- because you seem to be confused on this point -- watching some pop-model shake her ass on TV in our "most sexualised culture in world history" doesn't actually count as having sex. Just like watching a vodka commercial doesn't actually get you hammered. And, while we're at it, let's not pretend that the United States wasn't super-interested in sex before George W. Bush showed up, OK? Because that's just a wee bit insane.

Your argument sucks as bad as your sex ed policy. They both have a few bugs in them. Why don't you guys take a few decades to work out the kinks in your brilliant policy and then get back to us. Until then, we'll go back to the hellish, un-Christian nightmare that was actually working. (Guardian)


-Grassley+Twitter=fun!-
"Obama speech on healthCareReform Absolutely nothing new Waste of time saying we are going to get that done Baucus and I know that But doRITE"
-Sen. Chuck Grassley's latest stream-of-consciousness Twitter poem.

So what do you think, is that the result of vodka or whiskey? (Wonkette)


-Maybe we should consider a pre-emptive strike-
When religious extremists promises violence, I guess what makes them a "terrorist" is the language they speak. If it's Arabic or Farsi, then y'got yerself a terr'ist. If the religious whacko's speaking English, you've got a patriot.

At least, that seems to be the case with extremist anti-abortion activist Randall Terry. Terry warns that if national health care includes money to "fund the murder of babies by abortion... - either explicitly or implicitly -- there could be horrific consequences."

How horrific? Like the '60s. Or the civil war which, in Randy's mind, seems to be pretty much the same thing. "If they attempt to fund abortion, it is tantamount to the government putting a gun to taxpayers' heads to force them to pay for the brutal murder of an innocent child," he said in a statement. "There are many of us who will not comply."

A couple of points here: 1., no one's talking about doing that, so simmer down you psychopath. 2., every time this issue of paying for abortion comes up, the same question pops into my head -- what the hell makes you so special? We've been paying to kill innocent post-born people for years and I don't remember you making a big stink about that. Apparently, that killing -- i.e., the non-hypothetical kind -- you're cool with. Millions of Americans are already paying for real killing they don't support, so excuse me if I'm not duly impressed with your juvenile shitfit over a program to fund abortion that doesn't actually exist.

Not that we have anything to worry about with Terry's "civil war." He announces that he'll be holding a joint press conference tomorrow with the following household names:


Randall Terry, Founder. Operation Rescue
Missy Smith, President, W.A.K.E.U.P.
Ruby Nicdao, Chairman, Life Guard,
Dick Retta, President, Our Mother for Life
A Catholic Priest
A leader from the "tea party movement."
And more...


So it'll be Randall Terry, No One, Nobody, Who Knows, a random priest, a nutjob with an "OBAMA=HITLER" sign, plus the Professor and Mary Ann.

Wow, how completely unimpressive. Maybe if they could round it out with a powerhouse intellect like Joe the Freakin' Plumber... (Christian Newswire, via Right Wing Watch)

Navigating Conservative Thinking

It must be difficult to be rightwinger. It seems to me that it would require a tremendous amount of mental effort to be able to navigate the logical U-turns it would take to keep on that side of the road. What was true yesterday, what you actually defended as a core principle of your political thought, is no longer true the next day. In fact, it may be that the next day, the exact opposite is true. How they manage this cognitive gear-grinding without blowing some sort of gasket is a mystery to me. I don't understand how you can operate in the world without some sort of constant. You'd think the constantly shifting realities that wingnuts expose themselves to would be hopelessly disorienting. Yet there they are, every day, believing today's truth and forgetting that they ever believed anything else.

Case in point; two somewhat similar legal situations in which two radically different military personnel have made a similar choice. I give you the cases of Lt. Ehren Watada and Maj. Stefan Frederick Cook, both of the Army. In both cases, these soldiers refused to deploy, citing illegal orders. That's pretty much the entirety of the similarity.

In June of 2006, Watada refused orders to deploy to Iraq. Believing -- rightly -- that the war was illegal, Watada argued that he had the responsibility as an officer to refuse to be a party to a war crime. Watada faced a court martial, the government lost the case on what was basically a technicality, and the Justice Department, under Obama, dropped the charges against him in May of 2009. In the end, Watada's case was disappointing for observers, with the anti-war side never having tested the war's legality in court and the pro-war side never having gotten Watada behind bars.

And, boy, did they ever want him behind bars. For the right wing blog Moonbattery, Watada was a "sniveling deserter." For Michelle Malkin, he was a "coward" and the "moonbat left's new hero."

"This is more than just one man refusing to deploy," the conservative blog Wizbang opined. "It’s a coordinated effort by the anti-war left to undermine our troops, our war effort, and President Bush, and Lt. Watada is its pawn."

Looking at these opinions of Watada, you'd believe the right thinks that anyone refusing to deploy in a war was just playing politics to keep their cowardly self out of danger. And you'd be wrong, because that's yesterday's truth. Today's truth is something entirely different and Lt. Watada never existed.

See, it's here that the case of Maj. Stefan Frederick Cook comes in. Of course, in Cook's case, the reasons for his refusal to deploy are absurd. I guess that's what makes it so appealing to the right.

"Maj. Stefan Frederick Cook filed... suit July 8 in federal court here asking for conscientious objector status and a preliminary injunction based upon his belief that President Barack Obama is not a natural-born citizen of the United States and is therefore ineligible to serve as president of the United States and commander-in-chief of the U.S. Armed Forces," reported the Columbus Ledger-Enquirer Friday.

That's right, he's one of those.

So, where Watada's case was based in reality, Cook's case is based in wingnut fantasy. Simple logic rules out the "birthers" claim -- that Barack Obama is a Kenyan posing as a Hawaiian to win the presidency of the United States. You'd kind of think that the INS, the IRS, the Secret Service, or the State of Hawaii would've noticed that this guy running for president wasn't born here. Seems that's the hurdle any foreign-born president would stumble over. There's a reason why you never hear the phrases "high-profile" and "illegal alien" used together.

But if there's one thing about a conspiracy theory, it's that you'll never convince the theorists that they're wrong. It becomes a belief with as much strength in their mind as religion and, like religion, it doesn't require a whole lot of logical framework to stand in their minds. You've got as much chance of changing a conspiracy theorist's mind -- no matter how much contrary evidence you present -- as you do of getting a creationist to accept evolution. Anyone who disbelieves in the conspiracy is wrong, end of story. You simply cannot change their mind and it's a waste of time to try. The best thing you can do is drop a coin in their cup, compliment them on their tinfoil hat, and keep walking down the street.

And Cook's special brand of conspiracy/religion is becoming a problem for the Republican party.


[David Weigel, Washington Independent:]

Six months into Obama’s presidency, after scores of embarrassing legal defeats, and even after tussles between the attorneys who’ve turned frivolous lawsuits about the president’s citizenship into full-time jobs, the cottage industry of conspiracy theories about the president’s birth shows no signs of disappearing. The theories have found a home in talk radio and on conservative web sites such as Free Republic and WorldNetDaily. Conspiracy theorists are increasingly sending letters to their local papers, embarrassing members of Congress at town hall meetings, and hounding Hill staffers about challenges to the president’s citizenship.


Imagine people who believe the moon landings were shot on a Hollywood set taking their cases to court and you get an idea of how these suits invariably turn out. The Republican establishment would love to see these nuts just go away. "Crazy" isn't the perfect word for these people, but it's the closest. They aren't actually mentally ill, they're just committed to being wrong. The conspiracy theory is an article of faith. So it doesn't make any difference how many cases they lose, they're going to stay just as wrong until the day they die.

Cook's reason for refusing to deploy isn't as sound as Watada's, but I think that if I were stationed in Afghanistan, I wouldn't want him there. He's obviously a gullible ass of questionable intelligence, so having my life in his hands wouldn't be all that comforting a prospect. Unless, of course, you're a rightwinger -- then Cook's a hero.

I'm not going to read his mind and pretend I know he's a coward. I doubt he is, anyway. I'll just take him at his word and assume that Maj. Stefan Frederick Cook is an idiot. He's not going to Afghanistan, because the Army pulled his orders. I guess it's not worth the effort it would take to court martial him -- as they did, under a previous administration, with Ehren Watada. I'm not sure I agree with that, but I'm not sure I disagree. It's an unsatisfying situation, but there really isn't any way to win here. The birthers won't stop -- ever -- because their lunatic belief system won't allow it.

And all those people who thought Watada was a coward are either silent on Cook or cheering him on. One refusal was the worst thing ever, while the next is the best. There is no consistency on the right, no governing principle, other than that liberals are always as wrong as it's possible to be. That's what it means to be reactionary.

-Wisco


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News Roundup for 7/17/09

A whole lot crazier than you'll ever be

-Headline of the day-
"VA GOP delegate candidate may 'resort to the bullet box.'"

Talk about sore losers... Catherine Crabill, the GOP nominee for Delegate in Virginia's 99th District, is threatening armed revolution if she doesn't win election. Or something like that, anyway. With wingnuts, who even knows what they really mean?

"We have the chance to fight this battle at the ballot box before we have to resort to the bullet box... That's the beauty of our 2nd Amendment rights," she says. "Our 2nd Amendment right was to guard against tyranny." So, if I understand this argument, the founding fathers set up a system of democratic elections, then wanted any group of armed yahoos to be able overturn those elections if they didn't go their way. It seems to me that this would make that whole "elections" part a superfluous step. I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that probably wasn't what they had in mind and that Catherine Crabill's a little goofy in the head.

Not that Cathy's known for being sane. Her first brush with notoriety came when she blamed the US government for the Oklahoma City bombing while living in New Mexico.

So how much do we have to fear from gun-totin' Cathy Crabill? Not as much as you think. "I am not a gun owner but I did participate with the Women on Target group in White Stone last year and intend to do so again," she writes on her website. "If I ever feel competent with a fire arm I will not be ashamed to obtain one." Because, you know, people who own guns are known to be ashamed of them. If she ever feels competent at anything, I'm guessing her confidence will be misplaced.

But here's a crazy idea; if you're going to threaten armed revolution, it might help to actually have a gun and it might be a good idea to know what to do with it. It's kind of a requirement in this whole viva la revolucion thing.

So, voters of Virginia's 99th District, go ahead and vote for whoever you want. If she loses, the worst you have to worry about is Crabill sitting in a clocktower with a deer rifle, yelling, "OK, I got the chamber open... Now what?"

Seriously, if she's as dumb as she seems to be, she'll never figure it out. (Raw Story)


-What?!?-
"I don’t know if you’ve seen the movie Bruno, but there’s a scene there where Sacha Baron Cohen invites Paula Abdul to be interviewed on chairs made out of Mexicans. And that’s exactly what the Obama or the congressional plan does."
-Dr. Robert Goldberg of the Center for Medicine in the Public Interest, to FOX News' Megyn Kelly.

That's right, the Democrats' plan for health care reform is to make Paula Abdul sit on Mexicans. It's gotta be true, it was on FOX News. (Think Progress, with video)


-Just a reminder-
Pat Buchanan is a horribly racist fuckwit. (Huffington Post)


-I'm not sure Christianity is compatible with family values-
At least, not this brand of Christianity. According to the report, "A Capitol Hill townhouse that serves as a dormitory and meeting place for a band of conservative Christian lawmakers has been linked to a third episode of marital infidelity, this time in a Mississippi court filing by a former lawmaker's estranged wife."

Rep. Charles W. Pickering Jr. joins John Ensign and Marc Sanford on the list of frequent residents of a C Street brownstone who've gotten into sex scandals. Turns out that Pickering's wife "alleges that he carried on an extramarital affair with a onetime college sweetheart while he lived at a house at 133 C Street in Southeast Washington." She's filing an "alienation of affection" lawsuit.

What's the deal with the brownstone? It's run by a spooky DC Christian group known as "the family," who seem not to really worry much about that whole Christian lifestyle thing. According to the report, "The extremely tight-knit and secretive group is described by those with knowledge of its practices as a prayer group in which members seek to discuss personal issues and 'hold each other accountable.'"

They suck at that last part.

Look guys, if you're going to live like this while you're in DC, why don't you just go ahead and start a frat house? Seriously, you can bring in beer and strippers and no one would bat an eye. And you wouldn't have to sit through all those prayer breakfasts hungover in sunglasses. Man, does that ever suck, huh? The last thing you want to see is a big stack of pancakes.

And, while you're taking suggestions, why don't you guys shut the hell up about how moral you all are. Really, it just makes you look like dicks when it all falls apart. If everyone knew your were chugging Lowenbrau out of a poledancer's stainless steel wonderbra every night, no one would be all like "Ooh, that's shocking!" when one of you guys got caught with your pants around your ankles. It's not the sex that makes it a scandal, it's the hypocrisy.

Seriously, drop that whole religious stick-in-the-mud crap and embrace your inner decadent Roman senator. Hell, have a toga party. It'll pay off in the long run. (CQ Politics)

Institutionalized Ignorance

The less you know, the easier it is to be a Republican. Intellectual powerhouses are not welcome in today's GOP, where their perception of the average, everyday American is Joe the Plumber or Sarah Palin. The right values ignorance, because the facts so often are contrary to their ideas. Take a spin through the right wing blogosphere and you'll see very little actual reporting; you'll see links in opinion pieces that lead to other opinion pieces, you'll see comments written by people who are ignorant as all hell -- and damned proud of it. Right wing talk radio is dominated by mindreaders who tell you what liberals believe, while being 100% wrong.

The Republican party is the party of two constituencies now -- the wealthy and the dumb. Anyone who thinks that the CEO of MegaCorp wastes his time listening to Glenn Beck or reading Michelle Malkin is a fool. The guys in the boardrooms need news, not ignorant blather. They read newspapers. All the right wing media nonsense exists for the chumps. The only way to get the average person to vote Republican is to turn them into an idiot who'll believe anything.

This hasn't been working so well lately, as Americans reject Republican ideas left and right. As things get more desperate for the Grand Old Party, the electorate is stubbornly refusing to get stupider. Luckily, Republicans have a remedy for this lack of idiocy among the populace -- they want to institutionalize ignorance.

As is always the case, the proving ground for this new strategy is in the depths of RedState-istan --this time, in Texas. Texas children are leaving school too well-informed and something is being done about it.


[Wall Street Journal:]

The fight over school curriculum in Texas, recently focused on biology, has entered a new arena, with a brewing debate over how much faith belongs in American history classrooms.

The Texas Board of Education, which recently approved new science standards that made room for creationist critiques of evolution, is revising the state's social studies curriculum. In early recommendations from outside experts appointed by the board, a divide has opened over how central religious theology should be to the teaching of history.

Three reviewers, appointed by social conservatives, have recommended revamping the K-12 curriculum to emphasize the roles of the Bible, the Christian faith and the civic virtue of religion in the study of American history. Two of them want to remove or de-emphasize references to several historical figures who have become liberal icons, such as César Chávez and Thurgood Marshall.


"We're in an all-out moral and spiritual civil war for the soul of America, and the record of American history is right at the heart of it," says Rev. Peter Marshall, a Massachusetts minister shipped into Texas to become an education "expert" for the state. Marshall will join another right wing nutjob, David Barton, in recommending retooling the state's education system to teach BS.

"Never mind that Marshall and Barton are absurdly unqualified to be considered experts by any objective standards," reports the Texas Freedom Network. "Barton, who founded an organization that opposes separation of church and state, has a bachelor’s degree in religious education. Marshall also has no advanced degree in the social sciences. In truth, their 'expertise' is in promoting political agendas, not social studies education."

In fact, Barton is a professional BS artist, making his living rewriting American history to favor conservative views. In Barton's world, the founders wanted a bona fide theocracy. Barton says he's on a mission from God to uncover "America's forgotten history and heroes, with an emphasis on the moral, religious, and constitutional foundation on which America was built." Despite his lack of scholarship in the area, Barton says he's an "expert" on the "original intent of our Founding Fathers in the areas of faith and family."

According to People for the American Way, "Whereas people like James Dobson and Pat Robertson are well-known right-wing figures, Barton operates mostly under the national media’s radar, speaking to small groups of activists all over the country and churning out an array of resources that provide the pseudo-historical foundation for much of the right-wing agenda on everything from reigning in 'judicial activism' and impeaching judges to defending the phrase 'under God' in the Pledge of Allegiance and decrying homosexuals in the military."

With Barton and Marshall at the helm, Texas schools would erase inconvenient facts from history, replacing them with an emphasis on how Christian everybody was. They "say they believe that children must learn that America's founding principles are biblical," reports WSJ. "For instance, they say the separation of powers set forth in the Constitution stems from a scriptural understanding of man's fall and inherent sinfulness, or 'radical depravity,' which means he can be governed only by an intricate system of checks and balances.

"The curriculum, they say, should clearly present Christianity as an overall force for good -- and a key reason for American exceptionalism, the notion that the country stands above and apart."

To give you an idea of how based in reality these ideas are, consider that Marshall "preaches that Watergate, the Vietnam War and Hurricane Katrina were God's judgments on the nation's sexual immorality," Yes, he's that crazy and that ignorant -- and conservatives believe that's exactly what a good American school kid should be. Kids should leave school uncritical enough to believe anything.

It's not guaranteed that this new curriculum will go through. The reviewers were chosen by board members and half the board seems insufficiently crazy. WSJ reports that "three reviewers appointed by the moderate and liberal board members are all professors of history or education at Texas universities" -- i.e. actual experts, not pretend experts like Barton and Marshall.

But we all know that the professional BS artist's expertise isn't in informing, but deceiving. It may turn out that their arguments, though boneheaded, turn out to be more persuasive. People with an agenda have a strategy and people without one don't think they need a strategy. If they can make gains in denying global warming and evolution, they can make gains in denying history. They don't have to actually prove anything, they just need to cast doubt. "Someone has to stand up to the experts!" said former Board Chairman Don McLeroy of evolution education. Now someone has to stand up to the experts on history, because -- godammit! -- those kids are going to believe what they want them to believe. Truth be damned.

So this is the future of the GOP... At least, if they continue on their present course. Public education debates won't be about school funding or redistricting, they'll be about just how smart we're going to allow our children to be. If they're too smart to fall for Republican talking points, then they're just too smart period. And the wealthy CEO of MegaCorp? What does he care? His kids go to private school and his workers don't need to know history -- especially labor history, like the life and work of César Chávez. People like that need to be airbrushed out of the text books, like a former soviet leader who's fallen out of favor with the party.

In the end, this ought to tell you all you need to know about today's Republican party -- the truth is their enemy and the electorate is hampered by being too well-informed. When your arguments require that everyone be an idiot, how good can those arguments actually be? When you have to go back and change reality to fit your worldview, wouldn't that suggest that there might be a tiny little problem with that view?

Give them a generation and no one will ask questions like that, because they won't ask questions at all.

-Wisco


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News Roundup for 7/16/09

Government-run health care, according to the GOP

-Headline of the day-
"Right-Wing Escalates Fear-Mongering Rhetoric: Warns Americans Will Die If Health Care Reform Passes."

That's right, if President Obama's commie health care goes through, doctors will be given licenses to hunt you. Or something like that.

In an interview with the Washington Times, Sen. Tom Coburn was asked if government-run health care would "end up killing more people than it saves?"

"Absolutely," he answered. Others have been more specific, offering a statistic that seems to have passed the rigorous fact-checking it takes to pull something straight out of your ass.

"One in five people have to die because [their country] went to socialized medicine!" says Texican Rep. Louie Gohmert. "I would hate to think that among five women, one of 'em is gonna die because we go to socialized care." One in five patients die in nations with government-run health plans? Wow, you'd think people with commie medicine might be a little freaked out about that -- you know, riots in the streets, that sort of thing. But they seem pretty happy.

Fools! Can't they see they're dying?

"They're going to save money by rationing care, getting you in a long line," says crazier-than-Michele-Bachmann Rep. Steve King. "Places like Canada, United Kingdom, and Europe. People die when they're in line." Sure, you have to wait for care here too, but not in lines! We've got waiting rooms. It's the lines that'll get ya.

So, if Democrats have their way, you will die. Guaranteed. In fact, nations with commie health care have a 100% mortality rate; every child born in a state with commie health care dies eventually. Sure, on average it's about 70 or 80 years after they're born, but still... Every. Single. One.

Won't someone think of the children? (Think Progress, with video)


-Cartoon time with Mark Fiore-
Key kids, want the secrets on how to make a gazillion dollars? Just heed the message from...


Click for animation

Can't make up your mind whether to laugh or cry? Join the club. (MarkFiore.com)


-[Obvious] Quote of the day-
"Joe the Plumber -- you can quote me -- is a dumbass. He should stick to plumbing."
-Meghan McCain, daughter of Sen. John McCain (who used Samuel "Joe the Plumber" Wurzelhoopy as a campaign prop).

Meghan's not saying anything that most people don't already know, but she said we could quote her, so I did. (Political Wire)