Month: March 2012

Limbaugh’s Bullshit “Apology”

Rush Limbaugh has “apologized“:

“For over 20 years, I have illustrated the absurd with absurdity, three hours a day, five days a week. In this instance, I chose the wrong words in my analogy of the situation. I did not mean a personal attack on Ms. Fluke.

I think it is absolutely absurd that during these very serious political times, we are discussing personal sexual recreational activities before members of Congress. I personally do not agree that American citizens should pay for these social activities. What happened to personal responsibility and accountability? Where do we draw the line? If this is accepted as the norm, what will follow? Will we be debating if taxpayers should pay for new sneakers for all students that are interested in running to keep fit?In my monologue, I posited that it is not our business whatsoever to know what is going on in anyone’s bedroom nor do I think it is a topic that should reach a Presidential level.

My choice of words was not the best, and in the attempt to be humorous, I created a national stir. I sincerely apologize to Ms. Fluke for the insulting word choices.”

A few things:

1) Rush Limbaugh is sorry (not really) for his “choice of words” and “insulting word choices.” But that’s not the problem. It’s only part of the problem. Had he not called Ms. Fluke a “slut” and only called her a “woman of questionable morals and standards,” it would only have been slightly less offensive. Beyond the fact that it’s no business of Rush’s what women do with their sex lives, Ms. Fluke was not discussing her own personal sexual activities. She should never have been personally under discussion in the first place.

2) Rush Limbaugh has been an indirect supporter of Rick Santorum’s bid for the presidency, in part because of his stances on social issues. Rick Santorum is constantly addressing sexual topics at a Presidential level, and it hasn’t seemed to bother Rush that much. Rush is a liar and hypocrite.

3) The question is whether insurers will cover contraceptives, not whether taxpayers will subsidize them directly. Insurers are already required to provide Viagra, which has no purpose except to allow men to have sex. Rush has never indicated that he has a problem with this. Rush is a liar and hypocrite.

4) Having sex is a universal constant of the human condition, as natural and universal as eating and breathing. It is not a “social activity.” The question is not whether people will or will not have sex. They will. The question is whether women will be allowed to control their own destinies and have any life options beyond motherhood and subservience to their husbands. Rush knows this.

Rush wants a world in which he gets to decide who is impregnated and when, where the taxpayer funds his erection but not his partner’s freedom, and where the woman’s freedom (if allowed at all) is only purchased at the cost of her impoverishment. That’s what this is about. That’s what this has always been about.

Rush has a great deal more to apologize for than his choice of words. Even his utterly inadequate pseudo-apology is chock full of lies, distortions, hypocrisy and false contrition.

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Toxoplasmosis for Mittens

by digby

I hear the Nuge endorsed Romney yesterday. I wonder if he’ll be invited to sing with the Tabernacle choir?

I was going to blast him, but I just don’t have it in me. I’ve been following Nugent’s “political” career for some time, however, and have some good stuff in the archives. For instance:

Gosh, it seems like only yesterday that American singers could get themselves in big trouble by going to a foreign country and criticizing the President of the United States. They had their CDs burned, were subjected to death threats and blackballed from radio stations.

That was then and this is now. Here’s Ted Nugent in England this week:

“I think that Barack Hussein Obama should be put in jail. It is clear that Barack Hussein Obama is a communist. Mao Tse Tung lives and his name is Barack Hussein Obama. This country should be ashamed. I wanna throw up.”

It’s a good thing he didn’t say that he was ashamed. Them’s fighting words.

I would suggest a boycott of his CDs but I don’t think he’s come out with anything new since about 1975, so we’d have to go down to the basement and dig out the old moldy vinyl. And I’m pretty sure the only radio stations that play “Cat Scratch Fever” these days do it as a retro joke, sort of like “Muskrat Love” by The Captain and Tenille. It’s just not worth the trouble.

Here’s is your Nugent moment of zen:

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The sacred colander

by digby

I gotcher religious liberty for ya, right heeah:

In Austria one of the strangest fights for religious freedom has come to an end: Niko Alm, a self-described “Pastafarian,” fought for three years for the right to wear a pasta strainer on his head in his driver’s license photo.

His argument? Alm claimed he belonged to the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster and wearing the strainer was part of his religion.

The BBC reports:

Mr Alm’s pastafarian-style application for a driving licence was a response to the Austrian recognition of confessional headgear in official photographs.

The licence took three years to come through and, according to Mr. Alm, he was asked to submit to a medical interview to check on his mental fitness to drive but – straining credulity – his efforts have finally paid off.

It is the police who issue driving licences in Austria, and they have duly issued a laminated card showing Mr. Alm in his unorthodox item of religious headgear.

The AFP reports that Alm now wants to apply for “Pastafarianism to become an officially recognised faith in Austria.”

For real:

Here’s an interview with the Pastafarian Pastor.

Why do I have the sneaking suspicion that here in the US that the wingnuts wouldn’t have any problem ignoring the obvious illogic in not allowing this person to practice his “religious liberty.”

In fact:

Yesterday, within the span of 24 hours, the Florida House passed a bill to allow prayer in public schools and another to crack down on the supposed threat of Sharia law.

Retiring the concept of hypocrisy has its advantages, you have to admit.

h/t to jbf
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Bo the Bunny

by digby

Considering what I did to a succession of proud cats on this blog over Christmas, I can’t complain about this. In fact, it’s damned cute:

I always like the White House animals. In fact, I like them better than anyone else in the building. I was especially fond of Bush’s dogs Barney and Miz Beasley and the Fords’ golden retriever Liberty who had pups in the White House. And being a feline freak, I loved the Clintons’ Socks, and Amy Carter and Susan Ford’s siamese cats Misty Malarky and Shan.

But I have to say that Bo is, hands down, the most adorable White House pet ever. He’s amazing, beautiful. I could watch him all day long.

In fact, I think I will.

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Rush and the women who love him

by digby

So Mary Matalin defended Rush Limbaugh on CNN last night. What else is new? She always defends him. (And Carville tediously plays the foil.) She loves the guy.Here she is during the Bush years calling the show to tell Rush how much.

[Y]ou inspired me this morning. There’s no reason that I have to do that. I’m — and at least I think I do, but when I listen to you, I get all the information I need, and I — and I — it is — I have a confidence in the President, in the policies, in the goals. I have — I know his conviction. I know he’s right and I know he has the leadership to do it. What I don’t have, and what I can only get from you, is the cheerfulness of your confidence —

The right gathers around him whenever he gets into trouble. And it’s not infrequent. One of his worst moments was when he excused the Abu Ghraib torture. People were truly appalled, not to mention worried about the national security implications of this gasbag’s words being used as propaganda. There was a lot of talk about getting him taken off of Armed Forces radio for that, but of course it went nowhere.

But the most amazing defense ever came from Kate O’Beirne in National Review. You really need to read the whole thing to believe it. Here’s the essence of it:

Now comes a well-financed media campaign against Rush Limbaugh in a fruitless attempt to discredit him as a forthright apologist for the detainee abuse. Conservatives should take heart. First, the un-listenable (in every sense) Air America squanders buckets of liberal cash and now the Left is generously funding David Brock as their utterly implausible media watchdog. His first big target is Rush. The Left has always regarded the most-successful radio-talk-show host in history as a malevolent propagandist, and their acolytes in the White House press corps eagerly embraced the Brock smear and badgered Scott McClellan to repudiate the phony charge. They were sensibly blown off. But, a partisan parasite finding eager hosts among White House reporters is a depressing spectacle. And, just as calls for Don Rumsfeld’s resignation are aimed at President Bush, the attack on Rush is designed to discredit conservatives.

[…]

Rush’s angry, frustrated critics discount how hard it is to make an outrageous charge against him stick. But, we listeners have spent years with him, we know him, and trust him. Rush is one of those rare acquaintances who can be defended against an assault challenging his character without ever knowing the “facts.” We trust his good judgment, his unerring decency, and his fierce loyalty to the country he loves and to the courageous young Americans who defend her.

Here’s what Rush said, in case you forgot:

CALLER: It was like a college fraternity prank to stack up naked —

RUSH [LIMBAUGH]: Exactly! Exactly my point! This is no different than what happens at the Skull and Bones initiation, and we’re going to ruin people’s lives over it, and we’re going to hamper our military effort, and then we are going to really hammer ’em because they had a good time. You know, these people are being fired at every day. I’m talking about people having a good time. These people, you ever heard of emotional release? You ever heard of needing to blow some steam off?

… The dog is scaring an Iraqi prisoner. (Gasping.) No! We’re scaring them, too. Is that allowed in the Geneva Convention? We’re scaring them with dogs?
Yes, my friends, we are. The dog didn’t attack anybody, dog’s not attacking anybody, dog is on a leash, both of them are. I’ve seen the picture. So, yeah, I mean I’d be scared too if I were nude and I’d been committing crimes against Americans, now the Americans have me in their prison and a couple of dogs barking at me? Yeah, I might be a little scared. So what? It’s war! We all know what goes on in war.

“I’m sorry, folks. I’m sorry. Somebody has to provide a little levity here. This is not as serious as everybody is making it out to be. My gosh, we’re all wringing our hands here. We act like, ‘Okay let’s just die,’ you know? ‘Let’s just give up. What can we do to make these people feel better? Let’s just pull out of there, and let’s just go. Let’s just become a neutral country. Let’s just do that.’

I mean, it’s ridiculous. It’s outrageous what’s happening here, and it’s not — and it’s not because I’m out of touch; it’s because I am in touch, folks, that I can understand. This is a pure, media-generated story. I’m not saying it didn’t happen; I’m [not] saying the pictures aren’t there, but this is being given more life than the Waco invasion got. This is being given more life than almost — it’s almost become an Oklahoma City-type thing. One more Bush sound bite, and the president continued explaining how real democracy works here.”

“I don’t understand what we’re so worried about. These are the people that are trying to kill us. What do we care what is the most humiliating thing in the world for them? There’s also this business of them all wearing hoods and how that’s also very humiliating. You can see more guys wearing hoods at a [Sen.] Robert Byrd birthday party 40 years ago than we’ve seen in these prisoner photos.”

“There’s only one thing to do here, folks, and that’s achieve victory over people who have targeted us for loooong, long time, well over 15, 20 years. It’s the only way to deal with this, and that’s why obsessing about a single incident or two of so-called abuse in a prison is nothing more than a giant distraction and could up being something that will really ties [sic] our hands and handcuffs us in what the real objective is here, which is the preservation of our way of life and our country.”

That was, of course, the day after he’d admired that fact that it was “babes” doing the torturing and commenting that it reminded him a Madonna show and Sex in the City.

You can certainly see why the conservative ladies defend him. His special brand of misogynistic sadism is what passes for “decency and “good judgment” in right wing politics these days. They think they are defending their honor.

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A story to restore your faith in humanity

by David Atkins

Via SantaFeMarie at DailyKos, here’s a story that will restore your faith in humanity:

On Lord Howe, there used to be an insect, famous for being big. It’s a stick insect, a critter that masquerades as a piece of wood, and the Lord Howe Island version was so large — as big as a human hand — that the Europeans labeled it a “tree lobster” because of its size and hard, lobsterlike exoskeleton. It was 12 centimeters long and the heaviest flightless stick insect in the world. Local fishermen used to put them on fishing hooks and use them as bait.

Then one day in 1918, a supply ship, the S.S. Makambo from Britain, ran aground at Lord Howe Island and had to be evacuated. One passenger drowned. The rest were put ashore. It took nine days to repair the Makambo, and during that time, some black rats managed to get from the ship to the island, where they instantly discovered a delicious new rat food: giant stick insects. Two years later, the rats were everywhere and the tree lobsters were gone.

Totally gone. After 1920, there wasn’t a single sighting. By 1960, the Lord Howe stick insect, Dryococelus australis, was presumed extinct.

But then some people risked their lives to do something incredible:

Some climbers scaling Ball’s Pyramid in the 1960s said they’d seen a few stick insect corpses lying on the rocks that looked “recently dead.” But the species is nocturnal, and nobody wanted to scale the spire hunting for bugs in the dark.

Fast forward to 2001, when two Australian scientists, David Priddel and Nicholas Carlile, with two assistants, decided to take a closer look. From the water, they’d seen a few patches of vegetation that just might support walking sticks. So, they boated over. (“Swimming would have been much easier,” Carlile said, “but there are too many sharks.”) They crawled up the vertical rock face to about 500 feet, where they found a few crickets, nothing special. But on their way down, on a precarious, unstable rock surface, they saw a single melaleuca bush peeping out of a crack and, underneath, what looked like fresh droppings of some large insect.

Where, they wondered, did that poop come from?

The only thing to do was to go back up after dark, with flashlights and cameras, to see if the pooper would be out taking a nighttime walk. Nick Carlile and a local ranger, Dean Hiscox, agreed to make the climb. And with flashlights, they scaled the wall till they reached the plant, and there, spread out on the bushy surface, were two enormous, shiny, black-looking bodies. And below those two, slithering into the muck, were more, and more … 24 in all. All gathered near this one plant.

Check the NPR link for photos of this magnificent creature, or see here as well. (Sorry, I can’t find any non-copyrighted or common use photos out there.)

After a long while, they were able to take four of the insects, two males and two females. One pair died. The female of the other pair was near death, but nursed back to life by a loving caretaker. Eventually they bred.

And now?

When Jane Goodall visited in 2008, Patrick showed her rows and rows of incubating eggs: 11,376 at that time, with about 700 adults in the captive population. Lord Howe Island walking sticks seem to pair off — an unusual insect behavior — and Goodall says Patrick “showed me photos of how they sleep at night, in pairs, the male with three of his legs protectively over the female beside him.”

Awwwww.

Here’s a video of one of the little guys hatching, long legs and all, from an impossibly small egg.

Lord Howe Island Stick Insect hatching from Zoos Victoria on Vimeo.
See? There appears to be hope not only for this remarkable species, but for our own as well.

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CA GOP Communications Director Calls Krystal Ball a “Slut”

by David Atkins

The new Communications Director for the California Republican Party, Jennifer Kerns, took to twitter tonight under her username @CAPartyGirl with the following:

Stripper, or strategist? Democrat strategist on MSNBC raging against Limbaugh, her name is supposedly “Krystal Ball.” Speaking of #sluts…

That would be this Krystal Ball. It’s her real name. She ran for Congress under that name.

Just in case you thought it was only Republican men guilty of classless misogyny. Something is really wrong with these people at a deep psychological level.

One would hope this means that Ms. Kerns would need to start revising her resume. But why would she? This seems to be common discourse on what passes for the Right these days.

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Where did they find this guy?

by digby

This guy has the worst political tin ear I’ve ever come across in presidential politics. Seriously, what in the hell is he doing running for office?

Mitt Romney steered clear of the Rush Limbaugh controversy until Friday evening, even avoiding a CNN reporter earlier in the day, when he addressed the issue after an event in Cleveland.

“I’ll just say this which is it’s not the language I would have used,” Romney said.

Huh? Even Santorum did better than that and he really does think women who use birth control are all sluts. This was a freebie for Romney. When you have the nation’s leading right wing Catholic politician giving you cover, take advantage of it, and be the bigger man.

He just cannot get this right. Earlier in the week, he made a total ass of himself with this one:

ROMNEY: I didn’t understand his question. Of course I support the Blunt amendment. I thought he was talking about some state law that prevented people from getting contraception. So I simply misunderstood the question and of course I support the Blunt amendment…No, I simply misunderstood what he was talking about. I thought it was some Ohio legislation, where employers were prevented from providing contraceptives, and so I talked about contraceptives and so I really misunderstood the question. Of course Roy Blunt who is my liaison to the Senate is someone I support and of course I support that amendment. I clearly want to have religious exemption from Obamacare…. I really think all Americans should be allowed to get around this religious exemption.

After all that, he’s being cagey over Limbaugh? He really doesn’t know what he thinks? In fact, he seems so befuddled by all this, I’m finding it hard to believe he fathered all those kids. Does he not get that he could sound all prim and conservative if he just said something like “my parents taught me to be respectful of women and that isn’t respectful.” Who’s going to argue with that, a bunch of wingnut frat boys and dittoheads?

Honestly, this guy is just a mess. I almost feel sorry for him. Except for the hundreds of millions and the fascistic tendencies. But you know what I mean.

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The live free or die in childbirth state

by digby

When New Hampshire says it’s all about freedom, I’m not sure I understood it to mean this. And apparently, neither did the people who are now claiming it until five minutes ago. I guess they’ve had a revelation:

New Hampshire, one of the least religious states in the nation, has become the latest front in the political battle over contraception. State GOP leaders oppose the new federal rule compelling insurers to provide birth control to employees of religious organizations. They want to change a 12-year-old state law that requires contraceptive coverage under insurers’ prescription drug policies.

It’s hard to miss the politics fueling state House Speaker William O’Brien’s push to carve out a religious exemption from the contraception mandate.

“The Obama administration is trying to divide this country and to divide women against Catholics,” O’Brien said. “The amendment before you, however, is a way of guaranteeing religious freedom by ensuring that we are not forcing employers to purchase health care coverage that violates their belief.”

New Hampshire has required contraceptive coverage in all prescription drug plans since 2000. The law was passed by a Republican Legislature and signed by a Democratic governor. Nobody at the time, it seems, saw the policy as a blow against religious liberty.

Democratic state Rep. Terie Norelli, who co-sponsored the law, said that objection never came up.

“There was no discussion whatsoever — I even went back and looked at the history from the bill,” she said. “There was not one comment about religious freedoms.”

It wasn’t just lawmakers who were silent; religious leaders were, too.

“I wasn’t here back in 1999,” said Diane Murphy Quinlan, chancellor of the Catholic Diocese of Manchester, “and we didn’t have a full-time lobbyist in the Legislature. It’s possible that it was missed.”

Ooopsie. Of course, the Catholic Church was very busy during that period if you know what I mean. They can’t keep tabs on everything.

But this religious freedom thing didn’t really come out of nowhere as we’ve discussed here before. Here’s Right Wing Watch on one of the major promoters of the “religious freedom” concept discussing one of the main thrusts of their platform:

FRC and allies like the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, have an odd of understanding of freedom. It’s really just the freedom for everyone to live according to their religion, and only a very narrow interpretation at that. Monahan, who holds a master’s degree in theology of marriage and family from the Pope John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family, is no exception.

In a blog post from January entitled “A Pro-Life Hero: Minka Disbrow,” Monahan wrote the following:

In 1928, as a young and innocent teenager, Minka Disbrow lived in South Dakota and worked on a dairy farm. One day while enjoying a picnic, Minka and a friend were jumped by three men and raped. Innocent to the degree that she didn’t comprehend how babies were created, months later the 17-year-old Minka was confused and surprised to find her body changing and growing. Her parents soon found an adoption agency.

In a similar story, Ryan Bomberger, of the Radiance Foundation was conceived in an act rape. Like Minka, Ryan’s mother chose to carry her child to term. Ryan now dedicates his life to promoting and protecting the dignity of every person. For a recent lecture by Ryan on the hope and joy of adoption click here.

All can agree that rape is a horrific act of violence that no one should ever undergo. But abortion after a rape robs an innocent victim of a very beautiful life.

While it’s incredible that Monahan would suggest that Minka Disbrow “chose to carry her child to term,” given the description she provided, the bigger issue is that she would force a woman to give birth to her rapist’s child.

In a column from last November, Monahan spoke out against providing the full range of medical care to female victims of human trafficking. Her overriding concern was that women who had become pregnant after being raped might choose abortion:

Evidence exists that shows women who seek an abortion after rape add to their suffering: they now struggle with the coupled pain of the rape and the abortion; the abortion can become what some have termed “a second rape.”

Additionally, a recent peer-reviewed meta-analysis published in the British Journal of Psychiatry revealed that women who choose abortion have a significant increase in mental health problems including depression, anxiety and suicidal behaviors. A situation where a woman is trafficked and becomes pregnant is extremely difficult, but such women deserve loving and honest care and attention, and abortion is not part of that.

That was the woman they chose to testify before congress about contraception and “religious freedom.”

And no, no evidence of that exists at all that women who are raped struggle with the fact that they had an abortion if they chose one. The idea that these authoritarian busybodies are making such insanely cruel arguments on the basis of “freedom” is enough to make you crazy.

Rush is a disgusting misogynist pig and calling a woman a slut and a whore because she testified about birth control deserves all the blowback he’s getting. If we’re lucky it might even be the beginning of the end for him. But I’ll be curious to see if this firestorm against him will result in the conservatives pulling back on the religious liberty strategy. They seem to be pretty committed to it.

Update: Well, the national GOPers aren’t backing down yet:

Democrats are largely to blame for the name-calling and personal insults of the contraception debate, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) charged Friday.

Conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh has spent part of his last three shows referring to a Georgetown University law student as a “slut” with “boyfriends … lined up around the block.” But Issa said Democrats are also complicit in the deteriorating rhetoric, accusing them of insulting people of faith.

Issa shot back Friday against Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), who had asked the Oversight Committee chairman to disavow Limbaugh’s comments.

“While your letter raises important concerns about these inappropriate comments and the tone of the current debate over religious freedom and Obamacare, I am struck by your clear failure to recognize your own contributions to the denigration of this discussion and attacks on people of religious faith,” Issa said in response to Cummings.

I’m remembering an earlier Rush firestorm in which he called veterans “phony soldiers.” They stood by that, so it’s certainly possible they’ll stand by his sluts and whores comments. I’m fairly sure they have more empathy for soldiers than they do for women.

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Rush Limbaugh Has No Idea How Birth Control Works

by David Atkins

The Rush Limbaugh/Sandra Fluke story is starting to become surreal. It’s flabbergasting to watch the rightwing media machine self-immolate not only over social issues when any rational observer knows that economic issues are the safest path back to power, but over contraception of all things. Yes, of course the Talibangelicals have an interest in pushing the Overton Window on this issue over the long-term. But more establishmentarian conservatives must understand that appearing to oppose contraception itself is devastatingly bad for their electoral chances, at least in the short term. And yet they appear to be going for broke on it.

It especially doesn’t help when their key spokespeople don’t appear to understand how contraceptives even work. Case in point: Rush Limbaugh, who continued his anti-contraception meltdown even today:

Limbaugh continued to focus on Fluke today, saying she “hilariously” testified to Congress that “she’s having so much sex” that health insurance should cover her birth control.

“Not one person says, ‘Well, did you ever think about maybe backing off the amount of sex you have?'” Limbaugh said.

Anyone remotely familiar with oral contraceptives knows that to work properly, women have to take one pill a day over the course of their monthly cycle. It doesn’t matter if you have unprotected sex once a month or three hundred times a month. It’s still the same number of pills, and therefore the same cost. How much sex someone has is utterly irrelevant to the cost of contraception unless they choose to abstain for the entire month. (And none of this covers the issue of having sex with one person or more than one person, either. When Rush not just misogynistically but simply bizarrely calls Ms. Fluke a “slut,” it would seem to be based on an unfounded assumption about having sex with multiple partners rather than a single boyfriend–though neither situation makes a whit of difference to the cost of oral contraceptives.)

Even abstinent women who are not seeking to have children should be on the pill, anyway, absent other more permanent forms of birth control, if for no other reason than in case of a felicitous meeting at best, or involuntarily sexual coercion at worst.

Of course, the reason Rush doesn’t seem to understand female contraceptives is probably because he thinks they work like Viagra. Rush assumes that since it costs him money every time he has sex, it must cost a female college student money, too.

Rush isn’t just a misogynist and horrible all-around human being. He’s also a self-centered moron who doesn’t even have the intellectual curiosity to find out how oral contraceptives work. But he’s not the only one. Remember this gem from Bill O’Reilly:

Commenting on the Institute of Medicine’s recommendation that contraception should be considered a preventative service and co-pays for contraception should be eliminated, Bill O’Reilly claimed: “Many women who get pregnant are blasted out of their minds when they have sex. They’re not going to use birth control anyway.”

Apparently, O’Reilly thinks birth control pills only work if taken immediately after sex.

Remember, Limbaugh and O’Reilly are the cream of the conservative crop, influencing tens of millions of conservative male voters on these issues. Not only are they hateful toward women and fearful of sex, they’re clueless ignoramuses to boot.

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