Month: March 2012

Welfare sluts and the men who hate them

by digby

Jezebel is featuring some of the letters they’ve been getting from right wing throwbacks defending their hero, Rush Limbaugh. Here’s one:

I’m a Board-Certified ER doc, and I totally agree with Rush. I’m sick of paying excessive taxes so these sluts can screw every horny loser who buys them a drink. If she’s too cheap to buy her own birth control, and doesn’t insist of her partner using a condom, and gets knocked-up, she shouldn’t expect others to pay for her medical bills. The federal govt. extorts money from us taxpayers, and PAYS her to have the little bastard. I say, if she can’t pay her bills, she should be arrested, and the baby be adopted. This country has NO accountability, and over 1/3 of Americans are living on money they don’t themselves earn. It must stop. Welfare whores need to pay their bills, like the rest of us. Maybe this opinion hits a little too close to your home…

I especially like the implication that the sluts are out there trolling for the opportunity to bed the poor horny losers who are forced to buy them a drink. (And if the silly twit gets herself pregnant why, she ought to be arrested.)

I don’t know how many men are out there letting their misogynist ids run wild over this, but I am a little bit surprised that anyone’s surprised by it. It’s not as if Limbaugh and his ilk haven’t been spewing this crap all over the airwaves for years. And it’s not just about birth control:

LIMBAUGH: You know, the feminazis forgot one thing. Well, one of the objectives of the feminazis over the last 20, 25 years has been to dominate the public education system so as to remove the competitive nature of boys. You know, there’s a crisis of young man-boy education in the schools. And they did this on purpose, to eliminate male competition in the work force. This is part of feminazi grand plan.

They forgot affirmative action for black guys. And because of that, every bit of their plan has gone up in smoke now, because they — if — they had to come out in favor of affirmative action for black guys, and that’s — see, this is one of the things that really irritates the women. And there are women all over this country fit to be tied — trust me on this. And it’s — one of the things is affirmative action is exactly — it’s, you know, liberals eventually are going to be devoured by their own policies. And it has happened here.

(That was a twofer. He called Obama an affirmative action candidate, of course.)

And then there was this:

LIMBAUGH: Mammograms are the convenant, the sacred covenant of feminazism

Women should die.

And this:

LIMBAUGH: And these American prisoners of war — have you people noticed who the torturers are? Women! The babes! The babes are meting out the torture…You know, if you look at — if you, really, if you look at these pictures, I mean, I don’t know if it’s just me, but it looks just like anything you’d see Madonna, or Britney Spears do on stage. Maybe I’m — yeah. And get an NEA grant for something like this. I mean, this is something that you can see on stage at Lincoln Center from an NEA grant, maybe on Sex in the City — the movie. I mean, I don’t — it’s just me.

If only it were just him. Maybe most people don’t recognize the psycho-sexual issues that lie at the base of all this (even when one reads hideous screeds like that one from the so-called ER doctor above)but those rants by Limbaugh make it pretty clear as do his more recent screeching about sluts and whores. This is who he is, who he’s always been.

More importantly perhaps, it’s a deep and primal thing that’s a lot harder to change than women realize. We rise up every now and then in shock and horror, but it always reverts back. And I’m sorry to say that it isn’t just reserved for conservative men and the women that give themselves to them. It happens in our own circles as well.

Jonathan Schwartz read the Limbaugh slut comments and had an important insight I wish more people would get to when these flare-ups happen:

I guess if I were a more sensitive man, I wouldn’t be so surprised by the ongoing right-wing male freakout about women. I just didn’t realize how deep and sincere their…emotions…are on this…

When I see things like this, my main concern isn’t that it will be harder to get contraception. It’s that a lot of powerful people are so weirdly angry that they’re going to obliterate human civilization. Here’s something that the writer John Ralston Saul said about this:

Hitler’s favorite writer [was Arthur Schopenhauer]…Schopenhauer’s attraction for Hitler may have been his overwhelming sense that evil was overwhelming the world and that the “root of all evil…is the slavery of the will.”…

Schopenhauer also detested women, which, in the Saint Jerome—”Women are bags of dung”—tradition, is a sentiment closely related to the uncontrollable feeling that evil is inundating us. It is a little simplistic but not untrue that men who hate women will take out their sexual problems on the world if given a chance.

It isn’t just about the women, guys. It’s about the species.

Oh, and in case you wanted validation of the concept, here’s one of his commenters:

Uhm, no. You might want to drop that smug air of liberal superiority and consider there might be some truth to the conservative objections to this silliness. This is just liberal craziness.

Since when did contraception become an “inalienable” right? I mean … talk about entitled women here.. expecting people to pay for their hedonism and promiscuity.

Women have the right to do what they want with their bodies.. even if feminism, rampant promiscuity by females and female hypergamy have been a disaster and detrimental for most men, and most likely aren’t stable in the long-term. But women shouldn’t be expected to be subsidized for that behavior by society, nor should they expect gushing approval and encouragement. Well, perhaps they can expect from the dutiful liberal manginas with their “This is what a feminist looks like” T shirt. These idiots are clinging to delusions about an arc of “progress” and clueless about the destabilizing forces that feminism, female hypergamy, the sexual revolution and hedonism have unleashed on Western society.

I’m sure that the vast majority of men have never thought anything like this all the way through, as that intellectual misogynist has. And many men are undoubtedly instinctively appalled (the “manginas” of the crowd — also known as enlightened human beings.) But there are far too many of them whose lizard brains are activated in exactly this way. And they are all over the world, not just in red states, driving trucks and listening to Rush. I’ve heard the same sort of casual misogyny that Rush speaks in executive elevators in Hollywood, in villages in Mexico and bars in Bangkok. Feminism is a threat to the social order of many magnitudes greater than many people want to admit.

Update: For another enlightened view from a man who doesn’t think with his lizard brain, try this from Jonathan Cohn.

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Girding of the loins

by digby

Something very strange — very strange — is happening to the right wing. And that’s saying something considering their history. Here’s Tbogg:

Supreme Awesome Grand Mega-Extreeme Field Marshall Ace O’ Spades dons his toga (Spongebob Squarepants twin-size fitted sheet) and Crown of Fancy Proclamating (from a Burger King kids meal) and defends the Late Great Andrew from the filthy calumny that was belched forth from rebel apostate David Emmanuel Goldstein Frum.

Striking as a heroic a pose as possible when standing on a dining room chair and addressing several indifferent cats and an unwatered aeschynanthus he declaims:

We shall say of them that their legacy consists of more than three words — “Axis,” “of,” and “Evil.”

We shall say of them that they were warriors, and not bitter Vichyites mourning their loss of — loss of? was it ever even possessed? — relevance and reach.

From the dawn of time the primitives in the woods envied and feared those with the Magic of Fire.

David Frum exceeded Andrew Breitbart in one measure only, span of life.

But not in life.

David Frum will die as he lived, gray, timid, small, spiteful, cramped in thought and bent in spirit, slender of talent and obese in self-regard, unloved, unnoticed, unremembered and unread.

Better to live outrageously for only a short spell than to hiss from the shadows, content to live within the niggling license of Master’s Leash.

[…]

What was truly charismatic about Breitbart was his never-ending enthusiasm and energy. He spoke fast because he thought fast. He changed topics quickly because he had six or seven plans in mind at any one time.

He actually did things. He was instinctual. Athletes cannot afford the deliberation of thought. They move by instinct and training and muscle memory. They act.

Why did Breitbart sign a lease for a pricey townhouse in DC? Because, he said, “it feels mischievous.” It felt mischievous to establish an Embassy of citizen empowerment in the capital of statist overreach.

He had ten plans a month. He accomplished five of them a month. He acted.

He took over the Weiner press conference because it felt like something he ought to do.

He was brazen. He was bold. The right had no more enthusiastic champion and the left had no more implacable foe.

[…]

As I type this, Breitbart is more alive than David Frum has ever been.

I doubt very much that will change as the years march on.

It is the nature of the rat to envy the lion.

We should not fault the rat overly for this. For what else can the rat do?

But we should say that there are lions, and there are rats. And they are easily distinguishable.

And they are as different from each other as the sun is from the mirror that reflects it.

Scavengers have their place. They serve a function.

But scavengers know their place.

And scavengers only challenge the lion when it lies, safely, dead.

Breitbart had two things that men envy: Guts, and drive.

I almost can’t blame Frum for resenting Breitbart for having balls.

I resented Breitbart for having such balls. It’s natural to resent your betters.

It is, however, an embarrassment to commit petty jealousies to print.

David Frum had a revelation today.

But sometimes it is wiser to conceal than to reveal.

What’s left to say?

Do click over — apparently a movement is afoot.

It’s only 10:30 in the morning and I already need a drink.

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Flexing their thieving muscles

by digby

Democrats had better hope that the coming elections are not too close because the GOP is honing its vote stealing skills in its own primaries:

GOP state party snafus all have benefited Romney:

As we wrote yesterday, the Michigan Republican Party voted Wednesday night to award its two at-large delegates to the statewide winner instead of dividing up proportionally, as we (and even the Michigan GOP chairman at one time) had assumed. That move gave Romney a 16-14 delegate edge in the state instead of a 15-15 tie, and it has produced a firestorm of controversy. What’s more, it’s the latest GOP state party snafu this primary season that’s benefited Romney.

Consider: The Iowa Republican Party originally declared Romney the winner there (and even once the vote count had changed, it was hesitant to declare Santorum the new winner). In addition, the Maine GOP badly mishandled its caucuses (one county wasn’t counted due to snow, other results got lost in a spam folder), and Romney narrowly won that contest. And now you have the delegate drama in Michigan, which now allows Romney to claim a win there in both the popular vote and delegate count.

It’s important to remember that they have two main methods of stealing elections. The first is vote suppression, in which they make it difficult for their opponents to cast votes. This is nothing new historically and it’s not been confined to one party. But the modern Republicans have put their very special stamp on the practice by using reverse psychology and whining about non-existent voter fraud to claim they have been the victims of the terrible ACORN conspiracy to cancel out their decent Real American vote. (This was one of the bogus arguments used in Bush vs Gore, which serves as a sort of template for their various legal arguments.)

But there’s always been a second piece to the puzzle and that is the local and state GOP institutions responsible for counting votes and interpreting the voting laws being trained to use that power for partisan purpose. There are many aspects to this (here’s one example) but one of the most useful is the idea that being declared the winner can be more important than actually being the winner. Rick Santorum certainly is getting a big lesson in how that one works.

Karl Rove pioneered these close vote thefts many years ago as a political consultant. He and various others throughout the party have been building an infrastructure devoted to keeping Democratic election victories narrow through suppression and then taking advantage in states where they control the election machinery to tip the balance to the GOP. This isn’t a conspiracy theory — it’s part of their long term strategy to stay competitive in a country in which their main constituency is becoming smaller and more intolerant.

It’s fun to watch Rick Santorum squirm as this machine is unleashed against him but don’t think it’s confined to their party apparatus. They’re just flexing their muscles in anticipation of the general election. If the party “establishment” exists at all, it’s for this purpose.

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There Never Was a “Rational” Conservatism

by David Atkins

One of the themes that liberals and so-called moderates alike often discuss is the decline of modern conservatism into base extremism. William F. Buckley is often cited as the historical paragon of “rational” conservatism, as if there were a time at which conservatism was somehow less driven by prejudice, anti-rationalism and base paranoia than it is today.

Many writers better and more knowledgeable than myself have pointed out that the supposedly “rational” conservatives of the Buckley era were decrying Medicare and blacks marrying whites as the signs of the destruction of Western civilization. It’s not as if the “responsible” conservative positions of the time were any more moral. It’s just that the country as a whole had been less assaulted by a mass of conservative media institutions and think tanks connected with post-civil-rights race resentment.

But even without pointing to specific objectionable conservative positions from the past, the entire theory behind supposedly noble Buckleyan politics is seriously skewed. Buckley’s agenda is famously encapsulated in the 1955 mission statement of the National Review:

The launching of a conservative weekly journal of opinion in a country widely assumed to be a bastion of conservatism at first glance looks like a work of supererogation, rather like publishing a royalist weekly within the walls of Buckingham Palace. It is not that, of course; if NATIONAL REVIEW is superfluous, it is so for very different reasons: It stands athwart history, yelling Stop, at a time when no one is inclined to do so, or to have much patience with those who so urge it.

This idea of standing athwart history yelling stop is quite famous, and few find it intrinsically silly.

But the question immediately follows: who would even try to do that, and why? Change history, yes, if possible. Prevent disaster, certainly. But to simply stand athwart history and yell stop, simply as its own ethical principle? It’s madness. Change is by its very nature inevitable. Secular and religious wisdom alike, Eastern and Western, notes that change is an immutable characteristic of the universe–if you’ll pardon the tautology.

Buckley tried to preserve the architecture of United States government as it existed in the 1950s, or to revert it to an era prior to the New Deal. Yet he never asked himself whether it would have served the cause of justice and human freedom to have stood athwart history and yelled “Stop” in 1850 prior to the Emancipation Proclamation. Or to have done so in 1770 prior to the American Revolution, though Buckley would certainly have objected to the French version. Or to have done so in 1350 prior to the libertine and centralizing era of the Renaissance. There were many people who stood athwart history yelling stop during those periods. They were always wrong, and were thankfully defeated at every step of the way.

And what of Buckley, that great paragon of rational conservatism? What forces was he most interested in stopping at the time? Check the paragraph immediately following the famous “stand athwart history” passage:

NATIONAL REVIEW is out of place, in the sense that the United Nations and the League of Women Voters and the New York Times and Henry Steele Commager are in place. It is out of place because, in its maturity, literate America rejected conservatism in favor of radical social experimentation. Instead of covetously consolidating its premises, the United States seems tormented by its tradition of fixed postulates having to do with the meaning of existence, with the relationship of the state to the individual, of the individual to his neighbor, so clearly enunciated in the enabling documents of our Republic.

The League of Women Voters. The United Nations. The New York Times–back in 1955. An historian who committed the great historical error of opposing McCarthyism, the Vietnam War, and Nixon’s overreach of Executive authority. These are the institutions that principled, “serious” conservatism stood athwart history to stop. And in the next sentence, Buckley tries to insinuate that the American Constitution somehow presents a torment and thorn in the side to these largely uncontroversial institutions and positions. Is it really any less crazy to suggest that the League of Women Voters is somehow inherently unconstitutional, than it is to suggest the same of universal healthcare? No, it’s crazier. Buckley in 1955 sounds just as unhinged as Newt Gingrich does today. It’s only with rose-colored glasses that we see it any differently.

Conservatism in the United States didn’t only recently become the laughably misguided province of kooks and crackpots. It has always been so, even in its period of greatest supposed respectability.

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On Breitbart

by David Atkins

The comments here and the online world are abuzz with the passing of Andrew Breitbart, so I figured I should break the silence.

The Romans had a good saying for these situations: De mortuis nil nisi bonum. “Of the dead, [say] nothing but good.” It works better for me than the typical English “Speak no ill of the dead,” as it emphasizes the idea that when dealing with the passing of a person about whom one would say nothing good in life, saying nothing is a perfect alternative.

So of Andrew Breitbart, I will say nothing.

Of his family, I will say that I wish them deep and heartfelt condolences. I know as well as anyone that one can have close family whose views and personality one finds abhorrent, but their absence and passing are felt no less painfully for it.

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False facts and twisted logic

by digby

Think Progress tweeted this chart, writing: “FACT: Under Obama, government is shrinking. There are 598K fewer gov’t jobs today than there were in January 2008.”

It’s true, this is fact. And it’s also true that this fact is ignored by the Republicans who say that the Obama administration has massively grown the fedral government.

But I hope that TP isn’t also saying that this is supposed to be a good thing. In fact, it’s pretty tragic that in a time of massive unemployment the federal government shed that many jobs. The government should have created 598,000 new jobs, not eliminated 598,000 existing ones.

But then, considering how deep the Europeans jumped into the austerity hole, I suppose we should count our blessings that it wasn’t worse. The difference between us and them is that they don’t have a right wing noise machine claiming that the government did things that it didn’t do and then blaming those things it didn’t do for the slow recovery when the truth is that the government didn’t do what it should have done and that was the reason for the slow recovery. At least Europe’s plight is a rational disagreement based on real facts and events. I’m not sure which of us will be worse off in the long run.

Update: On the other hand there’s this, which should clear it all up

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Comic Gay Wedding

by digby

You know there’s been progress when this happens in kid culture and it doesn’t cause a major firestorm:

Apparently, this has been a big storyline since 2010. Progress does happen.

Still, Lord help the poor conservative preacher’s kid who’s caught reading this under the blanket. I’m sure it’s considered to be far worse than Playboy.

Update: Oy, spoke too soon. (h/t to @heythisisbrian)

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Erick Erickson Actually Has a Point

by David Atkins

Via John Cole, this may be the first time I give Erick Erickson at RedState credit for an intelligent comment:

When you have a candidate few people really like, whose support is a mile wide and an inch deep, whose raison d’etre (a 4am fancy word) is fixing an economy that is fixing itself without him, and who only wins his actual, factual home state by three percentage points against a guy no one took seriously only two months ago, there really is little reason for independent voters in the general election to choose him if the economy keeps improving.

Seriously, putting it bluntly, conservatives may not like Barack Obama, but most other people do. And when faced with a guy you like and a guy you don’t like who says he can fix an economy that no longer needs fixing, you’re going to go with the guy you like.

Of course, Mr. Erickson quickly steps back into idiot mode by begging Bobby Jindal to get into the race. Yeah, right.

But about Romney, he’s spot on. Willard is seriously damaged goods at this point, and he doesn’t have much of a rationale behind his campaign as the economy continues to improve. At least with Santorum the GOP can play a hardline base strategy, which has at least an outside chance of success.

Keep in mind that the Obama team hasn’t even really started to hit Romney yet in a serious way. So far, Romney has had a very weak glass jaw and an inability to close the deal with voters. The only way he’s been able to cling to a lead is by outspending his rivals by massive margins, often while getting help from the rest of the field to attack his nearest rival. The Obama campaign, by contrast, will likely outspend Romney, and he won’t have a lot of help from his flank. Things could get very ugly, very fast for him if he does limp forward into the convention.

Combine that with a House and Senate picture that is looking rosier for Democrats with each passing week, and it could be a very ugly 2012 for the GOP.

And that in turn could lead an already fractured Republican Party and conservative establishment to move to all-out civil war footing.

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Surreal sadist

by digby

For those of you who watched Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s birther press conference and wondered what in the hell you just saw, keep in mind that he’s been putting on a sadistic freakshow for years down there and keeps getting re-elected for it.

Yes, that’s right. He’s the guy who made all the men traipse around in pink underwear. Nothing strange about that at all.

But keep in mind that as the above first person account mentions, the press was there. And the more publicity he got, the more he was feted as a great law and order sheriff — and the more popular he became. Unfortunately, he spent so much time making his prisoners wear pink undershorts and chasing down people who look like might possible be of Mexican extraction, that he forgot to investigate more than 400 sex crimes.

Maybe his press conference today finally did him in. It certainly was surreal. But it’s a sad comment on our nation that this guy wasn’t chased out of law enforcement years ago for his despicable performance as a public official.

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Teabags and contraception

by digby

I’m guessing we’re going to see some major Teabag Townhall action this summer. This event with Kathy Hochul is a preview:

The Democrat was not only booed last week for her position supporting the Obama administration’s contraception mandate, she was chastised for her statement that she didn’t consider the Constitution when forming her opinion.

That’s a pretty terrible argument. She should have turned it around and asked where it is in the constitution that says the employer’s religion and conscience has precedence over the employees’?

In any case, regardless of where the polls say people are on contraception, this phony “religious liberty” theme is going to fire up the wingnuts and the likelihood is that the Democrats in these swing districts are going to be put to the test. I wish I were more confident in their ability to handle it.

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