The GOP and Cheap Grace

 

Johnson: Clay Higgins is a dear friend of mine and a colleague from Louisiana, and a very frank and outspoken person. He's also a very principled man. I didn’t even see it but he tweeted something today about Haitians.

Reporter: He told them to get out of the country by Jan 20th… pic.twitter.com/Y0oFz727WO

— Acyn (@Acyn) September 25, 2024

There's a formula here that the GOP employs again and again: the Tweet/statement/activity was terrible, but this is a good person (because I said so), and while I didn't see the Tweet/know all the details, I will forgive/absolve this person, even though I was not the person hurt by the activity.  Because it's the Christian thing to do. 

It's a lie. They aren't forgiving a "real" transgression (to them), and they don't care if the person is a good person--that person is "good enough for the political moment" and requires a permission slip. The permission slip has been pre-written, and we are only really just viewing what the in-group's tolerances are.

This type of cheap grace applies to Higgins, to Mark Robinson, to JD Vance, and entirely explains Trump. 

Instead of this statement vouching for Rep. Higgins, who is not noticeably repentant, I would throw it back to Speaker Johnson--why do have such a nasty racist for a good friend? 

ABC "Falls" for the Mommaganda

 

Let's try this again, ABC: These moms call themselves joyful warriors, but they are a dark money-funded astroturf group that is allied with the Proud Boys and Oath keepers and are a bunch of Hitler-quoting fascist homophobic Karens. Being a little confused by these concerned women whooping u on their local school boards might have been excusable--if local underfunded media outlets were the ones falling for it. When networks like CNN and ABC are falling for this shit TODAY after all the water under the bridge?

Oh hell, no. That's not these guys falling for the hustle--that a CHOICE. That's ignoring that these folks are using a misguided interpretation of "parental rights" to try and change up the educational programming for other folks' kids and insert their own conservative and religious dogma and, sorry, folks, flat-out bigotry.

There's really no excuse at this point for letting the words "Mom" and "Liberty" stimulate some kind of pavlovian respect response. They are just a cynical political hustle. No one here is brand new to this stuff--and I think we need the goddamn mainstream media to step up to where independent media and left bloggers were, what, like one-two years ago. They came to Philadelphia, a big liberal city in a swing state, for reasons. 

They aren't mad. They aren't fired up--they are just boosting Republican signals ahead of 2024.

They Want to Ban Abortions Federally!

 

News: @LindseyGrahamSC will introduce a national abortion ban in the Senate tomorrow.

Unless something really unexpected has happened, this will be a 15-week ban. Very interesting that it’s being cast as a “late term abortions act” 👀 pic.twitter.com/WMUVO3ys8l

— Caroline Kitchener (@CAKitchener) September 13, 2022

Fifteen weeks is definitely not a late-term abortion ban; I don't care what language they want to use about it. That's not "very interesting"--that's Republicans lying. Republicans do lie about abortion: would you like to see a big old lie made just today?

The Family Research Council decided to lie and say that "Abortion is never medically necessary to save the life of the mother." This is a big steaming lie. Ectopic pregnancies. fetal hydrocephaly, and the continuations of cancer therapies where the treatment is contraindicated for pregnancy spring to mind. They are vicious liars, but of course, they would be. This is child abuse promoter James Dobson's little corner of the culture war, which can boast George Rekers and Josh Duggar among its more notorious membership. and is fronted by Tony Perkins who somehow counts as a daywalker among these values vampires. 

Lies about things like maternal mortality show that these people don't care about the lives of people who become pregnant. Lies about fetal heartbeats (for a version of "heart" that doesn't yet even have chambers) and "pain-capable" fetuses are gratuitously imposing the qualities of born persons on pregnancies to try to create a separate life for that which depends solely on the body of a whole other, sentient person. 

I want to be hopeful about the turnout we saw in Kansas against a deadly stupid abortion ban, and to read into the voter registration numbers that show record female participation as a wholly good thing.  But if this is a real thing Senate Republicans are thinking of doing to turn out their base--

I hope they get good and screwed to the ever-loving wall over it. Because they are telling us that they don't want the Dobbs' ruling's concept of states' rights (itself a dodgy, shitty construction saying some people can just be freer to self-determination based on geography) but want to just deny female-bodied people the right to end a pregnancy based on some arbitrary deadline that politically sounded good to them and had nothing to do with our bodies, needs, economic status, or any of the other things that affect us as people. Because who are mere child-bearers anyways?

This is hostility to people who want to determine their reproductive future. I give them hostility in return. A thousandfold. 

UPDATE: The bill is worse than others Graham has put up before, with a 20-week gestation. The GOP can claim there are exceptions for rape and the life of the mother, but these are worse than useless.  See this part:

Only 52

 

I screen capped the above Tweet and am linking it because I kind of think it will be deleted, but a Washington Post columnist just recently on Twitter said "Only 10% of girls even get their period. Only 52 girls under the age of 14 got abortions in Ohio last year--and 10 is a long way from 14." 

How many should there be before you give a shit? I wonder, when I see that. See, I know girls as young as five have conceived. Girls who are, say, eleven years old, have been forced to have caesarian births.  At 11 years of age.  Only 10% of girls under 11 even get their period. Only. Only 52 girls under the age of 14 got abortions in Ohio in 2021. 

Only 52--one a week, just in Ohio. Just in Ohio. This is a figure that doesn't look at the Ohio children whose families made them give birth. This is looking at just one state. 

And I don't even know what to do with "10 is a long way from 14." Like, in terms of the child's innocence? In terms of how fucked up it is that she was likely impregnated by a grown man? How does anyone say something like that--as if implying that 14 years olds ate capable of consent and bearing and parenting a child. 

It's still very fucked up and not right, at ten, or fourteen, or really ever for someone to experience a nonconsensual sexual experience. 

I'm trying to not wonder if McArdle even understands what kids are, she of the imagined school shooter kiddy pile-up. She didn't understand what assault rifles did then and doesn't understand what birth for a tween means now. Whether their pelvis can handle it, what it means for the future fertility of the child, whether it is traumatic, how the delivery is made (cut from hip to hip?) how the pregnant child processed the trauma of all of it. 

It's strange to see an argument that was supposed to make the situation of pregnant tweens seem less horrific only--only--hammer home how traumatic and wrong it actually is. And how strange the word "only" can seem when appended to a tragic number.

Stating my Possibly Unpopular Opinion Re: Rep. Barton

There are a couple of things about l'affaire Barton that I think, just being a reasonable person, don't seem all that scandalous. He divorced in 2015. He had some consenting relationships with adult women. He sent them communications of a sexual nature. One of the women seems to have felt some way about having competition, and shared material that was intended to remain private. He advised her beforehand that this was a bad idea and not without repercussions.

Here's the thing--releasing a graphic video or photos of someone in an intimate situation because it screws with them when that person did not want it out and about is called "revenge porn". It is a crime in many states, and a damn nasty trick to pull on someone. All things considered, if he and the individual who released the material had a relationship that was cool and consensual at one point, and he felt like opening up in this way, turning around and using his vulnerability against him is just not cool, whether he is a US Congressman or a total political hack or has garbage opinions about the environment or health care, or any other thing totally not related to a naked video of Rep. Joe Barton making the rounds on social media.  He's a person who has a right to not have his private shit thrown out in the street like this.

I also have a problem with the body-shaming comments getting made about a video that was not ever made for mass consumption--also not cool, not necessary, not really an apt criticism. A dude in his 60's with a mostly desk-related job might not be your idea of pleasing to the eye. Got it. But he never made that for you. He made that for someone he thought would appreciate it and not actually release it to the broader public, because why in the hell would someone do that?

Which is kind of where judgment does come into this situation. When you send any material digitally to someone else, you run the risk of it being reproduced or forwarded to who knows how many other people. Being a person in his political position, he should have been well aware of the risk to his reputation if it ever came out--but he was being trusting. He just didn't think. Things being what they are, though, one always has to be thinking.  And I guess I can see where social conservatives may see this in a different light than I do.

There is precious little overlap between me and Barton politically, but I think he's getting some blowback about this story and its framing that is not entirely fair. It's not about him--it's about whether this is ever a way anyone should try to screw over a romantic/sexual partner if things end poorly. And I say this is not OK. If he's in jeopardy related to his job, it should be because he's said dumb stuff about wind being a finite resource or that we should apologize to BP over the Gulf oil spill, or has nonsense ideas about workers' rights and minimum wage and other right wing claptrap. It should be at the ballot box he gets his, and not over this.

Unless it turns out he sent that to be creepy or abusive to someone who never wanted it or some garbage like that. But the story so far doesn't seem to make him out to be that guy.

UPDATE: I guess it might be a factor in considering Barton's overall ethics that he was likely still married when he began his relationship, but this really still wouldn't have any bearing on whether it's appropriate to digitally pimp someone's business.

Democrats Should Hold Up Neil Gorsuch

Sen. Ted Cruz: "The Democrats are engaged right now in unprecedented partisan obstruction" https://t.co/UYpqI3w42L https://t.co/rNBruSGDF9

— CNN (@CNN) February 1, 2017

President Trump has named Judge Neil Gorsuch of the US Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit as his SCOTUS pick, which, to my mind, should not have ever been Trump's pick to make. The Supreme Court Justice his pick would be replacing, Justice Antonin Scalia, passed on in February of last year, and the popularly twice-elected president in office at the time was Barack Obama. By all recognized norms, Merrick Garland should have got a vote. Even a "yes" or "no" vote. He didn't.

So now, we find ourselves with Republicans who are soooooo mad, you guys, at the "unprecedented partisan obstruction" of even things like delaying a vote on Sen. Sessions for AG, or a boycott on voting for HHS pick Tom Price, well, what about how Republicans performed regarding confirming AG Loretta Lynch, or how about that Gina McCarthy boycott for EPA?  

Yeah, there is exactly nothing unprecedented about what Democrats are doing, or thinking of doing, with respects to people Trump wants to round out his Administration's universe with. The Republicans gave President Obama constant obstructionism.  They were ready to say that if Hillary Clinton became president, they would block her pick, because it had already been established that the court could run on eight justices. Their justification for blocking Obama's pic was that it was an election year. (There is nothing in the Constitution or any historical precedent backing this up.) They said things like, let the "will of the people decide" who gets to pick the next SCOTUS Justice.

Oh well. I guess the court is able to bang on with eight cylinders. The current occupant of the White House wasn't the popularly-elected choice. And anyhow, Trump has already filed for the 2020 presidential campaign, meaning his entire term is technically "campaign season".

Also this bunny has a pancake on his head:

so Trump's pick is obviously invalid.  And Gorsuch's point of view clearly has church all up in our state, and I never like to see that. So I say let's give him a miss, hm?

UPDATE: Is this for real?

I never have gotten the hang of Young Republicanism. But it isn't really the most fortunate quote to endorse for a future in jurisprudence, is it?  (Although most everyone goes through a pirate stage when they are young I guess.)

Phyllis Schlafly Has Left Us

As a feminist and social justice warrior type since I could walk, basically, the existence of someone like Phyllis Schlafly has posed a conundrum, that I want to air out as a kind of eulogy. Admire her for making her way through a man's world? Or repudiate and drag her for whatever she's done or said to make things harder for other people than they needed to be? And the answer is "both".

She was a woman of great intelligence and talent, who raised six children and received a fine education, and displayed through her communications a deliberatively and exceedingly capable mind--also she was a narrow bigot of the very worst sort, and devoted her life to reinforcing the kind of hierarchy that kept white male Christian gatekeepers as the arbiters of the kind of society she thought we ought to have because people who didn't meet her "values" just weren't her people. Or maybe even people at all.

Betty Friedan once called her an "Aunt Tom"--my preferred term for her sort is "sister shafter". The kind of prim, reserved woman, who can't conceive of the sort of wretched abuse another married woman might face at the hands of a spouse, denying that marital rape is even a possibility, is a disgraceful denial of empathy. The lack of sympathy for the woman who needs must be a breadwinner because she has no man is as unchristian as the Christianity she used to justify such disturbingly dehumanizing attitudes towards her fellow female. Her attitude regarding queers was no less shocking, and not at all ameliorated by having an actual gay son.

And she was also a garden-varietal mid-20th century racist. She sided with Goldwater and you can read between the lines with that, and with Donald Trump because her attitudes regarding the browning of America were predictably "anti". She thought baseball had gotten very disturbingly colored--by foreigners. She was an agitator and proud of it, no matter what she thought other, lesser females ought to do with themselves.

I never liked what she stood for, or particularly understood how she stood for any of it. Rather than disliking her as any sort of formidable conservative mind, I tended to view her as a sort of relic--a mind trapped in amber, forever extolling a world that probably did not exist and wouldn't ever again, and "Hooray!" for that.

It's probably fit that she passed before a liberal woman became our US President. It would have discomfited her to no end.

A "Billionaire" Settles For Pence

So, when the world is on the brink and evil is on the loose, and it looks like some commonsense leadership is hard to find, would anyone doubt the goodwill of "Never Trump" evangelical Mike Pence and funky as he wants to be Donald Trump being on the same ticket? Especially when Trump fucked off like a mad cow over Pence when the whole Nice thing went live because the pick wasn't assertive enough for him? When he decided let's not even do Pence, and tried to back out, even though the Governor of Indiana was in a bind over whether to run for his second term?  When NJ Governor Chris Christie tried to take a stab at currying favor and former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich was at his "She Turned Me Into A Newt" Gingrinchiest.

Sure. This is how a candidate for president could behave--if that person was completely incompetent and not remotely fit for office and also sort of wanted to fuck over pretended allies because of obscure grudges.

So, that's where I think Trump is.

But let's get real about what a Pence pick says about Trump--remember when he was asking us to believe that he was a great friend of queer folks? Well no! The Pence pick basically implies he is anything but, and Pence also highlights the way a government can punish women for even thinking about abortion.

They are basically a match made in GOP hell. I think they represent an inconvenient marriage of convenience and are both too stupid to be politically useful. I also love the nonsense penetration that is their "ThinkProgress" evocative logo and the vision of Loud Trump hollering into Mike Pence's stupid stiff face at any event at which they deign to mutually appear.

Like in Bedminster NJ, making sweet ticket love in Gov. Christies' backyard. Because Trump is never not humiliating potential allies. He's kind of a monster that way. Don't be played.

Ted Cruz and the 2020 Vision?

Ted Cruz bows out of 2016 race, accidentally elbows wife after speech https://t.co/IL10tXQjo1

— MSNBC (@MSNBC) May 4, 2016

It is sort of fitting that a candidate who seemed a little less than adept at being perfectly home in a human skin (c'mon, Ted, even a dog can shake hands, as the man said!), who disturbed small children (even his own!)and seemed a little more like an alien who lived on human misery and tinned soup, clocks his wife in the jibs as he ended his awkward campaign on an awkward note. It seems to be who he is--just an awkward, awkward guy who misnames sportsball equipment and strings movie quotes together when he can't make regular talk happen.

There's probably a way to sell this as being humanizing, if Cruz starts now. And I think he did, just a little, when he finally responded to the damn silliness of Cruz, Sr. being a part of the JFK assassination conspiracy by blasting Trump for his unserious repetition of crazy tabloid bullshit. I'm not saying I'd buy Cruz becoming likable--but what the hell--he's probably already had his eye on whether his chances are better in 2020. After all, I've already figured that Cruz is thinking long-range. Why wouldn't he--being I should certainly hope more wrapped up in his political future than your humble blogger is?

After all, although Cruz has bowed out, there's something about having been a figure for #NeverTrump people that I think should encourage him to refrain from coming around to endorsing Trump--after things Trump has said, I'd certainly respect him less if he did. I don't think there's any reason Cruz should a) expect a place for himself in a possible Trump cabinet or even b) put any eggs in the "Trump wins the 2016 race" basket at all.

Frankly, a 2016 win for Hillary Clinton becomes Cruz's best shot--having already proven a capable bomb-thrower with his previous government shutdown hijinks, it's clear that he can sustain a high profile as the face of opposition to Hillary Clinton's velvet-gloved tyranny from his position in the Senate. That, plus a softening of Clinton's image after a regular four-year RW media bombardment gives him a lot to work with. And with Trump having lost to Clinton in 2016 (because this is likely, unless you believe Rasmussen math, and I think they must have hired that Dean Chambers cat...)any hard feelings over his failure to give in for the sake of party unity to Team "Never Say Never" will be forgiven because, as you know, Trump was a loser.

And he never was a real conservative, anyway.

Now, part of me wants to think that calculation will be cancelled out by demographics, and that Cruz might not even win re-election for the Senate. It would count on a really rugged time for a potential President Clinton and a gathering social conservative backlash that is partially presaged by the "religious freedom" and trans bathroom discrimination bills we've been seeing in this cycle. But I can't say it doesn't make a weird kind of sense.

This is not the last we see of Ted Cruz's presidential hopes, folks.

Jeb! Same as He Ever Was!

I think the funniest thing about Jeb Bush's logo isn't that he basically recycled the same logo he was using in 1994 in his unsuccessful bid for Florida Governor, but that the reason he seems to have done so is more or less the same: in 1994, he was running for political office pretty much right after his father's 1992 loss to Bill Clinton. In 2016, he's still got to contend with his brother's legacy (although he does not mind having many of the same advisors on his campaign). So instead of "Bush!", we've got "Jeb!"

("Jeb!" stands for "John Ellis Bush--the last part is silent!")

It's kind of bananas that he has a problem with name recognition--usually, name recognition is a good thing. People aren't necessarily that attentive to the news, so if they've heard of you in one way or another, it usually goes in the plus column for you.

But just as a refresher, this particular Jeb Bush believed that a woman should get off welfare by marrying up some man to take care of her, that unwed mothers should be publically shamed by having their sexual histories broadcast, that the fetus of a disabled rape victim required a guardian an advocate, that the rights of some voters to be more valid than others, that drug testing welfare recipients is effective, that a simple matter of death with dignity is ripe for turning into a into a full-fledged circus, and that he really likes the works of Charles Murray, who is best known for a certain work that came out in 1994.

But sure, what the heck. The real problem with him is his name is Bush.

George F. Will is Not an Expert on Things.

One of the amusing things about punditry is it convinces the accepted class of mainstream commenters that their opinions on any and all things are valid and probably pretty damn smart.

George Will is an ancient and accepted pundit--and he is so wrong about stuff that Chris Wallace has to drag his ass up.  He unbelievably tries to say ebola is quasi-airborne because...nothing, on the FOX News Sunday show, and literally cannot be told he is wrong. Even the doctors he thinks he is quoting will go on to say he is wrong.

This is of a piece with his shtick though. Like, regarding climate change, where I have raked him over, he trots out the same things even though better brains than mine have said "Stahp".

He's made a spectacle of himself over rape culture to his detriment, and now, he wants to make a brand new spectacle of himself about ebola?

He is an expert about being a pundit who was mildly relevant in the 1980's. Please, Old Media, stop pretending he's relevant about anything else. He's very uninformed. He's like some 1950's sex manual recommending a cola douche for birth control. It's like, that level of embarrassing.

Okay, I Support Marriage Equality, Free Speech and Boycotts

I like to think I have a funny old quality about my "small-d" democratic leanings--I like to think the arc of history does actually bend towards justice. I like to think that, without excessive manipulation, folks are happy to let their neighbors live and let live. This is why I have a certain ambiguity regarding how I feel about Brendan Eich's stepping down as CEO of Mozilla.

Wait. I don't. Look, this is the reality we're confronted with, anymore. Alec Baldwin talks homophobic shit about a pap and loses out on his MSNBC gig. Martin Bashir talks shit about Sarah Palin and blows his gig. Tons of employees all over the globe have certain contracts regarding their conduct or compliance with standards of performance in their personal lives. Sometimes these standards have a direct impact on their effectiveness in their positions. If the impression that Eich's support of Proposition 8, which may have impacted his employees in Silicon Valley effects the market choices of the exact computing market Mozilla/Firefox want to capture--that's a business decision. People have a right to an absence of government opression for their free speech (although dudes in helmets wielding tear gas and pepper spray sometimes do make their presence known in spaces where people with particularly radical ideas can congregate--so let's not pretend that never happens--and also let's not pretend the equivalent is happening to CEO's of multi-million dollar corporations either, 'kay?)

I laugh at boycotts like those of the Million Moms over whatever their momentary outrage of the minute is because it's just puffery. You know, I don't think The Simpsons, Married With Children or The Family Guy, were ever particularly hurt by that kind of boycott, and I love like the devil loves suntan lamps the response of Honeymaid to their haters over their gay-positive ad. I think the Million Moms, who aren't either representative of even a million people or all Moms, have every right to stick it to Covergirl for having Ellen or Queen Latifa as their spokeswomen.

They just won't be effective. Because it turns out, we love Ellen and Queen Latifa. We love Modern Family and Glee.  We love our Adam Lambert and Clay Aiken. We aren't hateful of our fellow humans and respect their right to find and keep the love of their life if they are straight, gay, or what the hey.

So, you know what's been happening lately? When Chick-fil-A has to dial back the anti-gay and Duck Dynasty loses ratings?

Progress. I would call it progress. And that is why I kind of do have faith in democracy.

But I really do feel sorry for people who feel like they have to perform a lie to comply with the standards that society sets because they are a minority struggling against the opinions of a hostile majority. Which is why I do not quite have the sympathy for anti-gay Christians as they might think I'd have. Where would we have learned how to shun you all?  Maybe by watching you? Think about how that works, and get on back to us.

Not the Least, and Not the Last

Yesterday marked some new changes in the battle of LGBT equality, with AZ Gov.Jan Brewer vetoing Senate bill 1062, finding that there was no evidence that people of faith were being unduly burdened and that allowing this bill to become law would have unintended consequences, and with a federal judge ruling the Texas gay marriage ban unconstitutional. 

It's not unalloyed good news, because although I am optimistic (just see my last blog entry) I was not found in a cabbage patch nor was I raised on sunshine and good vibes. The response of some social conservatives definitely reminds me that nothing is over--if anything, the desire of a handful of retrograde culture warriors to wrap themselves in the mantle of faith and claim special privilege as a marginalized group seems to have grown. It's what you might call a smaller, but more motivated group. Look at it this way, if it's right that the SCOTUS Windsor ruling has literally made all further argument on gay marriage moot, what the hell is Brian Brown gonna do now? Get a real job? Even Fox News might stop inviting Tony Perkins on, and everyone knows Bryan Fischer is worried  that if folks are freely getting gay-married...well, he's on his own thing and I think he's more scared of turning into a vulva than turning gay, but my point is, that rear-guard money is catch as catch can and they gotta hustle now. So they will hustle.

This Land Was Made For You and Me and LGBT

Although we haven't strictly heard yet whether AZ Gov. Jan Brewer will veto the disturbingly easily passed anti-gay discrimination (or was that made-up religious freedom?) bill, I have a feeling she will veto it, especially since US Senators John McCain and Jeff Flake  have suggested she should, as well as business leaders and even some of the people who had voted for it, most GOP voters, and former Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney. 

This gives me great reason to believe this is a very dead bill, and should be decently buried. A similar bill was rejected recently in Indiana, and I think the Georgia bill will be, too. 

A Poor Choice or a Kinsley Gaffe?

I was going to let this go, but sometimes, the blog-muses don't let you:

A pregnant woman is just a "host" that should not have the right to end her pregnancy, Virginia State Sen. Steve Martin (R) wrote in a Facebook rant defending his anti-abortion views. 

Martin, the former chairman of the Senate Education and Health Committee, wrote a lengthy post about his opinions on women's bodies on his Facebook wall last week in response to a critical Valentine's Day card he received from reproductive rights advocates. 

"I don't expect to be in the room or will I do anything to prevent you from obtaining a contraceptive," Martin wrote. "However, once a child does exist in your womb, I'm not going to assume a right to kill it just because the child's host (some refer to them as mothers) doesn't want it." Martin then changed his post on Monday afternoon to refer to the woman as the "bearer of the child" instead of the "host."

 (Bold type emphasis--mine.)

By now, it's been pointed out in several places that the choice of the word "host" is unfortunate in that it implies a host/parasite relationship, in which case, the host really may have an interest in relieving itself of a parasite. Equating a fetus with a tapeworm was surely not State Sen. Martin's intent. And it would be easy to simply leave it at that, as just the kind of gaffe that comes with misplaced "sarcasm" (note--there is another Steve Martin who does the sarcasm much better, and this guy here might want to leave it alone).

But I find I also have an issue with the back half of the bolded phrase--"some refer to them as mothers". Why, of course! That would be the accurate reproductive term for the female contributor of the ova in a conceptus. But it's truer in more than just the literal sense of the relationship of the person seeking the abortion to the fetus--it's also accurate in the sense that the decision not to carry a child is a parenting decision, albeit a terminal one.

Santorum "StrikeForce" to the Rescue in VA

Santorum StrikeForce!

There's a phrase to make you want to, I dunno, duck, or something, but if you are in VA, you may just be getting a knock on your door from someone from Rick Santorum's own Patriot Voices to remind you that Ken Cuccinelli is the Santorum choice. 

This kind of support from the former PA Senator & 2012 GOP primary candidate is sure to help Cuccinelli with groups he has flagging support from, like, um.  Well, not LGBT folks. (Sorry.) And um, not science-minded people. (Sorry there, too.) And um, probably not women.  (Oh well.)

But, you know. At least a candidate like Cucinelli can pull a Santorum. All that McAuliffe character's got backing him is some former First Lady. You know, and more of the people who have been polled.

Erick Erickson, Wendy Davis, and that Catpiss Smell

Red State blogger Erick Erickson got a little attention for calling TX State Senator Wendy Davis "Abortion Barbie". That's pretty catchy. I can't say that I'm all that shocked by the name, because, damnit--pink shoes. You have totally pwn'd, Double-E. Maybe she will continue to be associated with the safe, legal medical procedure whose cause she took to the floor of the Texas legislature to champion on behalf of female-bodied people who might need it. Huh. And just think--she'll have Erick Erickson to thank for that particular bit of notoriety! Winzors, dude.

Although, I do have to quibble a little bit on the "not knowing about Kermit Gosnell and horrors thereof", because, and I want to thank Erickson for reminding me of this--he was not performing legal or safe medical procedures. He wasn't. That was the problem. His practice was based on desperate women who could not obtain abortions because of however far along they were, and the laws of their particular area in some cases, and one of the things he did was fake up the ultrasounds and just pretend he was doing legal abortions. But the thing I can't really get out of my head is that catpiss smell.

See, that was what his clinic smelled like. And he still had patients. Because they could not imagine a life where they carried a child to term or raised it. They could not. And they smelled catpiss and knew they were probably putting their lives at risk, puttting them in the hands of at the minimum, someone who was kind of fucked up--because catpiss, amirite? But they didn't see any other solution. Just like women who can in no way afford to carry a child to term and/or raise it in Texas might seek out some less than safe, less than legal procedure in the paradigm this rotten, inhumane, anti-abortion legislation would create. Which is what Wendy Davis was interested in preventing and actually talked about. But if you just wanted to look at her shoes...oh well.

Ken Cuccinelli's Unnatural Act: Or, the AG and the BJ's

I'll admit, I was aware that Ken Cuccinelli was up for bigger things back in 2010, when it looked like he was trying to take on climate science as his signifying crusade; but deep down, I was hoping he would go full-metal-wingnut over something a little more representative of his social conservative bona fides.  After all, this is the guy who weirded out over boobies post-Ashcroft. I won't have Rick Santorum to kick around forever--why not be on the look-out for a new field of ripe prudish whackadoodlehood?

But the other reason I was hoping Cuccinelli would pick a crusade with social conservative value is that there is a religious right bubble--on one hand, they seem to be aware that they're out of the mainstream and that their values aren't represented by Hollyweird and the mainstream media, but on the other hand, there seems to be a an almost naive lack of awareness that they don't represent a silent, moral majority of people who think exactly as they do. Case in point, I believe, is his request for a re-hearing of Virginia's anti-sodomy law:

This specific case deals with a man who was prosecuted under the "Crimes Against Nature" statute for having had oral sex with women, a felony offense under that law. The man in the case, William MacDonald, was in his late 40s when he was charged with having consensual oral sex with two young women who were, at the time, ages 16 and 17. While that might be seen as creepy, in Virginia, the age of consent is 15 years old. It is considered statutory rape—a felony offense—to have sex with anyone under that age. Under state law, an adult can be prosecuted for "causing" delinquency by having sex with someone between the ages of 15 and 18, but that is only a misdemeanor. MacDonald was convicted of such a misdemeanor, and his lawyers aren't challenging that conviction. But they have challenged—so far, successfully—the state's attempt to prosecute him for violating the "Crimes Against Nature" law. 

Because Virginia still has this anti-sodomy law on the books, the state wants to use it against MacDonald and win a felony conviction. The state, however, couldn't prosecute him under this statute if he had engaged in vaginal sex. That is, the state is trying to use a loophole in the law that makes oral, but not vaginal, sex a felony in order to go after this guy. The court of appeals determined that MacDonald could not be prosecuted under this law because the US Supreme Court ruled in 2003 that such laws are an unconstitutional "intrusion into the personal and private life of the individual."

At issue with the statute that he's using is that he's specifically singling out, not the issue of the ages of the young women in question nor the issue of consent, but the actual nature of the act itself. He wants a felony conviction because the act is oral sex.

He wants oral sex to be treated as a serious crime.  Let that sink in. Is that really where most people are on the subject?  Because I am willing to bet they are not. And yet he's going to be "the anti-oral sex guy" on the cusp of a gubernatorial run--is that natural, I ask you? (And this is just the latest thing in a string of things, which includes being birther-curious and paranoid about being tracked by one's Social Security number.)

Anyway, I suspect Cuccinelli will make for interesting watching in the months, nay, years to come.

Profiles in Whatever You Would Call That

The Romney campaign's recent hire of Richard Grenell was met with a little controversy for a couple of reasons--for one, he had a bit of a mean sense of humor on Twitter (although that was easily deleted, if not entirely forgotten) and for another, he was openly gay. It looks like it was the latter detail that lead to Grenell's resignation today, as Jennifer Rubin reports:

Richard Grenell, the openly gay spokesman recently hired to sharpen the foreign policy message of Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign, has resigned in the wake of a full-court press by anti-gay conservatives. 

In a statement obtained by Right Turn, Grenell says:

 I have decided to resign from the Romney campaign as the Foreign Policy and National Security Spokesman. While I welcomed the challenge to confront President Obama’s foreign policy failures and weak leadership on the world stage, my ability to speak clearly and forcefully on the issues has been greatly diminished by the hyper-partisan discussion of personal issues that sometimes comes from a presidential campaign. I want to thank Governor Romney for his belief in me and my abilities and his clear message to me that being openly gay was a non-issue for him and his team.

 According to sources familiar with the situation, Grenell decided to resign after being kept under wraps during a time when national security issues, including the president’s ad concerning Osama bin Laden, had emerged front and center in the campaign.

This is really quite disappointing. The last week or so has focused attention on Romney's foreign policy views, and Grenell might have been able to, well, do the thing he was presumably hired for and help the campaign craft a consistent message if the social conservatives could actually bring themselves to view a person based on his merits, not his identity, and if the Romney campaign wasn't--how should I put this?

Gutless.

Wow. Some days I can not avoid ugly thoughts.

I wrote about an ugly thought I had concerning Rick Santorum's odd assertions about the family; to wit:

It's weird how social conservatives sometimes have ideas that lead one to absurd places if drawn out to a logical end. Over the course of this campaign, former Senator Rick Santorum has made two assertions that I've found personally appalling: the first one being that even a woman and a man in prison might be preferable as parents to a gay couple, and the second being that a woman who was impregnated through rape should just make the best of a bad situation.

Separately, those notions are nasty enough. Taken together, however, can one assume that Rick Santorum would find that a rape victim, her rapist, and the child of that rape, are a less-dysfunctional family unit than a family headed by a law-abiding, committed, consensual gay couple? And that, whether he's inside of prison or outside of prison, the child of such a union benefits from having a rapist father in his or her life?

As it occurs, George Will has written a column regarding the importance of fathers in influencing their children's lives.  Here's a sample:

Born to an unmarried, mentally ill prostitute, he acquired his interest in driving from his grandfather, who would drive around the block with Sugar Bear in his lap. Not until Sugar Bear was 25 did he learn that his grandfather was his father, too, having had a sexual relationship with Sugar Bear’s mother.

         (Snip)

This is the preoccupation of Ken Canfield, 58, a Kansas State Ph.D. who, until five years ago, headed the National Center for Fathering in Kansas City. He then moved here to help Pepperdine University develop a Center for the Family, and he now labors with World Impact living among the city’s most troubled people. Canfield acquainted Sugar Bear with Psalm 68, which speaks of God as “father of the fatherless” who “setteth the solitary in families.” For people like Sugar Bear, people with holes in their souls never filled by the love of fathers, Canfield says religion offers the “spiritualization of fatherhood”:
“If you don’t have the calm self-respect that a father gives, your passions go sideways. For a number of men, their passions become sexualized as they look for comfort and affirmation of their manhood.”

See what happened there? And yet, Sugar Bear's mother's life apparently did not lack from an impactful relationship with her father. Apparently.  And yet she was, in Will's words, "an unmarried, mentally ill prostitute".  It would make you wonder, if you weren't more inclined to realize that this means that the old man raped his daughter and she would have been, therefore, very unlikely to marry the father of her child, and that being raped by one's father probably does not contribute to a very healthy psyche.

And somehow, Sugar Bear's troubled life had to do with fatherlessness.

It isn't when I don't understand social conservatives that I feel angry--it's when I think I do.