TWGB: You Can Consider All The Options

 

Recently seen unfurled at Yankee Stadium was an absolutely enormous banner reading "Trump or Death". It showed the dates "1776-2024" which sort of suggests something happened in 1776 that would definitely end in 2024. I guess the opposition of the United States to monarchy, since the weirdos brandishing this flag seem to want to install Trump in office regardless of how the rest of us feel about him.

I encourage Trump followers, of course, by all means, to consider all of their options. No one here gets out alive, etc. 

Mike Huckabee, former governor of Arkansas, father of Sarah, pastor (?), tv host and promoter of cartoon pseudohistory, certainly seems to think that if Trump loses in 2024 it will be the last election decided by ballots rather than bullets. Wild, if true, right? He subscribes to the idea that Trump is being persecuted for his political beliefs, when those beliefs were that he should be president for life and the hell with what the voters said. OK. Trump's beliefs are very much a problem. The idea that violence is the answer to your candidate losing an election because he isn't popular is the actual stuff of banana republics. Your political candidate deciding he should be president for life is a problem--and yes, this is a thing Trump hinted at. 

Shiny Happy People

 

I cannot recommend this Amazon Prime documentary enough, because the reality of the IBLP and the legacy of Bill Gothard has a real impact on politics today. The "Evangelical vote" in this country is about, to some degree, this anti-science and abusive cult of kept-sweet femininity and abusive masculine authority. It's about deadening children's creativity and independence.  It's about reinforcing gender stereotypes and blaming victims for their abuse. It's about taking away the voices of the abused. 

It's about taking away scientific facts, and inserting one's own religious bias.  You know how they do. It's about wisdom books that have no wisdom in them. It's about elevating positive thinking and shutting down critical thinking. It's about denying reality and smiling when the camera is on. It's about little kids being made emissaries of their parents' religion and not being compensated. It's about Jim Bob Duggar being a stingy controlling SOB. It's about Mike Huckabee helping whitewash child abuse. 

When you look at Josh Hawley and his weird kvetching about masculinity, or the Liberty Mommies astroturf bullshit--you are seeing something that stems from this movement. They want to be the umbrella over you to prevent Satan doing his closet boogeyman stuff to your life. It's kind of really well-funded and super-sad. Because it is rooted in patriarchy and ignorance and weirdos who want to spank little kids. 

Can I Get a Witness?

Damn. I did not realize that Sean Spicer was out there shaking his groove thang as a powerful witness to Christ through the language of dance as opposed to being a discredited lying hack trying to improve his Q score by appearing fuzzy and relatable.

Well, if you can't dance, I wouldn't want to be a part of your culture war, anyway.

(I don't know what's up--I screen-capped because the Tweet wouldn't embed.)

Sarah Sanders Proudly Lies for Trump

Pressed repeatedly on her comments on FBI agents, Sarah Sanders tells @GStephanopoulos, "It was the heat of the moment, meaning that it wasn't a scripted talking point. I'm sorry that I wasn't a robot like the Democratic Party" was about Mueller probe. https://t.co/mOQZNKl1wy pic.twitter.com/y3xcNwVYHg

— ABC News (@ABC) April 19, 2019

I noted a little bit earlier that Sarah Huckabee Sanders lies for Trump and sounds more like him all of the time. The Mueller report revealed that Sarah Sanders lied and admitted she did when she said that she had received messages from people in the FBI who were happy about the firing of Director Jim Comey. Her answer to being pinned down on that was less than great: it was 100% accurate that she got some messages to that effect, but it couldn't be considered "countless".


Yeah. Because whether the messages were "countless", and not whether they were happening at all, was the issue. I direct to others who were paying attention:

Was Mike Huckabee Always this Horrible?

.@GovMikeHuckabee: A lot more afraid of a Clinton presidency than "of getting a mosquito bite in South Florida." https://t.co/vIe7FoCnxW

— ABC News Politics (@ABCPolitics) August 11, 2016

Here we have former AR Governor Mike Huckabee haw-hawing over not being afraid of being bitten by a mosquito. Well, fine--for him. He's not a pregnant woman or woman of child-bearing age.

But take heart to this sad case of a young woman who traveled to El Salvador who didn't even know she'd been infected, who gave birth to her baby in Texas and all the time she ever spent with that child was the day she watched it die. I can't even imagine the grief she must feel, but I have the idea one should try to, or you aren't humaning right.

That story goes on to report:

Fifteen babies in the U.S. have been born with Zika-related birth defects, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Seven women have lost pregnancies due to Zika. Those numbers could grow. Nearly 1,000 pregnant women in the continental U.S. and territories have been infected with Zika.

Miami is battling a local Zika outbreak in the Wynwood neighborhood that has infected 21 people, according to the Florida Department of Health.

More than 7,300 Americans have been diagnosed with Zika, including 1,825 in the continental U.S. and 5,548 in U.S. territories, according to the CDC. Most Zika cases in the continental U.S. are related to travel or sex with someone who has traveled. One Zika case was caused by a lab accident.

Women and families mourning their lost children, their children who won't live, their children whose lives have been interrupted by disease, whose families will be impacted for years to come. Sure, he isn't worried--but what about these folks? How is someone so clueless and so heartless at once? It just seems like I would not have expected that from Gov. Huckabee at one time. It is a shame this is where he is now.

Comparing a Clinton presidency to a virus is also beneath contempt. He's merely hyperbolically bad at analogies.

Take Your Thoughts and Prayers and Shove Them

We are going to hear a lot about terrorism as more details about Omar Mateen's rampage on an Orlando, FL gay nightclub become known, but what I want to make clear about all of this is--thoughts and prayers are an insult. They are lower than shit. Because I sincerely question the "thoughts and prayers" of people who have been NRA shills and I sincerely doubt the "thoughts and prayers" of people who have never given a damn about the gay community--anywhere. But on social media, it's inescapable--people who don't give a shit taking a moment to selfie themselves with this tragedy by commemorating it with the old "thoughts and prayers". Like sending a perfunctory "thank you note" to the cosmos for gifting one with an opportunity to signify your biases by writing in the blood of your fellow human beings.

So, if you are a shitlord former presidential candidate who wants to take a minute a handful of months after appearing on a stage with anti-gay preachers who want a federal law to kill gay people to pretend that your stance against terrorism does shit for these victims, right here? Just take your thoughts and prayers and shove them. Your thoughts aren't worth anything and your prayers are against the very people who have been harmed. Do something positive. Learn about gay people and Islam. Or just get the fuck out of public life.

Or, if you are a dramatically reality-detached personality cultist, maybe congratulating yourself on being proved right that terrorism is a thing (when, no duh) is so extraordinarily grotesque that instead of merely "deleting your account", you should probably delete your entire run for the presidency. Maybe saying the words "Islamic extremism" and calling once again for a ban on Muslims in the US is ludicrous when you consider that Christians can be murderous against this particular population as well; and also that this Mateen wanker was born here and therefore couldn't have been barred entry to a country he was born in, and that US persons have been born here and convert to Islam and have no terroristic intent at all--like the late Muhammed Ali. Trump congratulates himself for a position wholly incoherent and untenable. And still and all--sometimes the wankers aren't even Islamists.

I am heartsick about these many victims of this horrendous tragedy, and I know the content of my thoughts, and, being without faith, I know the uselessness of my prayers. I will work and vote to do what I can to make sure that suspected terrorists and domestic batterers are not able to easily obtain automatic weapons, and I will always, always, be a voice against homophobia and Islamophobia. And I will be mindful that in life there are intersections of identity--Muslim LGBT people, for example. How do we ban them from coming here to be free (remember the US standing for freedom?) when they might face vicious threats to their existence often in their countries of origin?  How do we deny their existence when their home of origin is even here?

In the words of one the greats--"when the power of love overcomes the power of hate, we shall know peace." (On which great said it first, the jury is out--but I think it's right all the same.)

I don't think we need more thoughts or prayers--we need better gun policies and we need voices who speak out about tolerance and acceptance and not killing scores of people because you saw an act of affection between two men.  We need real action, not deliberate inaction, and local empowerment, not impotent talk.

Maybe some prayers and thoughts are decently offered, but they are not the answer to the great need for action we have.

Louie Gohmert Is Copying Mike Huckabee

East Texas' very own Village Idiot Louie Gohmert has opined on North Carolina's anti-LGBT law by confessing that he would have completely dragged it up to watch little girls pee:

“When it comes to this current legislation where — in most of the world, in most of the religions, the major religions, you have men and you have women, and there are some abnormalities but for heaven’s sake, I was as good a kid as you can have growing up, I never drank alcohol till I was legal, never to, still, use an illegal drug, but in the seventh grade if the law had been that all I had to do was say, ‘I’m a girl,’ and I got to go into the girls’ restroom, I don’t know if I could’ve withstood the temptation just to get educated back in those days,” he said.

Huh, really? Gohmert would have announced he was trans and then--asserted different pronouns, or a new first name, or taken a beating or a dozen for being a girl in the wrong skin? No, I guess Louie Gohmert pretty obviously doesn't get that being trans isn't about just alleging to have a given gender identity, but you know what? I'm so old, I remember when Mike Huckabee said the exact same thing:

Huckabee continued saying saying he wished someone told him in high school he “could have felt like a woman” and shower with the girls.

“Now I wish that someone told me that when I was in high school that I could have felt like a woman when it came time to take showers in PE,” said Huckabee. “I’m pretty sure that I would have found my feminine side and said, ‘Coach, I think I’d rather shower with the girls today.’ You’re laughing because it sounds so ridiculous, doesn’t it?”

Except, of course, that was being a teenager in high school and showering with other teenage girls. Being twelve and watching little girls pee seems a little odder. Girls' rooms don't have open stalls. Girls don't take off our shirts to pee. Sitting down, you can't really see anything, even if you were in an adjacent stall and for some weird reason, got up to look over the stall by standing on the toilet seat or whatever.

And that is just weird as hell. That's not an argument against being trans. It's like saying he has a pee fetish about little girls. And if Louie Gohmert has a pee fetish about little girls, he's a fine one to start shit about anyone else.

So there.

Trump Fatigue

Many apologies to my regular readers for my temporary absence from blogging, but I have been mentally laid up with a tremendous case of Trump Fatigue. The recent episode of Donald Trump vs the Media, pitting His Nibs against Fox News (and particularly Megan Kelly) was just a stunt too far for me to go on trying to write about this as politics, and it isn't even exactly media criticism--the only way to discuss this is as a television review for a reality show.

I had long wondered what debates mean to people who don't follow policy minutia. I no longer do. They are a talent contest for political spokesmodels. Who delivered cleverer lines? Who looked poised? Did one candidate or the other seem nervous or badly prepared for some ambush question? It's superficial--and backing out of the tiresome thing makes sense for a frontrunner who considers himself far enough in the lead to get no benefit out of it whatsoever--and already anticipates he won't get slammed for it. So Trump created his own counter-event. It even drew two of the undercard debate performers, Rick Santorum and Mike Huckabee, who seek attention like blind snakes seeking warmth. Did they realize they were practically signaling an endorsement? (Who knows what people with this little likelihood of winning the nomination, who still claim to be in the running, actually are aware of?)

Without Trump, the debate went on, arguably with more discussion of the issues. Sen. Ted Cruz took his shots at the absent frontrunner--but it looks like none of the other stiffs on the stage felt like that was their cue to take advantage of the opportunity to bury Trump while he was offstage. I found it a source of disappointment, but not surprise. They could have said he "cut and run" and challenged his seriousness, but no. Jeb Bush tussled with Marco Rubio. Rubio tussled with Cruz. Boring.

So Trump gambled that he wouldn't get painted as unserious for ditching the debate to have a rally for disabled vets--and was proven absolutely right. He flatfooted the competition, who simply did not know how to respond. And he won the media cycle, because once again, he was all the news could talk about.

I don't know when everyone else will be as exhausted by this sort of thing as I am, but I feel like the media should catch on that they are being played for publicity, and maybe his nasty little habit of turning on journalists who displease him only stops when they do what his GOP rivals refused to.

Dead Campaign Walking

This sort of news from the Huckabee campaign makes me think he might want to consider going back to doing radio. What's going on is:

Mike Huckabee’s presidential campaign is slashing salaries for senior campaign staff in the wake of poor polling and difficulty fundraising, sources told Politico on Thursday.

Campaign officials said the austerity measures will help redirect more funds toward evangelical-heavy Iowa, where Huckabee, a former pastor, won the 2008 Republican caucuses.

The salary reductions took place over the last few weeks, amid the abrupt departure of communications director Alice Stewart. 

Take a look at the GOP Iowa spread, and you can not think that by February 1st, with what Huckabee has on hand, he's going to do much to break what looks like a toss-up between Cruz and Trump.  Then he goes on to New Hampshire, South Carolina, Nevada and Super Tuesday.

He's got to make absolutely absurd gains to get there. He isn't going to make them in New Hampshire, and even if he figures out a way to score points in South Carolina, it isn't enough to encourage donors through Super Tuesday.

I totally had Santorum as next on the drop-dead rota, but I don't even know if he has staff to cut the salaries of anymore. I don't know what he's running on. Hope that at least he's doing better than that bastard Pataki?  (I know why Senator Graham is in, I think. Keeping it real, FWIW.)

Anyhow, I call Huckabee sensible enough to creep out of the race before massive campaign debts accrue. That's the best I'll say for him.

"No More Baby Parts."

If the "mainstream media" is to be believed, Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood shooter, Robert Dear, said "No more baby parts," when he was finally taken into custody after his violent rampage.  But, why, whatever could he have meant by that, do you suppose? Maybe he was just down to the clinic to borrow a cup of baby parts and found they were all out?  Maybe he was building a Frankenstein-esque creature and got peeved at the glut of juvenile bits on the market? Maybe he was misheard and was unhappy with "A. B. parts."

As Sherlock Holmes might have said, if he were prone to using my vernacular, if every other possibility is so fucking stupid and fanciful that you'd have to be a lying bastard to propose them, you should consider the evidence staring you in the face.

And it might just sound a little self-serving if one admits that Dear was a domestic terrorist, as Gov. Mike Huckabee has, but then plays victim by saying it especially harms the pro-life folks. Does this make the anti-abortion people really look bad? Do they need much help, there? And the knee-slapper is, this is the guy who was going to use the US military to forcibly close health clinics. It's "domestic terrorism" if you are a DIY-type. If you're president, you do what you want!

Failed tech-CEO Carly Fiorina takes a slightly different tack--it's just "typical left-wing tactics" to blame anti-abortion rhetoric for violent actions.  How dare we connect those dots in chronological order! This was the candidate, mind you, who imagined a scenario that wasn't even in the highly-edited videos who had to go on to produce one yet more lurid. Which we are not supposed to find incendiary or deceitful in the least, mind you.

Now, a handful of people are just looking at this guy's criminal records and immediately dismissing him as a lunatic. Mental illness is a spectrum, charges against this miscreant were regularly dismissed, and the things he was accused of weren't necessarily out of bounds for people who are considered perfectly sane. Being antisocial or even sociopathic doesn't exclude this person from having political views. People have made note of the fact that Colorado Springs is the headquarters for Focus on the Family. The founding member, Dr. James Dobson, justified both wife-beating and animal abuse.  (Not that I'm saying Dear was influenced by Focus on the Family, at all, at all--after all, he wasn't originally from Colorado Springs. He was from North Carolina. Where Eric Rudolph was found holed up. And there's some folks to this day who consider Rudolph a folk hero. )

John Kasich and Exporting "Judeo-Christian Values"

You know, I think OH Gov. John Kasich has come as close as there can be to being the "reasonable man" on stage in primary debates. He's informed, compassionate, and except for a little signifying, not overtly doling out pandering horseshit.

Which is why this business with creating an agency to dispense Judeo-Christian memes to countries he deems could use them is a hot mess. Remember just a blog post or so back when I mentioned that Ben Carson's adviser, Gen. Dees, was in favor of militarized missionaries? Well, that sort of thing is actually not allowed by military convention--US soldiers are not to proselytize.  (It's bad enough when heavy proselytization is used on the troops themselves.) We have this funny old thing here in the States about church and state separation, despite the best efforts of people like the head of Ted Cruz' SuperPAC, David Barton, to pretend it is not a real thing. An agency like the Office of Faith-Based Initiatives, created under President George W. Bush, is questionable enough--but even that office recognizes the Establishment Clause and steers away from proselytizing.

This proposal does not. It specifically mentions "Judeo-Christian values"--implying that any other values of any other creed must be less-than. (I've recently mentioned on Twitter that "Judeo-Christian" is such a passive-aggressive phrase in that the third Abrahamic faith is, intentionally, silent.) It specifically would be geared towards spreading "Judeo-Christian values" to--whom? The poor benighted boogers of lesser faiths who don't have values that Kasich recognizes as "correct"? Why, that is tremendously paternalistic and really likely to make people more pissed off at our colonialist mindset!

Yeah. I had a little respect for Kasich, but, while this idea might sort of woo evangelicals, seriously, if there was a way to peel them off of Carson and Cruz, Huckabee would have tried it. I think it's a turkey, and as God is my witness, I do not believe turkeys can fly.

Profiles in Chickenshit

Today was like watching an amazing case of "follow the leader", where state governor after state governor decided to Make! A! Political! Statement! that they would no-way, no-how, be accepting any Syrian refugees in their state. AL Gov. Bentley managed to combine his statement refusing to accept any Syrian refugees (which his state as of to date hasn't done) with a prayer for "those who have suffered loss." Nice. Syrian refugees have lost family, neighbors, their homes. He'll pray for them--but by the way, they can fuck off. A slew of other governors followed on this small-hearted and shallow-souled wake. (One even signifying on a Louie "Terror Babies" Gohmert level of ridiculousness.)

It's obscene that the Paris attacks, mostly carried out by people already French or Belgian citizens, are causing a problem for Syrian refugees, who did not do this. The one case where a Syrian passport was found near a suicide bomber (which was cited by TX Gov. Abbott, because of course a person can blow themselves up and their passport survives, and who doesn't take their passport to a suicide bombing?) it was very probably a fake.

And why would anyone do that? Because Daesh wants Westerners to reject Syrian refugees. They want to drive a wedge between people, polarizing them, eliminating the middle. Imagine, for example, what happens when Syrian people are turned away from a place to shelter. They are facing the possibility of returning home to die, because there are a lot of ways to die in Syria right now. They knew, depending upon the length and path of their route that they might be facing death anyway--and that this would be especially hard on children.

So in this great and generous, and some would even claim, Christian nation--what are these elected officials doing? Pretending to send people who are most likely no threat at all, and who are themselves under terrible threat, away from people in their states who they would like to convince they just did a wonderful brave thing for--because they are chickenshits. And they would rather fake leadership by making this basically annoying stand,  because the alternative is learning stuff and being decent and showing actual courage and compassion--and who even has time for that?

Because the people who make these mouth noises about how we can't really know who's who? Apparently have no clue that refugee application involves multi-agency inspections and can take 18-24 months to process. The US has only taken about 2000 people to date since 2012, and here's the scorecard on who is actually dangerous to our fellow Americans. Counting 9/11 as basically sui generis, you've got a lot of homegrown horrorshows. And here's my point--toddlers have, in any given year but 2001, killed more Americans than terrorists have. Take, like, any four American school-shooters, and you'd have an event that rivals the Paris attacks. The actual risk of a Syrian refugee actually turning out to be a Daesh operative is seriously low. It's ridiculous to angst over--

And in the meanwhile--think about the generation of Syrian youth who just got the message that we considered them disposable. Is that not radicalizing?

It's chickenshit. It's leading by following uninformed opinion. It's pants-pissing xenophobia and nationalistic signifying.

And Mike Huckabee wants Paul Ryan to step down if he doesn't stop the refugees from slowly dribbling in as they've been doing. And Ted Cruz wants to ensure that Syrian Muslims, specifically, are barred from entry. I can't imagine responses that would make Daesh happier, honestly. They couldn't be playing into what Daesh wants more if they tried. Are they that stupid? That pandering?

And what about the Authorization of Force against ISIL/Daesh Obama requested?

Right. Chickenshit.

"We'll See What Happens"

Dr. Ben Carson recently gave an interview on foreign policy where he suggested he'd be fine with the US shooting down a Russian plane. When questioned about the possible aftermath of that decision, he replied:

"If they violate it, we will, in fact, enforce it. We'll see what happens. For us to always be backing down because we're afraid of a conflict, that's not how we became a great nation, Chris," he said.

We'll see what happens.  Yes, two nuclear-armed states potting each others' planes over Syria. We'll see what happens.  That doesn't seem to me to be how responsible people think. But what else did he say?

"My point being that if we get out there and we really lead and it appears that we're making progress, that all of the Arab states and even the non-Arab states who are, I think, beginning to recognize that the jihad movement is global" will join, Carson said.

"Beginning to recognize that the jihad movement is global"? This isn't new to the rest of the world--this is only new to Carson. And the "really lead" stuff: please for the love of anything, Google "US-led coalition" and get back to us.

Now, I'm not going to pretend that Dr. Carson is uniquely unqualified on foreign policy--after all, Senator Marco Rubio is throwing around some "clash of civilizations" crap that is specifically unhelpful (I'd say it makes more sense to consider Daesh "anti-civilization"), and Jeb Bush, whose brother did not keep us safe, seems to think that we should only take in Christian refugees. (Senator Cruz says that, too, but wouldn't he? Really?) And then there's Governor Huckabee, who doesn't seem to know that Iran is at war with Daesh, also.

Yes, guys, let's be idiots and make this about Christians versus Muslims, exactly how the terrorists want us to behave.

These Republican candidates are just awful. Are they so warped by the need to appeal to the lowest common denominator of their base that they can not articulate even one reasonable response? (Yes, that was rhetorical.)

Update:  You know, parse this statement from Sen. Cruz's website:

“Such steps, however, are defensive reactions to an enemy that will continue to try to attack us until they succeed once again. We must immediately recognize that our enemy is not ‘violent extremism.’ It is the radical Islamism that has declared jihad against the west. It will not be appeased by outreach or declarations of tolerance. It will not be deterred by targeted airstrikes with zero tolerance for civilian casualties, when the terrorists have such utter disregard for innocent life. We must make it crystal clear that affiliation with ISIS and related terrorist groups brings with it the undying enmity of America—that it is, in effect, signing your own death warrant.”

 So, because Daesh has indiscriminate disregard for life, we should tolerate civilian casualties just like they do to show that anyone associated with them (like the people they kidnap, capture, oppress, sell) should die? I don't think that helps. I really don't.

About that Anti-Gay Thing Some GOP Candidates Were Doing?

I sort of had wondered if any of them might have realized that the content at this particular Religious Right whang-dang-doodle would have been de trop for a general election, and maybe tried to frogman their way out of it--and if so, the closest to a possible remote mainstream chance, Ted Cruz, coulda, woulda, shoulda, got on that particular train. Well, he didn't try to take his Ivy League education and walk off that stage.

So, um, good for him and his committed values?

But frankly, as covered by Right Wing Watch, this thing was absurdly hateful. ("Sitting in cowshit hateful" might be my new metric of hateful as a very hateful thing.) Huckabee, Jindal, and Cruz, all laid out their theocratic bona fides without the least concern that anyone might find this problematic at all.

I don't think I'm alone in finding this coziness with the kinds of people who want to stone gays and adulterers literally because they find this punishment in an Iron Age collection of Bronze Age just-so stories really disturbing.

Their faith isn't my litmus test--it's their intentions. I think they have bad intent towards people who do not believe as they do. And I find it chilling.

There was a Presidential Debate Tonight!

A presidential debate--yayayayayayay!

A GOP debate. Oh. Well....

So, I could seriously analyze it--but let me start off by saying the format where there's an undercard "kid's table" debate is starting to seem really insulting and like a rotten waste of time. So why aren't these people dropping out of the race so they can stop wasting our time? It's not that they have no right to run--they just have no reasonable expectation to win anything. But even the main event debates seem like maybe they are a little too populous. I don't think Mike Huckabee is really looking to be president. I'm kind of wondering what Chris Christie really thinks his odds are. And again, the outsiders, Carson and Trump, say really odd things that make it questionable whether they have the firmest grasp on policy.

The winner and loser of the debate seem to be above. Rubio was capable of dealing with questions with reasonable political instincts and impressed people watching the debate. Bush didn't do a lot of talking, and frankly wasn't about being there.

General impressions:

Rubio: Polished like a finger nail, and about as deep. But his debate coaching must be immaculate. But gosh he seems young. You know how sometimes a parent is asked if maybe their kid should have another year of kindergarten? Sort of like that. But sheesh--he's so tired of the Senate kindergarten.

Fiorina: She has no regard whatsoever for the facts, and says things that are completely wrong with utter confidence. How has FOX News not picked up on her yet? Also she will simplify the tax code to three pages--and that was when I realized she was about that grift, ladies and gents. She also said all of Obama's policies and all of Clinton's policies are just the worst. FOX News, are you listening?

Climate Sunday: Mike Huckabee's Sunburn Edition

They believe climate change is a greater threat than Islamic extremism, that a sunburn is worse than a beheading. It's nonsense! #DemDebate

— Gov. Mike Huckabee (@GovMikeHuckabee) October 14, 2015

Welcome to another edition of our Sunday Climate Round-up, this time named after Mike Huckabee's go-to "hot take" on how terrorism is scarier than...a sunburn, which is what absolutely no one who is discussing climate change is seriously talking about, ever. But I'll bite, because I've hit this one before, poll your friends and neighbors and see who can admit to having had a really terrible sunburn. Go on to see how many of them have had a skin lesion looked at or removed.

Now think about how many of your friends and neighbors have been beheaded. Statistically, it is way more likely for a US American that everyone you know has had sunburn, and a few of them have had something suspicious scraped. Skin cancer is pretty scary. But you are less likely to know someone who was beheaded by terrorists--which isn't to minimize the threat of terror at all, only to put it in perspective.

I Stand with Planned Parenthood and HRC

On Oct. 16, 1916, Planned Parenthood opened their first health center and changed life for women in America. Here's to the next 99 years. -H

— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) October 16, 2015

.@HillaryClinton They've also ended the lives of millions of unborn babies. Here's to ending #PlannedParenthood's destruction. #ProLife

— Gov. Mike Huckabee (@GovMikeHuckabee) October 16, 2015

One of the real true things about me is my support of the health care access of every person in this country. Respecting all bodies, of whatever walk of life, as equally dignified and deserving of care, seems like a no-brainer to me. Understanding that human beings are sexual beings, and that their reproductive health is not some freakish "extra" thing, but central to their ability to control their economic fate--by making family-planning choices--is essential to understanding how to stem poverty and make healthy families the center of a thriving economy. Hillary Clinton has been a great proponent of women and children's health for as long as I have known of her. She supports the idea that the health of families is crucial to the health of our nation.

Mike Huckabee is a bone-ignorant culture warrior and wouldn't grasp why any woman sees terminating a pregnancy as relative to her own health, even while he easily excuses why a young male sees fit to sexually violate his sisters or their companions.

I know who would dominate in a debate on this subject. But Mike Huckabee will not get the nomination of his party, not least because he is more fit to be a Twitter troll than a president.

Also, I would, grammatically speaking, also like to end the destruction of Planned Parenthood! Yeah! Let's stop trying to end an organization that does a lot for regular people!

I'm too tired to watch the debate.

Left the house at 7:20 AM to get to work, left Trenton for Edison (that's practically smack next to Long Island) at 3:15, took a test for work about 5:45, and then drove back from Edison to Philly but a smidge after 9 PM. Discovered about four miles of my highway time were construction delays on my way back--slight misty rain here and there.  Assured my parents I was alive by phone, saw my spouse to bed, and am basically all about Wine O'clock at the moment. I'm too mentally broke to pay attention. So I'm following Twitter. I will link some stuff.

But first, Gov. Huckabee, right about when the debate hit BLM:

ALL lives matter. It's time we stop burning cars, shooting cops, & recognize that life is a gift from God. #DemDebate

— Gov. Mike Huckabee (@GovMikeHuckabee) October 14, 2015

I'm not 100% on what cop shootings he means. There was that nice young couple of meth-heads associated with the Bundy ranch--no, wait, they were white. There was that one African-American guy who had a long record of depression and violence who took out his girlfriend, and then randomly killed two police officers like he was almost make a statement--except that was probably to deflect from the other screw-up in his life. And then...yeah all life is precious, but I don't think Mike Huckabee is getting who is being actively harmed by a biased system that protects officers who commit brutality. If he got what it was like to see people being annihilated on the street and stopped to think how often it happened and whether it ever needed to happen: he might want to hit something or set something on fire, too. If he cared about all people--which includes black ones.

(You can not expect better from this man on race, though. His whole head is like "Forget it, Jake, it's Gooberville.")

Basically, we are having a Democratic debate where a Republican is losing on Twitter. I mean like:

How are you losing a debate you aren't even in? https://t.co/WNd2ZKOkS0

— Jamilah Lemieux (@JamilahLemieux) October 14, 2015

Mike Huckabee is losing this debate

— W.E.B.B.I.E DuBois (@fivefifths) October 14, 2015

Missed Connections 2016: Rick Santorum

Sometimes, as a political blogger, you do a piece o' prognosticating, as I did five months ago, opining that if Rick Santorum were to run again, I would be on that like spaghetti sauce on a particularly nice white blouse, and many hits to my blog would ensue because curiosity would reign about who, exactly, this 21st century Savonarola is.

This has entirely not manifested. I am sure he is delivering the speeches most derpulent, but they are like the tree falling in the forest with no one around to hear. The profounder nonsense of Trump, Carson, Huckabee, and even Jeb! take center stage.

Santorum's babble doesn't even set off alarms anymore. He's not competing with Huckabee over the social issues stuff, and is just touting his boring flat tax. I don't know if Santorum can credibly do the Steve Forbes thing better than Steve Forbes did the Steve Forbes thing. Ted Cruz is already there, and also has the Bible-bangy bits, too. I'm not sure what Santorum has left to work with.

I'm calling him for next fish to float.

Huckabee's a Few Chips Short of a Bag

Via Steve Benen, I actually don't think there is anything surprising about Mike Huckabee wanting a boycott on Frito-Lay for their partnership with the It Gets Better Project. It might not look presidential to get into a fight with a bag od Rainbow Doritos, but from where Huckabee stands, in the polls and in life, the culture war is what it's all about. The striking point isn't the hypocrisy between Huckabee's support for a boycott in the instance, while calling a similar sort of strike on Chick-Fil-A over their support for anti-LGBT groups economic terrorism--that's just expected. I mean, all's fair in love of one's own voice and the culture war, am I right?

No. The striking thing, leaving aside the exception that Huckabee takes with potty-mouth and dis-respecter of religions, Dan Savage, for hurting religious fee-fees, is that Huckabee disapproves of the company's involvement with the It Gets Better Project, which focuses on supporting LGBT kids in the face of bullying, and was formed in reaction to a wave of LGBT kids committing suicide in despair of their situation. On some level, Mike Huckabee does not agree that LGBT kids should be supported even when they are facing the prospect of being bullied to death.

One could try to break down, specifically, what part of this mission bothers him. Is it that life is made bearable for LGBT youth, who he has a callous lack of concern for? Or is it that he simply feels that harassing a "sinner" to their breaking point is the God and Constitution-given right of any Christian child (and their parents)? Does that even matter?

For a child contemplating their sexual orientation or gender identification, this isn't a trivial matter, no matter what an ignoramus like Huckabee thinks. A young person is struggling to become an adult, and they don't just have the regard of their peers to consider--but the treatment they might face from an unenlightened school faculty, or from their own parents. Kids have been turned out of their family homes because of their identity. This isn't about some "name-calling" or fragile adolescent feelings--this is a matter of life or death for LGBT kids. This is about them being able to survive their vulnerability.

So am I saying Huckabee's signing on to this boycott is basically supporting picking on the vulnerable? You know, I think I am.