TWGB: We Need the Wood!

 

There's hardly anything wilder to me than Trump fluffing up his crucifixion narrative while being literally the most un-Christlike person you could think of. Turn the other cheek? Love thy enemy?  Forgive others as you would also be forgiven? Oh, that stuff is crazy. He sure does try it though. He's being persecuted for taking what he hast (overleveraged) and using it to get more rich (or at least, pretending he is).  He's being crucified (being prosecuted, not persecuted) for his hush money arrangement--a business fraud, based on an election fraud, based on an illicit sex fling--selling himself as a better man than he actually is. 

So how does this modern-day martyr show his Christ Consciousness? You know, the way Christ did, by letting his disciples know what Pilates' family members look like, so they could...use their imaginations. Who wants to tell me where in the Bible Jesus would have done anything of the sort? 

Trump is no Jesus and Judge Merchan is no Pontius Pilate--what the hell? This is where my blog title comes from--get on down off that cross honey, we need the wood! 

TWGB: Who is the Fairest One of All?

 

Donald Trump is very jealous that Taylor Swift is prettier than him and has a football player boyfriend and is the Time Magazine Person of the Year. And she did it all herself.  So he wants to send his flying monkeys to let her know he IS SO more popular than her. He was president once you know, and probably still has papers in his possession that prove it! He's still BIG. It's just the Deep State and the Lying Media's fault he looks SMALL. 

He'll show them! He's ready for his close-up, Mr. DeMille! 

Just, maybe not so close. And with a bit of a filter, And with so much makeup it looks like he's applying shoe polish to his face. 

Deciding he needs to go after a female pop star just after a hefty defamation decision against him sounds like just the sort of beef he would get into. Being appalling to women is one of his hobbies, after all. And consider that it's women who are or would be giving and have given him the most trouble. The nasty Hillary Clinton, who first pegged him as a national security threat and his followers as a basket of deplorables. Nancy Pelosi of the two impeachments. Letitia James. Fani Willis. Nikki Haley. Stormy Daniels, E. Jean Carroll, Roberta Kaplan, Tanya Chutkan... 

The Terror by Night

I think about the Bible sometimes. When the Internet was cut off in Gaza, and the electricity, I thought about the "terror by night"--the nameless and wordless horrors of the obscured, when the beasts come out after sundown, and you can barely make out the face of friend from foe. The thieves and knives come out at night. 

That terror is called "pachad". It is the terror for one's life. What is also to be feared? The arrow by day. 

That arrow pierces to the quick, because the target is seen. There is nothing done under cover of night that doesn't come out in the daylight.

I worry about people who want to use the Bible about this conflict. A lot of the ancient of days stuff is just outdated, and I don't think it's right that we hear a chant of "Khaybar, Khaybar" in pro-Palestine marches, or references to Simon of Trent. 

Abortion is Medical Care not a Fucking Spa Vacation

 

TOM COTTON: The military should not be paying for abortion tourism

SHANNON BREAM: So what should women who are in uniform in a place where they cannot access an abortion because they are there on orders, what should they do?

COTTON: They have 30 days of annual leave pic.twitter.com/18UHQnmWx6

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) July 16, 2023

He's being disingenuous about how easy it is to just go ahead and get leave depending upon what your unit is up to, and seems to be oblivious to how time-sensitive the mission to get a pregnancy resolved truly is, but I guess what this dead-eyed putz is implying that really set me off is the idea that taking leave and making a trip to where safe, legal reproductive care can be obtained is a FUCKING VACATION! A FUCKING TOUR OF THE WONDERFUL AND LUXURIOUS WORLD OF NOT CARRYING A FETUS. A GODDAMN SIGHTSEEING EXTRAVAGANZA OF YOUR KNEES UP AND WHATNOT IF SURGICAL AND A PHARMACY IF MEDICAL! AND MAYBE YOU WILL WITNESS THE LOCAL ANTI-ABORTION TRIBES PERFORMING THEIR SLUT-SHAMING RITUALS! AND EVEN INVOLVE YOU IN THEM!

I don't know how Tom Cotton was raised, but I guess if it was in Arkansas, land of the Duggars, maybe his early rearing really was as backwards regarding sex ed as a very backwards thing can be. The thing where women who are raped are seen as having been traps for their rapists. The thing where having had sex taints and uses a woman up--makes her less worthy. (Describing the sexual female as "used gum" in Christian abstinence education haunts me. Vaginas, are elastic like gum and self-cleaning like ovens. What the whole fuck?) The thing where her life is nothing compared not only to a viable fetus, but even to a nonviable one. As if she was obliged to go down with the ship because someone else desperately believed in miracles. 

It Comes Down to Hurting Women

 

A Florida woman, unable to get an abortion in her state, carried to term a baby who had no kidneys. Her son died in her arms shortly after he was born, just as her doctors had predicted he would. https://t.co/f9kwtQ4dBH

— CNN (@CNN) May 3, 2023

The so-called "pro-life" movement isn't that at all. There was no good reason for her to carry this doomed child to this outcome--only a stubborn idea that being born is better than not, even when biology stubbornly also insists, sometimes--no. 

If we look at the snitching-based law in Texas that allows anyone to sue a person who obtains an abortion or aids and abets it--here's where we end up. The worst human ever gets to use this law to further abuse someone who certainly does not owe him offspring. The reality of what anti-abortion legislation is for becomes obvious. 

It's about control. It's about telling someone who is female-bodied they have no rights the state needs to respect. Women are shuttled from pillar to post as lawyers argue whether they are close enough to death to be given reproductive care. The law that says they can seek care to save their lives is disregarded for the sake of the anti-abortionists' imaginary fetal friends. 

We have states where women are told to wait even in a parking lot until they are close to death before they can seek care. 

The reality of their situation needs such careful documentation. Like once again, in Florida, where a rape victim needs a paper trail to prove her situation. Consider a minor child, a victim of incest. How easy is it for that person to document what happened to them? A person economically dependent on their rapist (a situation a groomer/abuser certainly tries to create). A person stalked, threatened with further violence based on their actions? 

There are people who can't easily demonstrate they are raped or even physically imperiled by their pregnancy until their situation is literally them--at death's door. And this is not where someone should be compelled by law to be for their care.  No one should be so compelled to save their own life, or negotiate the euthanasia of their own child, by way of a protracted argument in a biologically time-limited situation. We need to give this space to them. It should not be a debate.

Reality is What Red State Governors Can Get Away With

 

NEW AUDIO: Brian Kemp says he is open to banning contraceptionhttps://t.co/8SVPoL2uT0

— Heartland Signal (@HeartlandSignal) September 15, 2022

I noted in my comments regarding Sen. Graham's 15 week abortion ban proposal that it is always reasonable to define Republicans as being just as extremist as they tell us they are--and here is another proof.

Gov. Kemp., who isn't the biggest fan of democracy, doesn't care that a lot of women do use birth control or at least feel like this is a good option for women to have.  If the Dobbs decision means he can ban birth control, despite the needs or desires of the women of his state, he feels like this is okay--because once you start culling the voter rolls of voters you don't think are with you, you stop giving a fuck about whether you are aligned with the voters' needs or concerns. You just side with the right-wing ideologues who brought you. 

Georgians, check your voter registration. If you are not on the rolls, you have until October 11.  Your governor does not care about your choices and wants to take them away. 

I hate governors who want to take rights away. This is why I am dead-set against Doug Mastriano in my neck of the woods, who is the same or worse. He scoffs at "my body, my choice", too. And I will live with my body my whole life, but I won't live comfortably if I didn't fight against someone who wanted to make choices for everyone else without considering their whole life experience and reality. Or rather, just keep government out of it. 

It's not their right. And they should not be in a position to pretend it is. 

UPDATE: Because we are not ever finished with radical Republican, woman-hating ideas, I have two related stories to add. First, there's a Michigan candidate for Attorney General who thinks Plan B should be treated like fentanyl. Yes, Plan B, the "morning after pill"--which is an emergency contraceptive. If life starts at conception, preventing conception would be, um, not taking a life. Don't worry, though, because the gentleman would do this having no idea how any of that works. He is just really certain that if you were the recipient of unexpected penis, you need to deal with unexpected fetus. And carry it all the way through. Why yes! He is a Republican. (My beloved friends and acquaintances let's don't ever have GOP AG's. They really are the worst.)

The other vicious nightmare of a potential Republican future is criminal penalties for abortion patients. They want to imprison people who terminate pregnancies, or worse.  Probably the death penalty. After all, if you want to say abortion is murder, what better way to signify that you are "pro-life" than to put someone to death for ending a pregnancy? And I can easily imagine people on death row for miscarriages, because why wouldn't someone with their head up their ass about the "miracle of life" add miscarriage of justice to the tragedy of potential life lost? 

The SCOTUS Dobbs decision has legitimized the logic of the clinic-bombers into law. To my mind, the vagaries of human sexual intercourse and development of human embryos are such that the law should back the whole hell off of trying to codify what is collectively right and leave a space for pregnant individuals to be respectfully treated as unique private persons with their own moral, physical, mental, economic realities. There was a lot of wisdom in the Roe decision, and today's partisan court totally lost the plot. 

CNN Falls for Mommaganda, Again

How two Florida moms spearheaded a parent movement aiming to impact the 2022 elections https://t.co/kfCD4V7G9r

— CNN Politics (@CNNPolitics) December 17, 2021

Oof, it feels like we just went over this. And yet, the journalists at CNN still haven't sorted out that the plucky mommies fighting the system are a front backed by dark money, no matter what kind of festive Xmas tchotchkes they're selling. They are the ones using COVID-19 as an opportunity, and there is nothing warm and fuzzy about people screaming at each other at school board meetings. 

JFC. At some point, it starts to look like they fall for it on purpose. 

 

Soft-Skulled Crabs

 I've had a moment to think over what happened January 6, and even though Trump had been conditioning the Tea Party types out there to prepare for civil war with his rhetoric for some time, and I think I have a pretty good grasp as how otherwise comfortable normies turn into soft-skulled crabs, I'm still pretty bowled over by the number of folks who participated in the melee who took extensive selfies and video of their activity. 

I mean, I get it, Trump's soldiers of convenience are folks like the Proud Boys (the alt-right fight club whose first rule seems to be "Never stop talking about being in a fight club.") But check out the toasty pumpkin spice Karen flashing a peace sign in front of broken glass at the capitol, whose battle cry included "Y'all know who to hire for your realtor. Jenna Ryan for your realtor." 

She thought this was great for her branding? Every single grinning picture ("Felt cute, might insurrect later") is a damning picture of how comfortable people have been with what I've been thinking of as Nazi-adjacency--the phenomenon of seeing someone's swastika tattoos or downstairs weapons stockpile or what have you and going, "Welp--not a deal-breaker." The way Trump's racism and Nazi-adjacency weren't a deal-breaker for voters, being snuggled up to these cats doesn't seem to be a deal-breaker in these folks' lives. Seeing III%-er gear doesn't bug them. And they scream like banshees if anyone suggests there is something "deplorable" about it. 

I mean, take the Klan Poobah over here--

before this yabbo had to explain that he was answering his president's call to be exactly this kind of wanker, this dumbass boychild who needs Whole Foods or his tummy gets a hurty could surely have picked something better than fake Aryan white supremacist bullshit for him to get his Iron John manly bonding on with--but that was what he went with. 

The conservative free speech argument regarding de-platforming people for TOS violations (like terroristic threats!) has been treated with a touch of seriousness that never has been comfortable to me, in a "Methinks you doth protest too much" kind of way. Even attempts to address white supremacist and rightwing extremist domestic terror is met with country-club pearl clutching or minimization. "Sniff! The so-called 'tolerant left!'"--because "some people" think things like abortion-clinic bombing and mass-shootings are actually, um, bad. Or because "some people" are concerned that eliminationist rhetoric will get turned to eliminationist actions.

That group of "some people" should be called "our society". There needs to be a reckoning not only with the way Republican party operatives involved themselves in these events, but with the way right-wing media has siloed the information-feed of their listeners, viewers and readers, and sent some of them down a cattle-chute to mayhem or madness. Maybe when conservative groups think they are "owning the libs" by inviting extremists to share their spaces, they aren't being edgy, but playing themselves and telling us more about them then they even knew. (And what about all the dark money that keeps the alt-right going?)

I don't know how to play "Can't we all just get along?" when real estate Karen and the Qanon Quinoa Kid out there are seriously claiming the holes in their heads and the right wing outhouses built over them are reason enough for the president to pardon them, and they have a point, because they really were led to believe they were exactly where the president said they should be. They shouldn't be pardoned because they should have known better, but they aren't wrong about what they were told.

So, Extortion is a Deeply Held Faith Value, Now?

Fox's Pastor Robert Jeffress: "The effort to impeach President Trump is really an effort to impeach our own deeply held faith values" pic.twitter.com/1X751y5HU5

— Jason Campbell (@JasonSCampbell) November 1, 2019

I can't say that I'm shocked when Christian conservatives turn everything into culture war, but this line of bull comes from the same place the "the Democrats are trying to repeal the 2016 election" comes from: it's a way of pretending the impeachment isn't about what Trump and his administration have done (lean on Ukraine for investigations into Hunter Biden and Crowd Strike) but about taking something away from the folks who voted for him. It's also a step on the rung to that grotesque idea that somehow, if one fairly corrupt and dishonest politician were removed from office, there would be a pretext for civil war (there's another thing Jeffress has actually said), I guess between the good Christians and the "godless" liberals.

It looks like religion is a refuge that Trump has decided to cling to in his hour of need:

Honored to pray for @realDonaldTrump and our nation! Also discussed the many great accomplishments under the leadership of President Trump. He continues to work tirelessly on behalf of the American people
(Official White House Photo by Joyce Boghosian) #prayer #potus #nation pic.twitter.com/rJ6ExahYXN

— Paula White-Cain (@Paula_White) October 31, 2019

That's Paula White, Trump's spiritual adviser and new head of the White House Faith and Opportunity Initiative. She's something of a prosperity gospel grifter, but what I find problematic is that she has used her following to tell people they must support Trump or answer to God.  But this idea that the Christian Right has a duty to support Trump seems to be broader than just the handful of Trump's biggest fans. It also seems to be the mindset of Trump's Attorney General and his Secretary of State.

Where does this message go? In some ways, it reverberates in the minds of people who believe that liberals want to not only take citizens' guns away, but their Bibles as well. But an unpleasant turn can be people who move from the mere puffery of a Michele Bachmann, who claims that Trump may be the "most godly" president we will ever have, to people who consider support of Trump as a literal part of their worship.

And when Trump, in his divisive fashion, implies it's time for the civil war? Would it be wrong to disobey the anointed? I wonder where people who use this rhetoric will choose to draw the line.

(For what it's worth, I'm not sure that a narcissist like Trump needs this kind of support--it's too easy for it to go to his head. )

The Curb Problem

I've seen the video of PA State Rep. Brian Sims confronting anti-abortion protesters outside of a Philadelphia Planned Parenthood, and I am honestly a little conflicted. I'm extremely on his side regarding the good work that PP does for community health, especially for reproductive health, that sometimes social shibboleth. I also view anti-abortion protesters as basically busybodies who want to tell other people what they can do with themselves, without ever having to weigh and consider the life stories of the people who have bodies with histories, with health issues, with any human, entirely personal matter that is not up for some curbside "counseling". 

I get it. What they do is intrusive and constitutes personal harassment of people living their own lives according to their constitutional rights.  If they gave such a shit, camp out at a legislative office or work harder on educating people about not getting pregnant in the first place if you want to stop abortion, but getting in the face of regular folks with their own problems has always been bullying (and sometimes the harassment of clinic personnel goes even further--so there's definitely that). Sims, a lawyer and LGBT rights activist who has also worked as a PP escort, has all the experience he needs of these judgmental, "doing more harm than good" people, praying at (not for, oh, make no mistake) patients as if to try to shame them out of claiming their bodies' needs.

I think of this really excellent video of a man who was being curb-shamed by these so-called "counselor" activists, when it was not at all the right time for them to insert themselves (and yes, I know it never really is).  They didn't understand the trauma a young family that wanted children could be going through, and were callous and defensive. These protestors are full of self-importance and relative ignorance about why people are even visiting a clinic, and I don't disagree with the idea that they are the ones who should find something better to do. Adopt a kid, if you think unwanted babies need love. Fund people with at-risk pregnancies and support universal health care. Support well-family programs for nutrition and day-care. But just don't holler in people's faces. 

But I also feel like there's a rule about what public servants should be doing vs civilians. Is a persona with a public platform as an elected official in the right place using his social media to shame a protester? Or to use that platform to crowd source doxing? I'm not as cool with that, and not just because it gives license to right-wing pols to dox leftist protesters. It's just, you have access to better tools--use those! Bring that energy--without personally getting up in the activists' spaces because that deal is unequal. 

I also think he got unnecessarily personal in addressing the old white lady as an old white lady. I know, I'm starting to radiate some serious "Talk to your manager" energy myself, but while I don't see "white" as a slur, please don't get all up in someone's case about whether they are old. Yes, some of the protesters are post-menopausal and don't need to consider their own likelihood of coming down with a case of baby on board. But also, some people just have old faces and can get caught out in their fifties. 

Evangelist Billy Graham has Gone Home

HONORING ‘AMERICA’S PASTOR’: As tributes pour in for the Reverend Billy Graham, who died today at age 99, @SteveOsunsami looks back at his impact and influence in American culture and religion. https://t.co/t8A3yGIcDk pic.twitter.com/dC4zQTsCby

— World News Tonight (@ABCWorldNews) February 22, 2018

I lack the grace to stay quiet about the passing of this influential and devout man. A lot of people would take care to note that Billy Graham, despite filling stadiums with worshippers who thrilled on his preaching, and being called to counsel with presidents about spiritual things, was never really a part of the Moral Majority movement of Jerry Falwell that really seemed to concretize what we mean when we talk about the evangelical movement. But he did sit with bigots and the princes of prosperity and failed to chide them. He did not counsel his brethren to look to any future but the day the Lord would come, even if we have no promise about what that day would be. And his history regarding gay people was a disgrace.

I can't help but see him as an enabler of the unnatural and indecent bedfellows some care to make of religion and politics.

He is survived by his son, Franklin Graham, a virulent Islamophobe and Trump-supporter.  The success of an evangelist like Billy Graham surely is not going to come again.  If I have no hope of a broader heaven, at least I have one of a more diverse, broad-minded world in the here and now.

Hands On POTUS

Let the Lord keep you and nourish you and pick you up and be a fence against people zooming in on whatever is on your collar, and we will refrain from discussing whether you were ever covetous of your son-in-law's wife, or whether you regard the trespasses of anyone else before considering your own--and we will certainly not discuss whether you have been combing a Prince Valiant into a DA for the last 40+ years because you're too antsy to sit in a big boy chair and get a big boy haircut. 

In other words--we thank you for your authoritarianism and beseech your future support for our considered Bible-maniac fuckery. 

So, How is that Trumpster Fire Doing?

If I treat the question "Is the Trump Campaign for real?" as answered in the affirmative, then the Trump campaign is a staggeringly weird one, and just one day's worth of material is probably fodder for a dozen blog posts about it's awfulness. I have simply never encountered such an embarrassment of riches regarding the awfulness of a campaign before. It's legendary, in a way.

If I were just to start from the news that the leak earlier in June in response to the disappointing FEC finance figures that showed Trump as having barely over $1 million on hand, in whch he was definitely going to forgive the "loans" to the tune of $50 million tht he made to his campaign, tht sort of justified his claims to being "self-funding"--were apparently bullshit. There has not yet been any proof at all he's tried to do any such a thing as forgive those loans, although he might now that his June numbers have gotten settled up--

Oh, there is an odd thing about them, though. He might have lied his ass off about how well his current round of fundraising (what with hitting up various foreign nationals all over the place and all) has gone. This is incredible because it should not be possible--how would anyone ever have the cheek to lie about whether he was forgiving his own loans or how well his fundraising effort was doing this close to the end of June, when its all really checkable? Like, is it possible he did not know that both of those things would be found out? Or did he unrealistically think that either of those revelations would set off a Ron Paul-style "money-bomb" and make it rain on his campaign? (Did he think an impossible rate like Ron Paul's 24 hour $6 mill figure could get sustained if one rhetorically kept it amped?)

I dunno. The FEC is already looking askance at his e-mails to the foreign nationals--this looks like both desperation and moves that simply aren't savvy enough about sophisticated campaign finance gambits. It all seems very amateur.

And Santorum Makes...Damn, I've Lost Count

 

In the increasingly-crowded GOP field for the 2016 Presidential nomination, I'm actually sort of pleased to see former Senator Rick Santorum throw his hat in--not that I agree with a lot of what he says, mind you. It's just that, as I have pointed out before, he always provides interesting blogging material. And I think it is refreshing that he's choosing to craft an economic message for working people. This field of competitors has a lot of people who have burnished their social conservative and religious right ties--Santorum doesn't necessarily need to push that aspect of his narrative, it's just always there. It's who he is. Bringing up a discussion of economic policy, though, might bring the political conversation around to something a little less fraught and more productive than the culture war.

That said, I'm going to address something I don't want to do on this blog--the Dan Savage thing. I've written about how Santorum has a kind of "name herpes", now. But the more I think about it, the more unfair it seems. His family share his name, and there are certainly other Santorums out there, and they didn't really do anything to deserve their surname being given nasty connotations. It's not that I'm above calling out and even cursing out boneheaded POV's. I've just decided that it's unkind and hits outside the target. And as for Savage wanting to make "duggary" a thing--that's not cool. While what Josh Duggar did was wrong, and what his parents did in covering it up was terrible, nonetheless his sisters share that name. There are still little children in that house, and Josh Duggar's own babies, and however I feel about their upbringing, it is tragic and unfair for them to have their name made filth. They will have enough to carry in this life without people just being mean for the association, which they can hardly help.

I like a good debate, or even a fight for something that matters. Sometimes name-calling is satisfying. And sometimes it's just hurtful, and not really the way to make a point.

Ted Cruz Drops a Campaign Ad

Sure, this is a pretty overtly Christian ad, but that doesn't really bother me at all. An expression of faith from a preacher's son looking to woo conservative Christian votes is likely to hit a number of religious-themed notes, and I suspect this is genuinely where Cruz is coming from. The thing that grates for me, though, is the text:

“Were it not for the transformative love of Jesus Christ, I would have been raised by a single mom without my father in the household. God’s blessing has been on America, from the very beginning of this nation. Over and over again, when we faced impossible odds, the American people rose to the challenge. This is our fight, and that is why I’m running for president of the United States.”

People thank God for good things all the time. Health. Success in their professional lives. Guidance in their moral dealings. It's just that he's saying "Thank God I had a father in the house or who knows what I would have been."  I know a few people who were raised by single moms--I know some who were raised by single moms and glad of it.  Some people from single-parent households have grown up to be quite successful.

But I don't think it's just a judgment about single-parent households--note, he said "single-mother", then elides into "the American people rising to the challenge." I don't know. Maybe America has been temporarily "Fatherless"?

So, what'll it be America? Who's your Daddy?

The LGBT Community Was Just Endangered Further in Uganda

I think I will single out Scott Lively as being a particular missionary of hate as far as this particular bit of legislation goes, because he did his time trying to make persecution of gay people happen. But Bryan Fischer of the AFA which every day and every way earns its label as a hate group, celebrates the imprisonment of LGBT Ugandans by comparing the anti-gay effort there, to Phil Robertson's comments here. 

Here's the deal--if they are celebrating this kind of persecution of gays there--is that not a really good sign they want that here in the US? It's imprisonment now--but what about camps? What about state-sanctioned murder of gay people? 

Look, I want to be tolerant of "religious people" of various stripes--but these monsters are advocating exterminating people who just don't have "opposite sex attraction" or whatever their bigoted reference for straightness is. Am I supposed to tolerate that? Am I supposed to benignly ignore that there is a species of Bible thumper that wants to stone actual human beings because their imaginary friend said so? But will maybe, intermittently, suffice with seeing them disappeared from their family and community. All because of their orientation--who these people love and choose to associate with?

They start with Africa because of colonialism and racism. They will try it here. If it is what they believe in they will. I can not tolerate this. I do not want to see my gay and lesbian brothers and sisters' lives actually ruined because we sucked up to a church based in hate. If that comment is invective--so be it. How in the hell is it right for anyone to lose years off their life because of who they love, or even want to spend time with?

This is where, I fear, anti-gay rhetoric actually leads. This is why I don't find this particular kind of speech tolerable. Lives genuinely do hang in balance.

Who is the Ted Cruz Coloring Book *For*?

I know I'm coming a bit late to the party regarding commenting on the Ted Cruz Coloring book, but I think it's in part because it isn't really...that weird to me? To explain, when I was six (!), I was a recruit to the Kiss Army, because they were not just a band, but an obviously swag-generating operation. I saw the Kiss Meets the Phantom of the Park tv movie, and decided I was going to grow up and marry Ace Frehley. I had the Colorforms. I had some trading cards. What other bands had Colorforms and trading cards? None. So who was the number one favorite of headbanging first-graders? Exactly. You have to give it up for a band that merchandises for the milk and cookie crowd, although, I admit, by Animalize my tastes had just about matured out of them.

So it goes, right?

But that leads me to the question--who is US Senator Ted Cruz to The Future for? I figure the upper age for kids who actually color is what--ten? So the kids coloring Senator Ted today would be more concerned with entering high school than voting booths when 2016 rolls around.

I know. It could just be kind of a hipster-fun thing to have a political coloring book, and I might be overthinking this a little, but I don't doubt that Cruz probably does have his sights on the White House (probably in 2016,* too) and that although he says he had no involvement with the creation of the coloring book, it definitely has the fingerprints of some "friends of Ted" (note the "Ten Commandments" branch on that tree). Am I being goofy if I think this is aimed at planting a seed with "Generation Joshua" (some of whom are definitely in the process of being softened up for the TX GOP politicians of the future)? That way, if 2016 doesn't fly, maybe 2020? 2024?

(*I know I have claimed not to be interested in talking about 2016 yet. "Consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds" and all that.)

The War on Women is still a Thing.

If the GOP was an organized political party at the moment, that seriously was capable of having a rebranding moment, one of the most important steps their leadership could take would be figuring out how in the hell the perception that their party was at war with 50% of humanity came about--and then STOP DOING THOSE THINGS.

As luck would have it, however, I don't think the Republican Party is as disciplined in terms of messaging as it may have been supposed to have been in times past. For one thing,the unfortunate rape analogies persist, especially amongst the Tea Folk. (For the umpteenth time: The only thing like rape is rape. FFS, just leave rape, and for that matter slavery, the Holocaust, or any other thing out of your hyperbolic echo chamber ramblings and try, a little, to talk about, I dunno--facts?) And for another thing, there seems to still be an adamant denial that paternalistic authority over women's reproductive health constitutes an attack on women per se--Damn it! Why can't us silly wenches see it's all for our own good?

After all, former US Senator and GOP presidential hopeful Rick Santorum doesn't see a war on women where the fight regarding birth control coverage is concerned: Don't us silly wenches realize that it is the First Amendment right of our employers to determine what we can do with our bodies? No, seriously:

“I mean, the idea that the First Amendment stops after you walk out of church, that it doesn’t have anything to do with how you live the rest of your life, I don’t know very many people of faith that believes that their religion ends with just worship,” Santorum explained. “It ends in how you practice and live that faith.” 

“And President Obama is saying, ‘No, once you step outside that church, I get to impose my values on you, your religious values don’t matter anymore, it’s my values that I can impose on you,’” the Pennsylvania Republican continued. “I don’t think that’s what the First Amendment stands for. And I don’t think that’s what the court will say.”

Is there any place a women might step, such as her doctor's office or bedroom, where her employer does not get to impose his or her values on her? Interestingly one-sided perspective he has, you see? Why, it's like the woman's choices as a reflection of her values aren't considered at all! And for that matter, if we just concentrate on the issue at hand, of how contraception is covered--if women are not provided by their employer with insurance coverage of their birth control, they are doubtless paid in money that can be used for that purpose. The employer would still be technically financially assisting her in purchasing the "immoral" birth control. Employers have historically paid employees with money that can be used to buy alcohol, weed, abortions, porn, and many other things those employers might find objectionable. It generally isn't viewed as any of their damn business what their employees legally do with their money. Only the introduction of this thing called "Obamacare" seems to have made any "religious-minded" employer think that their compensation package was now aiding and abetting immorality. Seriously, this argument is just obvious crap.

Radical cleric Pat Robertson is incoherent. But you knew that.

The Far Left is....livid?  They want to....kill babies? Lesbians! Planned Parenthood!

It's a little like Robertson just read off a sheet from a round of Right-Wing Talking Point Mad Libs. (Adjective, verb, plural noun, place....you get the idea.)*

I'm still working out how I know lesbians with kids if they can't have babies, and how abortions are anything but an individual choice. (Has anyone ever gone into the clinic, asked about an abortion, and really said, "Honestly, I'd have it, but you know, the lesbians make me feel like maybe I'll just adopt a small dog instead"?)  It's kind of funny in a funny/sad way that Robertson equates women's power solely with our ability to sometimes produce offspring.  (Anyone want to volunteer to explain straight privilege or childless by choice to the clueless fellow?)  Wow.

Pat Robertson is officially as relevant to our culture as ballet flats to a conger eel.

*So everyone can experience the cluelessness:

Bryan Fischer's weird ideas about valor and being a man.

Bryan Fischer of the AFA is just one of these astonishing natural wonders of the world that I just can't stop contemplating. He's so often so illogical that the source of his mental pathology practically begs to be unearthed, and yet, the people most inclined to offer critiques either come from the "Point and Laugh" school, where one simply says, "Hey, look, this dumb ass said a dumb thing" with the assumption that practically everyone will understand why it's dumb, or of the "This is evil" school, that imagines that Bryan Fischer knows better than the overtly weird Biblical readings he takes and wrests into images and suggestions so utterly divorced from reality that you just kind of know that he and reality did not have a good pre-nup, and reality doesn't want him near the kids, and there's Bryan Fischer, always insulting reality every chance he can get, the way some really bad divorces do turn out. But he has been writing some foolish nonsense lately on the subject of our "feminized military" and what constitutes bravery, which is so sexist and wrong-headed, that I really wanted to try out what I think is wrong with his world-view.


Here's what Fischer has been saying:

We have feminized the Medal of Honor.

According to Bill McGurn of the
Wall Street Journal, every Medal of Honor awarded during these two conflicts has
been awarded for saving life. Not one has been awarded for inflicting casualties
on the enemy. Not one.

Gen. George Patton once famously said, "The
object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other guy die for
his."

When we think of heroism in battle, we used to think of our boys storming the
beaches of Normandy under withering fire, climbing the cliffs of Pointe do Hoc
while the enemy
soldiers fired straight down on them, tossing grenades into
pill boxes to take out gun emplacements.

That kind of heroism has
apparently become passe when it comes to awarding the Medal of Honor. We now
award it only for preventing casualities, not for inflicting them.

To Fischer, putting oneself in harm's way is not an exercise in courage in the way killing is. Fischer is fond of the notion of killing, having advocated for killing orcas, killing bears, and now just killing people in general. The Bible might say things like "Turn the other cheek" or "Thou shalt not kill" or "Do unto others," but as far as someone like Bryan Fischer is concerned, the only right thing to do is kill something--because otherwise, you're just a big girl.

That's what he seems to be saying when he refers to the actually quite valorous act of facing enemy fire, risking one's own life and limb to save another human being (for some reason my own brain only references the following quote with respects to this act as "No greater love exists than this; that a man give his life for another man" but I surely could not tell you from whence I got it--yes, snerk implied) as not deserving and award because it is "feminine". WTF?

Risking one's own life, health, safety, is courageous, and courage has no gender. Many women have performed valiant acts of rescue and served as example of grit against a killing force. And there is nothing that stops a woman herself from doing violence. But Fischer seems to view this self-sacrifice as a submissive gesture, possibly inviting the penetration of bullets, instead of doing one's own penetrating. It's almost reflexively referent to the anatomical.

By associating anything short of violence "feminine", Fischer seems to be associating the male with violence. He goes so far as to rearrange the martyrdom of Christ from a figure of one done unto--to one who is a general victorious in battle--

I'm going to step back from a theology I don't believe in and a line of thinking I find besides the point, to challenge his idea of manhood--WTF? A man isn't a man unless he's active, violent, a raging boner of destruction? He equates the act of salvation with weakness, and the act of violence with strength? Um, what?

Great men have laid down their lives for a cause in the path of nonviolent struggle. Martin Luther King, Jr. Gandhi. They weren't perfect men, but I don't think you could have called them anything less than brave and committed men, who understood that service to truth did not need might to win, but only its innate rightness to win. These were men who knew they faced death, but faced it nonviolently, and in their example, also probably saved their followers from serving as examples that lead to death.

In the words of Jesus--"Be ye wise as serpents, and gentle as doves." I see a parallel between the character of Jesus Christ and these more recent, gentle men. They were brave and proud and committed--

And they did not kill. Were they less "manly" for it? Methinks Fischer is very confused. And not just wrong, but pathologically so.

Shorter me: Bryan Fischer strikes me as the kind of guy who lays awake nights worried that if he doesn't live up to a cartoon notion of what he thinks a man is or should be, he will morph into a giant vulva. And I think vulvas make him nervous.

Also I find I realized post-posting that trying to creep into his headspace makes me want to creep out.