This is getting so tired now — lower the discourse, then trot out with a lame apology that doesn’t address the horror of what was said. Faux News contributor Liz Trotta doesn’t even attempt to sound sincere with this bullsh*t mea culpa:

“I am so sorry about what happened yesterday with that lame attempt at humor…I just really fell over myself in making it appear that I wished Barack Obama harm or any other candidate for that matter. I sincerely regret it and apologize to anybody I’ve offended. It’s a very colorful political season, and many of us are making mistakes in saying things we wish we hadn’t said.”

Let’s take a look at what she said that got her into hot water. I don’t see any other candidates mentioned in her assassination joke:

“and now we have what … uh…some are reading as a suggestion that somebody knock off Osama …uh..um..Obama [after being prompted by the FNC anchor]….well both if we could [laughing]”

Please.

(UPDATE: See Francis’s take here and here. Also read the post over at A Slanted Truth about why these assassination remarks cut deep.)

How on earth do these sick people at Fox News get away with sh*t like this? Here is Liz Trotta, brought on to comment about Hillary Clinton’s ill-conceived remarks, and Trotta not only blurts out “Osama”, but laughs and “corrects” herself, suggesting it would be a good idea to knock both off. My god.

“and now we have what … uh…some are reading as a suggestion that somebody knock off Osama …uh..um..Obama [after being prompted by the FNC anchor]….well both if we could [laughing]”

This is yet another example of filing the edges off of the egregious casual mention of assassination, so that those offended and concerned about such casual talk are eventually the ones perceived with a hangup. It is a caustic and disgusting tactic frequently used by Fox, Limbaugh and the rest. It surfaced a while ago in regards to overt racism in the conservative MSM (see my post Filing the edges off of racism). Watch for more of this crap.

More here.

Hat tip, floozy.

Ah, Rick Santorum, returning from his anti-”Islamofacism” post-Senate efforts to familiar homo-hate territory. He’s back in the news, penning a ridiculous op-ed in the Philly Inquirer, “The Elephant in the Room: A wake-up call on gay marriage after ‘03 alarm went unheeded.”

Bigot! Hate-monger! Homophobe!

Those were just a few of the terms hurled my way in 2003 when I said that the Supreme Court’s Texas sodomy decision opened the door to the redefinition of marriage.

When I wasn’t ducking the epithets, I was being laughed at, mocked, and given the crazy-uncle-at-the-holidays treatment by the media. Or I was being told I should resign from my leadership post by some Senate colleagues.

Five years later, do I regret sounding the alarm about marriage? No.

I’m just saddened that time has proved right those of us who worried about the future of marriage as the union of husband and wife, deeply rooted not only in our traditions, our faiths, but in the facts of human nature: as Pope Benedict said, “The cradle of life and love,” connecting mothers and fathers to their children.

(Cue epithets: Bigot! Hate-monger! Homophobe!)

The latest distressing news came last week in California. The state Supreme Court there ruled, 4-3, that same-sex couples can marry.

In doing so, four judges rejected a statute that passed in a referendum with 61 percent of the vote that defined marriage as a union of one man and one woman.

And look, he’s worried that the elimination of discrimination will make all of the heterosupremacists look back at the good old days when homos were on the run.

Let me go out on another limb here and make another crazy prediction. Within 10 years, clergy will be sued or indicted for preaching on certain Bible passages dealing with homosexuality and churches, and church-related organizations will lose government contracts and even their tax-exempt status.

The California judges also ruled, for the first time in American legal history, that sexual orientation is just like race.

The California court just declared that those of us who see marriage as the union of husband and wife are the legal equivalent of racists. And openly racist groups and individuals can be denied government benefits because of their views, including professional licenses (attorney, physicians, psychiatrists, marriage counselors), accredited schools, and tax-exempt status for charities.

Have fun with the rest.

Do I even need to bother identifying U.S. Representative Paul Broun as a Republican? With an economic wasteland left by this president, as well as military carnage, waste, fraud, abuse, and corruption, of course this guy has to pull out the Homo Straw man — he has nothing else to run on. (Washington Blade):

Backlash from the California Supreme Court ruling in favor of gay marriage continued this week as U.S. Rep. Paul Broun (R-Ga.) said he plans to introduce an amendment to the U.S. Constitution to ban same-sex marriage. Broun, a freshman Congressman from Augusta, announced his intent May 20.

U.S. Rep. Paul Broun says an amendment to the U.S. Constitution is needed to protect heterosexual marriage from ‘activist judges.’

“What the activist judges in California have shown is that the traditional definition of marriage is under assault by a cadre of lawyers and judges who hold the will of the voters in contempt,” Broun said in a press release. “As a result, a political and social question that should be resolved at the ballot box is being imposed by a handful of liberal elites.”

…Broun’s proposed amendment states: “Marriage in the United States shall consist only of the union of a man and a woman. Neither this Constitution, nor the constitution of any state, shall be construed to require that marriage or the legal incidents thereof be conferred upon any union other than the union of a man and a woman.”

See him bleat about the California Supreme Court ruling after the jump.
(more…)

OK, folks, we all know Faux News is chock full of sick f*cks, but the cat box king of the week is Red Eye’s Greg Gutfeld, who has a conniption over Ellen DeGeneres announcing on the air that she plans to marry Portia de Rossi. He thinks she needs to closet herself rather than declare her love for her partner — because it offends him in a manner that is akin to jawboning about taking a crap. Thanks to folks at Media Matters, we have the clip of this, ahem, turd.

During the May 20 edition of Fox News’ Red Eye, host Greg Gutfeld criticized Ellen DeGeneres for “announc[ing] on her show that she’s marrying the stunningly hot Portia de Rossi.” Gutfeld said: “As you know, seeing Ellen happy makes me happy, for everyone should be happy with the one they love, be they straight, gay, transgendered, bicurious, master, slave, S&M, or even Belgian — especially Belgian, those miserable bastards deserve it.” Later, Gutfeld added, “For me, public exhortations of love are no different than telling everyone how great your bowel movements are since switching to All-Bran — no one gives a [bleep] except you.”

Gutfeld’s comments were previously noted by Michelangelo Signorile on his blog, The Gist.

Mike also notes at his pad that E.D. Hill, subbing for Bill O’Reilly, had a guest on intimating Ellen’s joyous announcement will drive sponsors away.

The crazed guest, Laura Ries, an “advertising expert,” says there is a “danger” to Ellen talking about getting married. Hill ponders something she finds more interesting: “How did a 50-year-old woman get a 35-year-old woman?”

As someone at my pad noted,

[T]he elaborate preface about how “everyone deserves to be happy, whether [long list of increasingly outré sexual practices]” really sounds like a contemporary version of the old saw “I’m not prejudiced, some of my best friends are members of the group I’m about to denounce.”)

But I think it’s only plausible for him to bother to make these comments in a homophobic context. Every day people announce publicly that they’re going to get married. Why does this particular announcement result in a tirade? Even he couldn’t possibly actually believe that publicly announcing a marriage makes it unlikely to succeed (which is not to say that he doesn’t demonstrate a level of idiocy that makes it pretty hard to imagine him tying his shoes unassisted), and as Media Matters points out, he talks quite a bit about his wife.

So to follow it all up with “you don’t see me going on publicly about my marriage”–that’s not only false, but the lamest het move on the books. It makes me scream when I hear people say things like ‘why do they have to flaunt their sexuality [by innocuous behavior like holding hands in public]? You don’t hear me discussing my relations with my wife’–when they’ve just referred casually to their children.

Ellen’s announcement was benign and unremarkable other than the legal news that make it possible to marry; certainly everyone has seen all sorts of on-air proposals, discussions about spouses, and talk about being pregnant/having a baby by celebs, anchors, etc. Do you see anyone saying a morning anchor announcing she’s going to have a baby is flaunting the fact she had to boink her husband to get knocked up? Of course not.

Gutfeld rode the heterosupremacy horse onto the set of Red Eye and let it take a dump on the air.

You might recall that Gutfeld is the same guy who hurled every nasty slur you can imagine about pregnant transman Thomas Beatie. See that below the fold.
(more…)

I seem to be blogging about Oregon a lot lately, but I try to choose the stories which have interest to everyone. (I missed the Obama rally, though, embarrassingly enough. Augustlet got to run the bases at the Triple-A baseball game, so I don’t regret the choice.)

But speaking of youth sports, holy shit.

Jaime Nared is nearly 6-1 and blessed with Michael Jordan-style skills. In games, the 12-year-old can more than hold her own against the boys — dropping three-pointers and sometimes scoring 30 points or more.

And there, according to her coach, lies the problem.

She’s so good, Michael Abraham said, she makes the boys look like scrubs. So she’s been told she can no longer play on boys teams at The Hoop, a private Beaverton basketball facility that runs a league in which Abraham’s teams compete.

Let me just say here that the sports-radio reaction - one of the most accurate bellwethers in the history of opinion - locally has been overwhelmingly supportive of young Ms. Nared. Usually you can find a few devil’s-advocate types who spout some sexist party-line nonsense, but in this case the Hoop doesn’t have a supporter as far as the eye can see.

“If I’d known about it, I wouldn’t have put any of my teams in the league. Besides, she’s been playing on this team since second grade, and she plays on our team when we travel around the region. There’s never been any problem in any event, not one word of complaint.”

Neal Franzer, The Hoop’s director of operations, said Thursday that parents were “adamant” that their complaints have nothing to do with Jaime’s skills.

“They said the problem was the boys were playing differently against her because she was a girl,” he said. “They’d been taught to not push a girl, so they weren’t fouling her hard, and the focus had shifted from playing basketball to noticing a girl was on the floor with them.”

Let me make sure I have this straight. This is basketball and the trouble is the boys don’t want to push her? I might almost understand this argument if she were a wrestler - as a former wrestler myself, I’d like to point out that there’s nowhere in a wrestling singlet for a 12-year-old boy to hide an embarrassing erection - understand the argument, but not support it. But basketball?

Basketball’s a c0ntact sport, fine. But a boy who’s too delicate to whack a girl hard on the arm the way he might a boy - a 6′1″ girl who could probably wipe the floor with him if she were so inclined - that’s not “good breeding”, that’s a dangerous lack of self-preservation skills.

Besides, it’s clear that the real problem is the boys, comparatively, suck at basketball and are sore losers.

“I think the boys on a specific team don’t like me,” she said. “It doesn’t seem fair.”

Jaime’s mom, Reiko Williams, said the issue boiled over after a particular game.

“She scored 30 points,” said Williams, who garnered national attention for her daughter’s predicament Thursday after taking the story to the media. “I remember one play. She stole the ball, dribbled up court and made a behind-the-back pass to a teammate. He missed the lay-in, and she grabbed the rebound and put it in. I think it was just too much for some of those parents.

“The next day, she came home and said they wouldn’t let her play with the boys anymore.”

I’ll tell you one thing. If a girl in a situation like this says “I think the boys on a specific team don’t like me” you can take that directly to the bank. And anyone who thinks there’s some room for ambiguity there has never been on the floor in a Jr. High sport, or in the stands, or at a PTA meeting, or at the park. And as the parent of a t-ball player who is routinely outhit by a girl who’s got three inches on him* I am even more familiar with the dynamic at play here (memo to other teams’ coaches: it’s FUCKING T-BALL.)

The Hoop’s protestations of “we’re just enforcing the policy” are the utterest hogwash. New management or not, the proof is incontrovertible:

He said the boys on his team enjoyed playing with Jaime — among a handful of girls to play on his boys teams over the years — because she helped them improve.

“If she were 4-feet-9 and no good, we wouldn’t be having this discussion,” Abraham said. “To appease a small minority of parents, in this day and age, is stupid. This is a decision that really targets her. She’s a well-adjusted kid who happens to be great.

* And on whom he’s got the good taste to have a little bit of a crush.

One of the ongoing issues in this election is going to be waking people up to the fact that John McCain is a grade A, totally not moderate social conservative. This is critical for that swing vote, especially those swing voters that say, “Well, I don’t think abortion should be illegal, but it’s bad to use it as birth control.” Translation of that sentiment: “I want to be able to have an abortion if I so desire, but I reserve the right to gossip about others in tones that indicate that I’m so scandalized.” These people would shy away from a ban, of course, but they probably can be convinced to vote for someone they erroneously believe talks the anti-choice talk but won’t do the anti-choice walk.

(more…)

According to Town Hall columnist, racism apologist and author Dinesh D’Souza, the advancement of gay rights via the courts is undermining our democracy. I almost refrained from posting this asshattery, but I just couldn’t after reading:

Now the high court of California has made gay marriage into a right that is immune from restriction by the majority of citizens in the state. We already know what California citizens think about gay marriage: they oppose it. A referendum outlawing gay marriage was passed with the support of the state’s voters. More than 60 percent of voters cast their ballots against gay marriage.

How, then, can a court invalidate the referendum and over-rule the will of the people? Basically through a kind of legal fraud. The court has to pretend that there is a right to gay marriage even though it is nowhere evident in the state constitution.

And since when did the will of the majority become the standard for extending civil rights to a minority group? Oh yes, when the fundies said so. And look at this nonsense:

In the past Democrats have always appreciated courts doing their dirty work when it comes to issues like abortion, pornography, prostitution and gay rights. This way Democrats can advance their permissive agenda without having to take political responsibility for voting against the values of a majority of voters. It’s time to make the Democrats pay for this in the November election.

I guess Loving v. Virginia was “dirty work” in his book as well as Brown v. Board of Ed. Go read the rest of that insanity. I just cannot deal with this level of bigotry today.

The Republican stupid - it burns. From Kathleen Parker’s column at the WaPo:

Well, at least they didn’t kiss.

I was bracing myself for the lip lock Wednesday when John Edwards endorsed Barack Obama.

Don’t look at me. David “Mudcat” Saunders, Edwards’s former rural adviser, came up with the idea, saying Obama should kiss Edwards on the lips “to kill this 41-point loss,” referring to Hillary Clinton’s landslide victory in the West Virginia primary.

Instead, the two men exchanged a manly air-hug to commemorate the moment when Edwards threw Clinton under the upholstered sofa on his grandmama’s front porch.

Holy smoke, is the “Breck Girl” reference to the former NC senator going to make comeback? I leave it to Brad at Sadly, No to break this sh*t down.

It’s tough to list all the things that make this column so mind-crushingly stupid, but let’s give it a shot:

• Parker begins the column by calling Edwards and Obama fags.

• Then, not having the courage to stand by this novel and poignant insight, she claims that it wasn’t her idea to call them fags, but was instead the idea of one of Edwards’ advisers. But hey, they’re still gay homo fruits who like to take it up the homobutt.

• Next, she pulls out the oldest trick in the Wingnut Punditry Bible: she lectures us about what Real Americans think! Never mind that she’s spent her entire working life on the Wingnut Welfare circuit - she’s got her hand on the pulse of The People, baby!

• And what do Real Americans think, you ask? Why, they’re apparently super-duper happy about the state of the country! Even though, like, 85% of them are dissatisfied with the direction of the country. And even though Bush’s approval rating stands at a sterling 28%. And even though the Republicans just lost a goddamn seat in freaking Mississippi.

How come I don’t hear about this loving - ahem - male bonding:

And I thought Bush’s lie that he gave up golf in solidarity out of respect for U.S. soldiers killed in the war was the winner of the dumbassery remark of the year. Boy was I wrong.

PZ Myers at Pharyngula points to an incredible statement by the movie critic, right-wing Clown Hall writer and radio show host. First, I love PZ’s opening.

Did someone declare this National Flaming Racist Idiot week, and I just didn’t notice until now? You have got to read Michael Medved’s latest foray into pseudoscience: he has declared American superiority to be genetic, encoded in our good old American DNA. Because our ancestors were immigrants, who were risk-takers, who were selected for their energy and aggressiveness. Oh, except for those who are descended from slaves.

Oh yes, Medved did, friends. I guess the best thing we can say about the following statement is that he probably wasn’t emitting the spittle Pat “A Brief for Whitey” Buchanan did yesterday when he was on Hardball. Medved even makes the gutsy move of explaining that the DNA shaped by our borders and risk-taking requires governing by Republican policies:

The idea of a distinctive, unifying, risk-taking American DNA might also help to explain our most persistent and painful racial divide - between the progeny of every immigrant nationality that chose to come here, and the one significant group that exercised no choice in making their journey to the U.S. Nothing in the horrific ordeal of African slaves, seized from their homes against their will, reflected a genetic predisposition to risk-taking, or any sort of self-selection based on personality traits.

…Senators Obama, Clinton and other leaders who seek to enlarge the scope of government face more formidable obstacles than they realize. Their desire to impose a European-style welfare state and a command-and-control economy not only contradicts our proudest political and economic traditions, but the new revelations about American DNA suggest that such ill-starred schemes may go against our very nature.

Wow. Talk about junk science — so now Americans are a “race”? Holy smoke, this is incredible. Actually, Medved’s working from the same playbook as Buchanan — slavery was a good thing for the darkies, after all, those bringing the slaves over as cargo didn’t have genocide on their minds, they needed that cargo alive because good hard money was paid for them.

Estimates remain inevitably imprecise, but range as high as one third of the slave “cargo” who perished from disease or overcrowding during transport from Africa. Perhaps the most horrifying aspect of these voyages involves the fact that no slave traders wanted to see this level of deadly suffering: they benefited only from delivering (and selling) live slaves, not from tossing corpses into the ocean. By definition, the crime of genocide requires the deliberate slaughter of a specific group of people; slavers invariably preferred oppressing and exploiting live Africans rather than murdering them en masse.

H/t, Oliver Willis.

(UPDATE: The GOP is in a panic over the legacy of this administration and its effect on November elections. See below the fold.)

We all know Dear Leader has no shame, but here’s yet another example of his terror alert leash jerking and fearmongering, intimating that electing a Democrat will lead to disaster if the U.S. withdraws from Iraq.

President Bush warned in an interview Tuesday that the Democratic presidential candidates’ plans to withdraw abruptly from Iraq could “eventually lead to another attack on the United States” and would “embolden” terrorists.

In a White House interview with Politico and Yahoo News — a president’s first for an online audience — Bush said his doomsday scenario for a premature withdrawal “of course is that extremists throughout the Middle East would be emboldened, which would eventually lead to another attack on the United States.”

I hate to break it to his highness, but he f*cked up the whole region with his Big Military Adventure. It’s hard to imagine anyone screwing over both this country and Iraq any more than he has.

In the interview, he also shows how he prays away any guilt at sending young Americans to perish fighting military battles based on his bad judgment and Darth’s dark hand. God’s comfort is all these families need, not an apology from the man sitting in the Oval Office.

His Christian faith has increased in office, since “part of the faith walk is to understand your weaknesses and is to constantly try to embetter yourself and get closer to the Lord, and that’s a daily occurrence.”

“Obviously, there’s been some tough moments in here,” he said. “When you know that somebody lost their loved one as a result of a decision that I made, that’s a tough moment. If you’re a faithful person, you try to empathize with the suffering that that person is going through. On the other hand, there is a knowledge that the good Lord can comfort during these moments of grief. And that’s what I ask for in my prayer.”

And what can only be described as the public ramblings of a sociopath, our president said he shows his solidarity with families who have lost loved ones in his military misadventure by...not going out on the links anymore. I’m not sh*tting you.

See the video below the fold.
(more…)

Kudos to Catholics for Choice for putting together a report exposing that Bill Donohue is not who he says he is. He claims to be a defender of Catholics against bigotry, but instead, he’s a right wing shill who mainly focuses on partisan political attacks. Scott Swenson has the story. Here’s a taste.

In a 43-page report released Monday, The Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights: Neither Religious, Nor Civil, Catholics for Choice documents a pattern of media and political manipulation by Donahue, his organization, and his supporters. His base of support comes from the most politicized leaders of the Catholic hierarchy, including Cardinal Egan, and a board that reads like a Who’s Who of partisan Republican politics (L. Brent Bozell III, Alan Keyes, Kate O’Beirne, Linda Chavez, Kenneth Whitehead, Lawrence Kudlow, Thomas Monaghan, William Simon, Jr.). Far from protecting Catholics from bigotry, Donahue plays the victim card to advance a narrow, socially conservative, hierarchical and patriarchal political view.

Read the whole thing.

However…

While I agree with Brad (and Lauren, as an aside) that the “everyhick” method of reporting on better-than-urban* America is complete bullshit, I think he’s wrong about one thing: The perception of Obama as Muslim is hurting him in West Virginia.

Maybe not as much as the Financial Times implies:

“I heard that Obama is a Muslim and his wife’s an atheist,” said Mr Simpson, drawing on a cigarette outside the fire station in Williamson, a coalmining town of 3,400 people surrounded by lush wooded hillsides.

Mr Simpson’s remarks help explain why Mr Obama is trailing Hillary Clinton, his Democratic rival, by 40 percentage points ahead of Tuesday’s primary election in the heavily white and rural state, according to recent opinion polls.

Brad replies:

Well no, dude, they really don’t.

Only 10% of voters think that Obama is a Muslim. And unless they all happen to be West Virginia Democratic primary voters, I don’t think that Mr. Simpson’s remarks explain anything other than his own psychosis.

Not quite.

(more…)

On the horrid article itself (instead of just the jaw-dropping quote), which isn’t technically about the casual cruelty that men inflicted on women in the conservative-romanticized utopia of the 50s, well, Lance Mannion has the long takedown that this article deserves. It’s by Michael Wolff and he at least does the nation a favor and shows that yep, The Village is more worried about politician’s sex lives than about what the public cares about, which is policy and leadership.

Politics is now about sex. Not just scandalous sex, not just who is having what kind of sex, but what we think about the sex each politician is having, or not having. Sex (sex, not gender) in politics is as significant a subtext as race.

(more…)

From Echidne, a jaw-dropping tale from the fundie vs. reason battleground in our public schools.

Substitute teacher Jim Piculas does a 30-second magic trick where a toothpick disappears then reappears.

But after performing it in front of a classroom at Rushe Middle School in Land ‘O Lakes, Piculas said his job did a disappearing act of its own.

“I get a call the middle of the day from the supervisor of substitute teachers. He says, ‘Jim, we have a huge issue. You can’t take any more assignments. You need to come in right away,’” he said.

When Piculas went in, he learned his little magic trick cast a spell that went much farther than he’d hoped.

“I said, ‘Well Pat, can you explain this to me?’ ‘You’ve been accused of wizardry,’ [he said]. Wizardry?” he asked.

Read that next to this post by tristero, to really get that he’s not kidding when he says this.

(more…)

Annejumps sent me this, and Cristina Page posted on it. Various anti-choice organizations are coming together and protesting the fact that many of you right now are not having to get abortions. You know, because you use contraception.

There’s an entire bit of pseudo-science woo to explain how the birth control pill actually causes abortion, but there’s no actual scientific reason to think it. The only reason they grasp at this is that the anti-choice movement is not, and has never really been, motivated by concern for fetuses, but more concern for women’s ability to control our fertility, and subsequently our lives, control they don’t want us to have. The pill is protested because their magical beliefs would have it “killing babies”, but that doesn’t explain their opposition to condoms, opposition that has led to abstinence-only education and abstinence-only strings attached to HIV relief funds to the rest of the world. Maybe it kills babies when sperm are deprived of the opportunity to swim free?

I can’t decide between this image that was broadcast on Fox News to illustrate a story about Clinton wanting some Lincoln-Douglas debates with Obama:

Or Chris Muir’s idea about where those crazy ladies keep their Glocks so they’ll be easily accessible:

I actually wedge mine between my anti-gravity titties, with holster embedded via a quick outpatient surgery.

Help me, Pandagonians—which is funnier?

So why didn’t my outgoing governor just go ahead and say “faggot“?

ABC News’ Eloise Harper Reports: Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Hillary Clinton received the endorsement of North Carolina Gov. Mike Easley Tuesday morning in Raleigh, NC. After touring a bio-manufacturing training center, Gov. Easley, First Lady of North Carolina Mary Easley and Clinton held a ceremony at NC State University. The Governor formally expressed his support saying that there was “nothing I love more than a strong powerful woman.” Easley concluded his remarks saying Clinton — “makes Rocky Balboa look like a pansy“.

Note that Hillary, who was right there with the NC gov, said nothing about his remark. Of course Easley infamously received the endorsement of Equality NC in his re-election bid, then in a debate said he’d sign a marriage amendment if it hit his desk, so why should we be surprised. And who is Hillary trying to court here — the “traditional Southern conservative.” Take the homo money and run, as it were. (The Politico):

Easley is a meaningful ally in the culture war she’s waging against Senator Barack Obama, as she seeks to cast him as a hopelessly unelectable liberal elitist and to persuade the Democratic Party leaders who will decide the nomination – the “superdelegates” – to choose her instead.

Both of the Dem candidates for governor here have endorsed Barack Obama, btw. I don’t see Easley’s nod to Clinton as significant; what matters are mayors and state reps, and the majority have publicly endorsed Obama as well.

Hillary Clinton was backslapping laughing with the NC governor. The same Hillary Clinton who has sucked millions of dollars out of the LGBT community. The same Hillary Clinton who cannot use the words gay or lesbian in front of general audiences, the same Hillary Clinton who has a web site where there’s no way to find any information on her LGBT positions.

Activist Phil Attey, former Human Rights Campaign staffer and online strategist, had a lot to say. It’s below the fold.

This release landed in my inbox:

Today in his endorsement of Senator Hillary Clinton, Governor Michael Easley of North Carolina ended his speech with an anti-gay epitaph. The hateful and sexist comment was that in his opinion, Senator Clinton makes Rocky Balboa look like a “pansy.” Directly following the word “pansy” the two veteran politicians burst into laughter and then embraced on stage.

When LGBT activists across the country heard this, our jaws literally hit the floor, as did our hearts. Since the Pennsylvania primary, we’ve been concerned that Senator Clinton is now courting and beholden to an anti-gay demographic, but never did we ever expect to be so whimsically made the butt of a joke nor blatantly thrown under the bus by politicians we once revered and some continue to support.

The statement was calculated and hateful. Americans over the age of 50 are fully aware that the word “pansy” is that generation’s polite way of publicly saying the word “faggot.” Both Governor Easley and Senator Clinton are of that generation, and both of them know what he meant by the word. This was not a slip of the tongue. This is part of Senator Clinton’s new “Rocky theme” … a theme that sadly includes now gay bashing.

On behalf of the LGBT community, I demand the following three things:

1. Governor Easley immediately issue a public apology for his use of hate speech and commit to launch a new state-wide campaign in North Carolina to educate the public on the issue of anti-LGBT hate speech and hate crimes.
2. Senator Clinton make good on a previous campaign ascertain that that she would strongly “reject and denounce” any endorsement from someone who engages in hate speech by immediately rejecting and denouncing Governor Easley’s endorsement.
3. Governor Easley face me in a public boxing ring in Raleigh, NC this weekend, so I can show him and the those who make such hateful comments, that if you go up against a real “pansy,” you’re going to end up pushing daisies. And, yes, I double yellow dog dare him.

Well, I did take notice of the Karl Rove article in Newsweek, but I didn’t, until today, see the fucking cover of the magazine.

Yes, the cover is about how much Obama is an “elitist” because there’s a vegetable called arugula and a beverage called beer, and while there’s not a whole lot of evidence that either substance is consumed to the exclusion of the other by Obama or that either imparts magical elitist or non-elitist properties, you’re supposed to believe this makes Obama unelectable. No word yet on the elitist properties of mustard, turnip, or collard greens. And if you’re holding your breath waiting to hear if John McCain has ever fouled his lips with the fancier foods, you can keep waiting. I’m sure his family’s private chef only makes them food that Bubba would eat. I find these food wars to be amusing as hell, since I’m like half redneck, because I guarantee you that some of the food I ate growing up would make the “journalists” who trumpet these kinds of non-controversies spin with confusion. Chicken and dumplings? I’m so electable. Quail, venison and elk? Elitist! What if I told you that my stepdad shot it all himself, though? Er, people do that? I’d also venture to mention that Mexican food has been 50% of my diet since I was able to chew, but that kind of information could cause a short-circuit. How do you read the tea leaves? Are you an elitist if you drink Miller but not Bud? I suppose it’s a gracious favor to the press corps that I’m never going to run for President with this sort of confusing background. Are all candidates supposed to submit a typical week’s diet for examination, or are only the Democrats?

(more…)

Karl Rove, who we know is just parroting the official Republican party line:

[Obama’s] stump speech is sounding old and out of touch. You made a mistake by not giving the bored press (and voters) something new last Tuesday when you lost Pennsylvania. Come up with something fresh that’s focused on the general election. Recapture the optimistic tone of your start and discard the weary, prickly and distracted tone you’ve taken on.

Dowd:

Hillary is not getting much sleep or exercise, and doesn’t, like the ascetic Obama, abstain from junk food and coffee and get up at dawn to work out on the road. She’s still a long shot and she’s 14 years older than her rival.

Yet she’s the one who is more energetic and focused and beaming, and he’s the one who seems uneven and gauzy, often fatigued and unable to disguise being fed up with the slog. Even his speeches don’t have the same pizazz.

She said it with more pizazz, but it’s clearly the same talking point that was probably on the fax machine the morning she wrote it: Obama is tired and boring. She’s getting her talking points from Karl Rove, y’all. Isn’t she supposed to be the “liberal”?

From Jake, it looks like Newsweek is looking for a new low in standards, publishing a concern troll piece by Karl Rove that’s probably best taken as a list of things for Barack Obama not to do in proper concern troll style. It’s sickening the way Rove is treated by the mainstream media—he should be received by decent people as if Jeffrey Dahmer walked into a room, but instead, he’s treated like a prince. All for his “brilliant” ability to be meaner and more soulless than even most Republicans. (At least in terms of political operatives. Surely those who run death squads and mercenary firms are even worse, though it might just be that Rove is incompetent at that kind of evil instead of unwilling.) But I suppose for the mainstream media, he’s a godsend, since he represents this sort of formal permission to replace legitimate analysis with shit-flinging and bullying. The country thanks this patriot for making all of us collectively stupider. In Rove’s America, there’s no more room for talking about issues that matter, and everything is potshots, innuendo, fear-mongering, and the favorite tactic of the right—”where there’s smoke, there’s fire”. (I was interviewed in the Austin-American Statesman, where I talk some about this in light of the Catholic League assault on myself and Melissa McEwan.) Mainstream media’s got to love him for making room for simple-minded bullying to become the prominent form of discourse. Maureen Dowd probably sleeps with a picture of him under her pillow.

This piece is a really shining example of how Rove’s moronic impulses are why he’s loved. Even the dumbest internet denizens would realize that this is very silly concern trolling. Right off the bat, he pushes the “elitist” slur, which sadly is so stupid it will probably take in the media, because black is white and up is down and the people who are fighting for greater justice and equality are more elitist than those who try to lift up the rich and stomp down everyone else.

But the real weak sauce, the demonstration that he’s just throwing shit against the wall to see what will stick, is in the list:

(more…)

As Richard at All Spin Zone notes, shouldn’t there be an investigation by officials into this? Inciting a riot is a felony. Here’s Rushbo:

He said the riots would ensure a Democrat is not elected as president, and his listeners have a responsibility to make sure it happens.

“Riots in Denver, the Democrat Convention would see to it that we don’t elect Democrats,” Limbaugh said during Wednesday’s radio broadcast. He then went on to say that’s the best thing that could happen to the country…

…Limbaugh said with massive riots in Denver, which he called “Operation Chaos,” the people on the far left would look bad.

“We do, hopefully, the right thing for the sake of this country. We’re the only one in charge of our affairs. We don’t farm out our defense if we elect Democrats … and riots in Denver, at the Democratic Convention will see to it we don’t elect Democrats. And that’s the best damn thing that can happen to this country, as far as I can think,” Limbaugh said…

Richard:

Someone needs to tell me the difference between Rush Limbaugh and Moqtada al-Sadr (above and beyond the fact that al-Sadr is an ordained cleric, and Limbaugh is just an ordained asswipe). And I want to know how Limbaugh, Michael Savage, Ann Coulter, etc. etc. can continue getting away with inspiring their listeners to violence, yet are never called on it by either the Republican Party leadership or law enforcement authorities.

If you feel so moved, you can contact the Colorado Attorney General’s office and express your concerns. At a minimum, inciting to riot is a serious offense. When the call goes out from someone of Limbaugh’s stature, who has legions of loyal dittoheads hanging on his every word, it’s very, very likely that his “call to arms” could motivate some right wing crackpots to action.

Note this is not an exaggeration — Mr. Hillbilly Heroin could be in a heap of trouble. Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper realizes that a line has been crossed, saying “Anyone who would call for riots in an American city has clearly lost their bearings.”

Why does Rush Limbaugh hate America?
(more…)

When I first heard about the Open Source Boob Project, I was sort of overwhelmed by the dipshittery and couldn’t really begin to tackle the multi-layered asshole levels required to be a part of this thing. (Summary: A bunch of dudes at some comic con decided that it would be awesome to trade on a handful of women’s serious insecurities and get some fondling. Gack, it’s complicated—just read the link.) Now that it’s been thoroughly dismantled by the rest of the feminist blogosphere, I feel like I can safely make fun of the whole thing without feeling like I’m missing something.

You have to give the assholes credit. Most men who have a strong need to have women flail around doing humiliating things (like being likened to open source software—aka, those other bitches you got to pay for, but you guys give it away for free) have to go the long, hard road and get a woman financially or socially dependent on them. You need to either go the Hugh Hefner route and just pay women openly for the favor or you go the route of any abusive fuckwit Joe Blow U.S.A. and charm her first with talk of love until you get her into a committed relationship and then start humiliating her, secure in the knowledge that it’s going to take her a lot, emotionally and financially, to break the commitment. In other words, you got to work for it most of the time. But these guys just waltzed in, declared themselves the judges of female beauty, and next thing you know, women are making absolute asses of themselves seeking the approval of these self-appointed judges. Nice racket if you can work it.

Not that I’m blaming the she-geeks that were sucked into this. As a she-geek of sorts, I fully understand that when you are old enough to vote but probably not old enough to drink, you are still getting over the fact that everyone who told you that you were too ugly and unsexy for admission in the human race in high school was probably exaggerating the case. And thus, you might be vulnerable to the flattery of some asshole who says, “Your tits are just good enough to be groped by random dudes who think showering every day is for peons.” But I promise you, young ladies, you don’t need the affections of men who hate you in order to get your grope on. Time passes and even those of us with the most unfortunate nicknames in high school can often go on to be considered full members of the human race, and attractive even to decent people.

Shorter Rod Dreher: Rape and child abuse should be legal long before we allow consenting adults of the same sex to marry. (Hat tip.)

What a massive, stinking asshole.

First, he tries to show his bona fides before he suggests that selling your daughters to your friends as rape toys should be legal.

Regular readers know that very little upsets me as much as child abuse. My default position is that the authorities must not hesitate to go in to protect children who may be being abused.

But then he immediately backs off this and gives people an exception if they say that god told them to rape girls that are barely past puberty. And he notes that raping young teenage girls has been considered a perfectly fine way to past the time throughout history, so we should take that into consideration when we decide to tolerate the practice of men raising daughters to give to their friends as sex toys, what you might call an FDLS compound, but I call a rape farm. By Rod’s argument, we should also be lenient on slavery (though it’s worth noting that the FDLS definition of wifehood is close to indistinguishable from slavery), infanticide, rule by kings, torture chambers for heretics, witch-burning—ah shit, what am I saying? All these injustices tend to fall on the shoulders of those who are not in his privileged shoes, so he’s probably see all of them as tolerable as long as you hid behind the “people of faith” label.

(more…)

This perv has a rap sheet with 30 arrests for sex abuse, 13 for jostling and two for grand larceny, according to the NYPD, and his behavior is so compulsive that he was barely out of the clink before he started up with the sexual abuse again.

About two weeks after he was released from prison, Freddie Johnson boarded a crowded subway train in Manhattan and illegally rubbed up against a woman, authorities said.

It is a fairly common crime on subways in New York. But this was no common criminal. Johnson has been arrested a staggering 53 times — the majority for groping women on the subway, police and prosecutors said.

In his latest arrest, Johnson was being followed by plainclothes officers who recognized him from police photos, authorities said. He was charged with persistent sexual abuse, and if convicted this time, he could be sent away for life. The district attorney’s office branded him a “recidivist transit grinder” at a court hearing earlier this week.

But the fact that Johnson was roaming the subways in the first place has raised questions about how the state deals with the problem of repeat sex offenders. His case even drew the scorn of a newspaper editorial this week that labeled Johnson the “Subway Rat.”

I’m surprised this dick still has his wing-wang; surely if he rubbed up against my cousin, it would be swiss cheese by now.

My story of pervy subway behavior is below the fold.
(more…)

Thanks to Roy for paying attention to Lileks’ continuing mental degradation. Roy wisely realizes that Lileks really is the true representation of the asshole who leans conservative, kind of hates himself for it because even he can tells he’s something of an asshole, and then doubles up the grumping in an effort to drown out the voices inside telling him that it doesn’t have to be this way. Or that’s what I’m telling myself is his disfunction this week.

Anyway, there are few things worse than when Lileks thinks he’s being clever, except of course that it’s also slightly awesome because it gives you a glimpse into the mind of someone who devotes 75% of his waking hours to rationalization. This review of “There Will Be Blood” tells us much about the mindset of a conservative who has replaced grumping with actual thought.

It kept my attention, and I enjoyed watching it, even though I felt myself disengaging from it by degrees in the last hour. Let’s just not tell ourselves that it’s a mark of great artistic insight to have the character get more insular and nasty as he gets richer, shall we?

Oooooh, insightful. Next he’ll be complaining that lovers in movies look starry-eyed, or that death causes the characters grief. Perhaps the rich in movies are portrayed as nasty and insular for a good reason? Hell, Lileks isn’t even rich, but being comfortably middle class has turned him into a person that hunkers down in his home, fearful that post-modernists and hippies are going to kick in his door for an interracial love-in. There are a few rich people who are good and kind, of course, but movies talk either in characters or symbols, and since “There Will Be Blood” was a film heavy with symbolism, it would have been, what’s the word?—moronic for the character that symbolized wealthy capitalists to be anything but power-hungry and crazy.

Look, mega-wealth is irrational, and yet it’s the source of 95% of the political problems we have nowadays. It doesn’t make sense that people who have enough money to live in the lap of luxury should want more all the time, and should do everything to cut taxes and cut corners and tweak the market to get rich quick and cut corners to the tune of something like the Enron scandal. And that’s what they do. The logic of mega-wealth is the sort of thing that only springs from nastiness and insularity, a total lack of perspective.

It’s kind of fun to be treated like a marauding threat to civilization itself.

Via Sadly, No, Michael Medved wrote a rather revealing column. I mean, it’s stupid, but as this quote that Travis plucks out shows, it’s revealing.

Now that we’ve broken barriers with history’s first viable female and African-American candidates, opponents of organized religion hope for a new campaign in which a brave politician makes a credible run for the highest office even while proclaiming his non-belief.

Considering that this entire article is bashing atheists, you can piece together what he’s saying, which is that the country is going to hell now that black people and women can run for President, and now that he’s been deprived of an opportunity to bash either group, he’s going after atheists.

(more…)

I’m beginning to think that, as irritating as it is, this drawn out primary is going to have one good side to it. At least the nominee, whoever he or she may be, will have had a chance to get some coverage before the full-blown onslaught of fanboy enthusiasm for McCain from our ridiculous mainstream press kicks in. I’m entirely unsure how the hell a Democrat is supposed to have a fighting chance with the ridiculous, deceitful McCain worship from the press.

Exhibit #1 in how bad this is going to get: CNN reporter Jim Acosta characterized this question as “heckling”.

STUDENT: We can see that this isn’t completely absent, uh, political motivation isn’t completely absent, yet we were told this isn’t a political event. So, what exactly is your purpose in being here, not that I don’t appreciate the opportunity, but I’d just like some clarification.

Seriously, watch the video. The student’s tone is even more measured and respectful than you would imagine reading the already bland transcript. I swear to god, if trends continue, before long, it’s going to be called a “terrorist act” to ask McCain any question other than, “May I fluff your pillow, Senator? Would you like another chocolate, Your Eminence?”

(more…)

And the problem with being a lesbian is…? I am so sick of these Cro-Magnons pontificating on the air. (Media Matters):

SULLIVAN: Two things. One, it’s important to clear up that he [Wright] did not say “The Jews are going to get you” in some conspiratorial, classic anti-Semitic fashion. I think that’s just —
HITCHENS: He [Wright] thinks only Jews are going to object to [Rev. Louis] Farrakhan and [Libyan leader Moammar] Gadhafi. Excuse me?
SULLIVAN: No, he didn’t say “only.”
HITCHENS: No, but —
SULLIVAN: Again, you keep playing with that quote. We’re happy to have it on the record. And now you’ve made me forget my second point, which is —
HITCHENS: Oh, well, don’t be such a lesbian. Get on with it.
SULLIVAN: I’m sorry, I’ve forgotten my second point. But I do think that’s important. And I don’t think Wright is Farrakhan. And I don’t think Obama, in any conceivable way, represents anything but racial inclusion and integration. And anybody that looks at any part of his career and can be in any doubt about that is beyond me.
The reason he went to that church, clearly, if you read his biography, is he wanted to understand what it was to be black in America. He didn’t understand. He’s a very polyglot person. He grew up in Hawaii, he had some time in Indonesia.

I’m serious — I don’t know what the f*ck Hitchens is talking about here. Are lesbians slow to make a point? Foot-draggers? Jesus. It’s nice to know he can combine misogyny and homophobia in one fell swoop. Admirable multitasking.

Perhaps Hitchens knows how many lesbians it takes to screw in a light bulb, or where the stock of conversion toasters are stashed. Inquiring minds want to know. Andrew Sullivan didn’t even bother to counter this crap. Sigh.

I don’t listen to WDCG’s G-105 morning drive time bigot Bob Dumas of “Bob and the Showgram,” I did years ago, but it’s easy to tire of juvenile, offensive frat boy humor that gets him in hot water all the time, and he’s an equal opportunity offender. (N&O):

In the radio segment, Dumas and co-hosts kidded an intern about her upcoming marriage to a Lumbee Indian. Dumas joked that Indians are “lazy” and that “a lot of Indians live on the reservation.” He also asked whether the groom’s grandfather would stand on the side of the road “with a single tear.”

Co-host Mike Morse asked: “After you guys get married, are you going to have a tepee-warming party?”

After that BS, complaints to the FCC and Clear Channel Communications quickly rolled in. WDCG General Manager Dick Harlow released this statement on the station’s web site:

“WDCG apologizes to any listener that may have found remarks or recordings played Tuesday, April 1st, 2008 during Bob and the Showgram to be offensive, derogatory or insensitive. WDCG does not condone inappropriate behavior, language or insensitive remarks.”

…Paul Brooks, chairman of the North Carolina Commission of Indian Affairs, released a statement lambasting “Bob and the Showgram” for the Tuesday remarks, as well as a history of “derogatory and insultuous comments against American Indians, African Americans, Asians and Hispanics.”

This is the same station, by the way, that sponsored a Straight Pride Parade in Chapel Hill, NC.

More below the fold.
(more…)