Dear Republicans,

This is your party.   Is it too late to nominate Jane Svoboda?  This bat-shit crazy, raving bigot truly represents you better than Mitt Romney ever could.  Mitt was just a sneaky bigot, who couldn't even do his own bullying himself.  He can't even own it later.  The witnesses still feel awful about the incident, but Mitt can't even remember it.  And then he can't help chuckling over it.

This is what your party has sunk to.  At this point, you can't even pass a measure to allow the Catholic Church to keep birth control expensive.  Your personhood amendments fail.   Planned Parenthood is still open.  Scott Walker just monumentally embarrassed himself and is surrounded by corrupt staff.  Laying off thousands of government workers over the past two years has retanked the economy.  The only thing you've won on this year is to keep the homosexuals down, and remind them that only straights' families count.  You go on about our national debt and yearly deficits, but propose cutting taxes anyway.

I will give your party this- you certainly are great at acting as if you know what you're doing.  Your party, since the 1960s, has been founded on satisfying the greed of plutocrats, the ignorance of religious fanatics, and the hate of bigots.  And that's done well among some of the voters.  Turns out that greed, ignorance, and hate do go well together.  At least, they work together well at winning elections and referendums.  But governing requires putting all three aside.

You can't remain an honest politician while bowing to whatever demands the richest place on you.  You can't serve your constituents without a vast body of background knowledge in science, history, and economics.  You can't believe in right-wing economics unless you just totally forget the economic history of the Industrial Revolution and 20th century banking.  You can't guarantee religious freedom for all if one religious group is allowed to write its dogma into civil law.  You can't say you provide economic opportunity when economic outcomes are so skewed for race, sex, and parents' wealth.

So, Republicans, enjoy the mess of embarrassing rants and wealthy ass-kissing caught on video.  This is the party you wanted.  A collection of mostly ignorant haters that don't care how the rich have screwed the rest of us, because somewhere there might be a homo who hasn't been stoned.

I got your Nanny State right here

Usually, I like reading Jack Cafferty, but this post just pisses me off.  I've read this man's life story in It's Getting Ugly Out There, so I know he's not saying this from a position of having anything handed to him in life.  But Jack Cafferty could probably use some reminding of a few things:
1- His job is protected by the First Amendment of the Constitution.  His freedom, as well as his boss's freedom, to do the stories they want to do the way they want to do them may not be abridged by Congress and can only be removed for inaccuracies or dishonesty.
2- Jack got his start on public airwaves.  They are rented out for free to networks/stations, in exchange for public service announcements and excluding obscenity.
It's almost as if Jack's opportunity to work his way up from a hellish childhood was made possible by someone watching over.... and protecting his chosen industry....  almost... sort of like... a fucking nanny.

They're not pro-life, they're anti-woman

Wow. South Dakota is in some sort of frenzy to earn my contempt.  And earned it the state has.  Apparently, some moron with more Bibles than brain cells has decided that abortion providers have got to go.  But don't worry, ladies.  This bill isn't about killing abortionists, it's about giving you the right to defend your unborn child.  Because the way Phil Jensen describes it, when a man is trying to cut open your abdomen to perform an abortion on you without your consent, you would NOT be legally allowed to defend YOURSELF.   What would we do without that son of a whore defender of women's rights to carry babies? Women apparently had no right to bodily integrity until Phil Jensen came around.   Well, let's be honest.  What women in SD would be allowed to defend is their unborn child, not themselves.  Is THAT legal in South Dakota?  Or is right to self-defense one of those things only men get?

Here's why there's no agreeing with anti-choicers, and I will never call them pro-life.  First of all, most anti-choicers support lots of ways for people to die- as collateral damage, on death row, for example.  So, they're not really pro-life.  But Phil Jensen has revealed to all just how anti-woman they are:  if a pregnant woman already has the right to defend herself from bodily harm, why would we even  need this law?  Because to Phil Jensen, women do not have bodily integrity.  In the anti-choice movement, women's bodies are not their own and Phil and his fellow Bible-beaters will never acknowledge this.

And their is no compromise position with these people.  Because to people who don't believe that my body belongs to me, there is no intrusion on my privacy and dignity these people will not push.  And enforce, through 'justifiable homicide'.  Fuck you, Will Saletan.  Maybe you should have listened to George Carlin more, and Jim Wallis less.

this isn't even the worst part

so iran, a country that literally and openly does some of the most barbaric government-mandated acts against women in the world, has won some sort of half-assed u.n. general assembly vote to retain (not acquire, see the link) it's seat, for another five years (until 2015), on the commission on the status of women, aka the women's rights commission.  and when i say rights, i mean the idea that people deserve a standard of fair treatment from their government and society. does the iranian government even know what women's rights are?  or rights in general?  the worst part of this:  they've had this seat since 1990.  literally, for 20 years.  no wonder this is a commission that seems to go nowhere.  it's like the commission hired a driver who decided to take a baseball bat to the car.

there is a world of things wrong with this.  for some reason, the u.s. could lobby to keep iran out of the human rights council, but not this one.  not sure how that works.  not sure why the u.s. even has to lobby to keep iran off of either council.  the government of iran has a long, and well video-recorded history (and present) of using violence, prison, and execution to trap its citizens in a theocratic hell.  but this is not the first time the u.s. has forgotten about women's rights, simply because it decided to take what it could get.  remember the iraqi constitution?  remember the revoking of secular family law?  as right wingers pat themselves on the back for noticing the irony of this situation, one must ask:  where the fuck were you when iraqi women were getting fucked?

spill, baby, spill

how's that pathetic excuse for an energy policy workin' out for ya', sarah?  here's how it's workin' out for the rest of us, you betcha':

do ya' see where it says "wildlife refuge" to the left and top?  yep.  that's what's fucked.  the only thing i still want to know is what exactly god's punishing us for this time.  come on, pat robertson, i can't hardly wait.

maybe girls are just smarter

nicholas kristoff is one of my favorite columnists of all time.  if anyone is aware of the wars and poverty that currently plague africa, or the scourge of sexual slavery, it's because they read it in a nicholas kristoff column or talked to somebody who did.  now nicholas kristoff had decided to turn to his fellow male americans, and ask his readers why they are slipping behind girls in various academic categories, especially ones requiring reading.  being the sister of five boys, my first inclination is to point out that guys just don't care about schoolwork as much as girls do.  after spending 3/4 of a year in the same french class as my two-years older brother and easily outscoring him, i thought that i had seen this firsthand.  but i now realize, after reading the responses that nicholas received, that i only believe that because feminazis forced me to listen to their man-hating diatribes (i have no memory of the incident, but i could have just repressed it).  so, to sum up nicholas' readers:

1-  boys don't do things that don't personally interest them.  since girls will stick with a boring assignment to get it done or because there might be some educational purpose in the work, let them keep doing that.  but save the cool, interesting, hands-on stuff for the boys.
2-  making a boy sit down, shut up, and listen to a woman tell him something is an insult to his penis, and may make it shrink by as much as 2" over the course of his educational career.  the same goes for teachers who want some order in the class.  i had previously thought they were doing that because disruptions to class keep their classmates from learning.  i now realize that when teachers tell johnny to be quiet and pay attention, they're trying to emasculate johnny so jane will run the world and bring us the nanny state.  attention spans are highly overrated, and may be a marxist plot to sap our young men of their essence.
3-  boys need more exercise and fresh air than girls.  we know this because girls don't complain about being indoors, which means that there's definitely nothing wrong.  and let's face it, it's not like there are any playground activities they could do, like jump roping or hopscotch, that they could do without the boys.   giving boys the extra activity they need while girls sit inside reading will also nip that whole title 9 thing in the bud.
4- anything written by a woman is chick lit.  it should not be taught as if it's a valuable contribution to english-language literature.  also, boys seem uninterested in female authors, which is a great indicator of their non-contribution to literature in general.  it's not like jane eyre or pride and prejudice have interesting male characters.  and besides, the male characters are only a part of the main female characters' stories.  that is definitely feminazism.  the feminazis want to destroy our natural and god-ordained society by showing women in the lead of a narrative for a change.  definitely marxist.
5- make sure your boys get in plenty of video games.  it's not like you could require your sons to spend evenings and weekends getting fresh air and exercise.  also make sure that every time someone calls your son a sissy for reading anything except tom clancy, you point out to your son that he is, in fact, a sissy.  and maybe a marxist.  when you're son brings home excellent grades, remind him that football is more important and will get him laid more.

well, these are all great ideas.  let's go back to keeping girls more dormant than boys, ghettoizing their contributions to literature, and maintaining boys' naturally aggressive behavior, and watch boys excel.  and if some girls get sexually harassed, think women have made no contributions to literature, etc., all the better.

social justice v. charity

before i get into the differences, i think i should note to conservatives that we did get glenn beck's message-  doing anything beyond voluntary charity is communism, or socialism or fascism.  since these ism's are blended together so seamlessly in glenn beck's mind, it's a little difficult to tell whether social justice will lead to killing jews, killing capitalists, or soul-crushing bureaucracy.  or will it lead to all three?  who knows?  more importantly, who cares?

i think it's important to note that countries like france, britain, canada, post-war germany, to name a few, went, at least mostly, down the social justice path.  so far, no communism, socialism, or fascism.  no concentration camps or gulags.  just bureaucracy.  which, for all its negatives, puts people to work.  and longer life spans.  and some sweet-ass vacation time.  for all of conservatives' attacks on our government-maintained safety nets, i don't see these fuckers moving to places that lack them, just complaining about their fellow americans who need them.

i guess now would be a good time to describe why glenn beck has pissed off a lot of christians who normally might agree with him.  christians, traditionally, have considered it one of their church's duties to support and administer programs for the poor.  and, technically, glenn beck doesn't seem to have a problem with this because apparently it's voluntary to give to christian charities.  but many other christians go further.  there is a branch of christianity that interprets the teachings of jesus to avoid wealth and give to others even when it's a sacrifice to oneself.  these christians believe that charity from your excesses is only to impress others instead of actually fostering the sense of unselfishness jesus christ came to spread.  some catholics took this even further to develop liberation theology, which supported the human rights of the poor against the property rights of the rich, especially in latin america.  combined with the catholic worker movement, liberals and those even more leftist in catholicism have kind of carved an unofficial (and unapproved) niche for themselves.  but even pope john paul 2, while no fan of communism, was also no fan of unregulated capitalism and unrestrained greed.  his cyclical on treatment of workers makes andy stern of the seiu look like a libertarian.   martin luther king considered it his christian duty to examine the causes of poverty itself, and attempt to eliminate them.  king called this "a revolution in values", and he called on his supporters to not just fling coins at beggars, but to restructure a system which produced beggars (which is why the right should think twice before insisting MLK actually acted on conservative values).  mormons actually require members of their congregations to donate, or tithe, 10% of their yearly income.  they actually have to state to their bishop that they've tithed every year.  this is not voluntary if you want to belong to a mormon congregation.  even muslims are also in on the act, requiring all muslims to contribute a minimum percentage of their wealth to charity, and to show hospitality to strangers.  this is not considered voluntary in islam.  these contributions are considered a part of improving one's soul and one of islam's five pillars.  social justice has a long history in various religious beliefs, including christianity.  glenn beck may want to pause before he chalks social justice up to marx and hitler.

why is glenn beck so pissed about social justice anyway, and why would he think churches should shun it, and people should shun churches that practice it?  because it's compelled by law.  oh, my stars and garters!  social justice is when you decide you've had enough of an economic system in which people who do the grunt work of a company make poverty wages.  social justice is when you demand that health insurance companies do the job we pay them to do, or the government will step in and do the job better.  social justice is when you decide that some money in taxes to support school lunches is better than seeing kids go hungry.  social justice demands that our economic system value something besides profit.  social justice sees people as more important than profit, and that our economic system must provide for us, not the other way around.  we don't have to support unregulated, unprotected capitalism if all we have to show for it are fat cats and slums.

social justice does not denigrate charity.  in fact, involving oneself in charitable acts is one way in which people learn about social justice.  some who involve themselves in charitable programs see too many decent people who are not afraid of hard work but have bosses who are afraid of paying living wages.  some see too many people thrown away by our economy from sickness, drug addiction, and the loss of one paycheck.  social justice is what you do when you realize that private charities are not equipped to provide the help needed to everyone who needs it, especially in hard times when private charities cannot muster the donations to meet the need.  that is why our government, which can compel you through fines and possibly jail time, maintains a safety net of its own.  this safety net is not voluntary- giving to it doesn't make you look good for your friends, or get one into heaven.  however, this safety net is always there, whether the rich want to pay for it or not.

long story short- if you belong to a church which administers and supports various charitable programs, and your church has not come to question an economic system that treats rush limbaugh better than your own neighbors (who actually do something productive, instead of selling ads on a radio show)- then i'm asking you- how can your church not add 2+2 and get 4?  how can any institution which spends time with the poor not see the numerous roadblocks our economic system puts in their way?  record company profits through layoffs and poverty wages are great for stockbrokers, but end up placing a huge strain on our secular and religious charities.  poverty wages and easy credit nearly destroyed our economy, which also puts a huge strain on charities.  which charities don't see this?  and even worse, which charities see this and choose to do nothing about it because they can't find a bible verse explicitly telling them to?  i guess somebody thinks he can get through the eye of a needle.