Mitt Romney’s quest to get in touch with his “inner human being” is starting to have comedic results. Take his recent forays back into the dark realm of “wimmins issues” . . . on Tuesday, Romney gobsmacked the realm with his new positions on abortion and contraception. In case you missed it, he’s now for them, or at least not as much against them. Ladies, don’t be distressed if you’re confused—you’re meant to be. At least until after the election . . . when all things will be revealed, issuing forth from quiet rooms filled with leather furniture, Cuban cigars and Napoleon.
It was with a heavy heart that Bishop Thomas Paprocki, of Springfield, IL gathered the faithful to him for a little pre-election instruction on the eternal damnation ramifications of voting for President Obama. In a news column in the Catholic Times and a companion video, Bishop Tom, appearing in his special-occasion red beanie, robes and bishop bling, counseled his flock that Democrats endorse “intrinsic evils,” therefore supporting Democrats puts a voter’s eternal salvation at risk. Snap!
The good bishop has studied both party platforms carefully and found that the Democratic platform is riddled with “intrinsic evil” like opposing the criminalization of abortion and endorsing equality for homosexuals; conversely, Bishop Tom found no “intrinsic evil” in the Republican platform.
The bishop repeatedly makes the point that he is not telling anyone how to vote, because . . . tax exemption! But, as a man of God, he does feel it incumbent upon him to warn the faithful that voting for a Democrat (notice he’s not naming names) will probably mean BURNING IN HELL FOREVER AND EVER AMEN!!!!1!
. . . a vote for a candidate who promotes actions or behaviors that are intrinsically evil and gravely sinful makes you morally complicit and places the eternal salvation of your own soul in serious jeopardy.
Not so fast with the “high fives”, Republicans you aren’t completely off the hook:
Certainly there are “pro-choice” Republicans who support abortion rights and “Log Cabin Republicans” who promote same-sex marriage, and they are equally as wrong as their Democratic counterparts. But these positions do not have the official support of their party.
“We will never have the media on our side, ever, in this country, We will never have the elite, smart people on our side.”
You know, sometimes even my former senator gets a thing or two right. I know—deceased equine belaboring on my part again, but I will never find his knee-jerk anti-intellectualism not fascinating.
I try to tune out the Value Voters’ thingie for my mental health and because I suspect there’s a lot of code-talking and signifying going on—and I don’t always “get” the code. I’m not the intended audience, in other words. But the bits that do drift past present a fascinating view of a very different mindset from mine.
“When it comes to conservatism libertarian types can say, oh, well you know, we don’t want to talk about social issues, Without the church and the family, there is no conservative movement, there is no basic values of America.”
It’s neat the way he says “the church” and “the family” like there’s just one church or one type of family. Yet, he doesn’t value other churches or families that don’t resemble his. And I know he doesn’t trust the education that lets people see the various factors that unite people despite their differences.
He will probably be descending upon Iowa three years from now, trying just a little harder. (Yes, when the conservatives are through with Mitt Romney….they’ll recognize that he was the smart people’s choice. Is what. And see where that got them. Santorum 2016.)
Well, boys and girls, it’s that magical time of year again when those voters who have values convene in Washington, DC to plot their plots and lay the groundwork for a Rapturous America where every citizen believes in the same hocus-pocus. (Sorry, no libruls, gayz, abortionists, contraceptive-addicted sluts with vaginas, 94% of Negroes, Muslins, poors, ACLU, SPLC, Federal Reserve officers, Atheists, illegal aliens, Mormons aloud!!1!)
That’s right! Starting this Wednesday, September 12 (9/11 was already taken) it’s time for Values Voters Summit 2012 —that delicious combination of rally, revival meeting, political convention and bazaar. A place where the good Anglo-Saxon stock that appropriated built this great country can come together in a politcally-incorrect, diversity-free zone to congratulate each other on being Affluent Christian Caucasians, who choose heterosexuality, and hold the key to the “shining city on a hill.”
This year’s proud sponsors are the Heritage Foundation, Liberty University, Gary Bauer’s American Values, and bona fide Southern Poverty Law Center-certified hate groups, including the American Family Association, Liberty Counsel and the Family Research Council.
Paul Ryan, Michele Bachmann, Gary Bauer, Rick Santorum, Eric Cantor, Jim DeMint, Steve King, Rand Paul, Jan Brewer, William Boykin, Sean Hannity, Bishop Harry Jackson, and Edwin Meese III.
Lesser-knowns like Mat Staver (Liberty Counsel) and Tim Wildmon (the American Family Association, another SPLC-listed hate group), however, are considered just as important in the process of conservative king-making… and political hate.
All this ladyparts discussion has been bumming me out this week, because, no duh, I haz them. Somewhere between the messages “There is no War on Women” and “A person with a uterus has no rights the GOP platform need respect”, I’ve developed the distinct impression that the Republican party would like women to vote for them, please, but they won’t do anything about getting women jobs that pay them enough to live adequately or raise children on, they don’t understand our weird attraction to having health care, and they really think we’re overly possessive of our reproductive organs. I think this could futz up their hope of getting adequate women voters, but there’s always those Phyllis Schaflley/ Ann Coulter types who look at the rest of us ladypart-havers like we’re clearly strumpets if we vote in favor of, you know, our self-interest.
I can’t even bring myself to say “At least that’s an ethos.” Here’s an ethos--full-bore misogyny. Being female is so toxic that a father of females is sort of female, too.
... Romney has 18 grandchildren, and they exceed a 2:1 ratio of grandsons to granddaughters (13:5). When they go to church at their summer-vacation home, the Romney clan makes up a third of the congregation. He is basically a tribal chieftain.
Professor Obama? Two daughters. May as well give the guy a cardigan. And fallopian tubes.
I think the cardigan is a reference to Jimmy Carter, who wore sweaters instead of touching the thermostat. But I will say that I am unfamiliar with the sperm-delivery possibilities of fallopian tubes, Is he saying girl babies only come from girl-parts?
Okay—I can’t even, that is all so dumb—so let’s just get back to the tax stuff.
Did you know that tribal-chieftain Mitt Romney now says he won’t release his taxes because his tithing is between him and his god? No, really. I’m not sure how this didn’t come up as his reasoning back in January when it was part of the primary debates, or how he didn’t use it sooner if this was the real concern, but here you go:
“Our church doesn’t publish how much people have given,” Romney tells Parade magazine in an edition due out Sunday. “This is done entirely privately. One of the downsides of releasing one’s financial information is that this is now all public, but we had never intended our contributions to be known. It’s a very personal thing between ourselves and our commitment to our God and to our church.”
In the faith of my forefolks, we have this thing called “the confessional”. But just because a priest can’t tell on us, doesn’t mean we can’t tell on ourselves. I would go so far as to assume a corollary exists.
But chalking it all up to religion is a neat “out”, isn’t it? It sort of implies that now, when people want to see the tax returns, they’re invading his religious privacy. We’re trampling on his faith, dig? Our prurient interest in his Sch D, E or F, is just straight getting between him and God, m’kay?
Since the GOP platform (see that pic up there with VA Gov. McDonnell? He’s like the poster child of the GOP platform) doesn’t respect the conscience of women to keep their personal business between them and their God over the rights of their bodies, why am I respecting Romney’s religious scruples to seal his….tax returns? From our judgmental eyes?
Why, I’m not! And I’m actually pretty happy that Gawker has done an info-dump of Bain docs. I don’t understand the damn thing, but I’m one of those “information wants to be free” folks, and even a puppet-show story of how Romney got and stays so rich is instructive.
By now, I have to assume that most Americans have heard at least a smidgen about Rep. Todd Akin’s theory that:
. . . women were not likely to get pregnant because “if it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.”
Statements like that have a tendency to make sane people curious so, it’s no surprise that several journalists have uncovered evidence that this bit of anti-abortion pseudo-science has its roots way back in Nazi death camp medical experiments. Because, well, they were real doctors . . .
While U.S. Rep. Todd Akin cited only “doctors” as his source of information about the rarity of pregnancy resulting from rape, it is two pages, from Mecklenburg’s 1972 article, “The Indications for Induced Abortion: A Physician’s Perspective,” that have influenced two generations of anti-abortion activists hoping to build a medical case to ban all abortions without exception.
In his original article, Mecklenburg stated that, for various reasons, pregnancy resulting from rape “is extremely rare.” One of those reasons was Todd Akin’s now-famous theory that “a woman exposed to the trauma of rape will not ovulate even if she is ‘scheduled’ to.” Mecklenburg’s article was one of 19 in a book called, “Abortion and Social Justice,” published a year before the U.S. Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision.
In supporting his claim about trauma and ovulation, Mecklenburg cited experiments conducted in Nazi death camps.
The Nazis tested this hypothesis “by selecting women who were about to ovulate and sending them to the gas chambers, only to bring them back after their realistic mock-killing, to see what the effect this had on their ovulatory patterns. An extremely high percentage of these women did not ovulate.”
Mecklenburg’s article, and the statistics cited in it, have been used again and again in the decades since by Right to Life activists.
In 1988, Pennsylvania state Rep. Stephen Freind told a radio interviewer that the odds of a woman becoming pregnant after being raped “are one in millions and millions and millions.” The trauma of the rape, Freind explained, causes a woman to ‘secrete a certain secretion, which has a tendency to kill sperm.” Freind’s source—a “Dr. Mecklenburg.”
In 1995, North Carolina state Rep. Henry Aldridge told the state House appropriations committee that when women are “truly raped ... the juices don’t flow, the body functions don’t work and they don’t get pregnant.”
Christian websites such as Physicians for Life and Christian Life Resources also have posted a 1999 article by J.C. Willke, a physician who was president of the National Right to Life Committee in the 1980s. “There’s no greater emotional trauma that can be experienced by a woman than an assault rape,” Willke wrote. “This can radically upset her possibility of ovulation, fertilization and implantation.
The Boy Scouts of America has reaffirmed its longtime policy of barring openly gay boys from membership and gay or lesbian adults from serving as leaders. The decision, announced on Tuesday, came after what the organization described as a wide-ranging internal review, and despite public protests.
Apparently the decision came down from a super-seekrit committee formed in 2010 for, presumably, the purpose of trying to figure out how to keep the antiquated policy alive in a matter that they could justify. Since obviously it cannot be justified they just told the American public to FOAD, we’re sticking with our own version of DADT. And this is despite the fact that the Girl Scouts, the Boys and Girls Clubs and even the frackin 4-H clubs* all have anti-discrimination policies.
Well, voting with your wallet always helps. Do not support the Boy Scouts financially and do not buy their popcorn (or whatever it is they’re selling these days). And seriously consider if this is an organization you want your kids affiliated with.
* I am not a 4-H hater by any means. My only point is this is an organization that operates primarily in rural areas that you would expect to lean red and they are even more liberal than the Boy Scouts.
Michele Bachmann thinks Hillary Clinton’s aide’s dead father’s supporter’s NGO that was tied to the Muslim Brotherhood in Europe circa 1970-1990 is evidence that the US government has been infiltrated by radical Islamists.
For the love of god, Minnesota’s Sixth Congressional District: You have the opportunity to give this braying ninny the hook every two years, and you keep returning her to Congress. Why do you hate America?
So, it looks like the Romney campaign can’t be arsed to spell anything correctly, not even the name of the last greatest Republican president, according to most Republicans. This, with the Amercia gaffe, and the “sneak-peak” gaffe, goes a long way to suggest that the Romney campaign just does not give one or even a fractional shit. Nor most probably should they.
If I were an up-and-coming young Republican, I’d rather be arrested for burning a cross on an exorcist’s forehead while spitting green pea soup out of my cranial orifices than be caught dead trying to make sense out of Mitt Friggin’ Romney for president. He’s either a Rockefeller Republican Willy Wonka in a Big Government Candyland, or a small government theocratic zealot, where, surprise, the theocracy is Mormon! Which every Fundegelical is probably too enthused about to even….speak. Except. In tongues, About. And not always favorably.
If I’m wrong about the ethos here, I’m sure I’ll get told..
So, via Huffington Post, there’s a side-by-side comparison of the video released by Live Action purporting to reveal Planned Parenthood personnel “encouraging” gender selection abortion and the full, unedited version:
There’s something especially tedious about this kind of exercise, in that, even if honest people concerned with what really took place try to parse each moment and what was said—the video was released as showing Planned Parenthood encouraging sex selective abortion, and that is by-God what people already convinced that abortion is a sin will see. They will be be persuaded, not by “factual statements”, but by confirmation bias. It won’t matter that the person requesting an abortion of a fetus based on sex was acting—they saw the possibility, however remote, that this is a thing that could happen.
Delighting Customers for Christ
Downsizing the Devil with Jesus
Paradigm Shift to Salvation
Getting Granular in Gethsemane
Synergy, Not Sin
I feel certain I’m overlooking low-hanging fruit and that y’all will push the envelope with value-added propositions.
In other news, I’m starting to feel like Tippi Hedren: In addition to dealing with the chickens, now I have a pair of turtle doves to contend with. They took up residence in a hanging basket under the overhang of our tiki bar.
“The tweets have been addressed with Heather and she understands this was a mistake.” – Michael Clemente, Fox News senior vice president for news
Don’t bother looking for Childers’ tweets now unless you’re an old pal or family:
@heatherchilders’s account is protected.
Only confirmed followers have access to @heatherchilders’s Tweets and complete profile. Click the “Follow” button to send a follow request.
Yeah, Hannity et al. have the knack of coloring just inside the lines in their question-mark-punctuated musings about the President’s legitimacy and nefariousness, but since Beck went the way of all bloated flesh, speculating in public whether Obama is a mafioso mofo who can out-Vince Foster the Clintons is beyond the pale. Funny old country you got there: Those closer to Obama’s political views think he’s a wimp who caves in a puff of wind; those diametrically opposed think he’s a cross between Stalin and Dick Cheney.
Most of the media focus in this kerfuffle has been on Childers and Fox News, but what of Godfather Politics, a new kid on the block to me in the overcrowded depths of truth-challenged RW crazy? Since it seems so keen to attract attention, who am I to decline?
Well, I think an atheist can live a moral life, because most of the standards of society—as encompassed in our laws and in our American constitution and other laws around the world—are based in religious faith, and I don’t think that those laws are much different between Christianity and Judaism, for instance, or Islam, and [long pause in which the listener has no choice but to mentally insert audio of Reverend Lovejoy saying “and miscellaneous!” -ed.] Hinduism. y’know, they all have basic principles as far as moral values are concerned. For instance peace, we worship Jesus as the prince of peace, and it would be good if everybody did comply with that mandate to resolve differences among ourselves peacefully. We’ve already mentioned some of the others, like humility and service to others, the alleviation of suffering… but I think that moral values can be applicable to an atheist who looks at Christian values and says “I don’t believe in those, but I adopt the basic principles that Christ espoused.” Whether they say that or not, I think that’s what they’re doing.
I actually transcribed that myself, which means I was annoyed enough to work for free. Now, I trust that you, the reader, are akin to my family, friends, coworkers, and anyone within a ten-yard radius of me when church bells sound in that you’d rather not hear me launch into a diatribe about how religion has, among many odious tendencies, a penchant for gathering up everything good in the world and claiming credit, so I won’t launch into that diatribe. It is, however, available upon request (or a two-second lull in the conversation), and it’s diatribe 16C if you’ve purchased a copy of my collected diatribes, The Hejustgoesonandonicon.
Anyway, apparently teaching the Republicans how to mobilize Evangelicals as a voting bloc in the late 70s wasn’t enough, now history’s greatest monster wants to provide the GOP further assistance! No, sorry, he wants to help the Democrats, which is, of course, the only reason anybody would agree to appear on Laura Ingraham’s radio show. His quiescence as she repeatedly refers to it as “the Democrat party” is some sort of rope-a-dope, surely.
Back in December 2010, the UK’s Daily Telegraphreported some unusual goings-on at the tiny southwestern France village of Bugarach, nestling in the shadow of the Pyrenean mountain the Pic de Bugarach:
... in the past few months, the quiet village has been inundated by groups of esoteric outsiders who believe the peak is an “alien garage”.
According to them, extraterrestrials are quietly waiting in a massive cavity beneath the rock for the world to end, at which point they will leave, taking, it is hoped, a lucky few humans with them.
Most believe Armageddon will take place on December 21, 2012, the end date of the ancient Maya calendar, at which point they predict human civilisation will come to an end. Another favourite date mentioned is 12, December, 2012. They see Bugarach as one of perhaps several “sacred mountains” sheltered from the cataclysm.
If this all sounds a little “Close Encounters,” well, that’s no surprise, as the mountain and the historic myths and mysteries that surround it were reputedly the inspiration for Spielberg’s epic film. Over the centuries, the mountain’s odd shape (one theory is that when an ancient volcano blew its top, it neatly flipped the summit upside down) and reports of strange lights, apparitions, UFOs, aircraft instrument anomalies and historical intrigues involving everyone from the Albigensians to the Nazis have fueled the mystery, and so it continues in its 21st-century form.
"[W]e wholeheartedly endorse the excellent Rumproast blog" -- Jim Newell, Wonkette
"Mind you, don’t let yourself be trapped dialoging with these guys: truth is their enemy; pyschological warfare and misinformation dissemination is their profession." -- TeaParty.org
