Right-Wing Utopia

While some aspects of the American conservative agenda might be attractive to some people some of the time, I doubt that most people have taken conservative positions to their logical conclusions. If they did, I think many fewer Americans would be willing to sign on.

Here's an outline of America if the conservatives had their way:

• Abortion illegal in all cases. Women getting abortions and the doctors who perform them are charged with first degree murder; women who attempt them are charged with attempted murder.
• Birth control outlawed.
• Anti-sodomy laws reinstated.
• Gay people banned by constitutional amendment from marriage, by federal law from military service, and by state laws from adoption, teaching, and any profession involving children.
• All environmental regulation repealed.
• Public education abolished, along with government funding of any education at any level: early childhood, student loans, etc.
• No government funding for the arts, under any circumstances.
• Islam not recognized as a religion, and thus stripped of all religious protections.
• Muslims banned from elected office, government employment and military service.
• America officially declared "a Christian nation."
• Employers, landlords and public businesses allowed to discriminate on the basis of race, sexual orientation, or anything else.
• Child labor laws abolished.
• Government surveillance on any person for any reason legal.
• English declared official language, and governments forbidden from printing materials in any other language.
• Unions outlawed.

I could go on and on like this. But even with just these few (real life, not exaggerated) examples, is this the nation we want to live in?

Maybe we should think about that.

I have hazel eyes.

I don't base my identity on my eye color. Having hazel eyes is just a part of me. I'm certainly not proud of having hazel eyes, but I'm not ashamed, either. Most of the time, I don't even think about it.

But if the government told me I couldn't get married to someone else with hazel eyes, or that I couldn't be in the military unless I wore blue contact lenses, or if people stood outside my eye doctor's office with signs that read "Hazel-Eyed Go To Hell!," I might start to think that my hazel eyes were pretty important. I might start to resent people who disliked me just because of my eye color. I might start spending more time than is necessarily healthy wondering what it was about my eye color that got certain people so riled up.

I might get angry when people said absurd or bizarre things, like that I shouldn't be able to teach children unless I wore sunglasses to hide my "condition."

But that would never happen, right?

Happy to have a job

"Brain drain? Perhaps, in the short run. But maybe Wisconsin will see new infusion of brains as younger workers step up and take those positions, happy to have the jobs even without the lavish pensions of yore."

-comment on "The Costly Brain Drain in Wisconsin," by Ruth Conniff, The Progressive

One of the phrases that has "angered up my blood" the most during this Wisconsin war on the middle class has been the line: "You should be happy to have a job at all." Often followed up with some variation on "Suck it up, you lazy parasite."

This is so disturbing to me because it means that the right-wing crapweasel propaganda has seeped so deep into the psyche of the lower and middle classes that they are willing to throw their lot in with the employer and say, in effect, "I am only worth what my employer says I am. I only deserve what my employer is willing to provide, however meager. Not only am I content with ceding power to my employer, but I demand it."

That attitude is sick and wrong, and resembles nothing so much as an abused spouse telling a friend, "He wouldn't have hit me if I had just put dinner on the table on time."

Eleanor Roosevelt famously said, "No one can make you feel inferior without your consent." This isn't just about taking our government back - it's about taking ourselves back. We better start now, before it's too late.

Taking a break

My outrage meter is broken. Six years in the red will do that. I just can't dedicate any more energy right now to the insanity that surrounds us.

Based on past experience, I'll probably be back at some point. Maybe not.

Editing

"Lewis Libby has now been found guilty of perjury and obstruction of justice for lies that had absolutely no legal consequence."

So begins Ann Coulter's latest column on how the Libby prosecution is (surprise!) a terrible miscarriage of justice, and how Bush just must absolutely pardon Libby, now.

Ann, sweetie, let me just suggest a minor edit to your lead paragraph:

"Lewis Libby Bill Clinton has now been found guilty of perjury and obstruction of justice for lies that had absolutely no legal consequence."

There. Much better - and more accurate!

Resonance

Lt. Gen. Kevin Kiley is the third high-ranking military official forced out because of the scandalous treatment of veterans at Walter Reed Hospital. Could this finally be a tipping point, where patriotic Americans begin to realize that conservatives don't care at all about the troops, no matter how much accusatory finger-pointing or heart-tugging country songs stomp through our war-infested culture?

No wait. What was I thinking? Of course, the answer is "no." The line is a dot, people.

What goes around

Unhinged eliminationist gun-obsessed perv Kim du Toit has decided that he's shutting down comments on his site, because he's tired of a few stray attacks on him and his wife, the vivacious, bombastic universal scold Connie du Toit. Up to now, his flying monkeys have pretty much toed the line, probably because they are too busy stroking their highly-polished shotguns to challenge him on anything. Well, those happy days are gone.

I must admit that one of my sharpest incidents of schadenfreude was when I learned that Kim and Connie's homeschooling database business, Did Today, collapsed because investors were horrified with the du Toits' combined online output. Who knew that years of calling for the violent death of your political enemies would have such negative consequences?

And so the withdrawal continues, as they homeschool their children and retreat into their fantasy of the 1950s America that never existed in the first place.

Go with God, you two.

Dirty Sanchez

So did you hear the one about the military guy who was the toast of the right, after speaking out about being called names on the Columbia University campus by the college's "radical anti-military students"?

Yeah - turns out his previous career was in show business. He was a star - of gay porn.

And guess what? Matt "Rod Majors" Sanchez had his picture taken at CPAC with Ann Coulter, just as she was making the "faggot" comment about John Edwards. He was at CPAC to accept the Jeanne Kirkpatrick Academic Freedom Award.

You can't make this stuff up, people.

Of course, the crapweasels are rallying around him. Because let's face it: he may be a (self-denying ex-porn-star ex-manwhore) faggot, but he's *their* faggot. It's also sad and tragic that Sanchez has pledged his undying support to a movement that doesn't think he should have been allowed into the military in the first place.

My favorite part of his whining display of victimhood on Salon was his contention that lefty blogs were "prying into his private life." Personally, I think if your naked ass is displayed on video racks in every porn shop in the U.S., your "film career" isn't part of your "private life."

Libby, Libby, Libby goes to Prison, Prison, Prison

Of course, he won't. He'll get a pardon, sometime between Election Day 2008 and Inauguration Day 2009. But it's just too pleasurable not to write that headline.

Coulter apologia

In surveying the right-wing crapweasel web sites, as I do more often than I should for the sake of my blood pressure and overall sanity, I've come across a broad spectrum of defenses of Ann Coulter's "faggot" remark. I hereby record them for posterity - paraphrased, but with the basic meaning intact.

1. Ann wasn't calling Edwards a faggot - she was referring to Isaiah Washington from "Grey's Anatomy."
2. Ann didn't call Edwards a faggot - in fact, she specifically *declined* to call him a faggot.
3. Ann was using the word in the "schoolyard taunt" sort of way - not to mean "gay." (This came not only from her defenders, but from Ann herself on "Hannity" last night)
4. I thought being gay was great, according to liberals. Is there something wrong with being gay, now?
5. Gays call each other "faggot" all the time. What's the big deal?
   
6. Faggot actually means: bundle of sticks, female prostitute, old woman, bassoon (!) etc. etc. ad infinitum.
7. The comment didn't have anything to do with Edwards - it was all about media hysteria over language.
8. It was a joke!
9. There were a lot worse things Ann could have called Edwards, but she didn't.
10. Why are liberals trying to take away Ann Coulter's freedom of speech? Liberal Nazis.
11. Apparently to liberals, it's OK to say vicious things about Christians, but you can't sneeze in the direction of a gay.
12. Ann was taken out of context (again).
13. I hate liberals and their manufactured outrage.
14. Ann was making a good point. Who wants the Breck Girl as Commander-in-Chief?
    

UPDATE: Best weblog comment of the week, from Hot Air:

I'd just like to add that liberals don't love to bash Christians, just people who call themselves Christians right after calling someone else a faggot.

Ich bin ein Faggot

Memo to Ann Coulter:

When Michelle Malkin denounces you for being over the top, you've got a problem. Seriously.

Still, though, please keep it up. Ramp it up if possible. Say every single hateful, racist, bigoted thing that your slavering followers are thinking but dare not say. Cap it off with another performance at CPAC 2008 - maybe you can call Barack Obama a half-breed nigger terrorist-lover or something. (Just an idea - feel free to steal it.) Because the Democrats are going to need all the help they can get to take back the White House next year.

Godspeed, Ann.

UPDATE: Shorter "Hot Air" comment section:

Calling someone a "faggot" is no big deal. When I was growing up, we called each other "faggots" all the time, and it didn't have anything to do with whether anyone was homosexual - or, as we have to say now, "gay." Damn fags and their euphemisms. Go Ann!

Everything's hunky-dory

When I heard the news story today about the explosion in Ramadi, I laughed. Which makes me a bad person. But when the U.S. government tries to minimize the reports of a truck bomb killing 18 children on a soccer field by saying, no, we set off the explosion ourselves, and it just wounded 30 people - we're down the rabbit hole.

Further down.

People in Hell want water

If Hillary Clinton gave the fantasy speech outlined by Gary Kamiya in Salon, I just might consider voting for her. But she won't, not in a million years. So I won't. Simple, no?

Quote of the Week

"I love America. Just because I think gay dudes should be allowed to adopt kids and we should all drive hybrid cars doesn’t mean that I don’t love America."

-Liz Lemon (Tina Fey), "30 Rock"

"30 Rock" is one of the best-written shows on TV right now, and definitely the best-written (and funniest) comedy. No surprise, since Tina Fey jumped ship as head writer on SNL to write and star in her own show. Alec Baldwin is also fantastic as GE exec Jack Donaghy, who has a giant photo of a toaster on the wall in his office.

Speaking of offices, "The Office" is brilliant, but I don't think it's a "comedy" in the traditional TV sense. The tone and aims are completely different.

If you haven't seen "30 Rock," give it a chance. I don't want this one to get cancelled.

Democrats Fail to Pass Symbolic, Non-Binding Resolution Declaring Earth Not Flat

This Modern World nails how I feel every time some anti-science nut like Dean Esmay (who also believes passionately that Terri Schiavo could have lept out of her hospital bed if just given a chance, and that HIV is harmless) laughs at Al Gore or writes some variation of this:

Boy, it sure was cold today. And we got 7 inches of snow overnight. Someone call Al Gore!

I think I need to take a break from the browser when every time I open it, my most common emotion is "loathing."

UPDATE: Some high-quality braying from Dean and his flying monkeys about Al Gore's Oscar win last night. Al better watch out - a few more good works, and he might surpass Jimmy Carter as Most Hated Man on Earth for the crapweasels.

How about 'who gives a shit'?

Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi gives voice to anger over a national media that is a lot more concerned with Britney Spears' hairdo and Anna Nicole's "death fridge" than anything that matters in this world. The thing is, just like our government, in this country we have the exact media that we deserve.

Doth protest

A choice comment from a Freeper called "Catholic Canadian," in a discussion about former NBA star Tim Hardaway's statement that he "hates gay people":

"At one point, I tried to be tolerant of gays that I met. I would talk to them as normal individuals. After awhile though, all civilised talk with them decends into lewd and suggestive sexual comments, innuendo, attempts at touching and suggestions that you go back to their place."

Uh huh.

Monkeys with typewriters

The latest salvo in the right wing's war against environmentalism? Hybrid cars are dangerous because they are too quiet, and thus threaten the safety of the blind.

I'm not making this up.

"That's not a real story," says my brother.
"Yes it is! I'll send you the link."
"You must have left something out," he says, incredulous.
"No. It's real," I say.
"Are you sure that isn't an Onion story? Because I would laugh at it if it was in the Onion."

This story is hilarious for many reasons. But the one that leaps to mind is, I can imagine right-wingers trying to come up with a list of reasons why hybrid cars should be banned. But I can't for the life of me imagine them coming up with that one in a million years.

I give up

I'm tired of fighting. So this is to announce that from now on I believe the following:

-The King James Version of the Bible is the inerrant word of God.
-Abortion is murder.
-Global warming is a hoax.
-HIV does not cause AIDS.
-Valerie Plame was not a covert agent.
-Saddam had WMD.
-Saddam helped plan 9/11.
-The minimum wage hurts the poor.
-George W. Bush is a Texas rancher.
-Bill and Hillary Clinton killed Vince Foster.
-Tom Cruise is not gay.
-Gay sex is indistinguishable from rape, incest and bestiality.
-Iraq is not in the middle of a civil war.
-$9 billion missing in Iraq is no big deal.
-George W. Bush is the reason we haven't had a terrorist attack since 9/11.
-Ann Coulter is funny, sexy, and correct.
-Michael Moore is a holocaust denier.
-Hybrid cars are dangerous because they are too quiet.
-Anyone who criticizes the Iraq war or the President is a traitor.
-The more guns we have, the safer we are.

If more revelations come to me, I'll add them. Thanks for your attention.

Pretension

This isn't a pop culture weblog, although pop culture is another of my abiding interests. And I do tend to focus, as some commenters like to point out, on stuff that "angries up my blood," as Grandpa Simpson says. So I couldn't pass up this Entertainment Weekly writeup on ABC's "Lost," which has suffered a major loss in audience (including me) this season:

Nobody is more proud - and more defensive - about Lost than [series star Matthew] Fox. The fall from amazing grace? That's just the headline-hungry media tearing down what the cast and crew built up. The ratings decline? Those were simply hype-intrigued looky-loos who've decided Lost isn't for them and gravitated toward less complicated fare. "Good riddance," says Fox.... And what of the devotees who yearn for those innocent invisible-peanut-butter-flavored beach days? "The people who rag on it that way aren't strong enough fans, really," he says. "Those people are copping out."

Memo to Matthew Fox: fuck you. You're an actor on a television show - a show that started with a handful of intriguing ideas that then proceeded to systematically crap all over them. This show made you a star, and it might not be the best move to be insulting the very people who put you there.

It physically pains me to channel Laura Ingraham, but shut up and act.