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Our Descent Into Banana Republicanism Continues

Horrible.  Just horrible.  Another new low in police brutality.

Arbitrary violence is nothing new. The apparently systematic use of sexual assault against women protestors is new. I’m not aware of any reports of police intentionally grabbing women’s breasts before March 17, but on March 17 there were numerous reported cases, and in later nightly evictions from Union Square, the practice became so systematic that at least one woman told me her breasts were grabbed by five different police officers on a single night (in one case, while another one was blowing kisses.) The tactic appeared so abruptly, is so obviously a violation of any sort of police protocol or standard of legality, that it is hard to imagine it is anything but an intentional policy.

Tell me again how we’re a beacon of democracy and the greatest country in the world and everyone else should be totally envious of us.

Add comment May 4th, 2012 at 07:02am Posted by Eli

Too Good To Be True?

Could it be that Rush really is in trouble?

Premiere Networks, which syndicates the Rush Limbaugh show, told its affiliate radio stations that they are suspending national advertising for two weeks. Rush Limbaugh is normally provided to affiliates in exchange for running several minutes of national advertisements provided by Premiere each hour. These ads are called “barter spots.” These spots are how Premiere makes its money off of Rush Limbaugh and other shows it syndicates.

(…)

Earlier today, ThinkProgress exclusively reported that 140 advertisers, including dozens of major national corporations, had requested their ads no longer air on Rush Limbaugh. Lifelock and Lear Financial are among the only companies standing by Limbaugh.

Even more dramatic:

1 comment March 13th, 2012 at 07:48am Posted by Eli

No One Could Have Anticipated…

Apparently the Republicans are having trouble finding enough women to support their war on women.  I can’t imagine why that might be.

Good thing for Obama and the Democrats that labor unions are a lot more forgiving about supporting people who screw them over repeatedly.

March 12th, 2012 at 07:42am Posted by Eli

Wanker Of The Day

Shorter Rick Santorum: I’m not familiar with that quote because I put my wife to work writing the chapter about how women shouldn’t work.

February 14th, 2012 at 07:58am Posted by Eli

The Republicans’ Rapist God

Shorter Idaho Republicans: That’s God raping you, so just lie back and enjoy it.

Marching in step with the GOP’s nationwide war on a woman’s right to choose, the Idaho legislature gave final approval to a bill that would outlaw abortions after 20 weeks. Modeled after Nebraska’s first-in-the-nation measure, the bill — like the one passed in Kansas last week — is based on highly disputed medical research alleging that a fetus can feel pain at 20 weeks. Idaho’s bill, however, also fails to include exceptions for rape, incest, severe fetal abnormality or the mental or psychological health of the mother. “Only when the pregnancy threatens the mother’s life or physical health could a post-20-week abortion be performed.”

(…)

But this year during Sexual Assault Awareness Month, state Republican lawmakers found plenty of reasons to advocate for it. State Rep. Shannon McMillan (R) argued that women who were impregnated under “violent circumstances” should have no choice because it’s not the fetus’s fault. State Rep. Brent Crane, the bill’s sponsor, took it a step further. Believing that “tragic, horrific” acts of rape or incest are the “hand of the Almighty,” Crane said women should trust God to turn the consequences of their sexual assault into “wonderful examples”:

“Is not the child of that rape or incest also a victim?” asked Rep. Shannon McMillan, R-Silverton. “It didn’t ask to be here. It was here under violent circumstances perhaps, but that was through no fault of its own.”[...]

The Idaho bill’s House sponsor, state Rep. Brent Crane, R-Nampa, told legislators that the “hand of the Almighty” was at work. “His ways are higher than our ways,” Crane said. “He has the ability to take difficult, tragic, horrific circumstances and then turn them into wonderful examples.”

(…)

The bill does more than compel sexual assault victims to carry pregnancies to term, it makes it a felony to perform such an abortion and allows spouses and relatives to file legal injunctions against physicians who break the ban. The bill also sets up a fund that can accept donations to defend the bill — a needed provision since the Idaho attorney general has issued two legal opinions declaring the bill unconstitutional for violating the Roe v. Wade decision’s viability standard.

Despite the lack of constitutionality or compassion, the bill passed 54 to 14 with only one Republican joining all 13 Democrats in opposition. The bill now heads to Gov. Butch Otter (R) “who is expected to sign it.”

If rape is just God moving in mysterious ways to produce serendipitous miracles, then why should it even be illegal?  Shouldn’t we be thanking the rapists for opening up all these “wonderful” divine opportunities?

April 8th, 2011 at 07:31am Posted by Eli

Joe Lieberman: Warmonger, Liar Or Sexist?

Okay, I know he’s all three, but which is he more?

Just as the sun always rises in the east, so too does Joe Lieberman always lie about Iraq and WMD.

This morning Lieberman told Morning Joe that:

LIEBERMAN: …the evidence is very clear that [Saddam] was developing weapons of mass destruction…Charles Duelfer conducted the most comprehensive report on behalf of our government…he found, and proved I think, that Saddam…was developing chemical and biological weapons.

Lieberman followed up this embarrassing performance with snide condescension toward Arianna Huffington, who was also on the program:

HUFFINGTON: Well, based on this completely unfounded assumption, I sincerely hope for the sake of the country that you do not become Secretary of Defense.LIEBERMAN: Now Arianna, these are not unfounded. Go read the Duelfer Report.

HUFFINGTON: There is nothing in the report that proves anything that you have said.

LIEBERMAN: I don’t think you’ve read it, sweetheart.

Wow.  That is a virtuoso performance right there.  Good fucking riddance to this evil tool.  (Click through for more detail on just how dishonest Lieberman is about WMDs and the Duelfer report)

January 21st, 2011 at 11:17am Posted by Eli

Good News From Teapartyland

Raise your hands if you knew about this:

[Tea Partier] Paul Butterfield, 48, an engineer from Ontario, N.Y., said: “We’ve achieved equal rights for blacks, equal rights for women, equal rights for gays. But creating a welfare state is a step backward.”

We have?  That’s so awesome!

Minorities and women may have perhaps attained something close to equal rights… but only on paper, not in the real world.  And gays haven’t even come close to paper equality yet, much less the real thing.

April 19th, 2010 at 06:33pm Posted by Eli

Were You Aware Of It?

Apparently all Protestants are rich white guys.

Who knew?

March 11th, 2010 at 09:54pm Posted by Eli

Epic Analogy Fail

So Tucker Carlson’s conservative answer to the Huffington Post kicked off today, because if there’s the net doesn’t have enough of, it’s aggregations of right-wing wankers.  Exhibit A:

Legalized rape. What’s that you say? Rape isn’t sanctioned in this country? Then you must not live in a city with red-light or speed cameras, where it happens every day. Forget for a second that in one-fourth of all automated ticket cases, the ticketed  car owner wasn’t the one actually driving the vehicle at the time of the infraction (what other crime-fighting technology do we consider reliable that nabs the wrong person 25 percent of the time?) Just as heinous is that every year, more and more municipal governments pretend that they plant these all-seeing menaces in the interest of “safety.” Yet every year, their revenues tend to  increase from the very same technology. Meaning that the only deterrent effect the technology has is deterring your government from being honest about raping its own citizenry. If you’re going to slide me a roofie, Government, at least take me to dinner and a movie first.

Of course, this is both ridiculous and offensive.  Automated ticketing is nothing at all like rape – it’s more like the Holocaust.

Also, isn’t the GOP supposed to be the Law And Order “civil rights and due process are for pussies” party, or does that only apply to offenses committed by minorities and poor people?  Maybe these automated ticketing systems simply need to use some kind of cross-reference database so that they don’t send any tickets to rich white people, who were probably in a very legitimate hurry to do important rich white people things.  Or drunk.

January 11th, 2010 at 06:43pm Posted by Eli

It’s Not Just Hyperbole

Republicans really are woman-hating pro-corporate evil sons of bitches:

Here is freshman Minnesota senator Al Franken’s first-ever legislative action, a relatively simple, almost laughably surefire bill requiring the Pentagon no longer do business with any contractor — hi, Halliburton! — that requires its employees to agree that she cannot sue said contractor if she is, oh let’s just say, gang raped by its employees.

You read that right. It’s a can’t-sue-us-if-you’re-raped clause. In a U.S. government contract. Aimed squarely at Halliburton. Thanks, Dick Cheney!

(…)

The most repellant part is the 30 U.S. senators — Republicans each and every one — who just stepped forth to vote against the Franken amendment, essentially saying no, women should have no right to sue if they are sexually abused or gang raped, Halliburton and its ilk must be protected at all costs, and by the way we hereby welcome Satan into our rancid souls forevermore. God bless America.

Let us repeat, for clarity. Franken’s amendment passed with a vote of 68-30. Meaning 30 U.S. senators voted against the elimination of the rape/sue clause. Meghan McCain, call your dad. He’s one of them.

(…)

[P]erhaps all we can do is ponder how pathetic and sad these various senator’s lives must be, how these bitter old men will now go home at night and announce around the dinner table that, yes, today they worked very hard to help improve the welfare of the nation by essentially enabling rape and sexual abuse, tried their darndest to prevent women who’ve been viciously attacked from having much legal recourse. And lo, Satan will chuckle happily.

Then maybe these senators will try and hug their wives, or their daughters. And maybe, if there’s any justice in the universe, their wives and daughters will slap them as hard as humanly possible, lock them in a shipping container, and never let them touch them again.

P.S.; Would you like a complete list of these 30 senators’ names? Right here.

Why look, there’s grandpa McCain. There’s disgraced man-child John Ensign. Hooker-lovin’ David Vitter. Saxby Chambliss. Inhofe. It’s a veritable welfare-state who’s who of Dick Cheney’s sanctum of oily fluffers, and many more who would love to be. Shall we write a nice letter to them? Or maybe their wives and daughters?

Pure evil, I say.  And the Democrats are idiots if they don’t make an issue of it next fall.

October 16th, 2009 at 07:22am Posted by Eli

Great Moments In American History

It’s a shame, but these things happen.

(From Married To The Sea)

October 8th, 2009 at 11:16am Posted by Eli

The Crazy Goes Up To 11!

Wow, this sounds like an awful lot of batshit in one building at the same time:

Conservatives gathered at a Hilton hotel in St. Louis over the weekend for the “How to Take Back America Conference,” a Phyllis Schlafly-hosted gathering where the faithful gathered to discuss issues such as “How To Counter The Homosexual Extremist Movement,” “How To Stop Socialism In Health Care” and “How To Recognize Living Under Nazis & Communists.”

Among the prominent speakers who traveled to St. Louis for the conference were former Arkansas Gov. and GOP presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, Republican Reps. Tom McClintock, Tom Price, Steve King and Michele Bachmann, and “Joe the Plumber,” aka Samuel Wurzelbacher.

(…)

Schlafly went on to suggest that Americans are “waking up” and that they don’t want “our country to be run by czars,” which she called “a Russian idea.” She said of her organization, Eagle Forum, “fighting feminists is still our main object,” arguing that feminism is “the most destructive force in the world.

(I sure hope the agenda features a debate between Schlafly and Jerry Boykin, who said that “there is no greater threat to America than Islam”…)

On the conference’s Web site, there is only one section available under the “listen & take action” tab: “HOMOSEXUAL EXTREMIST MOVEMENT.” There, Liberty University School of Law Associate Dean Matt Barber writes that “the sin of homosexuality is the bunker-buster bomb in this war against morality.”

“The very firm response by defenders of Biblical truth to the homosexual lobby’s relentless assault on our nation’s Judeo-Christian tradition is indeed a defensive reaction, not an act of aggression,” he says. “The sheer mechanics of homosexual conduct very naturally elicits revulsion in most rational folk. Therefore, most of us would prefer not to even imagine it, much less struggle to defend against its wholesale promotion. But regrettably, our hand has been forced.”

Oh, and Mike Huckabee wants to jackhammer away the part of Manhattan with the UN on it and float it out to sea.

It never ceases to amaze and terrify me that there are millions of people who take these backward freaks seriously.  Has America always had this many crazy/stupid people, or did the GOP somehow perfect the science of wacko husbandry?

(h/t WT)

2 comments September 28th, 2009 at 08:56pm Posted by Eli

Wankers Of The Day

ABC News:

Three ABC reporters combined to produce a 188-word post – 63 words per reporter — for Jake Tapper’s blog, speculating that Malia Obama “may have inherited her mother’s taste in sometimes expensive clothes.” No, I won’t provide a link.

Fitting that they would use creepy misogynist asshole Jake Tapper’s blog to pick on an eleven-year-old girl.

(h/t WT)

July 7th, 2009 at 06:55am Posted by Eli

Sara Robinson Wants The Right-Wing To Declare Themselves

She appears to be a teensy bit irritated with their nudge-nudge-wink-wink game of inciting hatred and then indignantly denying all responsibility when that hatred turns into violence.

Dear Conservatives:

Your fellow Americans demand an answer — and we want it now. Just one simple question:

Are you deliberately trying to start a civil war?

Just answer the question. Yes or no. Don’t insult us with elisions, evasions, dithering, qualifications, or conditional answers. We need to know what your intentions are — and we need to know NOW. People are being shot dead in the streets of America at the rate of several per month now. You may not want responsibility for this — but the whackadoodles pulling the triggers make no bones about who put them up to this.

You did.

(…)

If your answer is yes, then stop this cowardly half-assed screwing around. You speak the language of war and honor; but the honor code of the warriors you pretend to revere demands that you declare your intentions. If you really believe that the only way to get the America you want is to negate a fair election, shred the Constitution, and violently cleanse the country of everyone who doesn’t agree with you, then man up and get on with it. If it’s a shooting war you want, do not doubt that there are plenty of progressives who will oblige you. If this goal is so important that you’re really willing to kill for it, please don’t forget that you will also need to be willing to die for it. Because, like martyrs Greg McKendry and Steven Johns proved, we are willing to do whatever is necessary to stop you.

If your answer is no, then you have just one other choice. Knock off the tantrums, grow up, rebuild your party, come back to the table, and sit down and govern with us. (We know this will be a stretch, but we think some of you are capable of it.) You will need to learn, many of you for the first time, to get your way as adults do — without fear-based politics, polarizing rhetoric, on-air threats against those who disagree with you, and repeating outrageous lies in the face of stone facts and irrefutable evidence.

And most of all: you need to stop feeding the crazies. You need to disavow them in every way possible — sincerely, emphatically, and with full awareness that every time one of these people acts, it destroys the credibility of “conservatives,” “Republicans,” and “the right wing” in the eyes of the country. You cannot assassinate your way back to power. And don’t doubt for a moment that the majority of Americans — even those who agree with your ideas — will abandon your cause forever once it realizes that’s what you’re trying to do.

Since you’re the ones funding the violent radicals on your flank, you need to stop sending them money. Since you know far more about their activities than any one else, you need to be the ones who turn them in. Since you’re the ones who make heroes and martyrs out of them, you need to be the ones who call them out as criminals. Until you do this — consistently, wholeheartedly, and responsibly — we can only conclude that these assassins are operating with your support and approval, and that you are intentionally trying to start an armed revolution in America.

There’s a lot more great stuff in the middle, so read the whole thing.  It’s very hard to believe the right wing’s protestations of innocence when they do so little to dampen or repudiate the crazies.

June 12th, 2009 at 09:13pm Posted by Eli

Jonah Goldberg’s Perfect Candidate

Must be charismatic and self-loathing.

No freaks.

(h/t BT)

May 8th, 2009 at 10:11pm Posted by Eli

Wait… What?

Did Pat Buchanan just get on Chris Matthews for bigotry?

PAT BUCHANAN???

April 30th, 2009 at 06:55am Posted by Eli

Sarah Pallin’ Around With Bigots

If she didn’t before, Sarah Palin now officially scares the bejesus out of me:

In March, Palin nominated Wayne Anthony Ross for attorney general. Ross, a colorful far-right lawyer and longtime Palin ally who sports his initials, W.A.R., on his Hummer’s vanity plates….

Palin’s hopes for a swift confirmation process were dashed April 10 when Leah Burton, a veteran lobbyist on children’s issues and domestic violence, submitted a letter to the Alaska State Judiciary Committee claiming that Ross publicly defended spousal rape. According to Burton, who detailed the allegations for me, Ross allegedly declared during a speech before a 1991 gathering of the “father’s rights” group Dads Against Discrimination, “If a guy can’t rape his wife, who’s he gonna rape?”….

Burton said Ross’s statement was consistent with his overarching attitude toward women’s issues. She claimed that he once said during a debate on the Equal Rights Amendment, “If a woman would keep her mouth shut, there wouldn’t be an issue with domestic violence.”….

Since Burton’s testimony, her father, former Alaska Public Safety Commissioner Richard Burton, wrote a letter of his own demanding to Ross that he withdraw his nomination. “You sir, speak and act like the kind of bully I met many times when responding to domestic-violence calls, some of the most dangerous situations police officers are often in,” Burton wrote. Ross reacted with characteristic fury to the Burtons’ broadsides, barking to reporters that if “anybody said that to me, we’d have a little confrontation because that’s a bunch of crap.”….

(I particularly like how Ross’s response to being called a bully is to threaten to beat the guy up)

But as pro-Palin forces attempted to push back against Ross’s critics, dozens of op-eds Ross authored during the 1980s and 1990s surfaced as key exhibits in the case against his confirmation. Among them is a 1993 piece entitled, “KKK ‘art’ project gets ‘A’ for courage,” in which Ross cheered on a local college student who had offended an African-American classmate by creating a statue of a Klansman with a cross in one hand and a flag in the other. “It might have been fun to see [the African-American student] try to remove the display,” Ross wrote. “Then she could have been arrested and her future as a student of the university could have been resolved through the university disciplinary proceedings.”

(…)

A glance at Ross’s published archive shows he never limited his resentment to minorities. He taunted environmentalists (“It is time we quit crying over the oil spill” was the title of an editorial he wrote in the wake of the Exxon Valdez disaster); he denounced homosexuals as “degenerates” during a 1993 legal fight over a local gay-rights ordinance; and announced that his final wish before dying was to overturn Roe v. Wade. While rising through the ranks of the NRA’s national leadership in the 1980s, Ross published a piece in the mercenary magazine Soldier of Fortune, defending the right to form antigovernment militias.

(…)

….The tribes were especially disturbed by his vow during a 2002 gubernatorial debate to “hire a band of junkyard dog” attorneys to gut federal laws guaranteeing natives subsistence preferences….

I believe the phrase “piece of work” was invented for this guy.  Sexism, racism, homophobia, he hits the whole toxic trifecta.  With a little crazy separatist militia-man thrown in for good measure.  Which makes him Sarah Palin’s kind of people.

If she ever becomes president, she will make Dubya look like FDR.

April 13th, 2009 at 07:25pm Posted by Eli

Great Moments In Out-Of-Control Prudery

This is completely nuts:

My friends at the ACLU of Pennsylvania have filed a Complaint (PDF):

Plaintiffs in this civil rights action are three teenage girls and their parents. The Defendant, Wyoming County District Attorney George Skumanick, has threatened to prosecute the three girls for child pornography for their roles in the creation of two digital photographs unless the parents agree to place the girls on probation and send them to a five-week, ten-hour re-education program wherein the girls must discuss why their conduct was wrong and what it means to be a girl. One photo shows Marissa and Grace, from the waist up, lying side by side in their bras, with one talking on a telephone and the other making a peace sign. The other photo shows Nancy Doe standing upright, just emerged from the shower, with a white towel wrapped tightly around her body just below the breasts. The two photographs, which depict no sexual activity or display of pubic area, are not illegal under Pennsylvania’s crimes code and, indeed, are images protected by the First Amendment.

Skumanick nevertheless persists in threatening to prosecute the girls because he has deemed the photos “provocative.” Since there is no basis to prosecute the girls for posing in photographs that plainly are not child pornography, in terms of content or production, Skumanick’s threat to prosecute the girls must be considered retaliation against the plaintiffs for asserting their constitutional rights – the parents’ right to direct their children’s upbringing and the girls’ rights both to free expression and against compelled speech – in refusing Skumanick’s demands. Accordingly, plaintiffs seek declaratory and injunctive relief to enjoin Skumanick from bringing the retaliatory criminal charges against plaintiffs based on their refusal to accede to his demand that they submit to probation and participate in the re-education program.

It appears that the only grounds for calling the photos “provocative” is Skumanick’s say-so:

One parent stood up during the meeting and asked how Skumanick could be prosecuting his daughter because, according to him, she was in the photograph wearing a bathing suit. Skumanick told the assembled crowd that she was posed “provocatively,” which made her subject to a child pornography charge.

In response to Skumanick’s comment, Marissa’s father stood up and asked who was deciding what was provocative. Skumanick replied that he was not going to argue and that he could charge all of the minors there that night but was instead offering them a plea deal. Skumanick also told Mr. Miller that, “these are the rules if you don’t like them, too bad.”

Awesome.  If I’m reading the description of the Nancy Doe photo correctly, I can see where that’s a little borderline, but calling a photo with zero nudity or sexual activity “child pornography”?  And using that to threaten 13-year-old girls with prosecution?  That’s insane.

This guy sounds like an unhinged misogynistic crusader who’s about two drinks away from screaming that teenage girls are dirty little whores who tempt the righteous into sin.

March 26th, 2009 at 09:36pm Posted by Eli

How Bill O’Reilly Stands Up For Rape Victims

…By harassing bloggers who repeat terrible, hurtful things… that Bill O’Reilly said about them:

On March 1, ThinkProgress picked up on a story by News Hounds, which noted that Fox News host Bill O’Reilly — who has made controversial comments about rape victims in the past — was slated to speak at a March 19 fundraiser for the Alexa Foundation. The group is committed to supporting rape survivors.

Our post — which never criticized the Alexa Foundation — highlighted the fact that in the past, O’Reilly has implied that women who dress in a certain way or consume too much alcohol should perhaps expect to be raped. Here is what he said on his radio show on Aug. 2 about Jennifer Moore, an 18-year-old woman who was raped and murdered:

Now Moore, Jennifer Moore, 18, on her way to college. She was 5-foot-2, 105 pounds, wearing a miniskirt and a halter top with a bare midriff. Now, again, there you go. So every predator in the world is gonna pick that up at two in the morning. She’s walking by herself on the West Side Highway, and she gets picked up by a thug. All right. Now she’s out of her mind, drunk.

(…)

This weekend, while on vacation, I was ambushed by O’Reilly’s top hit man, producer Jesse Watters, who accosted me on the street and told me that because I highlighted O’Reilly’s comments, I was causing “pain and suffering” to rape victims and their families. He of course offered no proof to back up this claim, instead choosing to shout questions at me.

All those rape victims were just starting to put their lives back together, mercifully unaware of what BillO said about them, until those horrible woman-hating women at Think Progress blew the whistle.  Such compassion BillO has, that he feels their pain so acutely that he has to send his goons out to attack more women!

That is some seriously ballsy spin, right up there with when the administration claimed it was suppressing the second wave of Abu Ghraib photos to protect the torture victims from embarrassment.

And that’s without even delving into the fact that Watters and his cameraman actually staked out Amanda Terkel’s house and followed her car for two hours before ambushing her and her friend.  No, that’s not creepy or stalkerish at all.  And also not at all in complete violation of O’Reilly’s own policies, which are worth less than the airwaves they’re insincerely bloviated on.

2 comments March 23rd, 2009 at 07:37pm Posted by Eli

Radioenfreude

This is the best news I’ve seen all month. Right-wing hate radio victimized by its own success… at getting incompetent Republican clowns elected.

It would have been even sweeter if Spocko had been the one who took them down, but I’ll take it. These are some seriously vile, horrible people, and the public airwaves are much better off without them.

March 16th, 2009 at 07:24pm Posted by Eli

Cringemaking Quote Of The Day

From the founder of the perhaps-too-revealingly-named Hooters-like “breastaurant” Bone Daddy:

The girls that work here are drop-dead gorgeous and as friendly as you want them to be.  If I had a 19-year-old daughter … this is the only placed I’d want her to work, because I know how committed we are to creating a great environment to work in.

Sounds like it’s a good thing this guy doesn’t have a 19-year-old daughter.  Eww.

(h/t WT)

March 5th, 2009 at 07:06pm Posted by Eli

Is America Post-Sexist, Too?

If so, can someone let Jake Tapper know?  Here’s a few eyebrow-raising tidbits from Howie Kurtz’s profile on how awesome he is:

Tapper also became a cartoonist for the student paper, drawing such characters as a woman who rips out a man’s heart while breaking up with him.

(…)

He spent three years as a publicist for the firm Powell Tate, flacking for such clients as Hooters. Tapper also freelanced for The Washington Post, holding forth on such topics as “Stairmaster butt” and how caller ID “has single-handedly changed the rules of romance.”

In 1998, while working for the group Handgun Control, Tapper was pondering an offer from Washington City Paper when the Monica Lewinsky scandal broke. This was of more than passing interest to Tapper, who weeks earlier had gone on a date with the suddenly notorious White House intern. He turned that brief encounter into a cover story — and a job — at City Paper.

(…)

“To be brutally honest, I got with her because I figured that behind her initial aggressiveness lurked an easy, perhaps winning, bit of no-frills hookup,” he wrote….

(…)

Tapper, who festoons his Facebook page with baby pictures, says his network career has had a “horrible” impact on his family life. “I wouldn’t be able to be here,” he says, “if it weren’t for Jen and her complete understanding of this job and my drive.”

It all kind of adds up to a creepy, women-should-be-subservient-to-my-needs vibe (and this is from a profile that’s supposed to be flattering).  Which is a bit of a shock, since Tapper is so totally never a hackish wanker at all, nope.

March 2nd, 2009 at 11:29am Posted by Eli

Colorado’s Hate Senators

Colorado, Land Of James Dobson, has some truly warped and hateful Republican state senators.  In just two days, we had Scott Renfroe comparing homosexuality to murder:

A prominent national gay rights organization on Tuesday blasted Colorado state Sen. Scott Renfroe for comparing homosexuality to murder when he spoke Monday against a bill that would extend health benefits to same-sex domestic partners of state employees.

After quoting Scripture to call homosexual behavior a “detestable act,” the Greeley Republican said it would be “an abomination according to Scripture” for the Legislature to “(take) sins and (make) them to be legally OK.”

He continued: “I’m not saying (homosexuality) is the only sin that is out there. Obviously we have sin — we have murder, we have, we have all sorts of sin, we have adultery, and we don’t make laws making those legal, and we would never think to make murder legal.”

…And state senator Dave Schultheis opposing HIV testing for pregnant mothers because it “rewards promiscuity”:

Democrats were outraged Wednesday morning when Republican state Sen. Dave Schultheis said he planned to vote against a bill to require HIV tests for pregnant women because the disease “stems from sexual promiscuity” and he didn’t think the Legislature should “remove the negative consequences that take place from poor behavior and unacceptable behavior.” The Colorado Springs lawmaker then proceeded to cast the lone vote against SB 179, which passed 32-1 and moves on to the House.

He then issued a “clarification”:

The Colorado Springs Republican with a penchant for foot-in-mouth moments tells The Rocky Mountain News in a follow-up story to Wednesday’s Senate floor controversy:

“What I’m hoping is that, yes, that person may have AIDS, have it seriously as a baby and when they grow up, but the mother will begin to feel guilt as a result of that,” he said. “The family will see the negative consequences of that promiscuity and it may make a number of people over the coming years begin to realize that there are negative consequences and maybe they should adjust their behavior.”

Yes, Schultheis really said he is “hoping” people “have AIDS, have it seriously as a baby …”

I know Colorado is like Ground Zero for fundies and all, but this really is twisted and over the top.  The religious right is inching closer and closer to Fred Phelps territory.

February 26th, 2009 at 07:16am Posted by Eli

Wait, Which Country Was He Talking About Again?

Dubya gets right to the heart of the problem in his farewell address:

The battles waged by our troops are part of a broader struggle between two dramatically different systems. Under one, a small band of fanatics demands total obedience to an oppressive ideology, condemns women to subservience, and marks unbelievers for murder. The other system is based on the conviction that freedom is the universal gift of Almighty God, and that liberty and justice light the path to peace.

I think he might be exaggerating a little bit about conservatives marking unbelievers for murder, but otherwise I think he’s spot on.

January 16th, 2009 at 09:45pm Posted by Eli

McCain Continues To Court The Women’s Vote

McCain sure has a strange way of reaching out to those disaffected Hillary voters…

On October 29, 1991, Senator John McCain went to the floor of the US Senate. The former Navy pilot was angry and disgusted. In recent days, the news had broken that the previous month Navy airmen and others had gone wild—engaging in sexual molestation, out-of-control drinking, and other misconduct—at the Tailhook Association convention in Las Vegas, an annual gathering of retired and active-duty naval aviators. “I cannot tell you,” McCain proclaimed, “the distaste and displeasure that I have as a naval aviator…concerning this incident.” He bemoaned the fact that senior ranking naval officers and civilian leaders had been at the meeting. He called for an investigation and urged the Navy to suspend its traditional participation with the Tailhook reunions. “There is no time in the history of this country that something like this is more inappropriate,” McCain said, “and we cannot allow it. It is unconscionable. And we in the military…should be ashamed and embarrassed…that this kind of activity went on. And there is no excuse for it.”

Now, McCain has placed one of the men responsible for permitting—and encouraging– loutish activity at the Tailhook meetings in a powerful position: heading up his transition team.

McCain recently named John Lehman to oversee his transition effort and figure out how a McCain administration ought to get started—and whom it ought to hire for the most senior jobs—should McCain win the November 4 election. Lehman, now an investment banker, was secretary of the Navy during the 1980s, and he played a R-rated role in the Tailhook scandal.

Lehman was no longer Navy secretary when the Tailhook scandal exploded. But in 1991 and 1992, as military investigators and journalists probed what had happened at the 1991 convention—which included the so-called Gauntlet, a line of rowdy and drunk junior officers who harassed and assaulted women passing by–they learned that the events at the Tailhook convention of 1991 were predated by similar behavior in early years. And they discovered that Lehman, as Navy secretary, had been an enthusiastic participant.

In his 1995 book, Fall from Glory: The Men Who Sank the U.S. Navy, Greg Vistica, the San Diego Union-Tribune reporter who broke the Tailhook scandal, described a scene from the 1986 Tailhook meeting:

When the door to the suite at the Las Vegas Hilton opened, a prominent member of President Ronald Reagan’s administration and a naked woman were clearly visible. He was lying on his back, stretched out in front of a throng of naval officers. There were probably one hundred men watching him, laughing with him….

Several of the Navy and Marine officers now crammed into the room…knew him personally and worshiped him. Many knew he was married and had three children. Almost everyone knew who he was, which made the show that much more fascinating….

Most of the officers in the room, including the man on his back, were hard-drinking renegades. Some had been partying for days, others for hours. The carpet was spongy and damp from alcohol spilled on it by drunken military men. The room itself reeked with the odor of booze and sweat. But nobody seemed to care much. All eyes were on the man and the naked woman standing over him, wagging her bare rump in a teasing motion. The men in the room went into a throaty uproar at the site, and their cheers and laughs grew louder as the show went on.

The man on the floor was Lehman. And this was the example he was setting at this particular Tailhook convention. Another account of the Tailhook scandal–The Mother of All Hooks: The Story of the U.S. Navy’s Tailhook Scandal by William McMichael–noted that Lehman ate whipped cream out of the stripper’s crotch.

Lehman, who had once been a Navy pilot, left his post as Navy secretary the following year—four years before Tailhook would become a controversy. But the 1993 report on Tailhook ‘91 conducted by the Pentagon’s inspector general concluded that the 1991 convention was “the culmination of a long-term failure of leadership” in the Navy. According to the report, “the nature of the misconduct at the annual convention was well-known to senior aviation leaders….We were repeatedly told that such behavior was widely condone by Navy civilian and military leadership.” A footnote in the report stated:

Throughout our investigation, witnesses told us remarkable incidents at past Tailhook conventions. Incidents related by witnesses included a high-ranking Navy civilian official dancing with strippers in hospitality suites.

The IG’s report noted that Tailhook had spun out of control during Lehman’s tenure as Navy secretary: “By many accounts, the increase in rowdy and improper behavior culminated at Tailhook ’85.” After that convention, one Tailhook Association board member privately complained to the group, “Dancing girls performing lurid sexual acts on Naval aviators in public would make prime conversation for the media.” But no steps were taken—by the association or the Navy–to rein in the Top Gun aviators. And Lehman’s antics at the 1986 gathering sent an obvious signal: party on, men.

1n 1996, Lehman, appearing on ABC News’ This Week with David Brinkley, downplayed the Tailhook affair. Asked if he had participated in public lewdness at one of the conventions, he said that was unimportant and railed against “gutter reporting,” insisting that Tailhook ’91 should have been nothing more than a minor story. Speaking more broadly about the military during the Clinton years, Lehman added, “This is not a touchy-feely bureaucracy here. It has to have a macho, tough, warrior culture, and that’s what’s being eroded.”

Dammit, if our aviators can’t harass women and cavort with strippers, they’ll turn into ineffectual pansies!  That is just the kind of bold, outside-the-box thinking that we need in a presidential transition team.  Maybe there will be lots of strippers and prostitutes on hand during the transition, you know, to keep morale up.

And plenty of whipped cream.

(h/t Jenn)

1 comment October 21st, 2008 at 11:38am Posted by Eli

McCain Clings Tenaciously To The Gutter

Wow, he just doesn’t want anything to do with the high road, does he?  From his Fox News Sunday interview with Chris Wallace:

WALLACE: But Senator, back — if I may, back in 2000 when you were the target of robo calls, you called these hate calls and you said…

MCCAIN: They worked.

WALLACE: … and you said the following, “I promise you, I have never and will never have anything to do with that kind of political tactic.”

Now you’ve hired the same guy who did the robo calls against you to — reportedly, to do the robo calls against Obama and the Republican Senator Susan Collins, the co-chair of your campaign in Maine, has asked you to stop the robo calls. Will you do that?

MCCAIN: Of course not. These are legitimate and truthful, and they are far different than the phone calls that were made about my family and about certain aspects that — things that this is — this is dramatically different, and either you haven’t — didn’t see those things in 2000…

To hell with honesty and integrity.  John McCain wants to win, dammit!

MCCAIN: …[Sarah Palin] has excited and energized our base. She is a direct counterpoint to the liberal feminist agenda for America.

“Liberal feminist agenda”?  Is McCain auditioning for a job in talk radio?

And then there’s this breathtaking exchange…

WALLACE: In your radio address yesterday, you raised the “S” word, socialism….  But you did it indirectly, so let me ask you for some straight talk. Do you think that Senator Obama is a socialist? Do you think that his plans are socialism?

MCCAIN: I think his plans are redistribution of the wealth. He said it himself, “We need to spread the wealth around.” Now, that’s one of…

WALLACE: Is that socialism?

MCCAIN: That’s one of the tenets of socialism. But it’s more the liberal left, which he’s always been on. He’s always been in the left lane of American politics.

That’s why he voted 94 times against any tax cuts or for tax increases. That’s why he voted for the Democratic resolution, budget resolution, that would impose taxes on — raise taxes on some individual who makes $42,000 a year.

That’s why he has the most liberal voting record in the United States Senate.

(…)

MCCAIN: So is one of the tenets of socialism redistribution of the wealth? Not just socialism — a lot of other liberal and left wing philosophies — redistribution of the wealth? I don’t believe in it. I believe in wealth creation by Joe the Plumber.

WALLACE: But, Senator, you voted for the $700 billion bailout that’s being used partially to nationalize American banks. Isn’t that socialism?

MCCAIN: That is reacting to a crisis that’s due to greed and excess in Washington.

And what this administration is doing wrong, and what Paulson is doing wrong, is not going out and buying up home loan mortgages, home mortgages, and giving people new mortgages at the new value of their home so they can stay in their home.

They’re bailing out the banks. They’re bailing out these institutions.

WALLACE: But you voted for that.

MCCAIN: Of course. It was a package that had to be enacted because the economy was about to go into the tank.

Wow.  He calls Obama a socialist, repeats the Most Liberal Senator EVAR canard, and then admits to supporting a socialist program that he doesn’t even agree with, because he apparently believes that doing something is more important than doing the right thing.  Truly a virtuoso performance.

Kudos to Chris Wallace for pressing and challenging McCain rather than just tossing him softballs like most of his coworkers would.

1 comment October 19th, 2008 at 04:57pm Posted by Eli

Once Again We Ask…

…Dishonest or incompetent?  Or both?

An internal government document obtained by ABC News appears to contradict Sarah Palin’s most recent explanation for why she fired her public safety chief, the move which prompted the now-contested state probe into “Troopergate.”

Fighting back against allegations she may have fired her then-Public Safety Commissioner, Walt Monegan, for refusing to go along with a personal vendetta, Palin on Monday argued in a legal filing that she fired Monegan because he had a “rogue mentality” and was bucking her administration’s directives.

“The last straw,” her lawyer argued, came when he planned a trip to Washington, D.C., to seek federal funds for an aggressive anti-sexual-violence program. The project, expected to cost from $10 million to $20 million a year for five years, would have been the first of its kind in Alaska, which leads the nation in reported forcible rape.

The McCain-Palin campaign echoed the charge in a press release it distributed Monday, concurrent with Palin’s legal filing. “Mr. Monegan persisted in planning to make the unauthorized lobbying trip to D.C.,” the release stated.

But the governor’s staff authorized the trip, according to an internal travel document from the Department of Public Safety, released Friday in response to an open records request.

The document, a state travel authorization form, shows that Palin’s chief of staff, Mike Nizich, approved Monegan’s trip to Washington D.C. “to attend meeting with Senator Murkowski.” The date next to Nizich’s signature reads June 18.

(…)

In Palin’s court filing Monday to stop an investigation by her state Personnel Board she earlier had requested her lawyer, Thomas V. Van Flein, included numerous emails from her staff expressing confusion and incredulity over Monegan’s planned D.C. trip. None of those emails were sent by or to Nizich, although he was cc’d on several.

Contacted Friday, Monegan confirmed the travel authorization was to pursue funding for the anti-sexual-violence program. He said the travel authorization form was completed in a fashion consistent with practice, even though it showed no expenditures. The signed form approved the travel, he said, and authorized him to use a government credit card or seek reimbursement for expenses he incurred during the trip.

Okay, let me see if I can follow this.  Governor Palin is vehemently denying that she fired Monegan because he wouldn’t fire her allegedly abusive ex-brother-in-law, and claiming that she fired him because he went on an anti-rape lobbying trip… that her office approved? Have I got that about right?

Kinda seems to me that even if her claim that she fired him for being overzealous about preventing rape exposes her to less legal jeopardy, it doesn’t exactly sound like a political winner.

“I didn’t fire Monegan because he wouldn’t fire my abusive ex-brother in law, how dare you suggest such a thing!  No, I fired him because he went on a lobbying trip to DC, which my office approved, to try to prevent rapes!  I mean, some things are just beyond the pale… so to speak.”

Also worth noting, if I’m reading that last paragraph correctly (which I’m probably not), Monegan didn’t try to claim any per diem expenses… unlike, say, his boss, who was claiming them when she was at home.

1 comment September 19th, 2008 at 10:30pm Posted by Eli

Pork Is Once Again Sarah Palin’s Best Friend

Oy.  Apparently because Sarah Palin famously referred to herself as pit bull with lipstick, Obama must have been referring to her when he said this:

Let’s just list this for a second. John McCain says he’s about change, too. Except — and so I guess his whole angle is, “Watch out, George Bush, except for economic policy, health-care policy, tax policy, education policy, foreign policy, and Karl Rove-style politics. We’re really gonna shake things up in Washington.” That’s not change. That’s just calling some — the same thing, something different. But you know, you can — you know, you can put lipstick on a pig; it’s still a pig.

Nope, sorry, not seeing it.  But the McCain campaign and its surrogates are going nuts over Obama’s horrible terrible misogynistic sexism.

And I find myself wondering, was the pit bull with lipstick quote planted in Palin’s speech for exactly this reason – in the hopes that Obama would use the lipstick-on-a-pig expression (an expression that McCain’s candidacy fairly begs for) in some context, any context, so that these proud defenders of feminism could then clutch their fake pearls in fake outrage?

Because let’s face it, John McCain’s Sensitive Feminist credentials are thinner than Sarah Palin’s resume.

September 9th, 2008 at 11:24pm Posted by Eli

Keep This Quote In Mind…

If Sarah Palin and/or Team McCain start complaining about Obama/Biden’s sexist attacks:

“She does herself a disservice to even mention it, really,” Palin said. “When I hear a statement like that coming from a woman candidate with any kind of perceived whine about that excess criticism, or maybe a sharper microscope put on her, I think, ‘Man, that doesn’t do us any good, women in politics, or women in general, trying to progress this country,’” Palin said. “I don’t think it bodes well for her.”

Wait, did I say “if”?  I meant “when.”

The campaign just blasted out an op-ed by adviser Nancy Pfotenhauer under the heading “Ignore the Chauvinists. Palin Has Real Experience.”

Said McCain adviser Carly Fiorina: “Because of Hillary Clinton’s historic run for the presidency and the treatment she received, American women are more highly tuned than ever to recognize and decry sexism in all its forms. They will not tolerate sexist treatment of Gov. Palin.”

Also, Lindsey Graham:

“Would a man be asked this question? Probably not,” the South Carolina Republican said in an interview with Politico.

This surprises… no-one.

(h/t ArchPundit)

September 3rd, 2008 at 06:58am Posted by Eli

Presidential Campaign Etiquette

Now, admittedly, I’m no expert, but I’m pretty sure that repeatedly checking out your running mate’s ass is bad form.

The nervous swallowing and fidgeting with the wedding ring are also nice touches, as is the way McCain clumsily advances on her at the end while she edges nervously away.

It gives a whole new meaning to his claim that he saw Palin as “a partner and a soulmate” the first time they met, doesn’t it?  I wonder if McCain fidgeted with his wedding ring before he started chasing Cindy around the table those many years ago…

3 comments August 31st, 2008 at 12:52pm Posted by Eli