THE SWASH ZONE

Sex lives of the rich and hypocritical

2012-02-13T23:21:00.002-05:00

You might think that a person's sex life should be their own business. On the other hand, if you're like me, you might also think that, since Rick Santorum believes that he has the right to shove the government straight up every woman's vagina, then his own "love" life would be open season. So, just for fun, let's look at some of those pesky things they call "facts."

Fact 1: Rick Santorum married the former Karen Garver in 1990, and they have seven children (eight, if you count pickled Baby Gabriel).

Fact 2: Ricky has publically stated that he is completely opposed to all forms of contraception, and that sex should only be for procreation.

(Sadly, the original publishers, CaffeinatedThoughts.com, an evangelical Christian website, got a little cranky that people were taking chunks of their interview and showing what Santorum actually said, usually in context. So they make the usual "copyright infringement" argument every time somebody extracts a bit of it. Ironically, since they hosted it on Youtube, they can't hide it away without losing access themselves. Drag forward to 17:55 for this bit.)

One of the things I will talk about that no president has talked about before is I think the dangers of contraception in this country, the whole sexual libertine idea ... Many in the Christian faith have said, "Well, that's okay ... contraception's okay."

It's not okay because it's a license to do things in the sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be. They're supposed to be within marriage, for purposes that are, yes, conjugal ... but also procreative. That's the perfect way that a sexual union should happen. We take any part of that out, we diminish the act. And if you can take one part out that's not for purposes of procreation, that's not one of the reasons, then you diminish this very special bond between men and women, so why can't you take other parts of that out?

And all of a sudden, it becomes deconstructed to the point where it's simply pleasure. And that's certainly a part of it—and it's an important part of it, don't get me wrong—but there's a lot of things we do for pleasure, and this is special, and it needs to be seen as special.

As Ms Santorum is barely out of her 40s, there is no reason to assume that she's gone through menopause, although it's always possible. Adding these facts together, we have to assume that the Santorums did not mate like mad minxes during the nearly six years of her life that Karen has spent pregnant, or for the brief period of any hypothetical menopause which she might or might not have experienced.

Therefore, I think that it's safe to assume that either Rick Santorum is completely hypocritical on the subject of birth control (always possible), or he and his wife have had sex between eight and twelve times total. Approximately once every two years.

You could fantasize that they make it special: a glass of wine, maybe some candles, with her in her most fetching flannel nightgown and him in nothing but a sweater vest.

But I suspect that that the dark deed is most likely performed with a minimum of foreplay, with the lights out, missionary style. I picture Ricky pumping away grimly, trying to finish as quickly as possible, before either of them starts to enjoy it. And when the vile depravity comes to an end, they both roll over and quietly sob themselves to sleep.

Beyond Appearances: A Furry Film Retrospective

2012-02-12T00:57:00.001-05:00

Greetings to all critters above and below the waves. Later this month, Octopus will give a series of talks on cinema at a local art museum. It takes my mind off politics and off the calamari calamity that has recently befallen the cephalopod. I hope you will consider this post a welcome reprieve from the United Flakes of Dumberica. The first of these talks is under the fold.

My original idea was to curate a repertory film series titled: Movies About Photography. I am not referring to documentary films that blur the distinction between photography and cinematography, nor am I speaking of movies that employ special effects, long dolly shots, fetching compositions, or subtle qualities of light and shadow. If you are interested in great cinematography, I recommend:

Barry Lyndon (1975). This Stanley Kubrick film is best known for painterly cinematography, often shot under natural candle light, reminiscent of the Northern Renaissance;

The Third Man (1949). This film noir classic, directed by Carol Reed and written by Graham Greene, is noted for extreme camera angles, tilted compositions, and long shadows - all invoking a sense of menace and intrigue.

The aforementioned movies employ great cinematography, but these are not about photography. My focus here is not on visualizations that “throw nerves in patterns on a screen … or start a scene or two,” but the drama itself, specifically the relationships and tensions between photographers and their subjects, as in this film:

Blowup (1966). Set in 1960s London, this Antonioni film is a study in ennui and disconnectedness against a tableaux of modern pop culture. Other great films narrated from a photographer viewpoint include: Apocalypse Now (1979), Salvador (1986), The Killing Fields (1984), and Rear Window (1954).

For this post, I have chosen Fur (2006), subtitled “An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus,” directed by Steven Shainberg. As the subtitle suggests, “An Imaginary Portrait” means this film is a pseudo-biography, a work of fiction loosely drawn from the life of Diane Arbus, and not intended to be a true biopic. Nevertheless, it is helpful to know a few details about her life and work to more fully appreciate the themes interwoven in this film.

Born Diane Nemerov on March 14, 1923, she is the daughter of David and Gertrude Nemerov of New York City, who were proprietors Russek’s, a Fifth Avenue retail store specializing in high fashion furs. Her older brother would later become the acclaimed poet, Howard Nemerov, winner of the Pulitzer prize for poetry and Poet Laureate of the United States.

In 1941 at age 18, Diane married Allan Arbus who learned photography during a stint in the U.S. Army Signal Corps. Together, they started a commercial photography business called “Diane and Allan Arbus” with Diane as Art Director and Allan behind the camera. Their first bread-and-butter client was Russek’s, the retail store owned and operated by her parents. Over the years, their work appeared in such magazines as Glamour, Seventeen, Vogue, and Harper’s Bazaar.

Diane attended the New School for Social Research and studied photography under Berenice Abbott and Lisette Model, the latter having the most dominant influence on her style and technique. In 1956, she quit the commercial photography business to strike out on her own. Here are a few of her most iconic images:

Child with Toy Hand Grenade in Central Park, NYC (1962). This photo prompted Norman Mailer to say in 1971: "Giving a camera to Diane Arbus is like putting a live grenade in the hands of a child." A print of this photo sold at auction in 2005 for $408,000.

Teenage Couple on Hudson Street, NYC (1963).

Tattooed Man at a Carnival in Maryland (1970).

Identical Twins, Roselle Park NJ (1967). In his film, The Shining, Stanley Kubrick frames an identical pose, mimicking this composition. A print sold at auction in 2004. Price: $478,000.

A Family on their Lawn One Sunday in Westchester, NY (1968). In 2008, a print sold at auction for $553,000.

Russian Midget Friends in a Living Room on 100th Street, NYC (1963)

A Jewish Giant at Home with his Parents in the Bronx, NY (1970), where the parents reverse roles and appear as dwarfs in stark contrast to their oversized son. A print sold at auction in 2007. Price: $421,000.

A Very Young Baby, NYC (1968). First appearing in Harper’s Bazaar, it is a portrait of Gloria Vanderbilt’s infant son, Anderson Cooper, now known as CNN’s ubiquitous news anchor.

Diane Arbus died on June 26, 1971, a suicide at age 48, thus joining the ranks of other brilliant, unconventional, and tragic artists such as Sylvia Plath and Janis Joplin. She is survived by two daughters, Doon (a writer) and Amy (a photographer). What became of Allan, her former husband?

After their separation and divorce, he dissolved their commercial photography business and turned to acting, landing roles in such films as W.C. Fields and Me (1976) and the Omen trilogy. He is best known for television roles in M*A*S*H, Law & Order, LA Law, and Matlock, among others.

One ironic footnote: Allan’s acting career took off after landing the lead role in the cult film, Greaser's Palace, where the character played by Allan kills the character played by Robert Downey, Jr, who would later star in Fur.

Diane Arbus has been called the chronicler of:

“deviant and marginal people, of dwarfs, giants, transvestites, nudists, and circus performers, of people who appear ugly or surreal, the photographer of freaks.”

The infamous critic Susan Sontag wrote of her work, “In photographing dwarfs, you don’t get majesty and beauty. You get dwarfs.” Later critics criticized Sontag for “shallowness,” raising important aesthetic and moral concerns, namely:

Do accidents of birth or circumstance turn so-called “marginal people” into unworthy human beings … and therefore unworthy as subjects of art?

If we sentimentalize so-called ‘freaks’ or present more ‘sanitized’ images of them, would these be honest; or would we be accused of misrepresentation, of falsifying the loneliness of spirit felt by social outcasts, thus robbing them of a fundamental truth - their authenticity?

Often, our greatest artists break with convention and break the rules to extend our vision, even when we don’t like what we see. Over time, the legacy of Diane Arbus has grown as later critics have offered these reassessments:

“An extraordinary ethical conviction” (Max Kozloff, 1967)

“Altered the terms of the art” (Hilton Kramer, 1972)

“Filled with life and energy” (Barbara O’Brien, 2004)

Acquaintances and former subjects of her photography have come forward with these anecdotes:

“I have it in my bedroom, I think it’s great.” (Anderson Cooper, 2005)

“She captured the loneliness of everyone … I think that's how she felt about herself. She hoped that by wallowing in that feeling, through photography, she could transcend herself" (Colin Wood, the former child with the toy hand grenade, reminiscing at age 50).

"That's their 401(k).” (Bob Wade, father of the Roselle Park Twins, who saved the original complementary print sent to the Wade family by Diane Arbus).

Initially, audiences were no more predisposed to the film than they were to the works of Diane Arbus. The film opened in 2006 to poor reviews:

A Visual Chronicler of Humanity's Underbelly, Draped in a Pelt of Perversity

(New York Times, Nov 10, 2006)

Produced on a budget of $16.8 million, the film grossed less than $3M at the box office. However, just as the stock of Diane Arbus, the artist, has risen in posterity on the Dow-Jones of critical acclaim, so too have retrospectives of Shainberg’s movie. This review says it best:

“Anyone can read a book about the real life Arbus; but how on earth is that enriching the cinematic medium? (…) This film takes us inside [her] world and gives us a beautifully told and imaginative back-story that blends elements of real-life fact with references to Gothic literature, fairy stories, history and the subjective power of the art itself. The creative spirit of this film is exactly in tune with Arbus's creative vision” (International Movie Database, 2008).

A few words on the title of the film: It is a series of richly layered literary allusions that play off multiple meanings of the word 'fur':

Russek’s, the Fifth Avenue department store owned by Diane’s parents, was a retailer of high fashion furs;
Hypertrichosis, a condition that causes excessive body hair, also known as Werewolf Syndrome;
The character, Lionel Sweeney (played by Robert Downey, Jr.) is a social outcast afflicted with hypertrichosis.
An homage to Beauty and the Beast (1946), a classic film by the legendary poet, playwright, artist and filmmaker, Jean Cocteau. Here is a short trailer:

Although generations apart in style and mode of story telling, Beauty and the Beast and Fur are variations of a Cinderella story. The beautiful maiden is rescued, not by a handsome prince, but by an ugly beast whose ugliness is the catalyst of a spiritual journey. Winning the maiden’s love breaks the curse and transforms the beast into the mythic handsome prince. The influence of Jean Cocteau on Steven Shainberg, as told through the imaginary portrait of Diane Arbus, is about:

Learning to see beyond appearances.

What would Diane Arbus say about the underbelly of humanity shunned by bourgeois society and the guardians of conformity, of those who appear ugly or surreal, who will remain unknown and unseen unless she photographed them? Here is Diane Arbus in her own words:

"There's a quality of legend about freaks. Like a person in a fairy tale who stops you and demands that you answer a riddle. Most people go through life dreading they'll have a traumatic experience. Freaks were born with their trauma. They've already passed their test in life. They're aristocrats."

As the beast in Jean Cocteau’s film says with simple humility:

“I have a good heart … but I am a monster.”

In the works of Jean Cocteau, Diane Arbus, and Steven Shainberg, every person is an iteration of humanity, and every life represents a longing for affirmation, validation, and connectedness. It is a timeless theme explored by generations of artists. So what does the movie, Fur, tell us about the relationships and tensions between the artist and the subject? Here are a few closing thoughts on photography as an art form:

“We photograph not only what we know, but also what we don’t know"

(Lisette Model).

“A photograph is a secret about a secret. The more it tells you, the less you know"

(Diane Arbus).

“The goal is not to change your subjects, but for the subject to change the photographer"

(author unknown).

What more can an ugly and outcast cephalopod add? You’ll just have to rent these films and experience them for yourself.

Mars needs women

2012-02-11T10:33:00.001-05:00

It's an odd fact that, for some male astronauts like former Space Station resident Mike Barratt, spending 6 months without gravity produces changes in vision that often are irreversible. He went up nearsighted and needing glasses for distance and came down eagle eyed and needing reading glasses. His condition seems permanent. The phenomenon is under serious study at NASA which is concerned that the possibility of a long trip to Mars might just carry the risk of blindness. Just why it happens and whether or not it can be prevented may be, according to CNN.com, the determining question as to "whether he or any other astronaut ever journeys into deep space or sets foot on other worlds."

Prolonged weightlessness causes papilledema -- a swelling of the optic nerve for about half the male astronauts, some of whom recover and others, like Barratt do not. Women seem to be immune. Of course another question that doesn't seem to be addressed here is why we don't just hire more female astronauts? Sometimes we obsess so much about a puzzling matter that we neglect to look at obvious alternatives.

(insert Jim Nabors reference here)

2012-02-10T20:14:00.002-05:00

There is, if you look at the middle of these United States, right at the bottom, a godforsaken oozing sore of a state known as Texas. It is not a good place to live - it's a black hole of humanity and common sense, and it's where televangelists and crooked politicians go to die.

I was born there. And I would rather be castrated with a hammer than ever go back.

But I'm not going to run down the entire state; I don't have that kind of time right now. I'm just going to focus on one unique example of the kind of venal bundles of manure in a suit infesting the Texas legislative offices. He's a member of the US House of Representatives from East Texas, and his name is Louie Gohmert.

It is quite possible that he is the second stupidest Aggie in the history of Texas (tied with Rick Perry), but he is so much more than that. This man is a particularly special kind of crazy - put him in a room with Michele Bachmann and a bonobo on meth, and it's a tough call to say who will come out looking like the sane one.

He is (it almost goes without saying) a full-on birther: he, in fact, co-sponsored what came to be known as the "birther bill" (HR 1503), to "require the principal campaign committee of a candidate for election to the office of President to include with the committee's statement of organization a copy of the candidate's birth certificate..."

At one point, he became enthralled with "terror babies." You've heard of "anchor babies," where a pregnant illegal immigrant waits until her water breaks, then dashes across the border just in time to spew out her spawn, who then, under the 14th Amendment, is a American citizen. (It is, of course, a myth.)

Well, that paranoid fantasy wasn't bad-ass enough for our boy Louie! No, sirree Bob! He began openly coughing up the idea that terrorists were impregnating women, sending them to the US to have their "anchor babies," flying them back to wherever they came from, and then waiting twenty to thirty years to send them back as glassy-eyed kamikaze assassins who could gain easy entry into ANYWHERE and destroy ANYTHING!!! We're DOOOOOOMMMED!!!!

He successfully proved that he has less evidence for this than a UFO buff has of real illegal aliens by going on Anderson Cooper 360 and ranting incoherently.

But don't go thinking that's the worst conspiracy Louie can come up with. See, apparently, Obamacare, combined with our minor assistance in the Libya conflict, will inevitably lead to Obama ending up with a private army that only HE controls!! (cue sinister music)
"But then when you find out we're being sent to Libya to use our treasure and American lives there, maybe there's intention to so deplete the military that we're going to need that presidential reserve officer commissioned corps and non-commissioned corps that the president can call up on a moment's notice involuntarily, according to the Obamacare bill!"
And, of course, being a good Texas lawmaker, Louie isn't afraid to ignore that whole "separation of church and state" thing. The realization that California's Proposition 8 was unconstitutional made him a little cranky.

Said Gohmert: "The court, as I understand it today, struck down a law that said marriage is between a man and a woman. It's interesting that there are some courts in America where the judges have become so wise in their own eyes that they know better than nature or nature's God."

Gohmert then brought up the Supreme Courtjustices in Iowa who were ousted last year after a vicious campaign by anti-gay activists over their support for marriage equality:

"Nature seemed to like the idea of an egg and a sperm coming together because of pro-creation. Apparently [the judges] thought the sperm had far better use some other way biologically, combining it with something else. But the voters of Iowa came back and said you know what, if you're not smart enough to figure out actual plumbing...then perhaps we need new judges, and that's what they did."

(Youtube pulled the video from the original link, so I substituted one from ThinkProgress, where they also point out that Proposition 8 had nothing to do with procreation, because it didn’t even mention whether same-sex couples could raise children.)

So, that's our boy Gohmert. Not the brightest of all possible lawmakers, but certainly one of the more entertaining. But I think that Louie outdid himself this week.

See, Gohmert sits on the House Natural Resources Committee (because presumably all the members with functioning brain cells want to avoid that one), and his biggest interest this week? Making sure that Alaskan caribou get laid. Of course, to do that (and this, ladies and gentlemen, is the genius of Louie Gohmert), he needs to make sure that we spend more money on the Alaskan Pipeline.

It seems that Gohmert is also something of an expert on animal husbandry. Here's his theory: The caribou very much enjoy the warmth the pipeline radiates. "So when they want to go on a date, they invite each other to head over to the pipeline," he informed his colleagues. It's apparently the equivalent of being wined and dined. And that has resulted in a tenfold caribou population boom, he concluded.

"So my real concern now ...if oil stops running through the pipeline...do we need a study to see how adversely the caribou would be affected if that warm oil ever quit flowing?" he asked.

Because god only knows how they mated before there was a pipeline in Alaska.

People of America, I give you... Louis Buller Gohmert, Jr. Humanitarian, father, and caribou fucker.

Every sperm is a baby

2012-02-08T09:45:00.000-05:00

It will always be impossible to convince all religious people that religion isn't the mother of religious fanaticism and of the self-righteousness that makes fanaticism so dangerous. In fact they may be right in that such ego disorders seem to be a general human failing, albeit one that so often finds a home in Churches, Mosques and Synagogues -- but that doesn't soften the fear that from the frustration believers in old religions feel about the implacable advance of what I like to call enlightenment, a movement will arise like movements in the past to overthrow an age of reason and science and relative freedom.

"any action in which a man ejaculates or otherwise deposits semen anywhere but in a woman’s vagina shall be interpreted and construed as an action against an unborn child.”

There seems to be nothing in that statement that might hint it did not originate in the 5th century before the Christian era and nothing to suggest that it wasn't a measure introduced by a Republican, but alas, neither is true. Oklahoma State Senator Constance Johnson is a Democrat and she has introduced an amendment to pending Senate Bill 1433, a typical "life begins at conception" bill, that says that the resulting fetus

“at every stage of development (has) all the rights, privileges, and immunities available to other persons, citizens, and residents of this state.”

Ms. Johnson wants to extend that right to a sperm cell, although apparently she thinks egg cells are exempt -- since otherwise not getting pregnant might also be as murderous as masturbation. Still, the "every sperm is a baby" bill doesn't have a chance, but apparently Rick Santorum does and probably for few other reasons than his own ridiculous positions on interfering with private lives in the name of small government and Big Religion. Santorum has attracted a plurality of Republican loonies in Missouri, Colorado and Minnesota.

It's hard to think that Rick has a real shot at the presidency, but you know, I've been looking at Costa Rica lately.

I'm generally very intolerant of the "both sides are equally bad" arguments that depend on fraudulent accounting and false equivalence to forgive the side with the preponderance of guilt, but Geez - what does it say about Oklahoma Democrats that she is allowed to speak for them?

Whatever you do, don't say anything good about the auto industry!

2012-02-07T23:59:00.004-05:00

What follows is the video, and the transcript for a Superbowl ad starring Clint Eastwood.

It’s halftime. Both teams are in their locker room discussing what they can do to win this game in the second half.

It’s halftime in America, too. People are out of work and they’re hurting. And they’re all wondering what they’re going to do to make a comeback. And we’re all scared, because this isn’t a game.

The people of Detroit know a little something about this. They almost lost everything. But we all pulled together, now Motor City is fighting again.

I’ve seen a lot of tough eras, a lot of downturns in my life. And, times when we didn’t understand each other. It seems like we’ve lost our heart at times. When the fog of division, discord, and blame made it hard to see what lies ahead.

But after those trials, we all rallied around what was right, and acted as one. Because that’s what we do. We find a way through tough times, and if we can’t find a way, then we’ll make one.

All that matters now is what’s ahead. How do we come from behind? How do we come together? And, how do we win?

Detroit’s showing us it can be done. And, what’s true about them is true about all of us.

This country can’t be knocked out with one punch. We get right back up again and when we do the world is going to hear the roar of our engines.

Yeah, it’s halftime America. And, our second half is about to begin.

That was it. A simple celebration of a recovered auto industry. Nothing political, and carefully sanitized pictures of a union rally, with all the union signs photoshopped out.

But they made the mistake of using "halftime" as a metaphor for "the time to rally your team, build up confidence, and get back in the game." Which, of course, caused the Far Right to just completely lose their minds.

They decided it was a call for a second term for Obama. That, plus the fact that the auto industry was saved because the president loaned them money, and the shrews and screamers of the right wing noise machine went ballistic.

"WTH? Did I just see Clint Eastwood fronting an auto bailout ad???" said Michelle Malkin, the conservative blogger. "I think Clint Eastwood’s credentials as a conservative have been overrated for some time," added David Limbaugh, the brother of Rush and himself a conservative author.

Karl Rove was "offended by it." (Which is OK with me - I'm offended that Karl Rove is still allowed out in public.)

"I'm a huge fan of Clint Eastwood, I thought it was an extremely well-done ad, but it is a sign of what happens when you have Chicago-style politics, and the president of the United States and his political minions are, in essence, using our tax dollars to buy corporate advertising."

But reread that transcript. Watch the video again. Or perhaps, notice that both Eastwood and Sergio Marchionne, the CEO of Chrysler, have said that there was no political spin to the ad.

Doesn't matter. It didn't say that the Kenyan Devil-baby infesting the White House is destroying our Way of Life, so the attack hamsters continue to shriek and spew spittle. Because that's how they roll.

Campaign logic

2012-02-06T12:26:00.001-05:00

Argumentum ad ignorentiam: "appeal to ignorance" (where "ignorance" stands for: "lack of evidence to the contrary") Argument from ignorance may be used as a rationalization by a person who realizes that he has no reason for holding the belief that he does.

Argumentum ad Obaminem: special case of above or appeal to ignorance (where "ignorance" stands for: " all evidence to the contrary") May be used as a rationalization for libel or slander or accusation without evidence or most commonly: strongly contrary to all evidence or logic. An argument from authority in the absence of authority. Used frequently by Republican propagandists.

Argumentum ad Republican: A special pleading. It's only radical when Liberals like it or conversely: that argument doesn't apply to Republicans.

________________________

Forget the Superbowl commercials or the half-time show. Forget football. The most entertaining event of Superbowl Sunday was Newt Gingrich trying to convince his audience that Barack Obama is at war with the Catholic Church. Parroting the sentiment that a secular government refusing to bow to ecclesiastical pressure as the secular constitution demands, is a declaration of war, Newt, Gingrich, appearing on NBC’s Meet the Press, Sunday, said the decision represented

“a radical Obama administration imposing secular rules on religion.”

Well I hate to bring it up, lest anyone esteem me to be needlessly argumentative, but all religious people and their organizations have always been subject to the secular law of the land and by constitutional law, none of us can be held to any religious restrictions, taboos or responsibilities by the government. You see, that's why we don't have laws about blasphemy and punishment for heretics. That's why we're not held to the Biblical command against eating Cheeseburgers or chitterlings or watching football on Sunday - or divorce which of course Newt knows as well -- just as we know by all evidence that Newt is the consummate opportunist and a veritable prince of duplicity.

Yes, of course people are very protective of their beliefs and rituals and practices and in our country as well as in most of the civilized world, they are allowed to be and protected in that right but that's only because there are no official religious laws and no special protection for church policies that do not comply with our secular laws and our rights and our protection from faith-based tyranny. Newt is following in the muddy footprints of those who continually argue against the religious neutrality and secular nature of our Republic in spite of all evidence and despite the law itself.

Please forgive me for stating the obvious and writing as if for a child, but we're talking about Newt Gingrich here and I may be talking to some who do indeed think the government should indeed take such a dim view of our personal liberty as to allow clergymen to deny us birth control or having music on Sunday or divorce or living where and with whom we please. In many places they did after all get away with that for years.

We're talking about Newt Gingrich here who, after playing with several religions in his effort to bed many women including his own high school teacher, presumes not only to speak for but to dictate Church dogma to Roman Catholics who in very large part do not agree with it.

"Every time you turn around secular government is closing in on and shrinking the rights of religious America,”

Said Newt -- who has turned around about 200 years too late. The right of "Religious America" to be the law of the land by diktat was eliminated by the first Amendment, if the rage against such tyranny by the Founding Fathers wasn't already enough to put a stop to it.

In fact, 98% -- nearly all American Catholic women who have sex have used "forbidden" birth control methods and a solid majority think the Church policy is wrong. I don't think they're going to back this flim-flam Lothario who while indulging in it himself, tried to impeach a president for extra-marital fellatio in any bid to have Washington embargo the local drug store in the name of religious "freedom." Not any more than they would have the government outlaw the kind of bed hopping, marital leapfrogging Gingrich is noted for even if they frown on it. Don't we wonder why Newt thinks Catholics are so damn stupid that they won't notice he's arguing both sides of the question?

Organized religion is about many things, but personal choice and freedom of thought has never been thought of highly, to say the least, by any of them. To have to explain to someone with a Doctorate and a writer of history books, something a slow schoolboy should know, that professed belief or membership in some religious group does not convey legal authority in the US is laughable, but of course Newt knows it. He knows a principle and constitutional law that's been around since our beginning isn't radical and it isn't about Obama. He knows he's a lair even if he doesn't know he's a disgrace. I think the voters know too.

Will the real Jesus please stand up?

2012-02-04T09:02:00.000-05:00

“But for me as a Christian, it also coincides with Jesus’s teaching that for unto whom much is given, much shall be required,”

Said the President of the United States to a nation fulsomely fond of telling us that not only were our founding fathers fundamentalist Christians, but that our laws are really a re-statement of the Bible and that we are a Nation under God -- whatever that's supposed to mean.

Apparently it doesn't mean that a man with an African father who can't be considered a "real"American or a "real" Christian and most assuredly not a "real" president can presume to have such values in a country in which they have almost always been honored in the breach. Why that boy must think he's not only as good as the rest of us to whom America was given, but he must think he's Jesus himself if he presumes to quote from the book that belongs to us as white people.

"Someone needs to remind the president that there was only one person who walked on water, and he did not occupy the Oval Office.”

said the reprehensible Orrin Hatch (Hypocrite-Utah) at the National Prayer Breakfast Thursday.

No Orrin, those Christian values you pretend to aren't any different than Muslim or Jewish values with respect to the love of justice and our fellow humans and mocking anyone for attempting to put them into action doesn't allow one to walk on water, even if one actually is Jesus of Nazareth. Walking on, wading through and bathing oneself in shit however makes you just another lump in the cesspool and whatever magic ceremony you perform or whatever special underwear you put on, you're an enemy of everything any good man stands for whether he be Jesus or Jefferson.

Memory and Irony

2012-02-03T13:40:00.000-05:00

The jobless rate has declined to 8.3% according to the latest reports -- well below the Reagan rate and the lowest in three years after adding about a quarter million Jobs this January alone. That's a quarter of a million more in one month than were added under eight years of Republican flim-flam economics. The markets are booming, but we can be sure to hear nothing but sneer, snark, scoff and panicked pessimism from fact-free America and its electronic Svengali, Fox News.

I'm hesitant to make too much of it or to extrapolate too far, but unlike every Republican I talk to, I am willing to remember the Bush years when the air was full of nonsense about how Democrats were pessimists and Republicans were optimists and bullish on the economy. Of course it would be fun to mock the Fox News survey that gave "proof" that Liberals were trying to damage the vibrant economy with gloomy reports during the Bush years and of course the prophets of doom were quite right although not one of Fox's friends seems to remember, because after all, this is Obama's recession and Bush had nothing to do with it and the predictably dilatory nature of the trailing indicator -- the unemployment rate -- proves that it's all going to hell any time now.

A sense of irony would make fertile fields for all kinds of sardonic humor, since with the economy steadily improving, having already this year added more jobs than were added during the entire Bush administration (unless you want to count all the government jobs created by bloating the size and expense of our government,) they're still pretending the man who inherited this disaster caused it. But if there's any essence at all to American Conservatism, it must involve total blindness to the most glaring irony. They're still insisting that continuing what brought it on would end it quickly if only we'd have elected an empty headed beauty contest runner up and a doddering old man who couldn't remember his address but was sure the crash wasn't actually happening.

And while we're talking about irony, do we care to speculate about how many would have been lost if General Motors had disappeared and how many are working now that GM is again the worlds largest automaker? No, that investment is spending, while the massive expenses of Bush's prescription drug plan written by and for the drug companies increases as the population ages isn't even to be discussed -- and of course people are only getting older because of "that Obama's policies" hard as they are to discern. If I were a Republican you can damn well bet I'd be blind to the irony too as well as the outright dishonesty.

Things are looking at least a bit better of late and at a rate proportional to the improvement, the apocalyptic predictions increase. The Mayan end times, the Rapture, the death of the Dollar and the Zombie Apocalypse hold fewer horrors than are being predicted daily as the people who insist every time they hold the White House, that the government cannot create jobs and should not try, scream themselves hoarse nonetheless about jobs, jobs, jobs, dangling that elusive carrot in front of the desperate.

It's a hell of a thing to remember well, and that's why I'm sure amnesia, like ironic obtuseness is a necessary component of the conservative mind. It's a hell of a thing to be the only one to remember that "debt doesn't matter" was the keystone of Republican economics since Reagan and right up to the disaster of 2007 because tax breaks for the people who put all their windfalls into real estate, hedge funds and offshore accounts in Luxembourg, Liechtenstein and the Caymans would boost the economy so much, the debt would wither away in Marxist style.

Jobs, jobs, jobs and debt, debt debt in the relentless Republican ostinato like drumbeats in some dark jungle night, as though debt did very much matter and matter more than the ability to pay it off -- as though paying Bush's bills and saving the financial structure of our country with a far smaller amount of money than the shill for Goldman Sachs Bush used for a treasury secretary were an invitation to disaster rather than fiscal responsibility -- as though a three trillion dollar war to be payed for by magic; massive bailout packages without accountability and unprecedented spending weren't things the Democrats were howling helplessly about for 8 years.

Increased military spending along with an amazing record of eliminating al Qaeda means Obama is "slashing the military." Allowing increased freedom to carry weapons means he's a "gun grabber." Arresting and deporting more illegal aliens than Bush means he's "pro-illegal." Giving most Americans a tax break means he raised taxes, and although every day I have to listen to some Republican blowhard telling me he hates "Obamas policies" not one has been able to come up with a policy that actually exists -- that glib trope having become nothing more than the password to the club they think every white man belongs to.

No, sure they don't remember nor do they see the irony. Like Janus, they look both forward and back to see the easiest way to slither away from accountability and as and if the economy slowly improves and the spectre of Depression recedes, they'll continue to boom and bellow and snicker and sneer without any memory of how they accused Democrats of "hating America" even though all those dire predictions we made for 8 years came true while none of theirs ever materialized.

New Rules, Old Enemies

2012-02-02T10:10:00.003-05:00

Heresy: from Greek αἵρεσις, which originally meant "choice."

Sometimes I think that without their preoccupation with the "sinfulness" of human sexuality, all Western religions and some others as well, would be unrecognizable. For a Secular Humanist like me, it's difficult to understand this because the allegedly universal and inescapable condition of being a 'sinner' from birth is entirely separate from the commission of acts that harm others or their property. Indeed, harming others and their property is often fulsomely praised as something done in service of some rather helpless or lazy deity who would, were he able to act on his own, punish people for their very thoughts and the unhistorical actions of mythological ancestors. To many and perhaps most, even thinking about sex can be a 'sin' almost on a par with having sex without clerical approval. To some, sex and sin are nearly synonymous. God help the government that lets us make our own choices.

Perhaps the action of a number of Roman Catholic bishops last weekend won't be much heeded by the congregations to whom it was directed, but the letter, read aloud from thousands of pulpits last Sunday told the faithful that President Obama has

“cast aside the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, denying to Catholics our Nation’s first and most fundamental freedom, that of religious liberty.”

Now how has he done that? Well, by asserting that freedom of religion does not include the freedom of religious organizations to illegally deprive others of their freedom: the freedom to plan whether or not and when to procreate, the freedom to choose.

Of course the sentiment isn't exclusively Roman; evangelicals and many others seem to make a lot of noise about the first amendment being a violation of the first amendment and of course again, such cognitive contradiction, to put it politely, is the rock upon which the edifice is built. But obviously the decision of the Administration to stand by the Affordable Care Act which requires virtually all private insurance policies to cover family planning -- including female contraceptives, essentially guaranteeing near universal access to birth control, is being sold as the precise opposite of what it is. To some Bishops at least the first amendment guarantees an infringement of civil rights by religious authority. The anti-establishment clause means the opposite of what it says and it's our God given right to have our lives limited by clergymen.

“People of faith cannot be made second class citizens. We are already joined by our brothers and sisters of all faiths and many others of good will in this important effort to regain our religious freedom. Our parents and grandparents did not come to these shores to help build America’s cities and towns, its infrastructure and institutions, its enterprise and culture, only to have their posterity stripped of their God given rights"

wrote Bishop Thomas J. Olmsted in one of the numerous letters, reeking of dishonesty, illogic and lust for power -- as if freedom of religion meant ecclesiastical tyranny embedded within civil government.

What's at issue is a provision that says that unless a religious organization hires its own members exclusively, those employees: janitors, gardeners, secretaries, are entitled as first class citizens to access to birth control through their health insurers. All other organizations, including non-profits run by religious groups that hire based upon non-discrimination policies, must enact the new rule by August 1, 2013.

Now, I'm sure to be accused of being all sorts of things, including a bigot and an arrogant Humanist, but since virtually all the Roman Catholics I know seem to have a healthy degree of skepticism about the virtuousness and infallibility of Church men, perhaps I shouldn't make too much of this desperate appeal to medieval mores, but there are plenty of people of faith who don't and religious, economic and social fundamentalism -- and the stupidity on which it thrives -- are no less dangerous than when Jefferson and Madison wrote about it.

Susan G. Komen Organization Caves to Rightwing Pressure

2012-02-01T10:55:00.001-05:00

As a breast cancer survivor, I was astonished to read that the Susan G. Komen Foundation, which has supported breast health for women by sponsoring runs, walks, and other fund raising activities, has withdrawn its support from Planned Parenthood.

"Susan G. Komen for the Cure is the country’s best-known and best-funded breast cancer organization. Known for it’s iconic pink ribbon and annual Race for the Cure event, the organization has invested nearly $2 billion in cancer education and research since its founding in 1982.

But today, bowing to political pressure, Komen for the Cure announced that it is severing its partnership with Planned Parenthood and will stop providing hundreds of thousands of dollars in grants that allow their centers to perform breast exams on women who could not otherwise get them.

Since anti-abortion activists and their Republican allies ratcheted up their crusade against Planned Parenthood last year, they’ve targeted any and all allies of the organization to try to make inroads, including the cancer charity. Planned Parenthood provides birth control, STD testing, and cancer screenings to low-income women.

In a press release Planned Parenthood said it was deeply saddened and disappointed by the decision."

SOURCE

SGK is no longer a charitable organization whose purpose is to educate women on breast health and to support other organization that do the same. SGK has become a political entity that caters to a narrow group of conservatives who insist on withdrawing a very valuable and needed health service because of their personally held beliefs.

I will no longer support anything the SGK organization sponsors; since, through their shameful actions, that organization has shown it is not in the business of saving women's lives, but in conforming to political ideology.

Any contributions that I normally give to SGK will now go to Planned Parenthood.

PLEASE SIGN THE PETITION.

Talkin' To The Man III

2012-01-31T21:11:00.000-05:00

Dear Congressman West,

Just to recap, over the weekend you made the following statement:

This is a battlefield that we must stand upon. And we need to let President Obama, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi and my dear friend, chairman of the Democrat National Committee, we need to let them know that Florida ain't on the table...

Take your message of equality of achievement, take your message of economic dependency, and take your message of enslaving the entrepreneurial will and spirit of the American people somewhere else. You can take it to Europe, you can take it to the bottom of the sea, you can take it to the North Pole, but get the hell out of the United States of America.

Of course, when confronted by a reporter asking you to clarify your statement, instead of standing behind your openly moronic quote, you chose to deny having said it. Which kind of makes you a pussy, doesn’t it?

The other thing is that I did not refer to any person leaving. If you go back and read the transcript of the message that I gave, it was about equality of achievement, it was about economic dependence, it was about enslaving the American entrepreneur’s will and spirit. That message needs to leave this country.

That's crap, Allen. You don’t get to say idiotic things to pander to the paste-eating lunatics and inbred mouthbreathers hiding in the swamps of Florida, and then back away from it. You said it, and only a coward lies about his own past.

Of course, you have a lot to be ashamed of in your past, don't you? Strangely, you and I have a lot in common. Both of us entered and left the military in the same years: of course, having said that, only one of us wasn't forced to retire instead of going to jail for torturing Iraqi policemen.

I'm not going to say that makes me a better person than you: it would be the sum total of your life that proves that. And I'm not going to tell you to get out of my country, because unlike you, I have some concept of the ideals that this country was founded on, and I support them.

I will say that you are a shallow, deluded, lying gasbag who is not fit for public service; please resign in disgrace from a second government job. Get the hell out of my Congress.

With all due respect,*

Bill Minnich
Albuquerque, NM

* None
_______________

Snail-mailed this afternoon (without links or video) to:

Representative Allen West
3111 South Dixie Highway, Suite 308
West Palm Beach, Florida 33405

Jailhouse Rock.

2012-01-31T11:02:00.001-05:00

"Well, victims have rights too," is the usual evasion given to the question of why the United States has more people in confinement or under correctional supervision than the Soviet Union under Stalin. Well, of course they do have rights, but it's hard to reach the notion that a victim of a crime, or the state which represents that victim has the right to do anything at all to satisfy the rage we feel when someone harms us or our property from that position. Even the harshest laws of classical antiquity were set in place to hinder the endless cycle of revenge.

Harder it is indeed to get to the level of punishment typical in our land for crimes that in fact harm no one at all: "crimes" that throughout the years include marrying outside the arbitrary dictates of dominant religions, drinking from the wrong faucet, having a beer in private or smoking the herb that makes you feel mellow and sleepy. Most hard to justify is the rage for "Zero Tolerance" that makes judges into clerks and executioners unable to apply reason or a sense of proportion as it relates to crime and punishment.

Imagine, as Adam Gopnik suggests in Mass Incarceration and Criminal Justice in the January 30th issue of New Yorker, "Lock yourself in your bathroom and then imagine you have to stay there for the next ten years, and you will have some sense of the experience." At least 50,000 men don't have to imagine it at the moment, they simply have to be conscious.

Although it's tapered off some recently, we've been given editorials and articles and TV harangues about how prison life is too "soft" for "Criminals" such as some teen who sent a naked picture on a cellphone to another teen and gets life in a cage -- or another unfortunate caught with marijuana who has to endure 10 or 20 degrading and terrifying years and lose his civil rights in perpetuity, but Prison life in the US is a veritable nightmare in comparison to what it is in places like Europe. 70,000 prisoners are raped in our prisons every year where HIV is widespread. Texas alone has sentenced more than 400 teenagers to life imprisonment.

My own state of Florida, with a governor who somehow escaped incarceration for having been involved in the largest Medicare swindle ever, is as I write this, trying to "privatize" Florida's prison system. Is that another way of washing conservative hands of blood or is it simply that to the conservative mind, being profitable makes it moral: a corporation locking up people and keeping the corporate bottom line healthy by squeezing convicts as well as punishing them?

Of course Florida, as many other states have done, turned to prison labor as a substitute for slavery after Liberals ended their horrific atrocities, locking up "vagrants" and selling their "slave" labor for private gain in much the same way as China is accused of when we try to seem better than they are.

" More than half of all black men without a high-school diploma go to prison at some time in their lives"

says Gopnik and mass imprisonment has tainted our mass culture with affluent kids in shopping malls imitating prison dress and speech and tattoos. We wear our incarceration culture on the bodies of our children, like the mark of Cain.

"Mass incarceration on a scale almost unexampled in human history is a fundamental fact of our country today—perhaps the fundamental fact, as slavery was the fundamental fact of 1850. In truth, there are more black men in the grip of the criminal-justice system—in prison, on probation, or on parole—than were in slavery then."

Nor is it tapering off. The rate of incarceration is accelerating; tripling in the last couple of decades and with the tendency toward private slaveholder corporations, the comparison to the anti-bellum south is all the more frightening. We'r e being sold a southern sense of justice, suggests the author, and we sell it, as we sell our wars and our attacks on what we were taught were fundamental rights and even our attacks on reformers with appeals to rage. "If the accused had shot someone in your family, wouldn't you want to kill him?" asks the voice and of course I might, but fortunately for all of us, we have a system of laws, we have a civilization to prevent it. Indeed civilization exists as a brake on our base instincts, which instincts so often destroy it.

Is our current fascination with a withered government that thereby facilitates freedom in some magical way really compatible with a government so concerned with keeping all freedom away from so many people for ever expanding reasons? Or is the subjugation of such a huge number of people only a part of a vast scheme to subjugate most of us, to establish America as a vast plantation for the benefit of a very few slaveholders?

Perhaps not. Perhaps it's simply the fear in which we're all marinating in this safest period in history that's pickled our sense of justice; our fear of terrorists, dope fiends, predators, drunk drivers and heretics, but regardless of where the blame is put, we are, and continue to grow as a nation which more than any others, keeps people in cages and allows other people to profit from it.

Intelligent Disdain

2012-01-29T14:33:00.002-05:00

In Missouri and Indiana this month, bills have been put forward in the legislature to return "intelligent design" to the classrooms. Because their children are apparently not stupid enough yet.

I occasionally hang out on a blog called Stone the Preacher (it's run out of Hope Chapel in Hermosa Beach, CA); I ended up there rebutting one of the standard canards of the fundamentalists (I think it was "atheists have no morals," but at this late date, I'm really not sure), and I kept going back, probably because I thrive on conflict. And run-on sentences. And recently, Pastor Steve, a young-earth creationist, made the mistake of mentioning "intelligent design."

I've always loved that phrase because of its inherent idiocy. "Intelligent design" is creationism wearing glasses and a clown nose, and the adjective is so clearly in conflict with the noun that people should be unable to avoid stuttering when they say it. Every attempt to sneak it into schools gets thoroughly destroyed in the courts, but that doesn't stop them from trying over and over again (for example, in Missouri and Indiana - and probably in some other state any day now).

Let's be honest: evolution explains why some of the ridiculous design flaws exist in the world. There is no "intelligence" in the "design" of the world, and examples are everywhere. Comedians have been pointing them out for years.

"God is a mechanical engineer! Look at this marvelous collection of joints and levers!"

"No, God is an electrical engineer! Look at the intricacy of these neurons and synapses!"

"No," said the city planner, "God is obviously a civil engineer. Sometimes, when nobody's looking, it's just easier to run a sewer pipe through a recreational area."

But fundies, being fundies, keep soldiering on, like particularly pious zombies on a quest for children's brains.

Let's consider the evidence. And remember, the people who believe this silliness also believe that God doesn't make mistakes.

1. As we develop in the womb, we form three sets of kidneys. The pronephroi ("forekidneys") appear in the fourth week; they degenerate pretty quickly, but the ducts are recycled to build the mesonephroi ("midkidneys"). And then those degenerate and the tubules are recycled in the metanephroi ("hindkidneys"), which are our permanent kidneys.

This almost seems like an elegant bit of engineering, but really, it's more like building an Eiffel Tower as scaffolding for another Eiffel Tower, which is used as scaffolding for a final, bigger Eiffel Tower, and you rip down each one as you go (I don't remember where I saw that metaphor, but it's perfect). It's an unnecessarily complex process, and it's just evidence that evolution had a number of false starts along the way, and had to go back and refigure what it was building.

(On the subject of kidneys, why is the gene for polycystic kidney disease dominant? Why make it 50% likely that you'll inherit a painful, life-threatening condition?)

2. The female quoll (an Australian marsupial) has only six teats, but gives birth to a litter of 18, meaning that the 12 slowest or weakest die of starvation. A 66% death rate makes sense to you? Was God weeding out the weak ones? Why didn't He just build them right to begin with?

3. While you’re in Australia, look up the mystery of a kangaroo’s teeth, for that matter. The grasses they eat are tough, and wear down the front teeth of the 'roo. So, to make up for this, they ~~evolved~~ were designed with an unusual ability: as the front teeth wear down, they fall out and the back teeth move forward to replace them.

Which sounds great, except that they don't have the ability to grow new teeth. So by the time they're 15 or 20, they run out, and starve to death. Apparently, God hates kangaroos, and wants to see them suffer.

4. Birds of the family Sulidae (boobies and gannets)...

...heh, heh... I said "boobies"...

4. Birds of the family Sulidae are diving birds, plunging into the water from the sky. One of their adaptations to this is that they don’t have external nostrils – the water would get shoved up their noses on impact. But even without external nostrils, they have everything else that makes up a nasal airway inside their beaks. It’s just that the nostrils are sealed off at the outside. Having nasal airways that can’t work is pretty pointless design. Although evolution tells us why they’re there, it makes you wonder why God would choose to install a completely pointless structure inside the bird's beak. Did He build it from spare parts from another bird?

If these things, and so many others, are designed, that’s some pretty shoddy craftsmanship.

Maybe God occasionally gets drunk on sacramental wine while He's working?

Bring out the Bibles, bring out the guns, Jesus is coming to town

2012-01-26T09:44:00.001-05:00

The headline in yesterday's paper summarizing the President's State of the Union message is 3/8 of an inch tall. The headline just under it, reading RICK SANTORUM RALLIES IN STUART is in bold face type and is much bigger. Welcome to the monkey house.

Santorum was here on Florida's Treasure Coast Tuesday, holding forth at the Community Christian Academy to parents and grade school students, a horror of which some are particularly proud. It's an "up-close look at politics in action," said school officials.

That live action, these politics, included a prayer by the 'Reverend' Dan Holland, affiliated with the school and the pastor of Community Baptist Church in Stuart, Florida.

"I like what he said in the South Carolina rally, where he said ' I come from a place where they have a Bible in one hand and a gun in the other'"

Rick Santorum doesn't need a script, because he really isn't saying much and with such an audience, it doesn't matter whether he makes sense or mangles facts or makes them up. Rick speaks from the pulpit and anything said Ex Cathedra will not be questioned by this crowd. Besides, it's precisely what they want to hear: Barack Obama is the worst president this country has ever had, who hates capitalism, wants to take away what God wants you to keep to yourself and is destroying our natural order of things. Don't forget this is a religion that demands that women be subservient, hints that black people should stay in their place and since the Civil Rights Act of 1964 would vote for anything that hated Democrats.

Santorum's ever predictable message was about "family Values" "fiscal responsibility" and "ridding the White House of Barack Obama." One can take the last of the three as the real message since my idea of family values does not include veiled calls to armed crusade and lying about the economy.

An all-white group of 350 heard him say:

"we have to have a candidate who stands proudly, consistently, aggressively, forcefully for the values that made this country the greatest country in the history of the world."

Presumably that greatness was attained with Bibles and guns and anyone suggesting that we are in any way sinners, transgressors or less than perfect instruments of God's Christian ambitions, can go straight to Hell along with that apologist Obama.

They heard him howl about That Commie, apologist, freedom hating Obama bailing out Wall Street from the excesses and crimes the Republicans encouraged them in instead of using "free market forces" which would as any legitimate economist would likely tell you have brought that "greatest country in the history of the Universe" down to the level of Haiti. Still, the problem of galloping poverty isn't lack of resources, said Santorum, contradicting himself,

"the problem is in the home, the problem is in the churches, the problem is in the community. The people living in these woods are not the federal government's problem. . ."

Let's use poverty, disease and misery to fill the pews, because a just society is a commie, secular humanist Christ-hating society.

Perhaps he could have explained to me why the Republican's promise to provide jobs instead of food stamps while it's 'not the government's problem' isn't honest or consistent -- or how unlettered country folk with bibles and guns are going to help in the new anarchistic utopia he offers them -- but trying to present Rick Santorum as a rational candidate with any further agenda than dismantling all the rules that keep markets free, creating a new Christian aristocracy and most of all, hanging up that "White's Only" sign over the door at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue is a scam and a con and a farrago of flim-flam as great as any in the history of the world.

People like me can wonder how dismantling our entire economic system, refusing to pay the bills, can be called Conservatism, or any of the other radical, ultra-Chauvinistic, Denialist and dishonest rhetoric that smells more like Attila's unwashed hordes, but the blue-hair church ladies, their God smitten and brainwashed children and the rest of the angry Community Christian Academics don't seem to care. There's just something wrong out there and they don't know what it is and the sick Mr. Rick and his sanctimonious rabble are at hand to point out the enemies and heretics for the burning.

A Church Shooting in Knoxville, a Mutilated Cat in Arkansas

2012-01-24T11:44:00.011-05:00

Scanning the headlines this morning for the latest news, this story caught my attention, Arkansas Democrat's cat killed, painted with the word "liberal":

A cat belonging to the family of Jake Burris, an Arkansas Democratic Campaign Manager, was found killed with the word “Liberal” painted on the carcass. Burris and his four children found the cat on their doorstep when they returned home last night. One side of the head had been smashed, an eyeball hanging out of its socket.

Jake Burris is the Campaign Manager for Democrat Ken Aden who is running against incumbent Republican Steve Womack in the 3rd Congressional District, a heavily conservative ward won by Womack with 72% of the vote.

Can the timing of this story be more ironic! It happened on the same day as this announcement, Gabrielle Giffords will resign from Congress to focus on her recovery.

Let us segue to July 27, 2008: Jim David Adkisson entered a Unitarian Church in Knoxville, Tennessee, brandishing a shotgun. He killed two people and wounded seven others. While searching Adkisson's house, investigators found three books: The O'Reilly Factor, by Bill O'Reilly; Liberalism is a Mental Disorder, by Michael Savage; and Let Freedom Ring, by Sean Hannity. The motive behind the crime: Hatred of liberals and Democrats.

Let there be no mistake. There is an ugly pattern of rightwing violence that targets liberals and Democrats. It is born of an undercurrent of rightwing talk radio raised to the level of hate speech. The message is chillingly clear: If you are a liberal or a Democrat, you are demonized as unpatriotic, as an enemy of the state - and therefore undeserving of rights, respect, or protection under law. It is the same kind of inflammatory rhetoric used for centuries to scapegoat minority groups for the failings of society - leading to persecution, ethnic cleansing, murder, death camps, and slavery.

The proper historical reference is blood libel - not in the context used by Sarah Palin to justify herself after the Tucson massacre - but in the truest sense of the term. When partisan speech rises to the level of hate speech, it means the end of civil discourse and the beginning of violence. Eliminationist rhetoric is the signature trait of fascism.

Update (under the fold):

Your prescient Octopus half expected a vituperative response from the lunatic fringe. Earlier this evening, my expectations came true in the form of this comment from an anonymous troll who said:

“As soon as Gabby Giffords was shot by a deranged lunatic you fucking idiot progressives started screaming "Sarah Palin Target List." So much for civility. The dead cat story's obviously a hoax --- and you dumbshits went ahead and exploited it for crass political game. God, you freak leftists should just die. Fuck you” (Posted by Anonymous to THE SWASH ZONE at 11:07 PM, January 24, 2012).

Fact: The cat mutilation was not a hoax. Local law enforcement and the FBI are investigating the incident as partisan hate crime.

Fact: The Aden campaign NEVER accused Republican incumbent Steve Womack of having any role in the incident.

Fact: The Womack campaign condemned the attack with this statement: "The thought of brutalizing any animal for the sake of making a political statement is beyond any standard of decency and the person or people responsible for this act should be held accountable to the fullest extent of the law," said Beau Walker, Womack's chief of staff.

Of course, the anonymous troll was not clever enough to consider that such opprobrium would merely prove the point of this post. Witness: “So much for civility" and "you freak leftists should just die. Fuck you" [my bold].

Race, Gingrich, and South Carolina

2012-01-22T00:26:00.001-05:00

I love living in the south--the mild winters, the summer heat, magnolia trees with those impossibly large white blooms nestled among glossy green leaves. I like iced tea, collard greens, and watermelon. I can make a sweet potato pie that will make you forget that there is such a thing as a pumpkin. I'm southern to the core and while I love my southern heritage, I also know that it includes a dark side, a little problem that has to do with race.

Please don't misunderstand, I know that race is not an issue only in the South. I've seen enough manifestations of racial prejudice in my lifetime to be certain that it is not limited by geography. The South just has a peculiar love/hate affair with its perceptions about race. The white guy with a confederate flag on his bumper and who would disown any child of his that dated outside of his race will stop to help a lone black woman standing by the road next to her broken down car.

This dichotomy of feelings about race is what fuels someone like Newt Gingrich, what allows him to make a statement such as the following with a sincere belief that it does not reflect racial stereotyping and should not be construed as offensive or racist.

I'm prepared, if the NAACP invites me, I'll go to their convention and talk about why the African American community should demand paychecks and not be satisfied with food stamps. (Gingrich Singles Out Blacks)

Gingrich conveniently ignores that 28% of American households receiving food stamps are black and 59% are white. About 78% of American households are white and about 13% are black. (U.S. Census Bureau)

NAACP President and CEO Ben Jealous points out, the majority of people receiving food stamps are not African-Americans and have jobs. (Gingrich Singles Out Blacks) Gingrich is fond of referring to Obama as the food stamp president. (Id.) More people are receiving food stamps under this administration. Of course more people are unemployed or under employed. The country is, after all, in a recession.

However, in spite of all my discussion of Newt and food stamps, my point isn't really about Gingrich's dissemination of misleading and down right false information. I'm more interested in Newt's win in South Carolina.

This ability to hold on to racist ideology and simultaneously and sincerely believe that you are not acting in a racist manner is at the core of South Carolina's enthusiasm for Newt Gingrich. Gingrich responded with indignation when moderator Juan Williams dared inquire at the GOP presidential candidates debate in South Carolina:

Speaker Gingrich, you recently said black Americans should demand jobs, not food stamps. You also said poor kids lack a strong work ethic and proposed having them work as janitors in their schools. Can't you see that this is viewed, at a minimum, as insulting to all Americans, but particularly to black Americans?

Gingrich's response was swift and direct, "No. I don't see that." The audience in the debate hall also responded, standing and applauding Gingrich's snippy response.

Huffington Post reporter Jon Ward sums it up succinctly:

From the moment that Gingrich slapped down Williams' questions about his attitude toward low-income blacks and thousands in the debate hall stood and roared their approval--several voters this week told The Huffington Post that Gingrich "put him in his place"--Gingrich was on fire. (Gingrich Wins Big in SC)

Newt Gingrich speaks southern, and he is particularly fluent in the dialect of white southerners. It sounds the same as regular southern on the surface but it includes all sorts of code words and phrases. Neighborhood schools is a euphemism for maintaining segregation. Putting paychecks in the hands of black people is code for, those people don't want to work and live to receive government handouts. Put him in his place is used to speak of putting down an uppity Negro who has forgotten his place. Juan Williams at the debate and President Obama in general, as he is the most uppity Negro of all time. Angry black woman refers to any black female who articulates her opinions and doesn't shy away from controversy. Example: First Lady Michelle Obama. (I'm proud to say that I have also been designated on more than one occasion as an angry black woman.)

Newt knows how to make southern whites who refuse to confront their own issues with race feel good about themselves. A discussion about race and racism is immediately ended when the focus becomes on declaring that one is not a racist, although no one has declared anyone to be a racist. Talking about racism is not the same as calling someone a racist. The discussion that needs to be done about lingering racist beliefs, attitudes,and practices rarely takes place in this country which is why Newt really doesn't get why there is anything wrong with declaring that black people need to seek paychecks instead of food stamps. The key word is seek,which assumes that black people are more likely to be low-wealth in America because we choose to be so.

Gingrich believes that he has the vision to lead low-wealth black folks to the promised land. All he has to do is show us the light so that we understand that we need to work and not just sit around waiting for government handouts. Newt, and his eager supporters in South Carolina function on the presumption that it is lack of effort and inherent laziness on the part of black people that makes for a disproportional number of African-Americans living at or below the poverty level in the U.S. Lack of opportunities, systemic and institutional racial exclusion, and a continued fostering of racial stereotypes have nothing to do with it.

The reality is that the concept of racial equality is relatively new. Following emancipation in 1865 was a hundred years of Jim Crow, discrimination,restriction, and persecution based on the color of your skin. I grew up in a society in which where I could go and what I could do was determined by my skin color. I had to learn as a child not to display anything that could be construed as attitude or impudence to any white person regardless as to what that white person may have done or said to me. I was denied access to schools, restaurants, hospitals, swimming pools, wherever there was a sign that designated "white only." Although there are days when I feel ancient, I'm only 56.

It remains to be seen if Newt Gingrich's bilingual abilities will make him the GOP presidential nominee. His substantial victory in South Carolina, 40.4% to Romney's 27.9%, may not translate well to other parts of the nation which are not as adept at self deception when it comes to matters of race.

There are those who insist that the intense anti-Obama sentiment expressed by some has nothing to do with his being a black man. He is, by every definition that this country proposes about determining one's race a black man. So when someone says to me, what's race got to do with it, my answer is "everything."

I gave that bitch some rights - bitches love rights

2012-01-21T16:31:00.000-05:00

Well, two days ago, a random douchenozzle put a comment on a post I wrote six months ago, about the internet's reaction to Rebecca Watson admitting that she felt uncomfortable in an elevator, and explaining why.

What he wrote, in part, was a fairly standard male-privilege response.

This whole blog is an equivocation fallacy... If we were to take that seriously, then I suppose I should never talk to a woman anywhere, because rape DOES happen anywhere.

What some people seem to want is for a special exception to be made for women, because they view women as inferior. The people who feel this way are radical-feminists, pretending to be feminists.

This guy was undoubtedly just some random troll (his nickname was probably created seconds before he posted), but nonetheless, I responded to him.

Maybe I was a little rude (because I'm normally such a calm, generous, diplomatic person), but to be honest, my only regret is that I left off a question mark and used the phrase "you're an idiot" twice. Because I can do so much better than that.

My only excuse is that cheap boxed Merlot is a harsh mistress.

As far as I'm concerned, any male who uses the phrase "radical feminist" is almost automatically an inbred mouth-breather with limited capacity for reasonable thought. There are only two types of people: feminists, and morons.

(Quick disclaimer: sure, if you look hard enough, you can find a couple of lesbian separatists out there who want to live without ever seeing a man, or occasionally dominate men, reversing the status quo and sticking women on top of the bigotry heap. But they're a really tiny minority - the exception, not the rule - and it's rampant, overblown stupidity to equate the one with the other.)

You could argue that I'm setting up a strawman to make an argument, but this idiot male attitude is all too common. When you start with the two largest religions in the world openly stating that women are inferior to men, and somebody suggests that maybe the two should be equal, it leads you down a path where drug-abusing sociopaths make up words like "feminazi."

And you end up with men who think all women who don't fall into their stereotypes of "Madonna" or "Whore" must be ball-busting lesbian bitches.

And sometimes, you even end up with people trying to claim that the Costa Concordia disaster was made worse because of feminism.

Apparently, in their minds, there is only a limited supply of rights, and in order for somebody else to get any, they have to lose some. Sorry, guys, that's not how it works: we aren't about to reach "Peak Rights."

Anyone who has wives or daughters (I have one of each) and doesn't want to see them succeed is a subhuman asshat who never evolved past masturbating in public and flinging their own feces.

Because it's a basic fact of life - men do get all the breaks: society contains a built-in bias that allows men to succeed more easily than women. Hate to be the one to break it to you, children, but if you're too microcephalic to figure it out, I'm not going to help you at all. Instead, I'm going to give you math. Because I'm cruel.

Women make up roughly 50% of the US population, but only run about 1% of the Fortune 500 companies.

The average woman earns less than the average man (about 75%, give or take - admittedly, better than it was in the 60s).

"Ah," says the voice of Male Privilege, "could that be because men are smarter?"

No, sorry. About the same - although men tend to think that they are.

(Interesting side-note: because the concentration of money is in the hands of white males, white women earn, on average, 45% less than the salary of white men - a greater disparity than among any other race.)

And those numbers only get worse if you keep digging. According to the Department of Justice, one out of every six US women have been victims of a completed or attempted rape. The male stat? One in thirty-three. (And let's not even get into the concept of sexual slavery.)

But you aren't supposed to bring up these pesky little facts, and a young woman shouldn't talk about how she didn't appreciate getting hit on in an enclosed space. Because pinheaded morons start blathering on about "radical feminism."

Really? It's radical to think that women should be treated the same as men? And at the same time, it's radical to pay attention to the fact that some people feel uncomfortable in certain situations, and you should respect that?

Fuck you. Fuck every bloated, self-involved whiny little boy who uses the word "feminist" when deep down, they're screaming "cooties!"

SOPA Opera

2012-01-19T10:31:00.001-05:00

Should the Senate bill called PIPA or the House version called SOPA emerge as the law of the land (and probably a few other lands as well) odds are you won't like it, whether you're a downloader of music or a blogger who may have borrowed a photo you found on Google or elsewhere or a user of Wikipedia or even someone who clips an article and sends it to a friend. Neither bill is there to address the concerns of the public, but rather the (you guessed it) big corporations hell bent on retaining every last crumb, every last cent of potential profit from every word or image or sound they can claim as their own in perpetuity.

In my opinion, it's gone far past any position I could call reasonable. I've given many a guffaw when nearly every image one could call art has to be blurred out when shown on television and although I'm sure an effort will be made to blame yet another corporate triumph on "the Liberals" and of course "that Obama" this "intellectual property" and "artist's rights" crusade is a trend that started twenty years ago or more. There's always a noble purpose, of course -- like protecting the interests of widows and orphans of dead artists and writers and such noble purpose often devolves into huge lawsuits like the squabble between France and Spain as to which one can be the executor of the Salvador Dali estate in the absence of any widows or offspring. I remember the difficulty of using an image of a work of art to sell it because whoever owned the rights to a long dead artist's work might sue you even though your efforts were actually supporting the price of the commodity. It's nearly always about money and lawyers, no matter what it's dressed up as.

But my disdain for monster corporations stomping all over Congress screaming "mine, mine, mine" isn't my main concern. I'm more worried about the enforcement, which seems to allow huge fines for downloading some two and a half minutes of some Cramps tune from the early 90's or, God forbid, a little night music by Mozart, but about the next increment of surveillance and the possibility of making the Internet a very, very inhospitable place for non-corporate bloggers and providers of information like Wikipedia. While people of all political persuasions dislike the idea of Big Brother watching us, perhaps too few are watching Big Brother, Inc.

People often learn from mistakes, but it seems corporations do not. Prohibition and the war on drugs and stringent gun control and the war on pornography have hurt far more than they have helped and they haven't helped very much. Draconian penalties don't reduce crime and as a great article at Bloomberg.com today points out this morning, this War on Piracy isn't likely to stop, slow down or to have any effect.

"SOPA and PIPA are just the next steps in this larger enforcement agenda. Whatever happens to them, online enforcement will remain a very slippery slope, with attendant risks of censorship, surveillance, and the loss of due process. Because nothing in SOPA or PIPA is likely to stop piracy, there will be strong pressure to keep sliding."

Individuals will be scapegoated and ruined, lawyers will buy gaudier cars and cuff links and the free flow of information we have learned to rely on will dry up while more and more ordinary citizens will be made into criminals. The inevitable failure of this new, expensive enforcement crusade will only be used as proof that we need more of it, if history is a reliable teacher, and the true danger here is that it will, and I'm certain of it, be another stepping stone to the corporate police state. These are measures the public by in large does not support, but of course the public is distracted at the moment by the Republican freak show and revival meeting -- and of course congress listens to the representatives of industry instead of representing us.

I'm old enough to remember the movie industry's attempts to block cable TV and video recorders. I'm not old enough to remember how the advent of phonograph records and later radio broadcasting would, so they said, demolish the music industry, but I do remember the push to add a tax onto VCRs to reimburse the movie studios God given right to profit. I do remember how the music industry effectively prevented Americans from owning Digital Audio Tape machines and I remember how FedEx and others insisted in adding a tax on Fax machines to stifle competition and I remember how all these things not only failed but also how in the long run some of this technology was a huge boon to industries that were terrified of them.

Face it, the Internet is terrifying to a lot of entities, many of whom don't have anything like the public interest in mind when they propose to bend it to their will or destroy it. This thing of ours has more potential for good than the printing press and the spectacle of corporations crying about too much regulation calling for the garroting of that good in the name of a guaranteed right to a profit is as disgusting as anything prompting my gag reflex these days.

Somebody Needs to Read Him Some Montaigne and Read It Good

2012-01-18T15:29:00.000-05:00

A few thoughts concerning the following article in HuffPo:

Mark Wahlberg On 9/11 Plane: I Would Have Beat Terrorists, Landed It Safely

With regard to a certain celebrity's action-hero projections in the article referenced, I’d say the fellow is being just a bit insensitive toward those who died in the attacks. Anyone who would make such statements as "If I was on that plane with my kids, it wouldn’t have went down like it did" (he seems to be talking about the planes that flew into the World Trade Center) needs to read Montaigne's essay "On the Inconsistency of Our Actions." He needs to study a good grammar handbook, too, but I let that go.

The truth is surely that nobody really knows how he or she would face the prospect of certain or nearly certain sudden death. Being strong, bold, and active (and a movie star) isn't a guarantee that you'll go out like a hero, and being a wise philosopher isn't a guarantee that you'll go out with dignity, either, instead of curling up in a fetal position, sticking your thumb in your snout and whimpering for your long-departed mother. (Not that the latter would necessarily be such a wrong thing to do. Maybe that's what some people would need to do, and if I were sitting next to them, I'd like to think I wouldn't tell them to shut up and make my last interaction a mean-spirited, intolerant one.) You can hazard a guess how you might face an unexpected, violent death based on how you've lived your life, but you don't KNOW because it hasn't happened to you up to now or you wouldn’t be reading this.

As Oscar Wilde said a long time ago, "only the shallow know themselves." It’s worth keeping in mind.

Boo

2012-01-18T09:52:00.001-05:00

"With regards to immigration policy, that those that come here illegally should not be given favoritism or a special route to becoming residents or citizens that's not given to those people that stayed in line legally,"

-Willard Mitt Romney-

One would think, if one had the fortitude to spend more than a moment watching what passes for television news, that for the last half decade or so there were nothing of more than momentary interest happening than the American political circus and perpetual campaign. Geological and meteorological calamities do get reported, but the vast bulk of air time is given over to "the candidates" and the unchallenged lies they perpetrate. There are no pauses between campaigns, no half time shows and no seventh inning stretches.

I say circus although circuses are intended to be family entertainment these days and freak shows have gone the way of Times Square peep shows, cock fights and lynchings -- and sadly, the traces of any sense of shame, decency and honesty that ever had the audacity to interrupt or question the ragemongering has disappeared.

At the South Carolina Fox News debate Monday last (and I call it debate with all awareness of the inherent dishonesty of the appellation) Mitt Romney was booed, not because of what discernible policies he may be espousing at the moment, but because his father was born in Mexico. I don't recall any booing in response to John McCain's having been born in Panama, but of course anything done or said more than ten minutes ago is irrelevant in today's Republican world and that hobgoblin called consistency is always foolish.

George Romney, Mitt's father, entered the US illegally from Mexico, which might have given a better, more decent, less ambnitious Mitt pause before making such harsh statements about not tolerating any mercy for illegal Mexican immigrants, but of course it's a racial and ethnic issue, not an immigration one despite assurances to the contrary. The name is Romney after all, not Ramirez -- and this was South Carolina, Glossolalia, Holy Ghost Power and Rebel Flags, just he way God likes it.

But the mood of the South Carolinian Republican Rabble was ugly and when moderator Juan Williams asked if it wasn't a bit insulting to minorities when Newt Gingrich spewed that nonsense about black people needing to demand jobs instead of food stamps, as though the unemployment problem were caused by laziness and a president that encourages it, the ~~ugly mob~~ conservative citizens booed the black moderator just as Republican snake pits at previous "debates" have booed Child Labor laws, booed a serving US soldier and cheered the killing of prisoners in large numbers.

Is it any worse that they insist on being called 'conservatives' and not snarling beasts and that our only sources of news collaborate in that farce? Is it surprising that the state of South Carolina, still unrepentant for having been the first to take up arms against the United States, would once again boo at Ron Paul's suggestion that the 'Golden Rule' so often quoted as a core Christian value be applied in US foreign policy?

" Quit warmongering, stop going to war, and treat other nations like we want to be treated. "

Hell, no! Boo the bastard! Ask not what Jesus would do, ask what Attila the Hun would do, what a tribe of savage head hunters and cannibals would do, what a pack of giggling, stinking hyenas would do while ripping and tearing at the corpse of America.

It's been suggested to me, that I should approach such people with a more polite demeanor -- that the people who have made most of human history a horror story need to be given a chance to discuss things, to debate things and that monsters and the people who promote monsters can be persuaded by kind words and reason to change.

Boooooooo!

I'M GLAD YOU DIDN'T SNEEZE - A repost

2012-01-16T11:20:00.002-05:00

Someone found and left a comment on this post I first wrote on April 4, 2009, the anniversary of Dr King's death. It is a profoundly poignant ancedote and so I thought I'd repost a link:"I'm glad you didn't sneeze".

Remembering Dr. King, the Bearer of Dreams

2012-01-16T05:08:00.001-05:00

A Black Child Remembers Dr. King
by Sheria Reid

He came bearing dreams,
a drum major for truth,
peeling back layers to reveal
the beauty of our blackness.

Mama says I can't go to Selma,
so I find it on a map,
a small dot that may as well be in Timbuktu.
Montgomery is out of the question.

I march around the back yard
singing "We Shall Overcome,"
imagining that I feel the heat rising
from black pavement
and the hoses washing me down.
We shall overcome someday...

Let's play freedom march!
Slyly I entice my younger brother and sister.
You can lead the march!
But my legs are longer.

I follow him
marching ever onward,
a dark skin black child
reaching for the dream,
believing deep in my heart
we shall overcome
we shall overcome
we shall overcome someday...

Newton pulls out all the stops

2012-01-15T20:34:00.001-05:00

If you're like me (and to be honest, I'm pretty sure that you aren't - but I digress), you have to have a certain fondness for Newton Leroy Mephistopheles Gingrich. I mean, he may be an evil, bloated troll and a complete abject failure as a human being, but he, more than anybody else in America except Mitt Romney himself, is working hard to help ensure the reelection of Barack Obama.

It's true that we liberals, progressives and real Americans can't afford to be complacent as we approach the election, but sweet flaming Baby Jesus on a popsicle stick! How can you not giggle like a schoolgirl watching the GOP flail away at each other like some kind of morally bankrupt Rock'em Sock'em Republicans?

Mitt Romney is going to be the Republican candidate: that's all but a mathematical certainty. But Newton (who is apparently blind to the open oozing wound where his soul might once have been) is charging in like a screaming toddler in the candy aisle, demanding to have his way, by golly! Dragging his animated wax replica of a wife behind him, he's going to keep stabbing away at Mitten's exposed back, trying to bring the Mechanical Mormon down.

Newton's faltering campaign is freshly energized by an influx of gambling money from a stereotypical mob boss straight out of Central Casting: Sheldon Adelson, who occasionally introduces himself as "the richest Jew in the world."

With all these stacks of fresh, clean money piling up in the back room, Newton's SuperPAC (which Newton has no connection to, except that he set it up and put former staffers in charge) put out a short film and website bashing away at Romney's record as a "job creator."

And things are just going to get better.

"This is going to be Armageddon – they are going to come in here with everything they've got, every surrogate, every ad, every negative attack," Gingrich said. "At the same time we'll be drawing a sharp contrast between a Georgia Reagan conservative and a Massachusetts moderate who's pro-gun control, pro-choice, pro-tax increase, pro-liberal judge, and the voters of South Carolina will have to look and decide."

And just because the Three Stooges have to have their Larry, the craziest of the evangelicals got together this weekend to decide on their favorite flavor of not-Romney, and it turned out to be Santorum Crunch. So we can look for waves of fun coming from that quarter, too.

All I have to say is, the Obama campaign should see if they can borrow some of these ads later on.

Comrade Obama?

2012-01-14T10:41:00.001-05:00

I must disagree with Bill Maher that Rick Santorum thinks of gay sex more than a dildo salesman but only because Rick Santorum doesn't actually think, unless one defines that word very loosely. He doesn't remember things too well either and I say that in all generosity since one might interpret the things he says he remembers as outright lies. They aren't even up to date lies or original lies or good lies, yet there are always enough misinformed, low intelligence dung flingers in fatuously faith based America to believe them and make this country seem like the primate house at the world's largest zoo.

Take Santorum's tired repetition of John McCain's 2001 attempt to sell the embarrassingly ridiculous notion that President Obama wants to redistribute the nation's wealth in some Socialistic way, a bit like Jed Clampett arriving at the Royal Wedding in his beat up old truck. Coming from a Republican, whose party has engineered what might be one of the largest upward redistribution of wealth, that's already laughable but Mr. Rick seems to be the last man standing who is still driving that rusty jalopy -- the idea that Our president, beset by critics calling him a corporate whore and a sell-out to Wall Street is a radical socialist and perhaps a communist to boot. What Santorum claims to remember is that Obama supported a constitutional amendment to give your money to the poor ( read black people) when what the president really said in a 2001 interview was that the

"Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth and sort of more basic issues of political and economic justice in this society. And to that extent, as radical as I think people tried to characterize the Warren Court, it wasn’t that radical. It didn’t break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the founding fathers in the Constitution. . .”

Essential constraints -- it sounds very little like a man who is deploring those constraints. Indeed when Obama said the court had limited itself to insuring that he could eat at a lunch counter as long as he could afford to pay for his lunch, only a stupid man who thinks other people are even more stupid would interpret, or should I say twist, this as a quote from the Communist Manifesto.

"In the interview, Obama went into extensive detail to explain why the courts should not get into that business of ‘redistributing’ wealth. Obama’s point — and what he called a tragedy — was that legal victories in the civil rights led too many people to rely on the courts to change society for the better. That view is shared by conservative judges and legal scholars across the country."

said Obama spokesman Bill Burton during the 2008 campaign. Certainly no development since then has given credibility to McCain's sad attempt or justification for Santorum's calumnies.

I'm finding it difficult, even without the waves of nausea and loathing, to accept that any candidate could have got as far as Santorum has without being laughed out of town as a cheap, incompetent liar and unscrupulous scoundrel. I can only blame the media ringmasters who continue to provide this charlatan with his own ring in this sad and tawdry circus we call a campaign. Have we forgotten that the purpose of news reporting is to sort truth from rumor, slander and lies? Perhaps we have and it's certainly been a long time since the news was anything but a way for big news corporations and their sponsors to make money. Perhaps we should stop making them richer by occupying Wall Street and start occupying CNN and Fox and the rest instead.