Women will be future leaders, too, and I was dismayed to see how many of them either looked frumpish or like two-bit whores.

First, are these young people being taught anything by their parents? I was at another service-oriented gathering of young women where the girls were in tight bandeau-skirts (you know, the kind of tube-top skirts that hookers wear on street corners?). They were sitting with their mothers. What is going on here?

Second, have women so internalized feminist dogma that they see themselves in only two ways? Butch, men-lite wannabes or 3rd wave sluts who empower themselves by screwing every available horndog man?

Tell me more, tell me more, was she dressed like a whore?
Tell me more, tell me more, do you think you can score?

“Yes” and apparently “probably”.

1. No cleavage. That’s right. Cover that up. I say “no” in absolutist terms because women will show a tiny bit and that’s okay, but really, in a business environment where ideas are the priority, a dude thinking about your ta-tas is counter-productive.

2. Skirts no more than three finger-widths above the knee. Why do I even have to write this? Well, because someone is allowing these girls out of the house with mini-skirts that reveal too much.

3. Save the stilettos for Saturday night on a date with your boyfriend.

4. Bend at the knee. No, I don’t want to see your butt.

Young women, you degrade your own value by dressing and then acting the ho.

I cannot even tell you how many girls have told me that all they want is to get married and have babies. They do not seem to make the connection that a young man is not interested in getting married and making babies with a girl who is so easy as to have a one-night stand over a CPAC weekend (or any other weekend.)

You know what a guy thinks when you slut-it-up? He thinks: If she’ll do that with me, she’ll do that with anyone.

Let’s be brutally honest here.

These are the kind of guys you’ll find at CPAC:

And if you’ll fuck one of them then, yes, you’ll pretty much fuck anyone.

Meanwhile Erick Erick Erick Erick Infinite Ericks is shocked to find strapping young conservative men at the CVS daring to dream at the condom counter:

After RedState got started in July of 2004, blogging on the right became all the rage, though it was correlation and not causation. By 2005, CPAC had a Bloggers Row and I went for my first time. The event was held that year at the Reagan Center in Washington, D.C. Most of the attendees stayed across the street at the JW Marriott. It was not an ideal venue, but it was my first time and I did not know better.

Being the good, intrepid blogger, I ran across the street to a CVS to buy a notepad, having left mine in my office back in Macon, GA. There in line were a half dozen young men, each with CPAC credentials around their necks and each buying condoms.

That is part of life on the college circuit. Young men, regardless of political persuasion or ideology, are intent on having sex, being boys, getting drunk — doing what young men in college often do. All to(sic) often there are also a few young ladies willing to shame their parents if their parents only knew.

Which is why the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel had to be aired out after CPAC ended this past weekend to get rid of the smell of Axe, semen and desperation.

And that was just the main room where Sarah Palin spoke…

(Added) Meanwhile (Thanks to Steve) those hornydog CPAC conservamen could have scored with a gal known to put out and received  a free book  as a commemorative souvenir.

After nearly an entire term in the White House, Bartlet’s economic record was so dismal that it is a miracle he was reelected. Consider his attempt to literally defend this record before God (who he also calls a “feckless thug”): “3.8 million new jobs, that wasn’t good? Bailed out Mexico. Increased foreign trade. 30 million new acres of land for conservation. Put Mendoza on the bench. We’re not fighting a war.”

3.8 million jobs sure sounds like a lot, but at the time Bartlet made this speech, it added up to just over 90,000 jobs during each month of his presidency — far less than the country needs just to keep up with population growth. This kind of stagnant growth could be excused if President Bartlet, like President Obama, presided over our emergence from an historic recession, but the Bartlet Administration experienced no similar economic calamity.

[...]

President Bartlet’s inattentiveness to the 99 percent cannot be dismissed because economic justice doesn’t make good television. Screenwriters could not design a better villain than James Clark McReynolds, the Supreme Court Justice who systematically undermined FDR’s New Deal and routinely referred to President Roosevelt as a “crippled son-of-a-bitch.” Lyndon Johnson’s transformation from southern segregationist to civil rights crusader reached a climax that literally brought Martin Luther King to tears. President Obama’s drawn out battle over the Affordable Care Act is riddled with the kinds of crushing defeats, unexpected setbacks and narrow triumphs that fiction writers dream of recreating.

Ultimately, the Bartlet Administration was a failed opportunity because President Bartlet never once sought out these kinds of battles. Protecting choice or welcoming gays into the military (something the Bartlet Administration supported but never accomplished) are important prongs of the progressive agenda, but a liberalism that’s uninterested in income inequality or ensuring that no American ever dies because they cannot afford to treat a curable disease is both a recipe for electoral defeat and a tragedy of moral neglect.

The obvious point here is that The West Wing was a television show which ended in 2007 and was  about a fictional President and it bears only a slight resemblance to the current political landscape; to say nothing of the current president’s somewhat duskier hue which makes him that horse of another color we keep hearing about.

Less obvious is the fact that, while The West Wing had a political agenda (ofttimes delivered in the thuddingly simplistic expository manner), it was primarily a crash course on the sausage-making that is policy development, how political messaging works, and, most importantly, the humanity, moral crises, compromises, personal failings, and inter-personal relationships of people who have voluntarily inserted themselves into extraordinary circumstances where success or failure can hinge upon the use or misuse of a single adverb. Anything else is missing the point of the show and  hashing over the imagined progressive failings of the Bartlet administration (as people are currently doing at the ThinkProgress site in the comments) is like engaging in a symposium on the maritime failures of the Skipper and Gilligan. And why did all of those passengers on the Minnow have so much luggage if it was only three hour tour? Discuss.

The West Wing was about the art of the possible and how we are handcuffed by both external realities and the fact that we are human and are therefore imperfect. Well, at least you guys are.  It’s about trying to get from point A to point B without tripping over your personal baggage on the way. How good intentions generally aren’t enough to get things done and, on the rare occasions when they are, there is the possibility that the results may play out in unanticipated ways. The West Wing was about fighting the good fight in weekly 48 minute rounds and every round is scored a draw because the good fight never ends and we’ll pick it up again next week same time/same channel. It is about perseverance in the face of constant and sometimes inevitable disappointment.

So no scorecard needed, thank you. We don’t need to beat ourselves up over our imaginary failures; we already have enough real ones to keep us busy until the end of time.

I like the Shins so much that I want New Slang to be played as the intro at my funeral with Everclear’s Santa Monica as the outro because that’s how I plan to roll into eternity…

Tucker and a crack team of “journalists” who have to tell their parents every couple of weeks or so that working for Tucker “is too a real job” secretly interviewed many people at Media Matters whose names you may recognize about Brock:

Brock, the head of the liberal nonprofit Media Matters for America, had told friends and co-workers that he feared he was in imminent danger from right-wing assassins and needed a security team to keep him safe. The threat he faced while smoking on his roof? “Snipers,” a former co-worker recalled.
[...]
“He had more security than a Third World dictator,” one employee said
[...]
“What movement leader has a detail?” asked someone who saw it.
[...]
Extensive interviews with a number of Brock’s current and former colleagues at Media Matters, as well as with leaders from across the spectrum of Democratic politics, reveal an organization roiled by its leader’s volatile and erratic behavior and struggles with mental illness, and an office where Brock’s executive assistant carried a handgun to public events in order to defend his boss from unseen threats.

Yet those same interviews, as well as a detailed organizational planning memo obtained by The Daily Caller, also suggest that Media Matters has to a great extent achieved its central goal of influencing the national media.
[...]
“We were pretty much writing their prime time,” a former Media Matters employee said of the cable channel MSNBC. “But then virtually all the mainstream media was using our stuff.”
[...]
In November of 2009, Dobbs left CNN. “We got him fired,” says one staffer flatly.
[...]
Glenn Beck, the former Fox News Channel host, drew the ire of a wide spectrum of liberal groups while his program aired nationally. But according to several people who watched the process from the inside, it was Media Matters that orchestrated much of the opposition to Beck.
[...]
“We called it ‘fingerprint coverage,’” explains one former staffer, “where you know it was the result of your work.”
[...]
“In ‘08 it became pretty apparent MSNBC was going left,” says one source. “They were using our research to write their stories. They were eager to use our stuff. Stories about Fox News were especially well received by MSNBC anchors and executives: “If we published something about Fox in the morning, they’d have it on the air that night verbatim.”
[...]
“The entire progressive blogosphere picked up our stuff,” says a Media Matters source, “from Daily Kos to Salon. Greg Sargent [of the Washington Post] will write anything you give him. He was the go-to guy to leak stuff.”

“If you can’t get it anywhere else, Greg Sargent’s always game,” agreed another source with firsthand knowledge.
[...]
“The HuffPo guys were good, Sam Stein and Nico [Pitney],” remembered one former staffer.
[...]
“Jim Rainey at the LA Times took a lot of our stuff,” the staffer continued.
[...]
“Ben Smith [formerly of Politico, now at BuzzFeed.com] will take stories and write what you want him to write,” explained the former employee, whose account was confirmed by other sources.
[...]
“If you hit a reporter, say a beat reporter at a regional newspaper,” a Media Matters source said,
[...]
It’s not clear what the four spoke about — no one in the meeting returned repeated calls for comment — but the apparent coordination continued. “Anita Dunn became a regular presence at the office,” says someone who worked there.
[...]
Were the lines of attack coordinated? “To my knowledge, there wasn’t coordination,” says a source.
[...]
The irony of Brock’s relationship with the White House is that at certain points he has been openly hostile to Barack Obama, especially in conversations in social settings. Described by some who know him as a passionate and emotional Hillary Clinton supporter
[...]
The intensity of the 2008 campaign, say those who knew Brock at the time,
[...]
During a 2008 meeting of the left-wing umbrella group Democracy Alliance outside San Diego, Brock’s unusual behavior drew considerable attention. According to a fellow attendee, “David completely lost his shit.
[...]
Two years later, at another Democracy Alliance meeting shortly after the 2010 election, Brock behaved in a way one prominent liberal who was there described as “erratic, unstable and disturbing.
[...]
All of this, sources say, has caused anxiety for prominent Democrats.
[...]
At some point, Brock received a prescription for his condition. “Some days he’d come in and you could tell he was on his meds because he would just sit in his office alone and not engage with staff,” says a coworker.
[...]
Last spring, some at Media Matters headquarters and in other parts of the progressive world were caught off guard by an interview Brock gave to Ben Smith at Politico,
[...]
“It was insane,” says a coworker. “David was totally manic at the time. We were all shocked.”
[...]
Friends say Brock, who has publicly admitted drug use in the past, was working obsessively and staying out late with compatriots. “They’d close [local bars] and party till six in the morning,” said one.
[...]
A number of people in Brock’s orbit believe he was regularly using illegal drugs, including cocaine. “It’s not like he was trying to keep it a secret,” says a female friend of Brock’s.
[...]
Sources back at the Media Matters offices describe an atmosphere of tension and paranoia. “Many of us lived in fear that at any point we could be fired,” one said.
[...]
According to one source with knowledge of what happened next, Brock was “terrified” that news of the gun would leak. “George Soros and a lot of groups connected to gun control are funding this group, and they wouldn’t be too happy that an employee of Media Matters was carrying a gun, especially when it was illegal in D.C.”
[...]
Meanwhile, Brock became rigid and harsh with his employees — “viciously mean,” in the words of someone who witnessed it.
[...]
One staffer recalls Brock saying he would like to fire a researcher for being physically repugnant. “David definitely does not like ugly people.”
[...]
The atmosphere in the office was considerably more tolerant on non-editorial matters. “There were these two folks who got caught [having sex] in the communications war room on the weekend,” said one employee.

“People came in, and lo and behold there were two of their colleagues doing the nasty on a desk.” Neither one was fired.
…

To be fair, Tucker did find someone who was willing to speak on the record:

David Saldana, the former deputy editorial director at Media Matters, concedes that under Brock’s leadership, “there were very harsh penalties for getting things wrong. And justifiably so. … There was no room for weakness. Things had to be gotten right.”

What a monster.

By the way, that one staffer at Media Matters? No not that one, the other guy. He totally owes me twenty bucks. Yeah, you know who you are…

Closeted Gay Turtle Mitch McConnell joins the No Condom For You Lunch Bunch:

Not satisfied with President Obama’s new religious accommodation, Republicans will move forward with legislation by Sen. Roy Blunt (R-MO) that permits any employer to deny birth control coverage in their health insurance plans, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said Sunday.

“If we end up having to try to overcome the President’s opposition by legislation, of course I’d be happy to support it, and intend to support it,” McConnell said. “We’ll be voting on that in the Senate and you can anticipate that that would happen as soon as possible.”

So this isn’t really about people having impromptu awesome hot sweaty filthy, yet provocative, sexiness with other people. It’s about religion and how the government may not prohibit the free exercise thereof henceforth and such and such also too of the aforementioned religion:

“The fact that the White House thinks this is about contraception is the whole problem. This is about freedom of religion, it’s right there in the First Amendment. You can’t miss it — right there in the very first amendment to our Constitution,” McConnell said. “What the overall view on the issue of contraception is has nothing to do with an issue about religious freedom.”

McConnell went on to embellish the argument, claiming Obama is being “rigid in his view that he gets to decide what somebody else’s religion is.” He said that “this issue will not go away until the administration simply backs down.”

Which is one way of saying “You’re not the God of me” and allows Christians to ignore any laws of man that contradict the Holy Handbook of Do’s & Don’t such as:

22:13 If any man take a wife, and go in unto her, and hate her,
22:14 And give occasions of speech against her, and bring up an evil name upon her, and say, I took this woman, and when I came to her, I found her not a maid:
22:15 Then shall the father of the damsel, and her mother, take and bring forth the tokens of the damsel’s virginity unto the elders of the city in the gate:
22:16 And the damsel’s father shall say unto the elders, I gave my daughter unto this man to wife, and he hateth her;
22:17 And, lo, he hath given occasions of speech against her, saying, I found not thy daughter a maid; and yet these are the tokens of my daughter’s virginity. And they shall spread the cloth before the elders of the city.
22:18 And the elders of that city shall take that man and chastise him;
22:19 And they shall amerce him in an hundred shekels of silver, and give them unto the father of the damsel, because he hath brought up an evil name upon a virgin of Israel: and she shall be his wife; he may not put her away all his days.
22:20 But if this thing be true, and the tokens of virginity be not found for the damsel:
22:21 Then they shall bring out the damsel to the door of her father’s house, and the men of her city shall stone her with stones that she die: because she hath wrought folly in Israel, to play the whore in her father’s house: so shalt thou put evil away from among you.
22:22 If a man be found lying with a woman married to an husband, then they shall both of them die, both the man that lay with the woman, and the woman: so shalt thou put away evil from Israel.
22:23 If a damsel that is a virgin be betrothed unto an husband, and a man find her in the city, and lie with her;
22:24 Then ye shall bring them both out unto the gate of that city, and ye shall stone them with stones that they die; the damsel, because she cried not, being in the city; and the man, because he hath humbled his neighbour’s wife: so thou shalt put away evil from among you.

And if you disagree, you’re racist against the god-botherers.

Also, this is good news for John McCain. Not so much for Newt & Callista Gingrich…

So let’s move on to things which are not an abomination in the eyes of Our Lord Tebow:

Supper Time – Audra McDonald
Wise Up – Aimee Mann
Crying Sun – Radio Birdman
Rotten World Blues – Eels
Happy Feet Blues – Wynton Marsalis Septet (yep, that”s how the iPod played them in a row)
Time To Waste – Alkaline Trio
Love The One You’re With – Stephen Stills
Do The Strand – Roxy Music
What Is Hip? – Tower of Power
Ziggy Stardust – David Bowie
and Brown Street – Joe Zawinul

I finally heard the new Bruce Springsteen song We Take Care Of Our Own and if good intentions made good songs, it would be a great song… but it’s pretty awful, and by ‘awful’ I mean Paul McCartney’s Freedom awful, so really really bad awful.

You may have thought that Karen Handel, who was to public policy at the Susan G. Komen Foundation what Wille E. Coyote is to rocketry, waddled away from the Komen Foundation last week in disgrace, but you would be wrong wrong wrong. In fact, by spearheading the Aborting The Abortionists Most Awesomest SuperSecret Plan Evah, she made the Komen Foundation so popular that she had to get out of the way so that they could use her office to stash all of the extra money and presents and trophies and Duggar fanfic that people were sending to them because she is a giver:

Handel noted that Komen received a fair amount of support for its decision to cut funding, with “emails into Komen running 3 to 1 in support.” She added, “Within two days of the news, online donations were up 400 percent. It wasn’t like there wasn’t support for this. It was just being drowned out by Planned Parenthood. Komen doesn’t have the strength in the area of social media.”

Drats!

And I would have gotten away with it too, if it weren’t for you meddling kid killers at Planned Parenthood..

Seeking to allay the concerns of Catholic leaders,President Obama on Friday announced an adjustment to its health-care rule requiring religiously affiliated employers to provide contraceptive coverage to women.

Women still will be guaranteed coverage for contraceptive services without any out-of-pocket cost, but will have to seek the coverage directly from their insurance companies if their employers object to birth control on religious grounds.

Religiously-affiliated non-profit employers such as schools, charities, universities, and hospitals will be able to provide their workers with plans that exclude such coverage. However, the insurance companies that provide the plans will have to offer those workers the opportunity to obtain additional contraceptive coverage directly, at no additional charge.

[...]

“The new policy ensures women can get contraception without paying a co-pay and addresses important concerns raised by religious groups,” the White House said in a statement.

It would be in the Catholic Bishops best interests to claim victory and go home since this takes them out of the equation, allowing them to do what they do best: pretending that they don’t know that their flock is already telling the Vatican to pound sand by using birth control. They’re not going to like it, but absent total surrender from the White House, they’ve lost whatever high ground they believed they had since the Obama Administration has created a compelling illusion of having compromised. Besides, for the bishops,  their own house is on fire again and they may want to see to that.

Additional losers are the forced birth crowd who needed a victory to assuage the wounds they suffered in last weeks crushing Komen fiasco, and the PUMA/emoprog crowd who will see this as a total sellout by someone who is no better than Rick Santorum … ignoring for the moment that Santorum would ban birth control is he had his way.

Who wins?

Women.

And that is what this was all about.

(Added) Also too:

At his press conference this morning announcing the new shift in contraception policy, Obama said: “I understand that some folks in Washington may want to treat this as another political wedge issue. But it shouldn’t be.”

The irony is that after this announcement, this very well may become a wedge issue — against Republicans.

That’s because anyone who comes out against the proposal Obama outlined today will be asked a simple question: Are you saying that employers should dictate to female employees whether they should or shouldn’t have access to affordable birth control?

And this (link broken for the moment) from mistermix:

Can anyone give me a reason why this new contraception “compromise” is anything but a win? Obama just got some TV time for a full-throated endorsement of contraception (“no woman’s health should depend on who she is, or where she works, or how much money she makes [...] period”). Catholic opposition is now split between a bunch of old, out-of-touch geezers (the Bishops) and the Catholic Health Association, led by a charismatic nun, Sister Carol Keenan, who is happy with the compromise. The CHA, not the Bishops, are the ones who speak for the Catholic hospitals. So, Mike Huckabee’s “we are all Catholics now” talking point had a shelf life of a couple of hours. Now, Republicans who oppose this will have to come out of the closet as opponents of birth control, not supporters of Catholics. Finally, it sticks the insurance companies with the bill. I count four wins there, and zero losses, unless you count using the word “compromise” to describe getting what you wanted all along (mandated coverage for contraception) as losing.

The Rolling Stone article he is referencing is this one.

Well worth reading.