Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell at the zoo circus bad joke horror show Klan rally temper tantrum known as CPAC 2014 proving he’s still a man’s man.
Conservatives have become a parody of a parody.
One of the most annoying things about moving to Virginia from New York is that Virginia has no law against holding a cell phone while driving. In New York City, seeing someone holding a cell phone while driving is rare. In Alexandria, it’s the norm. I’m not even paying specific attention to it and I see it constantly. Just by way of comparison, NYC, alone, has a slightly larger population than the entire state of Virginia.
It is indisputable that using a cellphone while driving increases your risk of an accident. Yet, 31 states allow it. Mostly red states, of course (Surprised? Neither was I). 8 states don’t even ban texting (Arizona, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas), all red states. Who could have possibly have guessed?
Hell, Virginia JUST passed a terrible law to ban texting while driving last year for all the good it will do:
One crucial question: How will a police officer in the next car over know that you’re texting or emailing — which are banned — as opposed to dialing a phone number or typing an address into your phone’s GPS mapping software — which is legal?
There are lots of other smart phone distractions that also aren’t banned. Most cell phone applications — allowing you to do everything from listening to music to reading the news to checking your stocks — are completely unaffected.
In other words, it’s still legal to suicidally/homicidally drive while reading your phone.
Right wingers and libertarians will complain that they should have the FREEDOM™ to hold a cellphone while driving. Or text. Or not wear a seat belt. Or to ignore speed limits. The evil gub’mint can’t tell them what to do, maaaaaaan!
But, as usual, the narcissists of the right miss the point. As badly as they want it to be true, everything is not about THEM. Their actions affect those around them. Why should I and my children be placed at risk because they demand the FREEDOM™ to text and drive? The obvious answer is: We shouldn’t.
Try explaining that to a right winger, though.
In their race to find things to criticize Obama about, right wingers have taken nitpicking to the realm of the truly stupid:
“Talking with the President of Russia about an invasion in a button-down shirt and jeans is not up to the task,” Ron Christie, a former adviser to President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, told the Daily News.
While it “irks” him to see the casual wear that passes through the door of the Oval Office these days, he says Obama’s wardrobe choice for the Putin call was particularly bad for failing to send the “right message” given the seriousness of the issue.
If right wingers were any more shallow, they’d make the cast of Jersey Shore look like Greek philosophers. What’s next? “Obama sneezes in Oval Office, disrespects the United States?”
I generally agree with the idea that white conservative men vote their resentment but not everything they say and do can be chalked up to it. In Amanda Marcotte’s Pandagon article, “White men, as a group, vote Republican because they vote their resentments” she says the following:
Even the Republican strategist they interview has no idea how petty he makes the white male Republican voter sound:
Republicans say Democrats’ appeals to women, minorities and gays have been counterproductive with white men. “When you’re spending 60 percent of your time talking about birth control and Obamacare, not a lot of men are paying attention to you,” said Brad Dayspring, spokesman for the National Republican Senatorial Committee.
As much as I hate to agree with a Republican, he kind of has a point. Birth control (in this context, meaning IUDs, the pill, etc.) is about as important to men as sperm motility is to women. When I say this, I don’t mean the men that are religiously driven to treat women like brood mares. They do care about BC but for all the wrong reasons. Who I mean is the average male that only cares about BC if their wife/girlfriend/daughter is using it. And the only thing they really care about is if they work. This applies to men across all demographics, so I’m not even sure it’s fair to lay this particular charge strictly on white men. Yes, there are definitely larger and important issues at play but most people who don’t consume politics for a living (me) or are politically active (you) aren’t necessarily aware of that regardless of their political affiliation.
You have to remember, the only reason the majority of Democrats and liberals care about BC as an issue is because the GOP has been trying to restrict access to them (granted, this is a very good reason to care). And the only reason the GOP is doing this is to appease the religious extremists that make up their hardcore base as well as create a new wedge issue. If it wasn’t for that, the only people who would still be regularly talking about birth control would be Rick Santorum and the lunatics still trying to overturn Griswold v. Connecticut.
But that still leaves a lot of men, both liberal and conservative, who still don’t give much thought to birth control and aren’t going to be motivated to get out and vote over it. Marcotte is 100% correct that white conservative men tend to vote their resentment but to say that they’re petty because support for birth control doesn’t motivate them is unfair.
Ugh, I can’t believe I defended conservatives. I need a chemical scrub! STAT!
Posted in Blog Posts
Tagged birth control, Griswold v. Connecticut, Pandagon, Rick Santorum
What’s “Trail Life USA”? Only the coolest fucking thing to happen to boys since Jesus disemboweled a grizzly bear with one hand while tying a bowline with the other and turned the beast’s intestinal offal into honey-baked Easter ham to feed the multitudes of straight saved young men, that’s what! (Look it up; pretty sure it’s in Romans.)
Trail Life is the Godly alternative to that den of sin known as the Boy Scouts of America. Allied with the also-out-there American Heritage Girls—the non-strumpety alternative to those Girl Scouts whores—Trail Life purports to offer boys ”outdoor experiences… established on timeless values derived from the Bible.”
Yes, please seal yourself inside a bubble of self-reinforcing hate. Not only will you pull other extremists out of the mainstream, you’ll let the rest of the country see just how twisted you are. It’s a win-win for everyone!
Fox’s Chris Wallace spanked Darrell Issa (R-Bullshit Mountain) Sunday morning for his incessant lying about Benghazi:
A fact check last year had found that Issa was wrong to assert that Clinton approved an embassy cable in Libya because her “signature” was on it. In fact, the secretary’s signature is stamped on all cables.
“For the second time, they gave you ‘Four Pinocchios,’ which is their highest level of falsehood,” Wallace told Issa on Sunday.
Yet, right wingers still think that the GOP’s Head Witch Hunter is on the level and there was something fishy about Benghazi. Why? Simple. The right will believe ANY lie as long as it’s anti-Obama/anti-Clinton.
As I’ve said before, being a right wing politician/”journalist”/commentator must be the easiest job in the world. You can make up whatever garbage you want and your audience will lap it up and ask for seconds.
What I really want to know is how Fox will explain away their own debunking when Hilary runs and they resurrect all of their phony Benghazi talking points?
The Ukraine is in the middle of a revolution, overthrowing the pro-Russia government and hypothetically replacing it with a pro-European Union one. President Obama has insisted that there will be consequences if Russia intervenes and, today, Putin went ahead and did it anyway.
I’m not entirely sure it’s any of our business what the Ukraine does and I’m pretty sure that if Mexico was overthrown by a faction openly hostile to the United States, we’d be rolling across the border in a heartbeat. Overall, I’m kind of “meh” about butting heads with Russia over this and I’m not well versed in Eastern European politics so I don’t have a strong opinion on the whole matter.
What I am curious about is how the American right wing will react. Just a little over a year ago, Russia was still the evil hated boogey man for conservatives. Sarah Palin was keeping an eye on Russia, Obama’s “czars” were a threat to national security and Mitt Romney called Russia our #1 geopolitical foe. But then Putin started to openly oppose Obama and, WOW!, did the right do a whiplash 180. Suddenly Putin was a man’s man! A true leader! He made that wimpy Obama look like a…well, a wimp!
Will conservatives rejoice that Putin has very publicly told Obama to go frakk himself? I kind of think they will. These are the same people that insisted that not supporting a (Republican) president was tantamount to treason. Now, they will support anyone, even the president of a country they JUST spent 4 years fearmongering about, who will “stand up to” President Obama.
This cannot be stated often enough: Conservatives have no core values. The do not stand for anything, they only stand against.
or: “No, Right Wing Imbeciles, Liberals Do NOT Support ALL Leftists”
You have to hand it to right wingers: they are the masters of abusing every logical fallacy in existence.
The most recent example? The growing violence in Venezuela. A recurring theme is popping up on the right: Since the government of Venezuela is nominally a leftist one, all liberals must take the blame for its repressive nature. Oh, and HA HA! A lefty country is failing because libtards suck!
First, this kind of cruel joy at the sufferings of others is typical of right wingers. Nothing makes them happier to see people they don’t like in pain and misery. Because, you know, they’re good Christians or something. On the other hand, if Israel were to descend into a civil war, liberals might root for the racist warmongers currently in charge to be kicked out. What we wouldn’t do is crow about how awesome it is that a right wing government led its country into chaos and bloodshed. Possibly owing to the fact that liberals aren’t dicks.
Second, is there some unwritten law that says liberals must defend all leftist governments? I’m no fan of Castro and while Stalin was way before my time, I’m quite aware he was a monster. I don’t actually know any liberals that think Stalin was some kind of hero and while many liberals think our embargo of Cuba is silly (let’s face it, the embargo completely failed, time to move on), I can’t think of any that lionize Castro.
What we’re really seeing is a pathetic attempt to smear liberalism by pretending we worship extreme left wing dictators. Meanwhile, the only difference between several Middle Eastern theocratic oligarchies and what the right openly advocates for America is the religion. If Iran was run by Christian fanatics instead of Muslim fanatics, the right would abandon Israel in a heartbeat to embrace their new best friends.
But let’s all keep pretending liberals all love communist/socialist regimes, no matter how cruel they are. After all, if the right didn’t have their empty chairs to argue with, they might have to face reality for a change and that might make their tiny hate-filled brains explode.
I know the Volkswagen/UAW vote is over and the union lost by a fairly slim margin (712-626 or just 45 votes the other way) but it’s still worth noting that the GOP did everything it could to interfere. They lied about Volkswagen bringing more jobs to the area if the workers voted against the union (which VW repeatedly denied) and they flat out threatened the company:
State Senator Bo Watson, who represents a suburb of Chattanooga, warned on Monday that if VW’s workers voted to embrace the U.A.W., the Republican-controlled Legislature might vote against approving future incentives to help the plant expand.
“The members of the Tennessee Senate will not view unionization as in the best interest of Tennessee,” Mr. Watson said at a news conference. He added that a pro-U.A.W. vote would make it “exponentially more challenging” for the legislature to approve future subsidies.
Mind you, Volkswagen WANTED the union. Unions, of course, helped the American middle class (and America itself) thrive and grow for decades. But unions are one of the most effective counters to the massive amount of money corporations pour into elections. They also keep corporate greed in check. Hence, unions must not be allowed to propagate. Can’t have the common rabble pooling their resources to have a voice to match the billionaires, can we?
