Pandagon

The sudden new love of free speech on the right takes an ominious turn today.

As AAN editors and publishers try to determine if this is an issue of free speech, religious intolerance or cultural misunderstanding, many of them have become targets of at least one mass e-mail campaign calling on them to publish the cartoons.

RightMarch.com, a group formed in March 2003 “to counter the well-financed antics of radical left-wing groups like MoveOn.org” seems to be the source of the majority of these e-mails.

They recently published an alert, “Support Freedom of the Press for ALL People: Tell the American Media to Publish Danish Cartoons!” which asks people “to send YOUR letters to local and national media, asking them to publish the cartoons in solidarity with the people of free Europe and in support of the concept of freedom of the press.” ….

The RightMarch letter claims, among other things, that the Christian religion and Christian leaders are “portrayed in unflattering, even blasphemous, ways by secularists in the mainstream media … ALL THE TIME in America.”

When asked to provide a concrete example of this claim, Dukes cites media “condemnation” of the Religious Right and the movie The Passion of the Christ, as well as “a television show concerning a pastor that was very much anti-religion.” (NBC’s The Book of Daniel.)

And that tapped out my credulity that this dust-up over these Danish cartoons is a genuine grassroots effort at racist shit-stirring. These letters are feeding off not only years worth of anti-Muslim propaganda but another strain of right wing paranoia that Christianity is under attack. It’s just so perfect, a marvelous way to play on the red base’s belief that they are engaged in a holy war.

And wow, the timing couldn’t be better for BushCo! Isn’t that a coincidence? As long as Muslims are rioting, other news just doesn’t seem as interesting, even the sort of news that might incline the Republican base to rethink their affection for BushCo.

Today’s Very Special Day By Day is about the delicate subject of how to mourn a beloved civil rights leader.

We here at “Help Chris Muir Find TEH FUNNY” are sure he meant well by this most unfunny strip, so we tried to be gentle with the revisions, available below the fold.

Continue reading ‘A Very Special Edition Help Chris Muir Find TEH FUNNY’

The letters to the editor of the Austin Chronicle regarding a recent article about family planning spending cuts are mostly whining about the cover art, but there’s actually a couple that address something important–women’s health care and how anti-science religious ideologues are a threat to it. This letter was particularly startling, so I thought I’d share it.

I’m insured, partnered, and have access to “good health care.” All that privilege did not protect me from a local obstetrician who neglected to inform me of potential health hazards or treat me after I miscarried. His advice, “You’re fine. To avoid further problems, you need to practice abstinence and get married.”

Several weeks later, after a visit to my regular physician, I had to undergo an emergency D&C. The local obstetrician didn’t “offer” that particular service, even if my life depended on it. Because of mandatory state regulations, I had to endure a waiting period and was forced to listen to a tape about alternatives to abortion. Finally, my regular doctor had to convince my insurance company that I was not having “elective surgery.”

There are so many things that I hate about this episode in my life. The local obstetrician I trusted with my first attempt to have a child couldn’t find room in his big, Christian heart for me after he figured out that I’d miscarried and I wasn’t married. He didn’t bother to tell me I might need further medical attention. I hate that I had to wait to receive a procedure necessary to preserve my health, as if I had a choice whether or not to continue a pregnancy that had sadly already ended. I hate that the insurance company needed to be convinced that my life was worth the years of premiums paid to them.

The letter writer was writing in to complain about the cover art, but I wanted to highlight this passage in my ongoing quest to kneecap the lie that anti-choicers care about “life”. This woman was pregnant and wanted a baby. But there was no baby on its way–the fetus was dead. For health reasons, she needed the abortion, but no, the doctor wasn’t going to abort her pregnancy, because he wanted her to suffer for having sex.

Forced pregnancy proponents have been very good about tricking people into using the inaccurate term “aborting a fetus”. You don’t abort a fetus; you abort a pregnancy. I’ve been acccused of hair-splitting when I say that, but it’s not hair-splitting at all, but a fundamental reminder of how anti-choicers carefully craft language to erase the humanity of women from the debate. But there was no fetus to preserve in this situation, just a sexual woman who needed to be punished.

Stories like this give us a hint of what’s to come when the state regains the power to force women to be pregnant against their will–women forced to carry around dead fetuses, patients in the E.R. who’ve had miscarriages getting questioned by the police, doctors afraid to perform routine procedures like a D&C for fear of getting accused of aborting pregnancies. All for no reason greater than to remind women that our sexual organs do not belong to us.

Under the fold, who you have to thank when this woman’s experiences become standard-issue.

Continue reading ‘Your pregnancy is a punishment from god’

Scout Prime at First Draft has a great post on two examples of the lack of accountability in the Chimp’s “faith-based initiative.”

Case 1: The WaPo features the tale of House of Refuge in Salt Lake City. An alleged rehabilitation program at a church, the entity is facing allegations that it forced people to work as telemarketers for 28 cents an hour under the threat they could go back to jail. Oh, and the church withheld even those pitiful wages and pocketed it all.

Case 2: The New Orleans Times-Picayune reports an outfit called Lighthouse Disaster Relief, hastily put together by Pastor Gary Heldreth in the aftermath of Katrina, was hired by FEMA to construct a base camp for first responders and St. Bernard Parish employees. For this, Lighthouse was paid $5 million taxpayer dollars — and didn’t do the work according to the GSA.

The General Services Administration spokespeople couldn’t even confirm how Lighthouse cropped up on the list of approved, qualified contractors or whether anyone ever vetted Heldreth’s “faith-based firm.” Jeebus, in a PBS interview, Heldreth didn’t even claim that Lighthouse had any experience: “About the closest thing I have done to this is just organize a youth camp with my church.”

Even worse, after FEMA shelled out the $5.2 million and ended its contract with Lighthouse — the incompetent agency had to bring in another company to finish the job.

Scout nails this outrage cold.

Can anyone claiming to work for God belly up to Bush’s faith-based tit and suck away with no questions asked? I’m sorry Pastor Gary, if you are indeed a pastor, the taxpayers have the right to ask questions and receive answers before, during and after your work for us. As we can see now it would have been best to ask question BEFORE hand. Better yet dump the Christian moocher initiative all together and give us good government.

BTW, there is a fundraising drive to send Scout Prime, who has done superb reporting on Katrina-related events, to NOLA to do on-site reporting in March. Check it out.

The American Family Association has this up on its site and is grinding up the federal Marriage Protection Act machine, e-blasting its sheeple.

Senate To Vote On Homosexual Marriage Ban In Early March

Action Needed Today! Help Send U.S. Senate One Million Letters Supporting Marriage Protection Amendment

The U.S. Senate will vote on the Marriage Protection Amendment (MPA) in early March. This constitutional amendment will make marriage between one man and one woman the only legal marriage.

Your help is needed in sending one million emails to the Senate in support of the MPA.

Senators who vote against the MPA, or support a filibuster to avoid a vote on the MPA, are supporting homosexual marriage.

ACTION NEEDED TODAY!

Please enter your zip code above or below and click “GO” to send your two Senators an email, then forward this to your friends and family urging them to do the same. The “Tell A Friend” link found below is an easy way to pass this important message to your friends and family. Those favoring homosexual marriage are already contacting their Senators urging defeat of the MPA.

Time is short! Please send your letters of support today! Ask members of your Sunday School class and church to send an email in support of the MPA. Ask your pastor to put an announcement in the church bulletin and newsletter. They can send an email by clicking on AFA.net.

Simply enter your zip code above or below to send your emails to your two U.S. Senators. Remember, it is very important to forward this to friends and family if we are to reach our goal of one million. (Our system will not accept invalid email addresses.)

If you think our efforts are worthy, please help us promote traditional marriage with a small donation by clicking here.

Thanks for caring enough to get involved!

Sincerely,

Donald E. Wildmon, Founder and Chairman
American Family Association

The AFA knows that it wil be acted upon in March, and we don’t? I looked at the Human Rights Campaign site. Nada. National Gay and Lesbian Task Force site - zip.

I did a few searches for news on this; I pulled nothing up about a March vote. I posted on Melissa McEwan’s January 29 Raw Story article, reporting that Senator Wayne Allard (R-CO), a co-sponsor of the joint resolution, indicated Senate Majority leader Bill Frist (R- TN) would bring it to a vote in 2006 — but not with a date attached to that bit of information.

So Wildmon is either blowing smoke or he’s on the Frist bat phone. You guess which is more likely. More after the flip.
Continue reading ‘AFA: Senate marriage amendment vote is slated for March’

The Rev. Dr. Joseph Lowery, in keeping with the spirit of political truth-telling set by Dr. Martin Luther King and Mrs. King, said this at Coretta’s funeral today (Think Progress):

We know now there were no weapons of mass destruction over there. [Standing Ovation] But Coretta knew and we know that there are weapons of misdirection right down here. Millions without health insurance. Poverty abounds. For war billions more but no more for the poor.

The moment those words left Lowery’s lips, you knew it was only a matter of time before the Swift Boating would begin. Apparently it didn’t take long at all.

Lest we forget the class of the people we’re dealing with, the cretins who stand behind the criminal Bush administration no matter what, we only need to turn to the desperate, filthy underbelly of The Republican Base. Read my friends, this statement by the founder of the Free Republic, Jim Robinson.

We oppose all forms of liberalism, socialism, fascism, pacifism, totalitarianism, anarchism, government enforced atheism, abortionism, feminism, homosexualism, racism, wacko environmentalism, judicial activism, etc.

With that laughably and quickly dispatched, let’s take a look at the Republican base. Let’s also look at the black Republicans, because Coretta and Dr. King fought for their right to lie down with the flea-ridden dogs of The Base…
Continue reading ‘This is the Republican base’

(Anne Taintor image)

In honor of our recent troll influx, I thought I would welcome our guests by going over some of their “sincere” beliefs about feminists and help direct them to which ones are true and which ones are not so they can quit coming off like complete asses.

Feminists think there’s no difference between men and women.

Very much untrue. Feminists in fact are desperately trying to get Congress, the Supreme Court and the nation at large to understand that no matter how much some men sincerely believe otherwise, uteruses only exist in female bodies and therefore women should be the decision makers when it comes to how said uteruses are used.

Feminists hate men.

This myth is frequently trotted out by the exact same people who think that we think we are men. That said, there is a little known fact that male dominance and the biological reality of men are one and the same thing, due to a curse laid on half the human race by the wicked Witch Mispenasa. It’s said that if ever women should achieve equality with men, men will cease to exist altogether. So if feminists are fighting against male dominance, we have no choice but to believe they are out to destroy men themselves.

Continue reading ‘Feminist myths 101′

A reader sent me this supposed-to-be touching article about a doctor who’s torn between giving his patient medication that actually treats her schizophrenia but causes her to gain weight or giving her a drug that doesn’t work but preserves her looks in a way that the doctor approves of.

It was likely that the weight gain associated with Olanzapine would be very difficult to treat and that Nia would be fat, if not obese. But more disconcerting to the young psychiatrist was Nia’s apparent indifference to her predicament. While those around her worried about the beauty she had lost, she seemed unconcerned. Was she really as well as her family suggested? Had she really rejoined the image-conscious world of her peers?

Is there a chance that she was so relieved that her mind wasn’t driving her crazy anymore that the side effects seemed like a minor concern? Of course not–any woman who thinks there’s anything more important than beauty is by definition mentally ill. Jesus.

For further reading on the distressing influence of the romanticized stereotype of the beautiful, white, crazy girl on the quality of mental health care, I have to recommend Bitch again–there’s an article by a woman who only calls herself Angelina in the byline called “Black Girl, Interrupted”. The shoddy treatment the author receives when she seeks help for her depression is absolutely maddening.

Zuzu has more.

Bow down before the bird, patriots. *

As the NSA spying scandal heats up and it’s becoming more and more clear that the reason Bush wanted to skirt warrant requirements is because he’s keeping tabs on who he considers his real enemies, which are not vote-garnering terrorists but the political opposition, a certain theme is appearing with frequency in the conservative punditry. No, not just the workaday “I love being spied on!” crap. As usual, I’m interested in the stuff that plays around the edges, doesn’t come right out and say it. From the heights of David Brooks:

Over the past several years, theaters have been inundated by a series of films that all have the same plot. Whether it is “Hoosiers,” “Glory Road,” “Coach Carter,” “Remember the Titans,” “Miracle,” “The Replacements” or a hundred others you’ve barely heard of, the core elements are always the same. A tough, no-nonsense coach, usually with a shadow-filled past, takes over a shambolic, underfunded team. He forces his players to work harder than they ever thought they could. He inspires them to sacrifice for the greater good. Finally, he leads them to glory over richer and more respected rivals…..

•Thirty years ago, young people were told to question authority. But the heroes of these movies are coaches who are unabashed authority figures.

•Thirty years ago, there was a revolt against traditional manliness, but these coaches are stereotypical manly men.

•Thirty years ago, students were warned of the dangers of conformity, of the crushing banality of the Organization Man. But in this world success comes only when individuals subordinate themselves to the team.

To the lows of my favorite crazy bat at Townhall:

Yes, you heard it here, on a conservative, semi-libertarian website: obedience can be a virtue. Obedi-phobia is a cultural and personal disaster. Don’t bother looking it up: I just invented it. Obedi-phobia means a pathological fear of obedience to legitimate authority.

And even at Hugo Schwyzer’s blog there was a debate about a supposedly eternal virtue–you guessed it, obedience.

Bowing down and shutting up in the face of authority isn’t, as Morse hints at, really the face that conservatives like to put on their movement. Submission is considered a feminine trait and the main schtick of conservative punditry for the past 15 or so years is to paint their side as rebellious bad boys bucking phantom authority figures, like all-powerful feminists, the secret cabal of Hollywood liberals and of course, Michael Bérubé.

And that was working for the Republicans, since they knew that this pseudo-rebellious attitude was being inoculated in people who have nobody real to bristle at. (Besides the boss, but as we all know, the boss may be a pain in your ass, but he’s on your side against the real enemy–the pro-abortionist feminist conspiracy of Hollywood liberals who love Mexican immigrants.) But I guess the party is scared now because telling their voters, “We’ll be spying on you non-stop from here on,” doesn’t really sit well with the devil-may-care-libertarian myth of rebellious bad boy conservatism.

Brooks’ attempt to gently transistion the weenies-in-golf-pants contigency from imagining themselves as rebels against the feminist cabal and warriors against the Muslim menace to imagining themselves as obedient-yet-manly high school athletes under the direction of the Shrub-as-football-coach intrigues me. Will they fall for this attempt to distract them from the fact that the basic freedoms they’ve purported to support for all these years are under attack? Are they really so dumb as to buy into yet another maudlin masculine stereotype and blindly go along with whatever BushCo asks for fear that doing otherwise would make them less than All Man? Is J*ff G*ldstein really afraid that my cock is bigger than his?

Rhetorical questions, people. We all know the answer is yes. Obedience–it’s the new bad boy rebellion. I can’t wait until Goldberg starts writing about how he found peace through learning to put his head down and obey.

(Image from Grrlscientist’s badass post on something completely different.)

Does Turdblossum have cement shoes waiting for members of Senate Judiciary Committee if they do not do his bidding? This is how our country is run folks, low-life political thuggury driven by an unelected bastard who sleeps like a baby at night. (Insight):

The White House has been twisting arms to ensure that no Republican member votes against President Bush in the Senate Judiciary Committee’s investigation of the administration’s unauthorized wiretapping.

Congressional sources said Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove has threatened to blacklist any Republican who votes against the president. The sources said the blacklist would mean a halt in any White House political or financial support of senators running for re-election in November.

“It’s hardball all the way,” a senior GOP congressional aide said.

As Shakes Sis says…

Here’s a tip to spineless Republicans considering collapsing to their knees and sucking Rove’s dick yet again: Call Bush on his bullshit, and you won’t need appearances and photo-ops with him in the fall. You’ll be able to hold your head up high and tell your constituents that you held a lawbreaker accountable.

That would assume that these self-preservationists have any consciences. I think they checked them at the door long ago. Along with missing consciences, it looks like there aren’t any balls to be found either.

Those deemed disloyal to Mr. Rove would appear on his blacklist. The sources said dozens of GOP members in the House and Senate are on that list.

So far, only a handful of GOP senators have questioned Mr. Rove’s tactics.

My question — do any of the reporters, now that this story is out there, have the stones to ask Scott “Fetal Position” McClellan in the press briefing about Rove’s “conversations” with his blacklist buddies?

This one is ripe for the picking. Someone needs to get these White House stooges (and a some folks on the Hill) on the record about the strongarming. I know, I’m hallucinating. That would require a White House press corps that remembers how to do its job.

Hat tip, Ms. Julien.

Jamie-Andrea Yanak/Associated Press

There’s nothing like a fresh serving of unhinged Rev. Pat to perk you up in the afternoon, is there?

He picked up the holy batsh*t phone and received his latest message from above to enlighten us all about racial balance in Europe. From the February 6 edition of CBN’s The 700 Club (Media Matters):

ROBERTSON: Studies that I have read indicate that having babies is a sign of a faith in the future. You know, unless you believe in the future, you’re not going to take the trouble of raising a child, educating a child, doing something. If there is no future, why do it? Well, unless you believe in God, there’s really no future. And when you go back to the existentialism of Jean-Paul Sartre, the whole idea of this desperate nightmare we are in — you know, that we are in this prison, and it has no hope, no exit. That kind of philosophy has permeated the intellectual thinking of Europe, and hopefully it doesn’t come here. But nevertheless, ladies and gentlemen, Europe is right now in the midst of racial suicide because of the declining birth rate. And they just can’t get it together. Why? There’s no hope.

As you ponder Pat’s visions of waves of multiplying dark people across the pond and the end of Europe as we know it, you can watch him on video.

Also:
* Wingers losing patience with Crazy Pat

Bitch’s 10th anniversary edition is out! I love this magazine; right now it’s the only one I subscribe to, though I do need to get around to renewing my subscription to Organic Gardening. For the 10th anniversary, they have an article explaining what all the different kinds of feminisms you’ll see are about. This useful (though of course not comprehensive) summary by Rachel Fudge is a great starting point for someone who’s interested in feminism but might be a bit intimidated by all the modifiers that fly around like “liberal”, “radical”, “equity”, “third wave”, etc.

She also addresses misconceptions about what these words mean, and as you can imagine, most of the misconceptions come from anti-feminist propaganda. Radical feminism, for instance, is a specific set of political beliefs and strategies, but the word generally now is used mostly to slur women who both have opinions and state them. Interestingly, the only feminism really predicated on the belief that women are superior to men is not radical feminism, contrary to anti-feminist propaganda, but what’s best described as “difference” feminism, which one could argue is the most mainstream version of feminism, because the media can cherry-pick parts of the difference feminists’ writings and use it to reinforce the same old message of male superiority.

If anyone’s curious, I do in fact get emails from people who want to discuss their theory that women are superior to men. And every single one of these emails has been from men. I have no idea what this means.

Continue reading ‘It’s not the smart mouth that makes her radical; it’s the big brain’

Charlotte Hays at IWF has predictably taken the occasion of Betty Friedan’s death to piss on Friedan’s legacy and wax poetic about the housewife’s life. Reading or hearing handsomely paid female conservative pundits romanticize housewifery reminds me of nothing so much as reading old pastorals written by people who didn’t actually do any of the pig shit shoveling and as such could imagine a farmer’s life was non-stop bliss. Hays is comparing Friedan unfavorably to Phyllis Schlafly in this post, and it’s a model of how not to construct an argument. Maybe Hays really should reconsider and live the life she praises of cooking, cleaning and shutting up.

Though still very much with us, Schlafly certainly realizes that she’s not going to be accorded the sendoff Friedan is receiving from the mainstream press when her time comes.

This much is true. Friedan is getting kind, grateful words from all over the place from women, who do owe her much for her relentless activism that improved women’s lives by making employment, housing, medical care and marriage less discriminatory against women. I don’t really see there being cause for people to write laudatory pieces on Schlafly–what are women supposed to thank her for, again? Promoting the idea that the rest of us are as stupid as her and want the boot on our necks?

Continue reading ‘But I thought making speeches and writing books was housework’

Good news–Britain is replacing funding that the U.S. cut from family planning services overseas, a move the U.S. only took to mollify the self-righteous creepy sexist faction of our population. These funding cuts represent a real low in American misogyny, considering that this action has directly resulted in a rise of the number of women who die the distinctly painful death from botched abortions.

Nearly 70,000 women and girls died last year because they went to back-street abortionists. Hundreds of thousands of others suffered serious injuries.

Critics of America’s aid policy say some might have lived if the US had not withdrawn funding from clinics that provide safe services - or that simply tell women where to find them.

I love that even the Guardian is falling on the “critics say” structure when writing facts that conservatives are in denial about. Deaths from botched abortion aren’t the only source of blood on the hands of the “punish the slut” crowd, either, because these funding cuts to family planning services also mean that more women are being forced to carry pregnancies to term, a distinctly dangerous activity to undertake in some parts of the world without adequate health care. I linked it yesterday but it bears repeating–how many women would be alive today if they could have prevented or aborted pregnancies that result in death from childbirth or from longer term health problems like fistulas. If you think abortion is icky, I suggest reading up on what happens when women who probably needed to abort are forced to have children under dangerous circumstances.

Ack, I know I’m a broken record but it’s just maddening–we cannot abide by the lie that anti-choicers are “pro-life” any longer. There is nothing pro-life about pushing for U.S. policies guaranteed to kill women, often in the most gruesome ways imaginable. Funding cuts like this have shit-all to do with “life”–the most generous reading of the motivation is “pro-sperm”, in that nothing should interfere with the process of glorious male seed turning into social evidence of virility (otherwise known as “children”), certainly not some sentimental regard for the lives of women.

(Speaking of–Twisty, some of us totally got your back.)

Of course, for those of us who do care about women’s health, then the conclusion is obvious–abortion is good.