"If for no other reason, rage against the machine, vote for Newt; annoy a liberal, vote Newt. Keep this vetting process going, keep the debate going," said Sharia Plan.
Keep on rootin' for Pig Newton, says I.
(H/t GottaLaff. I have to go with two words, though.)
Thought about this post all day and haven't come up with a satisfactory (to me) thing to say...so I'll just put out a flawed thing. My impression based on my experience with (some) politically connected progressive Catholics is that... they disagree with the people in charge about birth control, they certainly don't personally disapprove of the use of birth control, yet... think public policy should still cater to the will of those in the hierarchy who they disagree with.
No I have not managed to make sense of this. Perhaps there is sense to be made, or perhaps I am just getting it wrong.
I grew up Catholic, went to the same Catholic high school as This Hippie, and have also for Professional Reasons read more official pronouncements from the Irish Catholic Hierarchy 1900-1960 than is sensible.
So I am an Expert.
I think the issue here may be with "politically connected Catholic progressives."
This may be a very small slice of "Catholic progressives." My mom was a way left Catholic, as is my FIL. Both of them sort of gave up on the political sort of thing, and instead devoted themselves to practical efforts like hospice social work and rural poor home construction.
In this new Catholic century, people like my mom said "nuts, who cares, I will just live out my life in service to the less fortunate, that should be cool." People like William Donohue yell a lot about bullshit. He'll die rich. Mom didn't!
So it's paradoxical because... it's paradoxical. My mom in her last months was distressed terribly because of her outrage against how Rome was treating leftist nuns, a lot of whom were her friends. She was torn up because she felt her religion was betraying her, as it indeed was. As it happens, you can't just do good for the poor without pissing someone off. Perhaps a bishop.
So, yeah. To be "Catholic" means to submit to the arbitrary moral judgments of a bunch of assholes. It just does. That Catholicism might be about anything else... have I mentioned that I've read 2/3 of a century's worth of the statements of the Irish hierarchy? Guess how much of a percentage of the bishops' wisdom is about "care for the poor" and how much is about "obey." Go on, guess. Hint: you're right.
The point is that "progressive Catholicism" is a contradiction not in terms but in lived politics. Great, wonderful people. But fucking confused.
Very different from everyone else.
Or not. If I could answer these contradictions, I would still be a Catholic. I can't. So I ain't.
MAS. The point is, that if the church wanted to be less authoritarian, it could be a powerful force for good, as it is now in some cases despite itself. But it doesn't. So fuck it.
The Gateway Pundit missed this debunking, but we do learn a bit as to his target demographic, as revealed by this ad at his site:
They cart you upstairs extra fast when you're fleeing the Black Gay Musselmen Home Invasions made mandatory by Obamacare. The device is propelled by artfully concealed shotguns.
And then we have the Very Prestigious Glenn Reynolds, who, recall, trumpeted:
Gosh. The news that the Daily Mail's Ace Science Reporter, David Rose, deliberately distorted his sources in order to spread lies... pierces the Singularity not at all.
Because Glenn Reynolds is, at the end of the day, a dick.
He was that at the beginning of the day also. And throughout the morning and afternoon.
If you look at the last link, it shows how the Daily Mail's David Rose has been publishing the same bullshit story for years, with the last instance occuring in November of 2011. It is fairly clear that whenever any temperature data are released, Rose will figure out a way to say it says that we're headed for another Ice Age by next Tuesday.
The quotes from Judith Curry are interesting; here is Judith Curry in November of last year, which is by Daily Mail math sixteen months ago:
With regard to the Rose article. The article spun my comments in ways that I never intended.I do not see any issue surrounding BEST that is in any way analogous to Climategate.
Fool me once, shame on me. Fool me twice, catapult the propaganda. Fuck me three times.
Glenn Reynolds though is a Neutral Observer, which would be useful if he weren't also a disingenuous twatwaffle.* No, stupid, the data from the last 15 years does not show a cooling trend. (Omigod.)
*("Twatwaffle" is MollyI's favorite curse word. It is poetry.)
Liam Neeson is emotional and ungracious in a local TV interview about his upcoming wolf-punching movie. Watch it and cringe. If he's this upset now, what's going to happen when he has to do PR for Battleship?
By this weekend, Mr. Romney’s aides were on the offensive and increasingly confident, with some combination of their strategy and Mr. Gingrich’s own performance swinging polls in Mr. Romney’s direction. Even as it acknowledged the damage inflicted on Mr. Romney by the past several weeks, his team suggested that it had learned a lesson about never letting up on rivals, especially if Mr. Romney wins the nomination and confronts Mr. Obama in the general election.
They spent a shitload of money on attack ads.
On Saturday, Mr. Gingrich vowed to fight on to the Republican convention, backed by a well-financed “super PAC,” the enthusiasm of grass-roots conservatives and sympathetic statements from the likes of Sarah Palin, who in a Fox Business interview late last week said the “establishment” was trying to “crucify” Mr. Gingrich.
OMIGOD! THEY SPENT A SHITLOAD OF MONEY ON ATTACK ADS.
With the Florida primary two days away, Mr. Gingrich is now facing the full capabilities of a Romney team that was built for battle, but that by several accounts became so confident during primary season that it failed to see Mr. Gingrich’s latest resurgence coming, presuming that he had been left for dead in Iowa.
"Facing the full capabilities of a Romney team that was built for battle"is the single most douchebag sentence ever written and whoever wrote it should be fucking ashamed forever.
How the FUCK do you achieve the state of utter abjection that you write, and apparently mean, these words:
the full capabilities of a Romney team that was built for battle
The Shark Tank has learned from a source close to the Newt Gingrich Campaign that Herman Cain will be endorsing Newt Gingrich for President at tonight’s Palm Beach County REC Lincoln Day Dinner.
So this thing here, that I'm about to link to, is obvious trolling -- indeed, it's pure fucking trolling, in the classic sense of the term, which would be "deliberately acting like an asshole in order to provoke some sort of reaction." Some argue that one ought never to respond to trolls, but as is usually the case with the sort of arguments proffered by "Some," that fucker, that is all my balls.
This horrible post at the SHAZAM link below is as I see it the essential "pro-life" post, and indeed the essential wingnut post. It Is Wingnut, hear it whine...:
Do I believe pro-life people are prettier than the pro-abortion crowd? Absolutely, I do.
They are prettier on the inside, which in turn radiates to the exterior.
Pope Benedict has a cute little pancreas, which explains why he is so darn fuckable.
All one had to do to see my point was spend ten minutes observing the participants at this week's 39th Annual March for Life held in Washington D.C.
People beat off to different things. I do not judge.
The pro-life marchers were seeping joy from every pore and exuding an unmistakable wholesomeness.
When one closely examines each and evey pore of another human being for the purposes of joy-seepage assessment, one becomes slightly intrusive. And if I want the aroma of "exuding an unmistkable wholesomeness," I'll cook bacon.
That's because being pro-life is a wholesome and good thing. There is nothing good and wholesome about being pro-abortion. Abortion is ugly and so are its supporters.
And that's trolling!
Honestly, that's all that is. Trolling. FUCK YOU I AM PRETTY!
I mean...
Compare the attitudes and smiles of the pro-life youth with those of the 2 dozen pro-abortion counter protesters—angry snarls, taunting obscenities, and hateful frowns. Ugliness is the purest sense. They held signs declaring "Keep Abortion Safe, Legal, and Rare" and "My Body, My Choice," completely oblivious to the irony of their messages.
Why the word "rare"? If abortion is a good thing, why should it be a rare thing? Could it be, perhaps, because it's a bad thing—a very bad thing, the worst thing ever?
So, by their own admission these women acknowledge that abortion is not good yet continue to support it. "My Body, My Choice" signs leave me as equally dumbfounded because infants in the womb have bodies too. They are not incorporeal spirit beings that don't assume their human form until being born. *Poof* it's a baby! No, human development does not work that way. A pre-born baby has a body and I am sure if you asked him or her, he or she would "choose" to be born.
There is a lot of nonsense here (the "interview with a fetus" stuff is great), but if you point that out, you are no longer "pretty," so I'll refrain. (I AM AM VERY FUCKING PRETTY DAMMIT YOU MOTHERFUCKERS. I AM EXTREMELY SENSITIVE TO THE "NOT PRETTY" CHARGE, PLEASE BE RESPECTFUL OF MY FEELINGS IN THIS REGARD. I AM PRETTY.)
And it goes on.
Even when the pro-abortion advocates were not taunting and yelling at the crowds they were less attractive than the pro-life marchers. Frankly, the women in the pro-abortion camp looked trashy. It comes from that lack of wholesomeness that I am speaking about. They did not look like wholesome girls a young man would take home to meet his parents.
I am too pretty to understand why this is crazy obnoxious. Giggle.
Or else: I am a straight, married man with kids, and I am SO FUCKING PRETTY that I support a woman's right to make her own decisons about her life.
Honestly, I don't know where to begin. Oh, how about here: I may have to stop watching television. Because every time it's on, I become more and more convinced this country is a maggot-covered pustule on the ass of the goatse (Google with caution--not for weak stomachs) guy. Do you find that description disgusting? Good. I'd like to you know my pain.
The day usually begins at 6 AM (OK, 5:30, but who's keeping track?) with Morning Joe, which lately seems to be even more village idioty than usual. That fact that the panel actually has serious discussions about whether a Richie Rich Robot with Magic Metal Underwear or a Walking Ham-Fart is a better person to lead our country is further proof that the MSM is no longer interested in actually reporting news or informing viewers. Basically what most MSM news-oriented shows have become is sports commentary. This is all a game to them. The fact that an oligarch or racist may become president is of no importance to the village idiots--they're having fun. And, hey, I get that. Sometimes the meanie in me enjoys watching the clowns emerge from the clown cars, falling down and vomiting all over themselves. I mean, car wrecks are interesting; but clown car wrecks are spectacular.
But at some point I just ache for someone to blurt out that the Republican party is made up of crazy people, sociopaths and people with Narcissistic Personality Disorder. I mean, Newtie's "Foodstamper, please!*" dogwhistles aren't really dogwhistles. They're more like dogscreams. Which either means A.) Newt is a racist or B.) is willing to exploit racist sentiment in his quest for power. How is this not causing everyone to have a Scanners-style meltdown?
The other night I was getting my fake-ass nails done, and the new there-is-no-godawful Erin Burnett show was on. The first issue discussed was the proposal of new taxes for millionaires. Because Erin Burnett is a dumb cow who--actually, really, YES--once argued that we should accept that some of our goods from China might be poisoned because they are affordable, I knew exactly where the discussion was going to go. It was one of those discussions where Point B had already been decided on and Point A was gonna get us there even if she had to wrestle it to the ground and kick it in the head and take a dump on its chest. Silly, middle-classers, don't you know that even if we taxed the millionaires at 100% it still wouldn't erase the debt?...which is a cute little trick, because it assumes that everyone believes that the debt is something that has be addressed right now or the universe will implode, babies will be gay-raped and Two and a Half Men will be cancelled. The one panelist who-- gosh darnit-- was "just doing the math" pointed out that the middle class was still our biggest resource for tax revenue. Should we tax the middle class more? Our sad, befuddled panelist JUST DIDN'T KNOW.
Oh, and then there's South Carolina debate audience...to which I would like to write a very short open letter:
Dear South Carolina Republicans,
If it weren't for Charleston--which is admittedly awesome and not just 'cuz I was born there--I would be happy if you seceded. You are a bunch of classless neanderthals. Your behavior at the debates made me cringe, made me ashamed of our nation. Hooting and hollering as if you were at a high school pep rally while attending a presidential nominee debate is something that just isn't done. Not in a civilized society. I know those racist dogwhistles got you all riled up, made your ears perk up, and your fur get all vertical...but you should have contained yourself. Save your vulgar displays of contempt for your fellow Americans for the next Secession Ball. And until then, kindly go FUCK YOURSELVES.
Much Obliged,
A Southern Belle You Don't Want to Tangle With
*phrase from the brilliant aimai at alicublog. I tried to Google the comment and couldn't find it.
Because Jim Hoft is smarter than "Keynes," which is an anagram for "Lenin." The link allows us to discover something wonderful:
The Brits are the latest country to dump the “spend your way to wealth” Obama-Pelosi prosperity plan. The Brits moved ahead with their austerity plan despite the recent letter from Obama urging G20 nations to continues to spend like drunken sailors.
