I seem to recall not long ago that in one of those usual “where da wimmin at?” web contretemps, there were claims that women just weren’t loud and bold enough to make their voices heard.
All you have to do is read Helen Thomas’s “Lap Dogs of the Press” and Molly Ivins’ “Enough of the D.C. Dems” to know that that isn’t true. They’re exactly spot on, and it’s good to see some uncompromising criticisms of the feeble old men of the media and the Democratic party.
(via Echidne and Phronesisaical)
Shame on you, South Dakota. Watch this clip of SD’s abortion politics; on the one hand, you have to respect people who have been providing abortion services to the state for years, like Dr Miriam McCreary (now criminalized), and the few representatives, like Elaine Roberts, who have opposed the law, but you also have to see that sexist asshat, Bill Napoli, ramble on about how he might make exceptions for religious virgins who had been brutally raped.
He’s probably going to get reelected, when in a just world he ought to be embarrassed to be seen in public without a bag over his head.
I hadn’t heard this part of Napoli’s argument before, either: he justifies the law banning abortions by appealing to fuzzy sentimentality about the way America used to be.
If a young man got a girl pregnant out of wedlock, they got married.
How biblical of Mr Napoli. Rape a girl, and if she gets pregnant, the whole community turns out to punish her some more by making her marry her rapist. Face it, this really is about treating women as chattel.
DFLers, today is the day for the precinct caucuses. Here in Morris, we’re meeting in Old Number One Southside at 7 PM—be there! Most importantly, Pete Wyckoff is running for the chairmanship of the Stevens County DFL party. We need to get a scientist elected for the position, since this is our first step in American domination, which will culminate in the election of a philosopher-king to run the country.
First Stevens County, Minnesota…then the world!
Minnesota had a vampire running for governor, which was pretty messed up…but Pandagon has found a couple of real prizes among the new crop of candidates, Merrill Keiser and Larry Kilgore. Keiser is anti-abortion and anti-homosexuals—he thinks homosexuality should be punishable by death. Kilgore wants the same thing, and also thinks adultery warrants execution. Just crazy stuff, huh?
There is a difference between our Jonathan the Impaler and these two Christian wingnuts: the vampire is a joke without a prayer of victory, but Keiser and Kilgore are typical excrescences of Christian Fundamentalism, with endorsements and money and a voting population that contains enough insane people who will pull the lever for anyone calling themselves “Christian” that they’ll get a number of votes. I don’t think they can win, but they’ll be taken seriously by far too many people.
They’ll also have a loud segment of the media behind them. Talk radio has kooks like Andrew Wilkow (whose rant you can hear at Crooks and Liars). I don’t think Wilkow is an isolated case; I’m an NPR kind of guy, but flipping around the radio dial here is a frightening experience.
And, of course, there is the current definitive example of the inmate running the asylum: Governor Mike Rounds of South Dakota. There is a tendency to dismiss people like Keiser and Kilgore as mere radical outliers, weirdos who really aren’t at all indicative of what’s actually going on in the body politic. They’re out there, though, and what they’re accomplishing is to give cover to people like Rounds; they can always point to the people who want to kill doctors and women, and say, “See, I’m not such a bad guy after all—I just want to throw doctors and women in prison!”
Give it a few more years. We’ll have politicians who will try to highlight their deep humanity by arguing that they want to kill the homos and adulterers with a painless lethal injection, rather than the stoning method advocated by the real wackos.
Amy Sullivan is not one of the people I want advising the Democratic party…unless, that is I suddenly decided I wanted to be a Republican, and was feeling too lazy to change my voter registration. She’s got one note that she plays loudly over and over again: Democrats need to be more religious. Why? So we can get more religious people to vote for our candidates, and so we can steal the Republicans’ identification as the party of faith.
Nationally, and in states like Alabama, the GOP cannot afford to allow Democrats a victory on anything that might be perceived as benefiting people of faith. Republican political dominance depends on being able to manipulate religious supporters with fear, painting the Democratic Party as hostile to religion and in the thrall of secular humanists. That image would take quite a blow if the party of Nancy Pelosi was responsible for bringing back Bible classes—even constitutional ones—to public schools.
By golly, she’s right! If the Democrats led the way in abandoning the principle of separation of church and state, if we institutionalized the teaching of Christianity in our public schools, and if we out-preached and out-prayed the Republicans and put up bigger crosses ad bigger flags in our front yards than they do, we’d win!
Let’s keep going with this. If we also pandered to big business more and did things like endorse strip-mining national parks and ditching those annoying safety regulations in the work place, we’d get more money and could fund bigger, bolder PR campaigns. Why not? Sullivan is simply endorsing the strategy of racing to the (religious) right, with the winner being the one who gets there the fastest and the farthest. Screw liberal and progressive values—all that matters is winning.
And it’s so easy. If we embrace faith-based policy, we can just ignore that hard reality stuff and believe whatever we want. For example, Sullivan seems to buy into that abstinence nonsense:
A sign that Democratic leaders are beginning to get it is the plan—promoted by leaders such as Harry Reid and Hillary Clinton—to lower abortion rates by preventing unwanted pregnancies. Full-throated support of this effort, and a recognition that abstinence education plays a role in lowering teen pregnancy rates (along with birth control), puts Democrats alongside the majority of voters on this difficult issue, and it is especially appealing to moderate evangelicals.
Well, our current abstinence programs don’t work and people are
urging that the programs be abandoned. Birth control works, abstinence programs don’t. That’s one difficulty, that awkward suggestion that we should be on the side of programs that actually accomplish something. For another, it’s delusional thinking to believe that the reason abortion is such a hot-button issue is because of some desire to help babies: it’s mainly about controlling women and controlling sexuality. I would like at least one political party in this country to be willing to say that sex is fun and an important part of being human. Two sets of prissy prudes shaking their withered fingers at me and vying for leadership is just too much to take.
Kevin Drum is smart enough to recognize what he’s being asked to do, but doesn’t seem to be willing to think about what it means.
Religion has been a big topic in liberal circles for a while now, and I have to admit that I always feel a bit like a bystander when the subject comes up. It’s not like I can fake being religious, after all. Still, no one is really asking people like me to do much of anything except stay quiet, refrain from insulting religion qua religion in ways that would make people like Brinson unwilling to work with us, and let other people do the heavy lifting when it comes to persuading moderate Christians to support liberal causes and liberal candidates. That’s not much to ask, and Amy makes a pretty good case that it would make a difference.
Yes, Mr Drum, that’s correct: we freethinkers are being asked to sit down and shut up and stay away from politics, and allow the evangelicals to shape the party. Let’s let both political parties be vocally religious and give up the whole idea of a secular America.
Not much to ask, huh?
No thanks. I’ve got another suggestion. How about if we reassure the evangelicals that they will always be free to worship as they please, there will be no interference by the government in their religion, but that in a nation with so many different religions floating around, we must and always will be a secular state and religion must stop interfering in government. Your belief in Jesus or Odin or the FSM is not a qualification for service in government (nor is it an obstacle), and isn’t even a testimonial to the quality of your character. The small-minded bigots who would like to see the non-religious effectively disenfranchised are not the solution to the Democratic party’s problems: they are the problem.
I’m not alone in this opinion—Atrios picks up on some of the same things.
Josh Rosenau managed to get a few words with Barack Obama. He only had five minutes, but it’s interesting stuff—it’s too bad there wasn’t time for some questions about science or science policy!
Never mind me, I’m running around with classes and meetings today…here are a few quick links.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr, what the hell is wrong with you?
I also refuse to pay any attention to the ghastly Huffington Post—it’s an example of the worst excesses of left-wing credulity, as represented by that fraud and quack, Deepak Chopra.
And it’s caught on tape. He was briefed the day before Katrina hit, heard Brown say this was “the big one”, that it was a bigger threat than Hurricane Andrew was, that there was great risk of loss of life, and that the topping of the levees was of great concern, and then would say with a straight face several days later that he didn’t think anyone anticipated the breech of the levees. He assured everyone that they were fully prepared to deal with the disaster.
Liar.
That’s our president: a useless, worthless lump who declaims platitudes in response to dire warnings, does nothing, and lies about it afterwards.
(via Neurotopia)
Powerline spouts the party line. It was overtopping, not breaching! It’s the usual fine-grained parsing to avoid the real issue: callous neglect and incompetence and CYA evasiveness by our duly elected Republican leadership. Soon they’ll be arguing that it depends on what the meaning of “is” is.
Afghanistan doesn’t look pretty, and this cuts awful close to home for a teacher.
Teachers are the main targets. Some have been beheaded, others shot in front of their classes.
The years of fighting the Russians, the subsequent civil war and Taleban rule has produced a “lost generation” in education. International agencies and aid organisations speak of their difficulties in finding qualified people to run projects.
Now another lost generation is being created. The education system of modern Afghanistan is anathema to the Taleban and Islamist extremists because it is inclusive of girls, and offers secular subjects for study. They have declared that only madrassas (Muslim religious schools) meeting their approval will be allowed to operate.
Shooting kids on playgrounds? Butchering teachers for daring to instruct girls? When we fail to protect a whole generation like this, face it: you’ve lost the war.
