White-Wing Roundup: A Review of The Last Week in June 2013

by Sunnyjane

Is it just me, or is global warming also responsible for the dramatic rise in stupidity and hatred in white right-wingers?  A fanciful question, of course, because I don't believe I've seen an overabundance of our darker-skinned brothers and sisters leaning that far to the right, but you get my drift.

This last week has provided a glut of post topics (all of which have been discussed at length both in the blogosphere and the mainstream media), but I thought it might be interesting to examine in one lump what might well be regarded as the Whackiest Week That Was in American history. 

So let's do that, shall we?

A Nation of Arrogant Squatters and Land Robbers

 

Oh aye, we are, you know.  Many of our lily-white-complexioned ancestors simply sailed west across the Atlantic and claimed the eastern part of this country for England.  Then they proceeded to push the Native Americans further west and began the methodical destruction of the abundant natural resources they discovered.  But that's another story altogether.

They came for various reasons:  the Puritans to avoid religious persecution, the Highland Scots of North Carolina to avoid English prosecution after the Jacobite Rising, and the Jamestown settlers so that three-hundred and fifty years later they could put up a theme park.  No, seriously.

And while life in the United States today is far from hunky-dory, immigrants still want to come.  Eleven million Latinos who are already here are working hard and becoming a vital part of our society without benefit of citizenship.  Thus, we need to reform our immigration laws.  Now.

The U. S. Senate passed -- by a wide margin  of 68/32 -- an immigration reform bill that will, among other things, provide a pathway to citizenship.  The House of Representatives, which has steadfastly refused to offer up a bill on immigration, now says, Huh uh, we're not gonna pass the Senate bill; we'll do our own bill!  And, of course, the House bill will not, according to Rep. Bob Goodlatte, provide a pathway to citizenship, but rather a pathway to legalization.  [Translation: We might let you work toward a green card.]    

While Michele Bachmann is under the deluded impression that the future of America looks like a white baby, the truth is we have become a glorious nation of multiple shades and hues that reflect the various nationalities in this country.  White people love to talk about minorities, when in fact, they are fast becoming the minority.  [Memo to Bachmann and her bigoted followers: Face it and get over it.]

Repeal of DOMA May Cause Right-Wing Hair Loss

 The New Yorker Cover, Moment of Joy,  by Jack Hunter

Clearly, eighty-three year old Pat Robertson is one of the most irritating, homophobic, racist, misogynistic Christians the citizens of this country have had to endure.  After the decision on DOMA was announced, he actually asked a guest about Justice Anthony Kennedy's staff: Let me ask you about Anthony Kennedy. Does he have some clerks that happen to be gays?  Kudos to the rather startled guest, who said he had no idea what sexual orientation the justice's clerks were.

But over in the land of Robertson's legislative kindred spirits there was much angst and dire warnings.  Louie Gohmert is ominously predicting that allowing gays and lesbians to marry will lead to bigamy and polygamy, while Michele Bachmann (yes, again) says that Marriage was created by the hand of God. No man, not even a Supreme Court, can undo what a holy God has instituted. In a later press conference, Bachmann called the Court's decision an affront to the Constitution...   Must we remind Ms. Bachmann one...more...time that this country is governed by the man-made laws of the Constitution of the United States, and not what she perceives as God's law?

Prop 8 Plaintiffs Kris Perry and Sandy Stier: We do! 

Surely Nancy Pelosi's Who cares? when asked what she thought of Bachmann's condemnation of the ruling on gay marriage has to rank right up there with President Obama's Please proceed, Governor during one of the 2012 debates with Mitt Romney.  Soooo satisfying.

The Unconscionable Death of the Voting Rights Act

Rep. John Lewis:  I didn’t think that when President Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act that I would live to see five members of the United States Supreme Court undo what he did with those pens.

Chief Justice John Roberts successfully set the voting rights of minorities, the elderly, the poor, and the young back fifty years when he gutted Sections 4 and 5 of the Voting Rights Act.  By ruling that the 1965 Voting Rights Act cannot be enforced unless Congress comes up with a new way of determining which states and localities require federal monitoring of elections, Roberts willfully gave GOP governors untethered license to do anything they damn well please to keep certain demographics in the country from voting.

The right to vote is the foundation of American democracy. In the 2012 election, that right was challenged in a way we have not seen since the civil rights and voting rights movements of the 1960s. Legislatures in primarily Republican-governed states decided that the freedom to vote must be restricted, and they erected unnecessary and discriminatory barriers to registration and voting.

There was nothing remotely covert about the Republicans' plans to repress citizens' ability to cast their votes on November 6.  From Pennsylvania, where the state's House Majority Leader told committee meeting attendees, Voter ID [laws], which is gonna allow Governor Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania, done!  to Florida where Gov. Rick Scott reduced early voting days from fourteen to eight, Republican plans to prevent people from voting were put into place.

It will happen again, and we'll get a good taste of it in 2014 because the GOP controlled House of Representatives will never pass effective legislation to prevent it from happening.

End Note

The Republican Tea Party: Equal Opportunity Haters

by Sunnyjane

Déjà Vu All Over Again

Hardly had President Barack Obama gotten through his repeat swearing-in ceremony in 2009 when newly elected RNC Chairman Michael Steele (the Republican's we'll-show-you! retort to a black Democrat in the White House) issued a stern warning that he would torpedo the public perception that the Republicans are "a party unconcerned about minorities, a party that's unconcerned about the lives and dreams of average Americans."  Well, that may have been Mr. Steele's intention, but it obviously was not on the GOP leadership's agenda, and his torpedo turned out to be a dud.  And speaking of duds, the RNC ousted Steele and installed Reince Priebus.

Hey, forget what we stand for; we gotta sound "reasonable."

Fast Forward to early 2013.  Election over.  President Obama inaugurated to serve a second term.  Republican/Tea Party/Libertarian heads explode.  Recriminations and finger-pointing ensue: the GOP candidate was too conservative... or the GOP candidate was not conservative enough.  Karl Rove's fantastical fractured figure finagling blamed. 

Studies follow:  Ground game ineffective.  College Republicans conclude that the GOP is closed-minded, racist, rigid, old-fashioned.  And even though no one asks him for his opinion, in January Bobby Jindal tells an audience of Republicans, We must stop being the stupid party  ...  We must stop looking backward ... We must stop insulting the intelligence of voters.  It's rather good advice, actually, but...

...less than two months later, Priebus confirms for the country that there's little chance of a change in the GOP by saying that Mike Huckabee should be a model for a lot of people in our party.  Yes, indeedy, the same man who supported Todd Akin, says homosexuality is a sin and leads to polygamy, is against abortion for any reason, and believes that a breeder should be at home with one baby on her hip, one at her breast, and one in her belly.  That Mike Huckabee.   

Conclusion:  GOP business as usual.

What War on Women???
  

The little GOP bitch in pink thinks rape kits have magical abortion powers.

The far-right in this country badly need a war -- any war will do -- to alleviate their own insecurities, and one of the easiest ones to win seems to be their hostility towards women.   They've become very successful at destroying a woman's constitutional right to choose what's best for her, her family, and her own body.  If all goes according to the GOP's plan, Texas will enact* the most far-reaching and restrictive anti-choice laws in the country this week.  It will bring to nearly seven hundred the number of similar laws passed in just the past three months.

*Update: During a nail-biting special session of the Texas legislature on Tuesday, the bill failed.  However, Rick Perry has called for a second special session of the legislature to push the same restrictive anti-choice bill because Texans value women's lives so much that, according to Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst...

In Texas, we believe in regulating vaginas instead of fertilizer plants.

Oh, and since Gov. Oops will probably run for president in 2016,  he's gotta shore up those family-values creds, dontcha know.  [Do you think the far-right Christianistas realize that they actually worship a Jewish liberal?] 

While Texas is hell-bent on ruining life for many women in the second most populated state in the country, Iowa legislators have given Gov. Branstad (a far-right pro-lifer) the final decision on whether Medicaid will pay for a woman's abortion.  [Legally, Medicaid can only be used to pay for abortions resulting from rape, incest, danger to the life of the mother, or a fetus so malformed that it would not survive outside the womb.]  So, after the abortion for one of these situations is performed, the governor will be presented with the details and make the decision on whether Medicaid will pay the bill.  Oh, Branstad has assured the citizens of Iowa that he plans to be very thoughtful in making his decisions, even though there appear to be no guidelines whatsoever for him to follow.  Bottom line:  Iowa has completely lost its fucking mind and they're obviously not aware that politicans are lousy doctors.

GOP governors are irrationally fixated on women's bodies and what they do with them.  Over in Wisconsin, Scott Walker thinks it's a dandy idea to perform transvaginal sonograms on first-term pregnancies.

There is no truth to the rumor that I want to prevent the next virgin birth from being aborted.

The governor has no problem with these invasive, medically unnecessary procedures and says,  I think most people think ultrasounds are just fine.  And which most people would that be, Governor?   It wouldn't be most men, now would it?  Just asking.  Oh wait, I get it!  Since Rush Limbaugh never got to see videos of Sandra Fluke having wild sex, I guess Scotty-boy is going to send his good buddy Rush videos of women having transvaginal sonograms.  Perhaps it's the only way Limpballs can get a stiffie going, huh?

But perhaps the most jaw-dropping bill being proposed against women at the moment is the one in Ohio that will require women who want birth control pills to undergo ultrasound procedures and wait twenty-four hours.  You cannot make this shit up.     

How about these states pass a law requiring a transpenile procedure for any man wanting a vasectomy or a prescription for Viagra or Cialis?

 

The Supreme Court Has Just Trod on My DOMA!

Q: How will DOMA repeal affect traditional marriage?   A: Ummm...

With a shrug and a Who cares?, Nancy Pelosi dismissed a reporter's question regarding Michele Bachmann's rant after the high court announced its decision on DOMA and Prop 8 in California: This decision is one that is profound because the Supreme Court not only attacked our Constitution today… Well, that's all you really need to know, because Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY) had to school Ms. Bachmann and reporters on that little thingy called Separation of Church and State.  And he did it beautifully.

And in other far-right reactions on the DOMA repeal, Justice Scalia swallowed his legalized argle-bargle gargle by re-ranting his homosexual sodomy argument while Rand Paul believes that the DOMA decision could lead to bestiality.  No, seriously.  As Americablog points out, Rand just compared Mary Cheney’s relationship to sodomizing your pet.  Sweet.

And not to disappoint his faithful followers, the model for the GOP (see above) Mike Huckabee tweeted My thoughts on the SCOTUS ruling that determined that same sex marriage is okay: "Jesus wept."   Of course, the phrase Jesus wept has absolutely nothing to do with gay marriage, but hey, so what so long as it gets the far-right in a lather?

The Supreme Gutting of the Voting Rights Act

While the Supreme Court struck down Section 4 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act (known as the formula section), it made Section 5 (the pre-clearance section) virtually null and void.  As Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg wrote in her scathing dissenting argument,  Section 5 is now "immobilized" without a working coverage formula.  Chief Justice Roberts said that it was the duty of the Congress to address the coverage formula; well, good luck with that, CJ.

I don't know where the Chief Justice was during the 2012 general election, but his ruling that racial minorities no longer face barriers to voting in states with a history of discrimination is naive at best, and deceitful at worst. Our country has changed, he wrote. While any racial discrimination in voting is too much, Congress must ensure that the legislation it passes to remedy that problem speaks to current conditions.  Current conditions, Mr. Chief Justice?  It only took Gov. Perry two hours after the decision had been announce to declare that Texas may now implement the will of the people without being subject to outdated and unnecessary oversight and the overreach of federal power.  You can bet your sweet bippy that there will definitely be racial barriers put up for the folks in the Lone Star state.  As John Oliver pointed out, It takes Texas less time to disenfranchise voters than to barbecue a pig.

End Note 

 

We Americans have our work cut out for us.  Stopping the regressive and repressive actions of the Republican Party and its far-right cohorts will take all of us working hard together.  We must believe that we can do it.

As Nelson Mandela once said:

 It always seems impossible until it's done.

 

The "Whacko-Bird" Wisdom of Michele Bachmann

by Sunnyjane

Warning: Medical science experts have not ruled out the possibility that lunacy is transmitted via the Internet.  Too much of the Tea Party may make you go nuts.

If it wouldn't do permanent damage, it might be interesting to spend two minutes inside Michele Bachmann's brain.  

Like an eighth-grader's dubious lab experiment gone really bad, the never-gonna-be-president House rep from Minnesota's 2012 campaign started out improbable and ended up preposterous.  Her entire campaign centered around social issues because when forced to enter into real policy issues, she almost made Sarah Palin sound rational.  Of course, she began her presidential campaign before the 2008 election, taking up the McCain/Palin mantra that Barack Obama doesn't see America as we see America.  And even prior to Tea Party darlings former rep Allen West and current Senator Ted Cruz, Bachmann was channeling her inner McCarthyism and saw anti-Americans (translation: Communists!) behind every pillar and post.  

While she should be treated for insanity, Bachmann's actually being investigated for, um...irregularities in her campaign.  As John Avlon at The Daily Beast reported recently, she is embroiled in a litany of legal proceedings related to her rolling disaster of a presidential campaign -- including an Office of Congressional Ethics investigation into campaign improprieties that has not previously been reported.   But never one to ignore an opportunity to blast President Obama, Glenn Beck has decided that Bachmann is under investigation because she's against radical Islam.

It's little wonder she's being investigated.  Her campaign and office staffing problems have a long history.  In 2011, the Associated Press did a little tally and found that in the four years she had been in the House of Representatives, she had lost six chiefs of staff, five press secretaries, five legislative directors, and three communications directors.  Whew! 

Charles Pierce of Esquire weighed in like this in late March:  Ever since the 2012 Iowa straw poll, when Bachmann stormed to victory by being the candidate best able to bus old white people efficiently from one part of Iowa to another, there have been rumors that, internally, the Bachmann campaign was a five-alarmer in Shanghai, and that was before Ed Rollins, bless his perpetually treacherous heart, began telling anyone within earshot what a freak show he'd signed up with. 

Ed Rollins, of course, signed on with Bachmann's campaign before she even announced her candidacy in June 2011; by September, he quit because he'd had a stroke.  (Well, who wouldn't have had a stroke, huh?)  By the end of October, he was saying, She's out of money and out of ideas.

How History Will Remember Michele Bachmann

Even Texas will not be able to whitewash the Minnesota representative's record for their textbooks.  It's far too outlandish.  We all know that she told folks in New Hampshire how much she loved their state because You're the state where the shot was heard round the world in Lexington and Concord. She was speaking. of course, about the beginning of the Revolutionary War, which actually began at Lexington and Concord in Massachusetts.  And she thought slavery was a bad thing, but at least it kept families together, so it was better than their current situation under the Obama Administration.  She also asked attendees at one speech to wish the deceased Elvis Presley, said to be one of her favorite singers, a raucous Happy Birthday! -- on the thirty-fourth anniversary of his death.  And of the President's foreign policies, she huffed that ...he put us in Libya. He is now putting us in Africa.  I have no clue where she thinks Libya is, but she obviously doesn't realize that it is in, uh, Africa.

One of the most tone-deaf, whacko scenarios of her political career had to do with Michael Steele, former chairman of the Republican National Committee. Steele spoke at CPAC 2009 where he took partial blame for the GOP's loss to Barack Obama the previous November.  Bachmann's turn at the podium was next, and before she began her speech she yelled, Michael Steele, you be da man, you be da man!   No information on exactly what Mr. Steele thought of being cheered in Ebonics by one of Minnesota's state birds, the Common Loon.

Hey, Barack!  Wanna suck on my belly button?

But there may be some instances of how brainless Bachmann is that haven't received as much attention.   Yes, she kissed George W. Bush at her very first State of the Union Address in 2007 and had such a death grip on him for thirty seconds that a reporter for Fox News hilariously told Tucker Carlson, We were about ten seconds away from a Secret Service moment there; you could see those guys talking into their wrists.  Things were going to get ugly.

But in 2008, Bachmann also threatened then-candidate for president, Barack Obama, with similar treatment:  If the presidency would somehow go to Barack Obama, I would welcome him to the 6th District as well ... As a matter of fact, I would put my hand on his shoulder and give him a kiss if he wanted to.  (There is no truth to the scurrilous rumor that Senator Obama muttered, I'd rather eat cold coffee grounds.)

End Note(s)

Marcus recently updated his social media Relationship Status to: It's Complicated

With DOMA and Prop 8 having just been argued before the Supreme Court, it is worthwhile to examine Bachmann's opinion on the subject of gays and lesbians marrying.  Actually, contrary to everything you think you know about how she feels, she believes it's perfectly acceptable.   Of course, there is one wee caveat.  In 2011, she told the president of Waverly High School's Gay-Straight Alliance in Iowa that gays and lesbians have every right to get married -- so long as they marry someone of the opposite sex.  

There!  It makes you wonder why, instead of wasting the Court's time, someone else hasn't come up with this practical solution. 

After all, who would know better than Michele Bachmann about such a situation.  Right?

In the immortal words of her fellow Republican, ditzy Dan Quayle: What a waste it is to lose one's mind. Or not to have a mind is being very wasteful. 

Joe Gandelman at the Huffington Post very recently wrote The Michele Bachmann sideshow is hurting the GOP, in which he says that it's her sensationalist rhetoric that's destroying her credibility.  After all, when Bill O'Reilly attacks her for her CPAC attacks on the President, you know she has become GOP toast.  That rebranding thingy ain't working, guys, when you've got the likes of Michele Bachmann on the team. 

The most positive remark one can make about Bachmann is that, unlike Palin, she hasn’t yet begun choosing her wardrobe from the Dimwitted Sluts-R-Us Collection.