It's a black fly in your chardonnay

A rush of concern for manners and decorum from people who were apparently fine with Mitt Romney's lies and rudeness to the moderator in the first Presidential debate.

I don't know, irony doesn't seem like a strong enough word here.

Proof seeking

Question: When and where has Republican ideology worked to benefit the majority of a population? The Republican ideology of low taxation, minimal regulation, small government, privatization.

What I mean is when has this actually been proven to work? In what country? How did it improve things for the general population and lead to growth that helped improve the living conditions of the many?

Here in the United States, has it worked? When?

I'm sincere here. I'm not creating an opportunity to bash. I really want to know. I want examples of how this has worked in the past.

Tomorrow's question - If Republicans were to have their way, how would that work? What would it look like? What would be the results of a November election putting Republicans in charge of the House, the Senate and the White House?

Hey, watch where you stick that thing

Why am I happy about the current focus on social issues? Doesn't this kind of thing usually send me over the edge trailing a stream of curse words behind me?

I've been thinking about what happened last week with the all male testimony to the Congressional committee and the GOP's reaction to the contraception provisions in the Health Care Reform Bill and how that, combined with the Komen debacle and the rise of Rick Santorum as a serious potential Republican nominee. It's interesting how all of these things coming together have shed a bright light on something that hasn't received nearly as much scrutiny as it should have.

Republicans have been running a systematic campaign to repeal, reduce and revise reproductive rights, particularly in regard to women. Yikes! Like many of our state legislatures, that's R overload.

It's not just one thing, it's many things. We'd be wrong to ignore a trend, a death by a thousand cuts.

Geoffrey has some marvelous ideas to help protect the Y contributor. Includes Oedipal Balls and the Sack of the Future.

Averil illustrates what it feels like to be a woman in this unhinged world. 


Jim H. puts President Santorum on the psychotherapist's couch.


How far will they go?

It starts with a v and ends with an a.  I mean, what's the big deal anyway?

They're not done either. 

Thankfully, women are learning to fight back.

And finally, "If Rod Serling were alive today, he'd write a Twilight Zone episode in which all the Religious Right zealots wake up pregnant in a world run by fundamentalist women."  - Dan, a Facebook friend of Jayne, a fabulous writer (she's got TV credits and is published!)

What has your attention? And where do you  plan to put that?

Please don't pee in our uterus, we don't swim in your church

Why do Republicans hate for other people to have sex?

Do Republicans really want to take on the contraception fight? Have they lost their ever-lovin minds? They insist that this is about religious liberty not contraception. I, like so many others, disagree.

When the religious right showed its true intent by focusing more of their political power on issues having to do with sexual behavior instead of economic justice and human rights, it became clear that their fight against a woman's right to choose would not stop at abortion. As they chipped away at reproductive rights, they  began to work on their plan to attack the affordability and accessibility of contraception.

Because even I, with my limited knowledge of Christianity and Jesus' teachings, know he spent way more time talking about charity, kindness, peace, love and forgiveness than he did about pee pees and wee wees. But hey, sex sells. It stokes something in our lizard brain. If you're talking sex, even if you're railing against it, people are more likely to listen.

When the story about Catholics being upset about the provision requiring employer-provided health insurance to cover contraception exploded, I understood how the issue could be framed as an affront to religious liberties, but my question was what if you live in a place where the only medical services provided are through Catholic-affiliated health care facilities?

Well, it turns out that you would be without options. Your personal liberties take a back seat to the institution's beliefs.

It's not all bad news. People are fighting back. Including governors.

I'm not anti-religion. What you do in your home, your head, and your church concerns me not one bit. But if you're going to take federal and state money to provide health care services, you should have to operate as a health institution first, not as a religious institution.

With the growing movement from the right to limit the rights of women, it's time for all of us to take a good look at their aims. What is it about us and our innie reproductive parts that frighten them so?

I, Masochist

I can't stop peeking through my fingers at the carnage, the aftermath, the bruised and bloodied form of our society stretched out among the shards of glass on the side of the road. We could see the collision as it unfolded because history, that repetitious asshole, has shown us what happens when you concentrate wealth, gut regulation, and poke your tax code full of holes.

Americans from sea to shining sea want to know who is going to fix this mess? Answers come from all sides. We pick and choose that which suits us. A Chinese menu of solutions.

A young man on the right toys with his drink, places his order. Um, I'll have the tax cuts with more deregulation on the side. Oh, and hold the entitlements.

There they were on the television. Angry white people sneering into microphones. Angrier white people trying to hook up with each other made up the audience. The CPAC turned C-SPAN into one hellacious hate fest. Rage against the machine that is government, liberals, elites, taxes, regulation, teleprompters, pro-abortion atheists, Democrats, welfare queens, entitlements, poor people, lovers of European-style Socialism, practitioners of Chicago-style politics, Massachusetts, New York and California, the lamestream media, Occupiers, gun control freaks, homosexuals and people who refuse to learn English. Those haters of all things America. The blame America first crowd. The apologizers and appeasers.

There was no mention of drowning government bureaucrats in bathtubs, but there were lots of references to Obama. Please do take note. Obama. Not President Obama.

Grover Norquist wants to rule the world without taxes. Sarah Palin wants to deliver real Americans from progressive evil and into the welcoming arms of free market capitalism. Her mean mouth formed sharp words with which to stab at crony capitalism. Without the slightest hint of irony, her scorn for those who would use their political positions to gain wealth was palpable. You could see it coming off her in waves.

The crowd was hungry for this kind of lovin'. Cameras flashed. I held my hand to my forehead, was I flushed? Was this the equivalent of a good mental spanking? Would this scratch my itch, my need for a little punishment for my loose morals and liberal ideology? But that's redundant, isn't it?

I closed my eyes and soaked in their fury, marinated in the blood of their Christ who railed about sex and preached the gospel of prosperity. I could smell the green ink of the dollar bill. A vision of Ronald Reagan swaddled in red, white and blue bunting came to me as I moved closer to the television. I had to see the fire in their eyes, the exact curve of their lips where the spittle of righteousness gathered, their pores a thousand points of light, I'm sure, if only we had high def.

The crowd roared its approval. I drew back to see the big picture. Sarah Palin in her perfectly-fitted red suit body surfing the crowd, the young disciples passing her, smiling and waving, over their heads. A country singer crooned over the rapturous noise "She's not just a pretty face......."

The Politics of Envy

Envy.

Mitt Romney, the man who has finally gotten to the head of the line, thinks we envy him and those of his stratospheric ilk.

Let's not lie to him or ourselves. We do envy him. But it's not for the reason he thinks.

Since it's rude for me to speak for you, I'll stick to why I am envious. My envy of Mitt Romney is specifically because he's never known what it's like to be financially insecure and it has nothing to do with his superior skills, hard work, or intelligence. By virtue of his birth, Romney has never had to worry about a lack of money. No, his only money worries have been about the accumulation of more wealth.

So that's the basis for my envy. What's at the root of my dislike for Romney is the fact that he seems unwilling to even imagine for a second what it's like for most Americans who have worked hard for the last thirty years and are still just running in place.

His refusal to acknowledge that there might be valid reasons for people to be pissed off tells us what we need to know about Mitt. He has no interest in understanding the plight of the middle and working classes, the poor. He subscribes to the idea that, unlike his situation of being born to wealth setting his destiny, if you're not rich like him, it's because you're not smart enough, you don't work hard enough. The fact that American socio-economic mobility is pretty much a myth and getting worse holds no sway with Romney.

I would say that by virtue of that same solid gold birth, perhaps Mitt Romney is incapable of empathy for the less fortunate, but then how do you explain wealthy families that breed bleeding heart liberals? Does it really come down to how the brain is wired?

Mitt Romney wants to run on his record as a businessman. Fine. Look at his record at Bain Capital where he was far more comfortable dealing with profits and numbers and data. People who lost their jobs were merely collateral damage. No, that's too generous. They were the cost of doing business and they were expendable.

Running a government is far different from running a business. The missions are different. Romney isn't smart enough to know that. As President, he would do just as he did at Bain. He would increase profits for the shareholders by any means just this side of legal while cutting out the waste and inefficiency.

What Americans need to understand is that unless you're a top investor, you are waste and inefficiency.

Read Bob Lefsetz on this.

For Rick Perry

You take the stage with what can only be called
A shit eating grin meets aw shucks.
Thunderous applause in your head, the adoration of the crowd
Tell us what we want to hear
Tell us what we know is true
You seize the mic like you seize the day
All gusto and outsized
A Lone Star, ready to rumble.
I close my eyes to listen to your message of redemption
The sinner nation needs you now.
You take a deep breath ready to speak, to sermonize
Tell us what we want to hear
Tell us what we know is true
Your detractors are many
The blue and cold-blooded serpents in the weeds
Not now, they hiss. Not ever.
A run from you would be a reminder
A visual and audio rerun of the last one,
The compassionate usurper
Inauthentic, a sneak-thief of your very self
He told them what they wanted to hear
He told them what they knew was true
Let them come then, you will not waver
Chosen, appointed, annointed
By the Christian God, sponsored by the Oil and Gas Industry and The Republican National Committee
You will be a force with which to reckon,
You reckon.
You're up there now
In front of the banner
The red of his blood, the white so pure, the true blue of the ages.
Tell us what we want to hear
Tell us what we know is true
My eyes remain shut
A wish that others will do the same
For when you speak, we are reminded
Of what we know is true.