Tag Archives: GOP

Helping anti-choice terrorists, one name at a time.

Last week, I got all caught up in my anti-War on Women fury and tweeted an article that, it transpired, was three years old. Oopsie!

In my defense, though, it was about a law in Oklahoma that was really, really heinous and had actually passed, so my brain was a bit addled. This law (later struck down by the courts) would have required that the details of every abortion conducted in the state be posted on a public website:

The questionnaire doesn’t include the woman’s name or “any information specifically identifying the patient,” but it does ask for age, race, level of education, marital status, number of previous pregnancies, and the county in which the abortion was performed, information which opponents of the bill argue would be enough to identify a woman in a small town. The questionnaire also asks about the mother’s reason for the abortion, her method of payment, and even what type of insurance she has, as well as whether the fetus received anaesthetic and whether there was “an infant born alive as a result of the abortion.”

So, you know – phew! At least we dodged that one!

Except we didn’t.

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A Growing Rift Between Religious Groups And The GOP

The Wing-nut Takeover Of the GOP Continues

I’ve never understood how people who call themselves Christians can belong to the Republican Party. I read the Bible many years ago and seem to remember lessons that taught me to care for my fellow humans, to show compassion, to turn the other cheek and to do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

That doesn’t exactly describe the modern Republican Party now does it?

With the craziness happening in the political world over contraception, the following story from ThinkProgress makes me think that the GOP is overcompensating in their reaction to the contraceptive issue.

Earlier this month, the nation was barraged with media coverage of the Catholic Bishops’ opposition to regulations promulgated under the Affordable Care Act protecting working women’s access to contraception. The loudness of the bishops’ complaints, which were echoed by conservative luminaries ranging from Speaker John Boehner to GOP presidential frontrunners Rick Santorum and Mitt Romney, easily could have conveyed the misimpression that churches and other religious groups are at odds with the Affordable Care Act.

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A day in the life of the GOP. And American women.

Over on TPM, Evan McMorris-Santoro sums up the day on which the GOP decided it was time to time-travel back at least sixty years, and drag us all along with them for the trip.

Today. That day was today:

There you have it: modern women being told by Republicans that they’re not qualified to talk about their own sexual health, are dressed like “whores” and probably need birth control because they’re so slutty. And this is just in one day.

For details, click here. But hold on tight, because that time machine moves fast.

And here you were worrying that I was being overly optimistic in my earlier postTch.

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Alien Attack Now Imminent, Republicans Warn

Conservatives are sounding like a celestially-fervid flock of Chicken Littles over President Obama’s plan to reduce the U.S.’s nuclear weapon stockpile by as much as 80 percent.

And for good reason.

As Ronald Reagan knew well in the 1980s—because his wife kept him informed of all inter-galactic current events—20,000 nuclear warheads may have been enough to bomb every sovereign nation on the globe 100 times each, but it wasn’t nearly enough to thwart an alien attack!

Now that the stockpile is in the process of being reduced to 1,550 nuclear weapons, the threat has been compounded.

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Dear Asian-Americans: I am so sorry that I didn’t warn you about the GOP.

Or: The GOP – they really don’t seem to like much of anybody!

Last week, I wrote a post asking the GOP to just shut up about black people, a post which got a surprising amount of attention across the web.

In the aftermath of that, I found myself wondering: “Huh. Who is the GOP going to demonize and belittle next in this election cycle?”

And I knew: Asian-Americans. A post began to form itself in my head, one I intended to write sometime this week.

I mean, they’ve demonized and belittled gay people already:

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Gingrich, lies, damn lies, and the Palestinian people.

I am a child of the Watergate hearings.

By which I mean: I’m no fool.

I don’t believe that politics and running a country can be anything but an (at least) occasionally dirty business, I don’t believe politicians choose politics for purely altruistic reasons, and I certainly don’t believe that any of them don’t lie, or at least fudge the truth. I say this as a person who campaigned for the current President with the greatest sense of urgency, wept when he was elected, and continue to find him to be an inspiring figure. Has he lied to me yet? I don’t know. He’s probably at least fudged the truth.

Having said that: There’s lying, and then there’s lying. There’s “not purely altruistic,” and then there’s “utterly and cravenly opportunistic.” When I look at the front runners in the GOP field, that’s what I see.

Mitt Romney is famous for his “flip-flopping,” which is a terribly cute little way of saying “lying through his teeth.” The man chose positions that would carry him to power, and now that he wants a different kind of power, in a different venue, he’s chosen different positions. The position is not what matters – the power is what matters. He was for gay people before he was against them, he was for health care before he was against it, and let the chips and the human lives fall where they may.

And then we have Newt Gingrich.

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Newt Gingrich gives advice to black people: Maybe you should seek employment!

Newt Gingrich on the campaign trail in New Hampshire:

Bet you never thought of that, black people! Finding a job and getting paid for it – huh! Whoulda thunk?! Aren’t you glad Newt’s here to help? Of course, he’ll have to explain why this is a good idea at your annual black people get-together. But in the meantime, there’s some food for thought.

Oh wait, what’s that? “Food for thought” isn’t covered under the federal food assistance programs? Oopsie, my bad!

(Friend-of-ABLC Joy-Ann Reid at The Grio reports that, according to the USDA, “when it comes to total welfare receipts, Whites receive 34% of federal food assistance benefits, African-Americans 22%, and Hispanics 17%.” For that, and a few more examples of Newt Gingrich, a leading voice in American politics, equating “poor people” with “black people,” click here).

Crossposted at Emily L. Hauser In My Head.

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Mike Huckabee Is Saying Sensible Things About the GOP

Stop the presses!

 Mike Huckabee opened his face-hole and words came out!  Sensible words!

From Think Progress,

As the GOP candidates stump around the Hawkeye State before tonight’s Iowa caucus, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee (R), who won the caucus in 2008, called out many in his party for prioritizing political victory over the country’s well-being. In a radio interview, Huckabee expressed his frustration with the current field and said, “If I walked in the booth today I’m not sure who I’d pull the lever for.” He explained that he decided not to get in the race this time because, “It appears to me, and it still does to a large degree, that many of the Republicans are more interested in just defeating Barack Obama than they are in rebuilding America.” Huckabee said he wanted to see more of an emphasis on how to get Americans back to work and noted, “defeating somebody without a plan to really resolve problems, to me, is a worthless endeavor.”

Gee whiz, Mike, what gave you the idea that Republicans care only about defeating Barack Obama? Could it be that they brought the country to brink of economic collapse over what should have been a routine raising of the debt ceiling just to throw the Teabilly Wing of the party a bone? Could it be that they refused to pass the American Jobs Act (or any part of it)? Continue reading

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The vocabulary of bad behavior: Adultery, harassment, assault, and rape.

Source: Melina Mara/The Washington Post/Getty Images

Herman Cain is imploding. If anyone’s still pretending this is a surprise, can we stop that right now? I would also be grateful if we could finally stop acting as if he was ever a serious contender for the GOP nomination. He wasn’t, and not just because he’s black. Cain was never a serious contender because he’s wildly ignorant, and borderline crazy. The GOP has a history of allowing these people (Bachmann, Perry, Santorum, Paul, Cain, etc) to toddle out onto the stage and push the boundaries of civil conversation a little farther out, squeezing out every last drop of anti-social outrage they can, and then tossing them onto history’s famous scrapheap, in favor of the one fella who has money and isn’t certifiable. In 2008, it was John McCain. In 2012, it’ll be Mitt Romney. Have we cleared that up? (No, it won’t be Gingrich. Stop that! He’s made too many Republicans mad. Much as they hate Romney, they hate Gingrich more). (No! Not Huntsman either! He’s too reasonable, and too poor. Maybe 2016, when they’re done purging the party of the crazy following what they already know will be Obama’s re-election). (Yes. That’s what’s going to happen. Can we get to the point now? Thank you).

Herman Cain’s silly White House run having served more as useful foolishness than reality, I don’t have any interest in discussing it as a political exercise. I do, however, have a very real interest in using it to continue the conversation I started at my place earlier this month about the ways in which harassment and assault shape women’s days, and to move into the vocabulary we use in conversations about sexual violence, whether they are about Herman Cain, or Jerry Sandusky, or Dominique Strauss-Kahn, or the asshole down the street.

Cain stands accused of three things:

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