Ed Whelan, National Review Online:
Ninth Circuit Panel Affirms Anti-Prop 8 Ruling

So as you may have noticed from the hordes of QUILTBAG people fucking outside of your home (all of your homes and every home, multiple of your homes if you are John McCain), Prop 8 was just struck down as unconstitutional today…again, but this time at the 9th Circuit of Appeals level. The proponents of Prop 8′s long delay tactic principled stand for direct democracy truly tried its best to win the day for bigotry, but was sadly hamstrung by things like “not having a leg to stand on when asked to argue their case secularly” and “not having someone to argue their case who wasn’t also criminally insane”.

And despite barely winning the battle for being allowed to defend their own case, it turned out that ranting for hours about how the fags are evil and should be punished and that its unfair that anyone other than conservative straight men (who aren’t closet queens) judge any case ever just couldn’t trump the fucking law.

But it was a long investment for the professional Anti-Gay movement. Despite suspecting for awhile that lacking a single competent lawyer might come back to bite them in the ass, they’ve long prepared for the bitter concession speech, some more bitter than others. And that’s where our old friend Martin Edward Whelan III of the National Review comes in. As a conservative lawyer…or rather a hack who interned with Scalia a bit and know makes his living off wingnut welfare, this decision hits him very close to home. Not close enough to help the sinking ship of the Prop 8 defense legally of course, but let’s let him explain.

As I expected, a divided panel of the Ninth Circuit has affirmed former judge Vaughn Walker’s outlandish ruling that California’s Proposition 8 violates the federal Constitution. Arch-liberals Judge Stephen Reinhardt and Judge Michael Hawkins were in the majority, with Hawkins joining Reinhardt’s opinion. Judge Randy Smith dissented.

You can just feel the butthurt radiating off the page. And with the raw hatred of the idea of anyone more liberal than Scalia being allowed to do anything related to Justice, we can see why he was brought in to help purge the Justice Department during the Bush Administration and fill it with loyal hacks.

From a quick skim of the introduction,

You are “employed” at the National Review as a legal analyst. Your job is literally nothing other than reading over big legal cases like that and translating it to paranoid delusion for your mouth-breather audience.

Man, I really wish I could plink down a 6-7 figure income by “skimming” the only thing its my job to read.
I see that the majority opinion purports to be narrow. It doesn’t opine on the general question “[w]hether under the Constitution same-sex couples may ever be denied the right to marry.” [Emphasis in original.] Instead, it maintains that the particular context in California—in which same-sex couples under California’s domestic-partnership law had all the rights of opposite-sex couples and in which Proposition 8 restored the definition of marriage that the state supreme court had invalidated—means that there was no “legitimate reason” for Proposition 8.

That is true.

Hey, gotta give them their props when they manage the task of accurately describing reality. That’s because with wingnuts the bar is really that low. If a wingnut wrote in a post “the sky appears blue to our eyes”, I’d give them a fucking medal and a key to the city. Power of low expectations here people.

In the grand scheme of things, there is nothing enduringly significant about today’s ruling. The Ninth Circuit was just a way-station on the path to the Supreme Court, and the composition of the Ninth Circuit panel meant that there was no prospect for a reversal of Walker’s ruling. What would have been most troubling would have been a ruling that Prop 8 proponents didn’t have standing on appeal, as that might have complicated the prospects for Supreme Court review. But the case now has a seemingly clear path to the Supreme Court.

I wonder if wingnuts of the era were as hanging hope on a bigoted Supreme Court to pass a bad law that would eventually be overturned in the run-up to Dred Scott vs Sandford. Were there a bunch of people going “yeah, sure, he’s free now, but our owned buddies in the Supreme Court will be selling him down the river soon enough”?

Or did I just verbatim describe a ye olde newsletter from Martin Edward Whelan the First?

It’s still possible, of course, that the Ninth Circuit might take the case en banc, either on its own initiative or on a request from Prop 8 proponents. My own guess is that it won’t do so—and that the Court will grant review of the Ninth Circuit’s ruling before the November elections (and perhaps even hear oral argument in October or November).

Yeah, it’s possible, but I don’t think wingnuts would be looking forward to it, because the more justices involved, the harder it is to argue you are being screwed by that “one man” who’s “probably a liberal anyways” and thus not nearly as constitutionamifcationally-minded.

Now what’s the legalese for “get off my lawn”?

I will provide further commentary after I have read the ruling more carefully.

This is the National Review Online, home of Jonah Goldberg and the fine work ethic he has established.

What do you think the over/under is on this “further commentary” occurring before Judgment Day?

I’m going to go with the same likelihood the Prop 8 defense actually busts out a legitimate secular defense of the bill.

In the meantime, let’s let Lord Fauntelroy the Edward of Whelan stew in his juices and celebrate with all the sodomy and gay abortions this occasion demands!

(Look out window) Ah, brings a tear to my eye…probably because some lube just flew into it.

Shorter Dan Foster, America’s Shittiest Website™

You Should Find the Anti-Komen Backlash Disgusting, Even If You’re Pro-Choice

• People who disagree with Komen cutting off funding to Planned Parenthood should exercise their free speech rights by writing a check to Planned Parenthood and then just STFU.

Dan Foster, that rakishly handsome Lothario over at America’s Shittiest Website™ obviously has a deep and abiding personal interest in women’s health issues, so, of course, he was all over the backlash to the Komen Foundation’s decision to placate right-wing religious nuts by cutting off funding to breast cancer screening at Planned Parenthood clinics. (You may wonder why the Talibangelicals object to mammogram funding. Silly liberals, don’t you see? Women that survive breast cancer can live on to have more abortions and kill more babies.)

Here’s what that burning hunk-a-love had to say about that “disgusting” backlash:

Look, the beauty of free speech is that, if you’re inclined to do so, you can write a check to PP in an act of solidarity, or write a check to Komen as an expression of moral approval. That’s all fine. But there’s something quite a bit different, something creepy and not a little despicable, about the Planned Parenthood set’s besmirching Komen’s good name across a thousand platforms for having the audacity to stop giving them free money.

God forbid that anyone should exercise free speech by, um, saying something. Silly liberals. Free speech is for checkbooks and people with money.

The wags at Gawker latched onto this and beat up on our fashion plate friend pretty badly, which led sartorial Dan to have a “What Would Jesus Jonah do?” moment. So Dan decided to fight back. He’d show them, with his superior rhetorical chops, that no one messes around with Dan Foster and lives to tell the tale.  Sadly, as we say, no!

But the ‘conservatives think free speech only applies to money’ canard won’t cut it here. I never say, or imply, that anything PP or its allies have done is illegal or should be.

No, Dan, you didn’t say that free speech that wasn’t money was illegal — and Gawker didn’t say you said that — you just said that free speech with words rather than bucks was — what were the words? — “creepy” and “despicable.”

Gawker 1, Jonah Wannabe 0

In case it was unclear why I think those words apply, let me be more explicit.

We’re all ears, you handsome devil.

The amount of grants issued by the latter to the former totaled less than $700,000. Planned Parenthood successfully fundraised in excess of that amount within 24 hours on the argument that Komen was hurting women’s health …

I don’t know how anyone can step on their own 1/2″ penis, but Dan just managed it. Dan, sweetie, you don’t win an argument that the backlash was disgusting because it raised more money for breast cancer screening for poor women.

Some of the methods employed by PP supporters were downright filthy. … United States senators calling on Komen to reverse its decision on the floors of Congress? I don’t know if that’s legitimate free speech, but I know its despicable.

I don’t know how anyone can step on his own 1/2″ penis and pee on himself at the same, but Dan just managed that feat too. Even someone who has flunked high school civics class knows that statements made on the floor of Congress are at the fundamental core of what the First Amendment is designed to protect.  To suggest that statements made on the floor of Congress aren’t legitimate free speech is like saying that access to the ballot box isn’t a legitimate part of the right to vote. Oh wait. . .

Gawker 3,252, Dan -2,716.

Game over.

It’s easy to lose 8 years when you are a time traveler from the late 1800s.

Cindy Simpson, American Thought Processes Occurred Once:
Citzenship: Easy Come, Easy Go?

IT’S ALWAYS PROJECTION is a truism of all wingnut writing. No matter what a wingnut tries to write about themselves or their idea of their enemies, what comes out ends up being a perverted reflection of their own crimes.

So it sadly has proven to be with the old claim to be the Party of Personal Responsibility. Whether it be denying one’s hand in the Financial Crisis, denying the creation of the modern Security State, or just denying that the Bush years ever happened like this post, wingnuts have proven again and again that what they hate more than anything else is credit for their own successes and actions.

But let’s let slippery eel Cindy Simpson demonstrate this:

Rather than engage in the politically incorrect practice of “profiling,” our government, under the guise of national security, has chosen to subject everyone who holds an airline ticket, from small children to grannies, to uncomfortable and unreasonable searches by the TSA.

But-but-but when we created the Security Theatre clusterfuck, it was only supposed to inconvenience dirty brown people and hippies, why is it being applied to everyone?

Actually having to cope with the consequences of my panicked desperate plea for non-stop security theater is like Hitler Times 50!

Likewise, rather than restrict dual citizenship or reform the controversial practice of granting U.S. citizenship to every baby born on our soil, our government leaders have chosen instead to pass legislation that endangers the rights of citizenship of all of us.

Yes, the controversial practice of actually understanding what the word citizenship means and how it is granted truly is a failure to understand what citizenship means.

Hey, wingnuts, just say “we don’t think niggers and spics should count”. It’s more honest and doesn’t constantly make you look like a complete moron when you try and talk about citizenship.

However, if these shared values of citizenship include the sacred constitutional right to due process, that fidelity appears to have been broken by Obama himself, when, on December 31, he signed into law the NDAA with its provision allowing the indefinite detention of U.S. citizens without a warrant or hearing.
Although Obama signed the “Martial Law Bill” with “serious reservations” and assurances that he does not intend to detain American citizens suspected of terrorism without trial, Professor Jonathan Turley explained: Obama did “not deny that he has such authority.”
On the heels of that alarming legislation is another dangerous bill introduced in the House and concurrently in the Senate that would essentially strip the citizenship from anyone who engages in or supports “hostilities” against the U.S.: the “Enemy Expatriation Act.”

Yes, how DARE Obama McHitler Mussolinipants…continue to renew the broad powers that conservatives universally supported and still support and that Bush put into play.

I mean, yes, these are bad policies and should be ended, but pretending like Sauron Obama was sitting upon his dread tower and deciding to violate civil liberties is pretty much…par for the course for you fucking lunatics in denying the Bush years ever happened.

Constitutional experts Herb Titus and William Olson thoroughly examined the bill under existing law and Supreme Court precedent, and both warn that expatriation is a serious criminal punishment that essentially sends “American citizens into exile.”
Rep. Charles Dent argues that his proposed legislation is needed to amend current expatriation law to encompass the “modern threat of global terrorism.” As Ron DeSantis noted, our enemies could “have an incentive to recruit individuals who can claim American citizenship but who have no actual loyalty to the country” since U.S. citizenship and the right of due process could “create a zone of protection around jihadists (as well as other malcontents) who take up arms against the United States.”
The problem, though, is that any measure that attempts to limit the benefits of citizenship to such enemies will likely undermine the protections guaranteed to all citizens. As Turley pointed out, the “disgraceful argument” that “we are not really losing any rights because most citizens are unlikely to be subject to these powers” is negated by the fact that “something is not a right if it is discretionary with your government to allow or to take away.”

I remember making these arguments about 10 years ago and was called, what was it again, oh yeah, a treasonous fifth column America-hater who should be thrown in Guantanamo.

See, this is the worst part of wingnuts. They are authoritarian power worshippers who still want all the cool street cred and righteous indignity of being an anti-authoritarian rabble-rouser.

So they cheer police action against hippies, endless war, and infinite illegal detention and torture and then throw on some Dockers and try and act like having their Klan rally looked at askance by pedestrians is equivalent to The Selma to Montgomery March or that by selectively criticizing indefinite detention, but only if the president is black and only if we replace it with a system that is more guaranteed to only affect brown people, they are constitutional defenders.

Sorry, Pedro, you’re kinda 8 years too late to this shit. If you didn’t like it being entrenched in our system, maybe you shouldn’t have spent 8 years entrenching it in the system and chomping at the bit to accuse any liberal who objected of treason.

In short, if you don’t like the smell of what’s being shoved in your face, maybe you shouldn’t have shit on the Constitution rug.

Yaser Hamdi and Anwar al-Awlaki are real-life, recent examples of individuals this legislation is meant to target. Both men were “presumed” citizens, for the sole reason of their birth in the U.S., even though to non-citizen parents temporarily resident here. The court in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld ruled that U.S. citizens, even if they are considered “enemy combatants,” are entitled to habeas corpus. However, a drone aimed at Awlaki in Yemen eliminated forever his chance at a day in court, because, as the attorneys who authored the “secret memo” noted, Awlaki’s U.S. citizenship protected him, unless he couldn’t be seized alive.
At first glance, for terrorists like Hamdi and Awlaki, the premise of the NDAA provisions or the expatriation act may not seem like a bad idea. But the risk to the rest of us lies in the application and definition of the legislation’s nebulous terms: “belligerent acts,” “harboring,” and “hostilities.”

Ah, yes, Rumsfeld, that well known Obama Secretary of Defense. Yes, I can see how Obama is personally responsible for this sad violation of citizenship rights.

Instead of focusing on how to strip citizenship or its rights in these (fortunately) rare occasions, perhaps greater consideration should be given to the awarding of citizenship in the first place.

Or you know we could use the very well documented national and international laws against terrorism to just arrest and try them as citizenships instead of pretending that being a terrorist (but only if you are brown and muslimy) means you can bend iron bars and escape from the same maximum security prisons we use to house serial killers, cannibals, and whistle-blowers who reveal our illegal torture camps?

We could even give one a really archaic sounding name so you can still pretend that terrorists are real world Supervillains.

The Supreme Court defined citizenship in 1875 in the famous women’s suffrage case of Minor v. Happersett as membership in a political community, to which the citizen owes allegiance, and from which the citizen is owed protection. The Court further asserted that new citizens may be born or created by naturalization, and “that all children born in a country of parents who were its citizens became themselves, upon their birth, citizens also. These were natives, or natural-born citizens, as distinguished from aliens or foreigners.”
The automatic granting of citizenship at birth to non-citizen parents under the controversial “birthright” citizenship practice, no matter their status (legal or illegal, temporary or permanent), is a contentious issue that has been hotly debated for a century, heating up to a “roiling boil” as the associated economic costs of unchecked immigration have become too enormous to ignore.
The basis of birthright citizenship is found in the 1898 decision of Wong Kim Ark. The divided court, in a 55-page opinion, determined that Ark, born in the U.S. to non-U.S. citizen Chinese parents permanently and legally domiciled in the U.S., was a citizen.

Hey, you know an easier place to find the origin of “birthright citizenship”?

How about Article 2 of that stupid hippie document called the Constitution where it talks about how the president needs to be a “natural born citizen” seeing that as the highest and most uncontroversial form of citizenship to the United States? Hell, even the Confederate Constitution thought that “natural born citizens” were pretty important and they were all about making sure “certain people” couldn’t vote.

But please, do continue.

In its actual historical context, however, Ark’s situation was governed by a treaty in effect between the U.S. and China — a treaty that originally recognized the transfer of allegiance of Chinese making their permanent homes in America, but, as later amended, also prevented Ark’s parents from ever naturalizing as U.S. citizens. In fact, as Attorney Leo Donofrio explains, unlike other native-born children of alien parents of other nationalities, Ark was not born with the dual allegiance that many experts contend the amendment’s “subject to the jurisdiction” phrase was meant to prevent.
The controversial ruling has since become precedent, broadened in its popular application to guarantee the right of citizenship to every baby born here, not just to the permanently domiciled Chinese under the treaty, but even to illegal aliens and temporary visitors from every country — parents who have not transferred their allegiance to America.

Yeah, it’s almost like being born in a country means you are a citizen of that country unless you actively try and naturalize to be a citizen of another country.

Cause countries are trying to prevent the creation of “Stateless entities” and the legal problems that creates.

Law professor Lino Graglia, in his scholarly paper opposing birthright citizenship, noted that Circuit Appeals Judge Richard Posner, “the nation’s leading public intellectual,” also argued against the practice: “… one rule that Congress should rethink … is awarding citizenship to everyone born in the United States[.] … Congress would not be flouting the Constitution if it … put an end to the nonsense.” Graglia concluded that the current practice is an “absurdity.”

Lino Graglia was too insane and conservative for Ronald Reagan to nominate to the Fifth Circuit (the one for Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas). This would be the same Ronald Reagan who tried to nominate Robert Bork to the Supreme Court. I’ll let that just sink in for a moment.

And indeed, if citizenship is purely based on geographical location at the moment of birth, well-timed travel planning is crucial. For the foreign relatives desiring admission to the U.S., an “anchor baby” birth in the right spot and time is cause for celebration. Mark Cromer, in his essay for CAPS titled “American Jackpot: The Remaking of America by Birthright Citizenship,” used the subheading “Run, Squat and Drop.” Perhaps an insensitive description, but such is the reality.
In fact, U.S. citizenship has become such a prized possession that an entire industry, “birth tourism,” has blossomed to meet the demand from mothers from around the world who want to ensure that their babies arrive with the status of American citizenship. These babies are also granted citizenship by their parents’ home country, making them dual citizens at birth.

Oh fuck me, the type of nutcases who freak out over the thought of “anchor babies” have discovered the concept of dual citizenship.

No good can come of this.

Foreign-born applicants for U.S. citizenship must formally reject other citizenships in their Oath of Naturalization. However, children born here as dual citizens are never formally required to make such a renouncement. The State Department rarely enforces its policies discouraging dual citizenship, and has adopted, as described by Frances Stead Sellers, a sort of “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy.

Yeah, dual citizenship sounds all cool in theory, like some jetsetter superspy bouncing between countries, but in practice, it’s a big fancy safety net usually used for things like not having to deal with a lot of hassle for visits to family, being able to leave to a country with functional health care if you get sick, or going to a country with jobs or free education if say one country is going through the shit-hole.

Seeing as how conservatives hate anyone other than the rich and powerful to have any form of safety net, I can see why the very concept incenses them to their very souls.

The very idea of double allegiance is considered “civic bigamy” by scholars such as Dr. John Fonte, who notes the “principle that an American citizen should be loyal to the United States and to no other country or political power is a moral and constitutional issue of the highest order[.]”
Stanley Renshon, author of The 50% American, has estimated that over 40 million Americans are dual citizens. The ongoing practice of birthright citizenship continues to expand that figure.
The unavoidable fact is that both Hamdi and Awlaki were dual citizens by virtue of the birthright citizenship practice. Stripping them of their U.S. citizenship would not render them stateless. Neither had parents who held allegiance to America. Neither had parents who were permanently domiciled here. Neither had parents who intended to naturalize as U.S. citizens.
Of course, we cannot imply that dual citizenship equates with the terrorism that both men were guilty of, but in all practicality, imagine the nightmare if America became involved in a worldwide conflict while having a significant percentage of citizens claiming not just heritage, but actual citizenship in the very countries with which we might be at war.
As Ms. Sellers wrote of dual citizenship, “[w]ar is all about taking sides. Unless of course, you can’t, because you belong on both sides.”

You might be forgiven for thinking this rant began as a condemnation of Obama for allowing the continuation of the stripping of US citizenship for the purpose of bullshit “terrorists aren’t really citizens” shit.

But sadly, when a wingnut thinks about filthy brown people being in the country, it’s only a matter of seconds before any pretense towards empathy is ripped away and it’s all “no brown person should be considered a citizen ever” all the time.

And I wish that was just a snarky joke.

Our nation’s sovereignty relies on citizens who belong on its side, with sole allegiance to the political community of the United States of America, which, in turn, provides its citizens the guaranteed protection of the rule of law.
We must examine how the terms “presumed” and “dual” dilute the value of U.S. citizenship, rather than formulate laws that weaken its protections. We cannot continue to sweep the need for immigration reform under the rug, even when the race card is thrown. And any program of reform cannot ignore the inviting, gaping “hole in the fence” that birthright citizenship policies create.
Our government leaders need to focus on building fences, both physically and figuratively, that protect our nation and our rights as citizens, rather than passing ambiguous legislation that instead tears up the foundations of our Constitution.

Oh sure, every other idea we’ve had on this subject has been an embarrassing failure that even the 27% has begun to hate for its massive inconvenience, but all we need is even more oppressive bullshit. Then, no damn dirty foreigners or natives or anyone with skin darker than Edward from Twilight will want to live here.

Nor will we. But that’ll be okay, because that’ll be the fault of the liberal Lincoln Statue we elected to be president the following year.

Douchehat haz a sad.

Ross Douchehat, New York Fucking Times:
Government and Its Rivals

I am thoroughly convinced that the New York Times is engaging in a long-running trolling of modern conservatives. Ensuring that no matter what year it is, there is always a prominent reminder that any conservative who talks about a meritocracy or complains about “affirmative action” has a ready example proving them completely full of shit.

The current sacrificial example is of course the Chunky Witherspoon fearing, poor man’s Jonah Goldberg that is Ross Douthat.

Today he is whining because after 30 years of surviving on bullshit and scare-mongering in the suburbs, real people are starting to notice that all the government scare-mongering has just left them with a shitty economy, no safety net, and collapsing cities.

I’ll let him explain.

When liberals are in a philosophical mood, they like to cast debates over the role of government not as a clash between the individual and the state, but as a conflict between the individual and the community. Liberals are for cooperation and joint effort; conservatives are for self-interest and selfishness. Liberals build the Hoover Dam and the interstate highways; conservatives sit home and dog-ear copies of “The Fountainhead.” Liberals know that it takes a village; conservatives pretend that all it takes is John Wayne.

Yes, when liberals aren’t pounding their heads against the table at the prospect of having to argue with a simple-minded toadie who sleep-walked his way to a 6-7 figure salary, they sometimes like to point out that government isn’t actually a nickname for a gigantic troll monster that eats children, but rather that it’s a word we use to describe a creation of the people, by the people, and for the people to keep everything running so the rest of us can get back to our day jobs of looking up strange new forms of erotica and sampling bubble wrap.

In this worldview, the government is just the natural expression of our national community, and the place where we all join hands to pursue the common good. Or to borrow a line attributed to Representative Barney Frank, “Government is simply the name we give to the things we choose to do together.”

Yes, this fantasical, strange “worldview” and its zany crazy views of the world working the way it does.

Many conservatives would go this far with Frank: Government is one way we choose to work together, and there are certain things we need to do collectively that only government can do.

But there are trade-offs as well, which liberal communitarians don’t always like to acknowledge. When government expands, it’s often at the expense of alternative expressions of community, alternative groups that seek to serve the common good. Unlike most communal organizations, the government has coercive power — the power to regulate, to mandate and to tax. These advantages make it all too easy for the state to gradually crowd out its rivals. The more things we “do together” as a government, in many cases, the fewer things we’re allowed to do together in other spheres.

Oh of course, I know that when I let the government keep me from dying from preventable causes, that my meetings with the local rotary club go down the crapper and my D&D group gets seized by the FBI.

See, the problem with the constant attempt by conservatives to sell the idea that government is somehow against liberty, is the constant fact that reality keeps contradicting them. When the government is allowed to keep people from starving or dying in the gutters, the Churches don’t magically cease to exist and social clubs don’t stop meeting, aren’t broken up, or infiltrated on, unlike when anti-government zealots try and seize control.

And since he’s basically doing a slow-burn to arguing that churches are being “brought down by the Man, man”, I’m going to skip ahead and note that Churches have the most “coercive power” with regards to their stations, often tying charity aid with proselytization or mandatory conversion, removing social support from anyone who becomes a “member in bad standing with the Church”, not to mention demanding political orthodoxy as a requirement for a sense of community.

But then, that’s the feature, not the bug.

Zealots like Douchehat want people to be dependent on the Church so that people like him can feel better knowing that there are a whole bunch more suckers stuck with him.

Sometimes this crowding out happens gradually, subtly, indirectly. Every tax dollar the government takes is a dollar that can’t go to charities and churches. Every program the government runs, from education to health care to the welfare office, can easily become a kind of taxpayer-backed monopoly.

Yes, every tax dollar is a dollar that doesn’t go to charity. Because you see, every dollar spent in America goes to charity, church, or taxes.

Wait, that sounds insane. Let me instead argue that it’s because tax and charity are directly related and people give a set amount no matter the situation, so when you give people a tax cut, they immediately give that money to charities and churches as we saw with the Bush tax cu-

Damnitt! Just pretend this makes sense and isn’t an obvious and poorly played three-card monte to setup a “Church good, Government bad” retread later on in the post.

But sometimes the state goes further. Not content with crowding out alternative forms of common effort, it presents its rivals an impossible choice: Play by our rules, even if it means violating the moral ideals that inspired your efforts in the first place, or get out of the community-building business entirely.

This is exactly the choice that the White House has decided to offer a host of religious institutions — hospitals, schools and charities — in the era of Obamacare. The new health care law requires that all employer-provided insurance plans cover contraception, sterilization and the morning-after (or week-after) pill known as ella, which can work as an abortifacient. A number of religious groups, led by the American Catholic bishops, had requested an exemption for plans purchased by their institutions. Instead, the White House has settled on an exemption that only covers religious institutions that primarily serve members of their own faith. A parish would be exempt from the mandate, in other words, but a Catholic hospital would not.

HOW DARE THEY!

The nerve!

Demanding that institutions which take federal dollars have to actually-I can hardly say it-actually follow the federal rule of law governing such funds.

Is it not the very founding moral character of religious institutions that they have a right, NAY a calling, to fleece the public chest without a single action binding them in anyway?

Truly this is exactly akin to having Churches banned from any form of community building of any form or having all the religious members of an institution denied a voice in government or something that would be akin to actual oppression rather than having your abusive over-reach and attempt to evade the law mildly rebuked.

Ponder that for a moment. In effect, the Department of Health and Human Services is telling religious groups that if they don’t want to pay for practices they consider immoral, they should stick to serving their own co-religionists rather than the wider public. Sectarian self-segregation is O.K., but good Samaritanism is not. The rule suggests a preposterous scenario in which a Catholic hospital avoids paying for sterilizations and the morning-after pill by closing its doors to atheists and Muslims, and hanging out a sign saying “no Protestants need apply.”

Uh yeah! If a religion can’t deal with being part of a general secular society and wants to selectively discriminate against the public, then they don’t get to be a public service receiving public money.

Your Catholic Hospital can hand out a sign saying “No Protestants need apply” and decide that medicinal drips only go to people who affirm their belief in the Trinity, but then they don’t get federal money designed for making sure everyone gets actual medical care.

You want to play in the big pond, then you have to follow the Big Pond rules. You can’t just say, I want in the Big Pond and then start pissing wildly and trying to molest all the girls. People are going to throw you out and send you back to the Fundamentalist Mormon swimming pool where you belong.

The regulations are a particularly cruel betrayal of Catholic Democrats, many of whom had defended the health care law as an admirable fulfillment of Catholicism’s emphasis on social justice. Now they find that their government’s communitarianism leaves no room for their church’s communitarianism, and threatens to regulate it out of existence.

Yes, I’m sure Catholic Democrats totally agree with your life-long crusade to try and make Chunky Reese Witherspoon’s life as miserable as possible and aren’t more concerned with that Father McWanderingHands scandal.

Critics of the administration’s policy are framing this as a religious liberty issue, and rightly so. But what’s at stake here is bigger even than religious freedom. The Obama White House’s decision is a threat to any kind of voluntary community that doesn’t share the moral sensibilities of whichever party controls the health care bureaucracy.

SEE! If you take away the religious right’s ability to selectively ignore any laws it doesn’t like while still stealing public money that could go to people who actually want to help the public good, then you take away that right for everyone.

How will your Superbowl Party be able to survive not being able to steal federal funds to discriminate against proper football fans? And your neighborhood Sewing club, how will it continue to meet without an ability to take federal money while discriminating against that damn Mrs. Thoraday and her radical cross-stitchings?

Don’t you see the community-less anarchy that would be created in that nightmare world?

Please support the Religious Right’s right to fleece non-members of its religion. It’s the right thing to do. (Paid for by an anonymous PAC that is totally not the Koch Brothers and their newly founded religion Graftism).

The Catholic Church’s position on contraception is not widely appreciated, to put it mildly

Yes, trying to force every citizen of America to do without contraception because of the precepts of a Mad Pope who has been blocking any investigation to the continued rape of children as an attempt to end-run around a decades-long settled public debate about the issue was indeed “not widely appreciated”, “to put it mildly”.

Let’s make it a game and cite other events that are “not widely appreciated, to put it mildly.”

For instance, Ross Douchehat’s hiring at the Times was “not widely appreciated, to put it mildly.”

and many liberals are inclined to see the White House’s decision as a blow for the progressive cause. They should think again. Once claimed, such powers tend to be used in ways that nobody quite anticipated, and the logic behind these regulations could be applied in equally punitive ways by administrations with very different values from this one.

The more the federal government becomes an instrument of culture war, the greater the incentive for both conservatives and liberals to expand its powers and turn them to ideological ends. It is Catholics hospitals today; it will be someone else tomorrow.

Are you fucking serious?

After 50 years of nothing but non-stop Culture War all the time by you greasy retrobates, you now want us on the abused and battered side to surrender our arms and stop because we are mildly resisting your attempt to continue a culture war you lost by other means.

I’ve got a song by Lily Allen for you on that.

The White House attack on conscience is a vindication of health care reform’s critics, who saw exactly this kind of overreach coming. But it’s also an intimation of a darker American future, in which our voluntary communities wither away and government becomes the only word we have for the things we do together.

Well, that’s fair.

I mean, not your complaint, your slippery slope horseshit, or the way your flaccid attempt to call secular community groups to your cause after you’ve spent decades trying to eliminate them off the face of the planet reminded you of how your latent homosexuality and lack of self awareness prevents you from any satisfying amorous encounters.

But why you needed to pull out this pile of weak sauce. When the Big Bad Health Care came to pass and it turned out that the sky didn’t fall and it ended up just being a naked giveaway to the Insurance companies that doesn’t really change much at all for the better, you fuckers ended up needing something, anything to grasp onto.

After all, you pinned so much of your 2012 campaign chances on your resistance to the mild attempt at a Health Care Bill, so there needs to be something catastrophic about it to get the scared grandmas and soccer moms to piss themselves and fill in the R U INSANE? box.

But hey, it’s okay that this failed, I’m sure, the community spirit of Mother Church will be there for you when the Times moves on to the next Affirmative Action hire.

Organic Unit in need of repair. Please call a FOX Men’s Association Member immediately.

S.E. Cupp, NY Daily News:
Newt Gingrich, natural woman

It’s been a long time since we’ve given old Sippy Cupp the spotlight here at Sadly, No! For those of you who don’t quite remember, Sippy Cupp is a botched example of the Stepford Conservative, the generically pretty, thin-lipped carbon copy usually put on conservative TV so that Fox News watchers can do their masturbating without feeling “gay”.

Unfortunately, while the Lab technicians were able to give her the slightly alien glass-eyed look, the soulless smile, and the head full of crazy, they failed to make her hair the required shade of blonde, so poor Sippy Cupp has been forced to roam the back alleys of third rate tabloids like the New York Daily News becoming ever more bitter and incoherent as her short lived processors begin to clog with dust.

It is a sad fate indeed, but not one we here at Sadly No Industries are above mocking. So let’s go!

No one in the modern era, save maybe Lorena Bobbitt, has proved the axiom more true than our gal pal Newton Leroy Gingrich, who is now — let’s face it — a woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

This was the first paragraph. The premise we are to buy for the crazy that is to follow. Our entry point into the mind of Sippy Cupp. Be very afraid, people.

I don’t like to peddle in sexist stereotypes,

Well, good. Sexist stereotypes are a lazy shorthand in our culture, too often employed at the expense of all women including yourself. I don’t often say this about a conservative, but I am proud of you to make the brave decision to not engage in the easy practice of reciting nothing but sexist stereotypes and instead taking the high road and trying to argue your insane premise through logic and concrete examples!

Wait, that’s a comma at the end of that sentence, isn’t there? Oh, f-

but

Yup, there it is. Welp, let’s just have it.

the poor girl is an emotional wreck, and needs an intervention. As part of the womanfolk clan myself, it’s therefore my duty to give Ms. Gingrich a serious reality check, and save her from herself. Because…I care.

Sippy Cupp, I hate to break this to you, but you are way too female, way too straight, and way too without irony to be trying to pull off the whole “miss thang” thing.

It all started when that no-good prom king Mitt Romney did Newt terribly wrong. Everybody knows you don’t double-cross the most popular girl in school, and Newt was just that, for a little while at least. Mitt should have known who he was up against. Newt didn’t get to where she was by being nice. She knows how to fight dirty — she’s had years of practice.

So when Mitt unexpectedly stole Newt’s thunder, everyone in school could see the writing on the wall. Ms. Gingrich was going to lose it. And lose it she did.

Well, that didn’t take long at all for the sexist stereotypes. Hmm, okay, how about something about how bitches be catty?

There was the catty talk on the campaign trail about Romney’s posse, his Super PAC brat pack. There were the nasty rumors about Mitt’s past as a Bain Capital ne’er-do-well.

Check.

And of course, in wingnut world, being the well documented head of something means it’s just “nasty rumors” that you are connected. Whereas if it’s just a nasty rumor like Obama being a muslin sheet, then it might as well be written in special wingnut ink on the Constitution for all to see. Ah, to be young and so insane that’d make sense.

Hey, for the next sexist stereotype, I’m going to go with PMS.

She’s always taken high school politics personally (remember the time she threatened to shut down the school because she didn’t get a seat at the cool lunch table?) So it’s no surprise to any of us that she’s taking this latest catfight to heart.

Oh, of course, catfight!

I’m sure the next paragraph will be the start of some actual point against Newt Gingrich, maybe pointing out such negatives as his constant arguing that real countries are fictional or his support for the return of child labor. I mean, it’s not like she could keep up a post that was entirely sexist stereotypes, right?

It’s no longer about some silly popularity contest now. She’s out for revenge. She wants him ruined. And if she has to team up with her enemies in Rick Perry and Rick Santorum to do it, she will.

It’s like something out of a country song — to recall the immortal words of Carrie Underwood, she may very well dig her key into the side of his pretty little souped-up four-wheel drive, carve her name into his leather seat, take a Louisville slugger to both headlights, slash a hole in all four tires…and maybe next time he’ll think before he cheats.

Damn it. Okay, but she isn’t going to do something stupid like argue that sexist stereotypes are universal to all women, even women created by Sippy Cupp because she’s burning up that Bachmann isn’t doing well enough in the race to use all her sexism up on her? Right?

C’mon, throw me a bone here!

Well we all have those fantasies. Who among us hasn’t wanted to rip the throat out of some guy who betrayed us? But my message to Ms. Gingrich is simple: Snap out of it. Have some dignity, woman, and do what we all do in times like these.

You get yourself in a bubble bath. Inhale a tub of ice cream in the privacy of your own home while watching a “Toddlers and Tiaras” marathon. And when that tub of ice cream is done, you follow it up with a bag of potato chips and a bowl of Cap’n Crunch. Then cut up all his pictures and burn them in the fireplace. But whatever you do, this public psycho trip has got to stop.

Any more of this and I might just start suspecting the point of this post was to throw out a whole bunch of sexism and the gender change of Newt was just the excuse when you couldn’t hold it in anymore.

So to Newt Gingrich and women on the verge everywhere, enough is enough. We are strong, independent women, and we’re better than this.

Whew. Glad to see that you believe women are strong and independent and above all the sexist bullshit thrown at them by…people completely unrelated to you. Sure makes me feel better about the purpose of this post.

We put up with menstruation, childbirth and size zero Hollywood actresses.

La la la la la! Can’t hear your obvious retreading of sexism cause I’m too busy trying to think the best of you! La la la la!

Newt needs to pull herself together and call it a day. Because frankly, she’s making the rest of us look a little unhinged.

Yes, Newt is making women like you look unhinged. What with Newt being too much of a faded high school queen bee struggling to adapt in a world that couldn’t care less about her former shallow accomplishments. What with Newt trying to truck too much with sexist stereotypes and uses of sexism against all women in embarrassing ways to the sex.

How perceptive of you.

Shorter John Wharton, The American Supergenius
It Was ‘A Wonderful Life’

Contrary to what liberals think, Mr. Potter is the real hero, and George Bailey the true villain, of “It’s A Wonderful Life.”

It’s been a standing joke for ages to claim that some free-market Randroid was so clueless that he or she would watch “It’s A Wonderful Life” and cheer for Mr. Potter while hissing at George Bailey. It would be the equivalent, say, of someone hoping that Scrooge would tell the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Future to sod off or that Spielberg would leave E.T. to die alone in a ditch in Southern California or that Dorothy would be stranded in Oz for the rest of her life as the Wizard’s concubine.

But, of course, this, or so everyone thought, was all just cute and snarky hyperbole. No one, not even the High Priestess Ayn Rand herself, could possibly actually watch “It’s A Wonderful Life” and come away not sobbing like a child but instead thinking that George Bailey was a social parasite spouting vile commie propaganda against the heroic Mr. Potter, the job creator who knew what was really best for the people of Bedford Falls.

Well, meet John Wharton, if that really is his name:

There is probably no more iconic piece of cinematic Americana than Frank Capra’s 1946 film It’s a Wonderful Life. Even today, families enjoy the folksy warmth of small-town America at Christmas as seen in the golly-gee world of the Bailey family, living their all-American lives in Bedford Falls, NY. And indeed, Americans should watch this timeless classic often but, I suggest, more to remind themselves of just how our modern-day financial problems were born and what cavalier habits bred them.

Uh oh. You can see this coming from miles away: because banks were forced by PBS-watching liberals infatuated with the Capra film to act like George Bailey and give home loans to shiftless, lie-about Negroes instead of acting like Mr. Potter and throwing them homeless onto the streets where they belong, the entire U.S. economy collapsed. Thanks, again, to Hollywood, of course.

Most viewers see George Bailey as naive but likeable, a bit like themselves. But American Genius Wharton naturally sees the sinister truth.

His idea of a date is to take his future wife, Mary (played in the film by the virginal Donna Reed), to an abandoned house she adores.  He persuades Mary to help him vandalize it by explaining that “with deserted houses, you make a wish and then try to bust a window.”  …  Such is our story’s hero.

While we are on shady characters in film, let me point out that Dorothy Gale was a juvenile delinquent who ran away from home with her vicious dog only to wind up murdering a wealthy landowner in order to deprive her of her rightful inheritance of her dead sister’s estate.

When George’s father dies, the board of the Bailey Building and Loan Association (BBLA), a co-op owned by its members, meets to consider the institution’s future. … Potter argues convincingly that the BBLA should be closed because George’s father was an incompetent administrator, citing a loan given to Ernie the taxi driver after it was declined at Potter’s bank. The bank’s wisdom in rejecting Ernie is shown clearly when, in fact, he is soon unable to make payments on the mortgage he holds with the BBLA and attempts to return his home’s deed.

…

Ernie the taxi driver should have “moved back in with the missus’ folks” as he wanted to do until he could retrain to afford the nice home he wanted for his family. Ernie intrinsically knew that he was in over his head; George likely helped him drown.

And while we are in the business of rewriting classic movies and consigning Ernie to the bottom of the pond to fulfill a right-wing ideological bias, let’s not forget Atticus Finch in To Kill A Mockingbird who, by defending that no-count Negro, wound up embarrassing Scout to death, causing her to lose all her friends and, ultimately, hang herself from the back porch ceiling fan.

Obviously, old man Potter’s business sense was exactly right when he told the BBLA board: “High ideals without common sense can ruin a town” — or a nation — as easy credit creates “a discontented, lazy rabble instead of a thrifty working class. All because starry-eyed dreamers like Bailey put impossible ideas into their heads.”

…

Our current mortgage meltdown crisis shows us that, indeed, 70 years of Bailey-style undisciplined credit growth has brought us to tears as we had ignored common lending standards and let crony capitalism favor personal connections over objective analysis. A bit more cold-hearted caution in the ’40s might have helped us avoid the civil unrest and plummeting living standards we almost certainly will experience as Potter’s reality bites and the FOGs [Friends of George Bailey] adjust to a new world of painful limits, correcting for decades of living an unearned high life.

It’s apparent I must have fallen asleep when I watched “It’s A Wondeful Life.” Did I miss the part where George invents the credit default swap and resold all his bank loans as derivative instruments?

Adam Hasner, American Reverse Spew:
Conservatism Set Me on the Pro-Life Path

If there is one word to describe this nascent year in conservatism, it’d be batshit. If two, it’d be fucking batshit, but before this turns into a Monty Python skit, let’s skip straight ahead and note that beyond the usual doubling down of crazy, the season has been dominated by an incredible amount of dishonesty.

Now, dishonesty and wingnuts go together like Republicans and double wetsuit dildos, but even for our annually fact-challenged, there has been a noticeable increase in the usual areas. Projection has skyrocketed to accommodate their candidates realizing that the 27% are pretty much the only Republican primary voters left. And Republican candidates realizing that they no longer need to pretend to value truth to our bought-and-sold media have begun openly spinning their preferred model of reality as if the internet didn’t make it embarrassingly easy to disprove their fantasies.

Hell, one can say that we’ve gotten so used to conservatives defaulting to dishonesty as a first recourse, that it is rather shocking when they deliver some long lost honesty, much like a sickening flower blooming once every thousand years.

So it is, with this quaint post by Republican Senatorial candidate and professional tater lookalike, Adam Hasner.

I thought the interview with Anne Conlon was both impressive and instructive, and it stirred in me some thoughts about abortion in America, on this, the day of the annual March for Life in Washington.

Ah, right, the 39th anniversary of Roe v Wade has many conservatives reflective on how they always seem to be decades behind an issue they already decisively lost, but are still fighting anyways.

As a Jew, I can appreciate the evolution of Conlon’s — and others’ — thought process on the issue of abortion. And I know first hand what it’s like to disagree with family and friends on this fundamental issue.

I attended public schools growing up, and while the Jewish faith is theologically and historically a pro-life faith, the strong strain of secularism within Judaism has taken many in the religion away from its pro-life roots.

Well, he’s a conservative. He couldn’t have a post that was entirely honesty, so he sells a quick lie to keep his hand in and signal the mouth-breathers that he isn’t some traitor who acknowledges the sky is blue.

As the son of liberal Democrats, I didn’t inherit my pro-life views or have them engrained in me by schooling or my institutions of faith.

I have listened to the stories of people explaining how viewing an ultrasound for the first time or the experience of becoming a father or a mother can solidify a belief in the sanctity of life. I have not experienced this either.

And yet I still arrived at the conclusion that every life is sacred from conception until natural death. That is because we cherish life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness in this country, and those rights should extend to every life, born and unborn.

Except women, of course.

But I have to hand it to him, a conservative not pretending that his “deeply held beliefs” has any connection to some sort of “profound event” often with a wink and a nod suggesting that evil liberal abortionists have never done something as profound as “seen an ultrasound”?

So Mr. Hasner, if not those things, what was it that made you such a staunch forced-birther? Will you spin some story about Planned Parenthood and Hitler? Seeing an aborted fetus reanimate itself and beg for the rescinding of established medical ethics and law? The gun currently being held against your head by a fanatical “pro-life” terrorist?

I arrived at these conclusions because, before I ever really thought of the abortion issue, I was a conservative.

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you that rare and delicate thing.

Naked honesty from a conservative.

Appreciate this gem, for we will not see its like for many a day hence.

I came of age during the Reagan Revolution, steeped myself in conservatism, and registered as a Republican at age 18. Being pro-life isn’t just a moral issue for me; it’s a historical and constitutional one. Understanding the creation of Planned Parenthood and the pro-abortion movement helped shape my view. But I’m pro-life because I was conservative first. I wonder how many other people out there can say the same.

I have a much deeper faith today, and I find pride and comfort in Judaism’s historical defense of life. But I know that conservatism helped set me on the path.

He’s anti-choice because he was a conservative and being a conservative means you buy whatever half-formed insane nonsense is presented to you as the price of the tribe. And those beliefs are now dear to him, because being fanatically anti-woman is how you show membership to the tribe, to question it is to question the tribe.

If this seems suspiciously like a cult, then you should be ashamed of yourself!

…

Cults get better hats.

That’s why I recoil whenever I hear people — even those within my own party — say we need to get away from social issues.

Yeah! How dare we get away from social issues I only care about because I was told being conservative meant I had to care about those issues and conservatives are nothing if not firm believers in the practice of sunk costs?

Not changing even when reality and the will of the people say otherwise is the hallmark of a great man…or someone incapable of handling the task of dressing and feeding themselves daily. One or the other.

Or that we’re “on the losing side” of the marriage debate, or the sanctity of life argument. The defense of life just doesn’t “move voters,” I’ve heard more than one consultant say.

I hope that never becomes the majority view in our movement. If it does, we will never earn the right to be the governing majority in America, nor will we deserve to. I will continue to speak clearly and consistently on the connection between our moral values and economic prosperity.

Yeah, how would we ever manage to hold the governing majority in America if we cater to petty things like “the will of the people”? Or acknowledge that spewing archaic shit people thought settled decades ago just makes people less keen on electing us to positions of power?

The real path to power is to espouse reviled and bigoted beliefs long past their for-sale date. For instance, have you ever considered that the real path to power lies in ranting about the perfidy of the Irishman?

The anniversary of Roe v. Wade is a grim observance. It marks an uncorrected mistake in American history. If the conservative movement ever stops being the home of the pro-life movement, this grim observance — and its consequences — will mark many more anniversaries.

I’m not sure that sentence manages to actually successfully say anything.

But I guess you needed to demonstrate your fealty to the crazy train after basically spending a post noting that the only reason you are a “firm believer in this moral cause” is because you fear getting off this train is the fastest route to ending up on those lists “perfectly legal and not at all connected to the lone-wolf terrorist” “pro-life” organizations like to circulate with the home addresses and daily schedules of “enemies”.

It’s okay, just wink once for “he’s got a gun against my head” and I’ll totally come help you, once I’m done making a sandwich.

Now, what mustard goes best with rye?

Shorter D.S. Hube, Newsbutthurters
Is Liberalism Leading to Comic Books’ Downfall?

There is nothing left for me to read now that commie comic books are all about oil spills and shit like that.

The liberal media must be falling down on the job because the folks over at Newsbutthurters have now taken to complaining about comic books, apparently not being able to find, today at least, anything in the news to butthurt about.

First, let me get this out of the way: if you are a grown-up that eats Fruit Loops, wears a onesie to bed, or reads comic books, it’s probably best to keep that to yourself. But the Newsbutthurter in question, one D.S. Hube, admits that this is pretty much all he reads, if “read” is the correct word. At least this is all that he “read” before he decided to bring the whole comic book empire crashing down through his one-man boycott to punish the comic book publishers for trying to turn him into a communist by slipping subversive plots into their comic books.

As a big comicbook geek from waaaaay back (I have a section of my blog, The Colossus of Rhodey, dedicated to comics), and as one who continued to purchase comics up until the mid-2000s, I find this modern “progressive” trend not only disburbing, but disgusting. It’s what led me to stop purchasing contemporary comics outright, and lose some, if not friendships, associations, as a result.

So what’s an example of what D.S. finds “disgusting” and caused him to lose all his 12-year-old friends who hung out at the comic book shop with him?

You pick up a superhero comic book featuring a childhood favorite of yours, hoping to reignite some of that magic you felt way back when and you see that the opening sequence in the comic deals with an oil rig disaster. You immediately and disappointingly know what’s going to be said, either by your childhood favorite or by some other character given credibility within the story. You turn the page, and sure enough, your childhood favorite grumbles about his/her country’s dependency on oil or how inherently dangerous oil drilling is to the environment.

The disgusting idea that we should stop giving a fortune to the Saudis was enough, I imagine, that it sent D.S. Hube to go turn on all the lights in his studio apartment (all four of them) just to show Batman who is who and that he can’t keep shoving stuff down D.S.’s throat just because he’s Batman.

This cumulative effect eventually took its toll on me. I kept purchasing comics probably longer than I should have.

Yes, D.S., if you bought comics once you were older than fourteen, then that’s the smartest thing you’ve said in your entire post

Many of the stories were top notch despite my knowing the politics of the creators … but at a certain point, I had had enough. … I just asked myself “Why do I continue to support these guys? I give them my money — and they continually spit in my face.” … And, thus, all this is [partly] why I blog. I why I’ll continue to not shell out $3-4 for a comicbook any time soon.

Actually, I think I feel much better that this grown man with an overdeveloped interest in muscular men in tights has decided to start blogging instead of lurking around kids in comic book stores. So, maybe, just this one time we can honestly say that Newsbutthurters is actually performing some kind of public service.

Shorter America’s Worst Self-Employed Lawyer™, America’s Shittiest Website™
The Golden Globes: An Ugly Peek into the Real Hollywood

Hollywood = Golden Globes. Golden Globes = Penis. Penis = Bad. Hollywood = Bad.

Sadly, No! all-time fave Ben Shapiro, who used to be America’s Worst Law Student™, and then America’s Worst Law Firm Associate™, and now is America’s Worst Unemployed Self-Employed Lawyer™, surfaces briefly at America’s Shittiest Website™ to complain about the Golden Globes award which, not surprisingly, is the perfect storm of everything that upsets Ben — foreigners, Hollywood, and penis jokes — all wrapped up into a 90-minute TV special that Ben hates so much that he can’t resist watching the whole thing, although he must have been on a Funyuns run when they gave an award to some Muslims, because he says nothing about that. But, for a guy whose penis is less useful to him than a basketball hoop to a Chihuahua, he is overcome by all the penis jokes on the show and dutifully reports them all to his fellow Cornerdomites.

I’ll let intrepid mango hunters analyze most of AWSEL™ Shapiro complaints about each of the Globe penis jokes, but I can’t resist bringing this mango back first:

Finally, Tina Fey and Jane Lynch explained how actors and actresses aren’t all that different from their real-life selves. “Matt LeBlanc is Matt LeBlanc,” said Fey. “And Hung’s Thomas Jane . . . really is a high-school coach,” replied Lynch. They then high-fived and shouted, “Yes! Penis joke!” Fey is widely considered the best female comedy writer on television. No wonder 30 Rock has swirled the toilet bowl for the last couple of years. As for Lynch — well, let’s just say her knowledge of the male anatomy is likely limited.

So, let’s see, at the same time Ben, who still probably refers to his own penis as his “woowoo,” is bitching about penis jokes, he makes a lame poop joke and an even lamer lesbian joke in which Ben thinks that since lesbians have never seen a penis, they can’t make penis jokes, or something. Given that the virginal Ben claims to only have any experience with his own little unused and dessicated pecker, it seems unclear where that gives him any greater experience with penises than any random woman on the streets, lesbian or not.

Weirdly enough, phallic jokes are a way for Hollywood to up its liberal street cred — by acting like third-graders fascinated with their own genitalia. Which many of them are.

In case you’re wondering why AWSEL™ had such a short tenure at a real law firm, take a careful look at that sentence quoted above. He appears to be saying that most people in Hollywood are third graders. He was trying to say that many people in Hollywood were fascinated with their own genitalia (as if that were some sort of affliction rather than the normal state for everyone else in the world but Mr. I-don’t-have-a-Penis Shapiro) but just doesn’t have the third-grade writing chops necessary to pull it off (so to speak).

Feel free to make your own penis jokes in the comments (as if you need my permission).

Albin Sadar, American Daydreamer:
The Big Switch

Conservatives have trouble enough with analysis. Trying to recognize a thing that is happening and actually process it on a real and meaningful level without massive amounts of projection and fantasy is a skillset far beyond their grasp.

So when a conservative skips that and goes straight into speculation, you know you are in for a treat. And Albin Sadar does not disappoint.

Now that the 2008 idea to “make history by voting for the first African-American president” is yesterday’s news, what will be done to spice up the current election season?

Cause that’s what it was, right? A transparent cynical attempt to capitalize on a minority like our failed ploy of Palin, right? Please say yes, my fragile mind just can’t take the truth.

Also, did you know that elections are only held to entertain us?

Two more white guys running on the Republican side? Not a chance.

Can’t even pretend your side will have any diversity, can ya?

But a woman as a running mate for the Democrats? Now, that could do it. And not just any woman, but the woman who was left high and dry the last time around. The woman currently ranked more popular than Oprah. Yes, a “reluctant,” hope-we-can-convince-her Hillary Clinton.

Wait, what now? Uh…short of criminal allegations they don’t really replace the vice-president nominee for the re-election campaign*. So how do you plan to-

And, best of all, having Hillary replace Joe Biden on the ticket would be the perfect way for a do-over, a way for voters to atone, to collectively tell Hillary: “We’re sorry!” Many are regretting that Hillary didn’t get the nod for the top spot four years back. Now they’ll be perfectly willing to enhance their race-oriented vote of 2008 with a gender-targeted one in 2012, even if it does mean resigning Mrs. Clinton to second chair.

Did we misread the whole 2008 primary and assume that PUMAs were a real thing and that hordes of women were stewing in anger willing to betray all their principles in order to stab Obama in the back over “sleighting” Clinton?

Well, let’s repeat that folly, louder and more incoherent than ever!

On Bill O’Reilly’s show a few nights back, a couple of pundits were arguing that replacing Joe Biden on the ticket would be tantamount to the Democrats admitting that the Obama/Biden ticket is in trouble. Although true, these pundits failed to realize that the yellow-stream media would spin a Biden jettison in a positive way. He’s graciously taking one for the team, they’d say, and, pointing to his long and noble years of public service, they’d tout his well-deserved, well-earned retirement.

Wait, rewind. This wasn’t just a fever dream on the part of a lowly wingnut? People were paid, probably more money than I’ll ever make in my life to come on television and debate things that would never happen in a “serious” manner.

Fuck, I was apparently wasting my time getting a Master’s degree in Biology.

These same O’Reilly analysts also asked, “Why would Hillary want to leave her current role as secretary of state? It’s a terrific position of power and influence.” But what is the truest desire of both Hillary and Bill Clinton? The historic First Female President trophy. As Obama’s vice president, in four years, Hillary could quite easily slip right into the presidency.

Why, it’s almost as if the question was inane and revealed the pundits as the overpaid hacks that they were. But luckily brilliant analysts like Albin are here to make sense of the nonsensical!

We need to admit it: Hillary on the ticket would truly be a brilliant move. It would reinvigorate the dreary Dems and certainly give the wall-sitting independents a reason to jump back on board the history-making bandwagon.

We’re really betting the farm that the only reason people would vote for a black man was a one-off token president, because otherwise, our strategy of exploiting racism for electoral votes from scared white folks is going to look mighty short-sighted mighty fast.

And the timing for the big switch will be incredibly well-orchestrated. Most likely it will come this summer in Charlotte at the Democratic National Convention. We can expect a very big tuh-do with lots of hugs and hype and maybe even Joe Biden himself, in a “terribly gracious” speech, introducing his replacement.

Yeah, yeah, we will never know how you were able to predict this, blah blah blah.

On the positive note, we’ve apparently just ID’d one of Sadly No’s most “famous” trolls.

However, if you see the ticket remaining Obama/Biden as the convention comes and goes, do not rule out a September — or even a traditional October — surprise. The liberals and progressives cannot and will not let the transformation of America be stunted. The Obama presidency may be their last best hope. Look for some sort of tricky ailment (heart problems? stroke-like symptoms, perhaps?) that will force Joe to very reluctantly step aside. Then who could blame the Democrats for pulling the last-minute switcheroo?

Would you say that if reality doesn’t take the crazy train to Cuckoo Valley, it would have been “central to your point”?

And nice of you to get the ass covering out nice and early. Saves writing a whole new post when the inevitable happens.

So what can be done to minimize the effect of a Clinton vice presidential bid?

The Republicans have to do something they haven’t been able to do in a long time — beat the Dems at their own game. They have to get way out in front of the Big Switch.

In fact, just by letting Americans know loudly and clearly that this sort of game plan may be in the works, the Republicans can knock the steam right out of the Democratic engine. If and when the switch is finally announced, then at least the result will be a fizzled thrill-factor. The best result: voters would see that they’re being distracted from the abysmal Obama/Biden record — and manipulated into a knee-jerk voting response to boot.

Yes, please devote all your attack ads to attacking the Clintons some more. Hell, buy some TV ads to do so. It will really show us libs when we do that ninja voodoo shit we are known to do.

It’s been said over and over again, here at American Thinker and in many other places, that this nation will simply not survive four more years of Barack Obama. If that is true (and it certainly is), what, then, will America be like after four — or even eight — additional years of Hillary Clinton?

Wouldn’t it be shorter to just write “Boo, now be scared”?

Bonus comment mango:

Is this speculation or is there some inside info being leaked ? It sounds plausible and the Democrats are certainly going to use every legal and illegal maneuver to retain the White House. Given the fact that so many dunderheads were too busy watching American Idol to bother doing any research into Mr.Obama’s murky past before they cast their vote, putting Hillary on the ticket would give these voters another excuse to cast vote before engaging brain. The problem we face is an electorate too ignorant, too lazy, and too dependent upon the government for their day to day existence.

Aww, that’s so cute. He still believes that wingnut facts come from a place other than the writer’s ass. I bet he still believes in Santa Claus and Market Forces.

I don’t have the heart to tell him otherwise.

*I meant “don’t tend” rather than “don’t ever” as it’s very rare for an otherwise clean vice president to be replaced on a ticket (but not impossible as many pointed out). But since I didn’t say that and you got me on what I did say, let’s just leave this up as a monument to my ignorance.

Shorter George Picard, The American Genius:
How Obama Betrays Martin Luther’s King’s Dream

• To celebrate Martin Luther King day, here are five incompetent niggers and two worthless spicks that Obama hired just because of their skin color.

Of course, no Martin Luther King holiday would be complete without some poor oppressed white guy doing the tried and true schtick about how it’s the niggers that are the real racists, particularly the colored usurper in the White House who has spent the last four years taking America away from true Americans and giving it to his black buddies. Meet George Picard, who writes under a pseudonym at The American Genius for obvious reasons

President Obama has mocked Martin Luther King by policies and actions that judge people by the color of their skin and not by the content of their character. … Among his dreams was an America where his four children would be judged not “by the color of their skin but by the content of their character”

You might be forgiven for imagining that King was expressing a desire that his children could eat at any lunch counter and sit anywhere on the bus, but only if you are a Negro-oppressed white man will you realize that King was in fact expressing a prophetic condemnation of affirmative action and that he lived in abject terror that his children might get into college with lower SATs than their white counterparts.

The man who campaigned on the theme that there was no “white America” or “black America” has used his powers as President to practice identity politics on a scale never before seen in America. Barack Obama has overtly chosen top officials on the basis of their skin color and not on the content of their character.

Because no president before Obama has ever chosen a white person of low character for public office and even if they had it was purely coincidental that they were white.

Of course, first stop on Picard’s white outrage tour is that wild-eyed, Black Panther loving Eric Holder whom

Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer has called him one of the most incompetent attorney generals in American history

Both Kraphammer and Picard have apparently forgotten all about John Mitchell, which would, of course, have absolutely nothing to do with the fact that Mitchell was, you know, white.

And don’t forget, while we’re being outraged, that uppity Negress at the EPA, Lisa Jackson:

She is blithely unconcerned that Congressmen have taken her to task for performance.

If she were truly competent (and white), she would immediately step down the moment someone in the opposition party criticized her.

When Obama went looking for a Supreme Court Justice is was so obvious that he had a very narrow filter of who would “qualify” that Time’s Mark Halperin wrote that “White Men Need Not Apply.”

And, of course, like Martin Luther King, George Picard and Mark Halperin, I too have a dream that I will live to see the day when there is finally a white man on the Supreme Court.

‘Shorter’ concept created by Daniel Davies and perfected by Elton Beard. We are aware of all Internet traditions.™

Bob Unruh, Wing Nut Daily:
Exposing Kinsey Sex Atrocities Goes Global

I’m surprised that wingnuts don’t go after Alfred Kinsey more often. I mean, let’s be frank, the conservative opinion on sex is that if one puts their fingers in their ears and pretends any information about sex away, then that will also make sex and sexuality go away.

To a wingnut, as long as they don’t hear about it, then it must not ever occur, and their teenage daughter’s swelling belly must be because she has really let herself go on her exercise routine.

To be fair, that’s probably by design. A psychotic deliberately trying to ignore any evidence that gays aren’t minions of Satan (pshaw, like we don’t all know that they’re Venusian slavers come to rob us of promising conservative politicians) isn’t likely to look up exactly who did the research that proves they’ve been around forever.

“Luckily” for us, Bob Unruh is a well-read escapee of the mental asylum and wants his fellow inmates to know that there was a guy that looked into this nasty sex stuff they are all ashamed of, but its okay, because he’s really Hitler Times 12.

Perhaps, I should let Bob explain.

Alfred Kinsey’s belief in child sexuality, with all of its impacts on children and society, now circles the globe, but a campaign to reveal the truth about his efforts to legitimize pedophilia is following right behind.

My word, this certainly is a shocking development. Please, Bobby, tell me quickly your proof of this incredible assertion!

Judith Reisman, a visiting professor of law at Liberty University, popular lecturer and former consultant to four U.S. Department of Justice administrations, recently concluded a trip in which she delivered seminars on the fallacies of Kinsey’s arguments in Rome, Ireland and London.

One of her books exposing the agenda of Kinsey’s lifelong campaign recently has been translated into Chinese.

Okay, good for her. The proof?

“The Kinsey Institute is very active in the sexology field, holding conferences in every major nation in the world. They’ve been training the sexologists, sex educators in every country,” Reisman told WND.

“There’s not a single country that educates the public about sex where the institutional position, [the teachers], have not been trained in the Kinsey model,” she said.

There is no proof is there? Damn, I always get my hopes up for no damn reason.

Her books, including “Kinsey: Crimes and Consequences” and “Sexual Sabotage,” show that Kinsey’s research was based on “illegal sexual experimentation on several hundred young children.”

My word! Maybe one sentence this will no longer be just a naked unsupported assertion that flies in the face of you know, reality. What? I’m allowed hope, right?

His research results came not from a scientific cross-section of American, but from “hundreds of sex offenders, prostitutes, prison inmates and exhibitionists,” she documents. Kinsey, Reisman explained, used these people to represent the sexual activities and behaviors of the “Greatest Generation.”

Okay, fine. Spoilsport. So, yeah, the proof of deviant child molestation on the part of Kinsey is the fact that he studied abnormal sexuality as well and thus interviewed rapists and pedophiles to understand what caused those desires. Naturally, she lumps this in with interviewing non-abusive “sex criminals” of the time such as exhibitionists, prostitutes, and anyone who was in prison. And this somehow means that Kinsey’s research can be safely burned and never looked at.

Who wants to be the first to inform the wingnuts of the world that peer-reviewed research and verifiable results don’t just disappear if you smear the original researcher of the subject enough?

Or should we just wait and see if one of them manages to get that meaningless step actually correct first? I mean, why not go with an easy one like knocking James Watson for being racist, thus DNA is a communist plot that doesn’t exist?

Or would knocking a historical figure for something true just violate the deeply held conservative belief in being wrong 100% of the time?

The”K Bomb,” as she calls it — the “studies,” claims and “research” launched from the institute’s headquarters behind the gothic limestone Indiana University façade — have been used to “subvert” the nation’s traditional morality.

The impact has been seen worldwide.

Why yes, recognizing behaviors exist and that denying them away don’t make them go away is in fact the exact same thing as conjuring them into existence in the first place.

Hence why there was no sex and no one was born before the Sexual Revolution. Fuck the 6000 years crap. Real Patriots know that no one was born before 1969.

Kinsey’s extreme view of sexuality is typified by a statement posted on the website of the North American Man-Boy Love Association, which advocates sex between adults and children.

The statement, from Kinsey’s book “Sexual Behavior in the Human Female,” defends adult-child sex and accuses those who object to it of being responsible for “serious effects” suffered by children.

“When children are constantly warned by parents and teachers against contacts with adults, and when they receive no explanation of the exact nature of the contacts, they are ready to become hysterical as soon as any older person approaches, or stops and speaks to them in the street, or fondles them, or proposes to do something for them, even though the adult may have had no sexual objective in mind. Some of the more experienced students of juvenile problems have come to believe that the emotional reactions of the parents, police officers, and other adults who discover that the child has had such a contact, may disturb the child more seriously than the sexual contacts themselves. The current hysteria over sex offenders may very well have serious effects on the ability of many of these children to work out sexual adjustments some years later.”

Oops, there’s the main mistake.

How many times do I have to tell you people? Never quote reality in your deluded ramblings. It’ll just prove you wrong. Like here, where you quoted a section noting that lying to a kid and just warning him about “adults” and “sex” without context is just going to fuck them up and turn them into the type of repressed psychotic who thinks that passages about basic child psychology are actually support for child molestation.

Not that you would know anyone like that.

The acceptance of Kinsey’s research of rapists, pedophiles and others has helped foster widespread sexual experimentation and an anything-goes atmosphere.

It has resulted in a “gutting” of the nation’s tough laws that previously had kept pornography and predators at bay, she explains.

Yes, before porn, there was never any rape… Well, that might be an accurate statement considering that I imagine cavemen were drawing figures in heat in the dirt around the time Homo Sapiens speciated from Homo Neanderthalis. But still…

Why do I keep getting the same creeped out feeling about wingnut writings on sex where I suspect the real objection to the study and growing awareness of rape is more worry that people might put two and two together with regards to their particular brand of “showing loving affection”?

Reisman has lectured at Princeton, Notre Dame, Georgetown, Pepperdine, Johns Hopkins, the FBI, the U.S. Air Force Academy, the University of Jerusalem, University of Haifa and Tel Aviv University. She has been cited by the London Times, Time, Newsweek, the New York Times and the Washington Post. She has appeared on “Entertainment Tonight,” “Larry King Live,” “Donahue,” the”Today” show and “Crossfire.”

She’s been listed in “The World’s Who’s Who of Women.”

See, she’s not some random nutjob! She’s in “Who’s Who”. You know, the scam book that’ll print any name that sends them a check? Why are you laughing?

On her recent trip to Rome, she presented her research to the Alliance of the Holy Family International, including Cardinal Raymond Burke, Cardinal Ricardo Vidal and other leaders of the organization.

A Vatican organizer of the events called Reisman’s work critical to the ministry of the Catholic Church.

Well, I’m glad she’s not associated with child molestors like Kinsey!

Reisman also delivered presentations in Ireland, where she trained nurses and doctors about the true methodology of Kinsey.

The country that had one of the biggest Church molestation scandals of them all? Well, I’m glad she warned them all of the real threat facing their children.

WND Managing Editor David Kupelian, shortly after publication of “The Marketing of Evil” in 2005, predicted publicly that the next “liberation movement” to assault America would be “the mainstreaming of adult-child sex.”

Now he has noted, “The same godless logic that leads to normalization of homosexual marriage will lead also to the de-stigmatization and decriminalization of pedophilia.

Slippery Slope! You know, the slope would be easy to walk on if we just pretended all the masturbating WNDers away. Let me demonstrate. Woah! Oh dear Bob in Himmel, I got some in my mouth. I think I’m going to be sick!

Remember, consensuality has replaced morality in today’s legal system, so a young person ‘consent’ to have sex will ultimately trump the old-fashioned desire to protect the innocent.

…

Seriously?

SERIOUSLY?

I don’t even know where to begin with this statement other than calling every woman, man, and goat who might ever come in contact with this man and warn them to stay far the fuck away. I mean, I know wingnuts don’t get consensuality, but holy fuck!

Also, since adult-child sex is a ‘cultural preference’ in certain non-Western countries, child-molestation lobbyists are now making the argument that criminalizing adult-child sex amounts to condemning another culture. So that’s where multiculturalism has brought us.”

It always comes back to the multiculturalism for the proud not-at-all-racists of Wing Nut Daily.

Funny that.

Why if it wasn’t for the multiculturalists shoving their big brown cock of Kinsey down their throat, they’d be able to pretend away non-white people and thus solve racism for good.

See how we stop the conservatives from achieving greatness?!?

Timothy Birdnow, American Ow-My-Brain-Hurts:
Obama’s Fascist America in 10 Easy Steps

There is much butthurt in the wingnut universe. Their God-King come to life in George the Second was much maligned in his time in office by mean-spirited liberals daring to notice that some of the boots being given to the security state were decidedly jackbooted. Furthermore they dared to note that maybe having a uniform executive unilaterally deciding that most of the first ten amendments ceased to apply to certain people and that torture was peachy keen was a little bit fascist flavored.

Now, there have been many celebrated attempts to deal with this. The most famous of course being the Lord Doughboy’s famed treatise: Liberal Fascism, subtitled “Nuh uh, it’s you who are the fascist poopyheads”.

But why shouldn’t a meth-crazed designer of some of those right-winged photoshops that are 99% projection, 1% something snortable be denied their attempt to give it a shot?

Writing back in 2007, Naomi Wolfe catalogued the steps to creating a dictatorship (which she sought to apply to George W. Bush). Interestingly enough, they apply far more to the man who replaced him.

Obviously Naomi Wolfe was trying to punish “their guy” and so now it was their turn to do the same. Historical awareness, concept of what terms mean? Nah! All we need is some determination to force the square block into the circle hole.

1. Invoke a terrifying internal and external enemy

Isn’t that precisely what Occupy Wall Street has done with the banks and businesses? OWS has ties to Obama’s friends in ACORN, as well as to SEIU. Isn’t that what was done with Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker and his attempts to save that state from bankruptcy? Isn’t that what the EPA is doing with its endangerment finding — claiming that carbon dioxide emitted by industry is going to cause catastrophic climate change? For that matter, isn’t that precisely what was done by the Department of Homeland Security, whereby pro-life citizens, returning military, gun-owners, Ron Paul supporters, Christians, and just about everybody in “Red State America” falls under the category of domestic terrorist?

Yes, OWS is just engaging in foreign and domestic victim blaming and enemy-creation by daring to notice exactly who it was who trashed the economy and has resisted any and all attempts to A) fix it or B) alleviate the pain in the meantime.

And gotta love the continued whining about having your most radical members briefly looked at (by Bush’s Justice Department). The left had librarians, environmental groups with no history of violence, and random civil rights groups looked at as “potential terrorist organizations” whose members were wiretapped. You had groups with known ties to violence checked and then went on a campaign of violence in this country and a number of others and as far as I know have yet to have your asses wiretapped or your library book records checked.

I don’t know, but I think if a person connected to Greenpeace had decided to shoot a congressman, I doubt there’d be an environmentalist outside of Guantanamo around to bitch about how they were briefly looked at 3 years ago. But IOKIYAR and all that.

2. Create a gulag

FEMA is doing something that bears a disquieting resemblance to concentration camps.

And Madam Wolf worried about Guantánamo Bay, yet Mr. Obama has not closed it.

QE-motherfucking-D liberals! We got you on…uh…hmm…well, there’s the paranoid delusion that has only existed in our heads…and…uh…OOH, of course, you haven’t yet fully closed down our gulag! Bam, got you there loony libs!

Also, good call there, Democratic congressmen, on not shutting it down. That really kept it from being used against you.

3. Develop a thug caste

At a town hall meeting in St. Louis held by Democrat Congressman Russ Carnahan, members of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), representative of government employees, beat a black man who was there selling flag pins. A woman was beaten up by an Obama supporter in Minnesota. A man had his finger bitten off in an assault by an Obama supporter at an anti-health care rally.

And let’s not forget the entire Occupy movement of the 99-centers; they have been camps full of lawlessness, full of rapes and assaults. OWS was produced and organized by people close to the Obama administration.

So, your examples are and let me get this exactly correct.

A) A disabled man beaten up by an insane conservative who pulled down his attacker thus “savaging an innocent man”

B) Another person defending themselves against an attack by a conservative

C) A third person who defended himself from attack by biting the person pulling him to the ground.

Oh right and D) Hippies are moral scum because they want to acknowledge and work through issues of large encampments that allow anyone into them rather than hide them in the dark and pretend them away for the good of the movement.

I must admit I knew what I was going to get was massive projection, but I’ll admit I was hoping for better than recycled weak sauce projection. I mean, don’t we, the snarking centers of America deserve better from our wingnuts?

4. Set up an internal surveillance system

Obama has set up and is setting up a heavy internet surveillance.

DHS has special spy technology capable of seeing through walls and has vans cruising city streets, spying on Americans indiscriminately.

And don’t forget Obama’s “Truth Squad” in Missouri, where elected Democrats were cruising the internet looking for examples of “misrepresentations” and threatening to use legal means to suppress opponent’s “Lies.”

See! You could do it. Sure, it’s complete insane projection and paranoia that includes blaming him for not ending your internet spying program and freeper conspiracy theories, but at least it’s novel.

Too bad you’re nearly halfway through the list and have yet to find something you know, true. But hey, it’s the little things in life.

5. Harass citizens’ groups

What is the DHS domestic terrorist report but a tool to harass citizen’s groups? What is OWS but a way to harass businesses and citizens groups? What was the beating of Kenneth Gladney but harassment of the Tea Party?

Oh, poor babies, suffering such harassment. Why just because you were behind almost every domestic terrorism plot in American history, you had your most radical members briefly profiled and catalogued using legal non-harassing methods. And now you must suffer your political enemies being allowed free speech to protest their slow painful starvation and death at the hands of an uncaring economic system. And not to mention having your assault victims briefly defend themselves.

Truly you live in fear like no other minority group.

Sure I’m a member of the trans community which is murdered in the hundreds every year because of who we are and my parents were scared off being members of the fucking Sierra Club because our home phone was tapped soon after joining, but now I understand what true harassment looks like.

6. Engage in arbitrary detention and release

Obama just signed the National Defense Authorization Act into law, a bill granting him the power to detain for an unlimited time anyone he deems engaged in terrorism. Given the DHS definition of terrorism, that could be anybody. American citizens are not exempt, although Obama promises not to use these new powers against them. (Step right up, folks! Great new bridge for sale!)

Bam, liberals. He hasn’t ended one of our programs. Not ending the fascist apparatus of someone else is tout suite worse than installing it in the first place.

I’m sorry Timmy, my boy, but you can’t play Bush Who? when the whole purpose of your article is to “get back” at the mean libs for saying those rude uppity things about your God King in the first place.

7. Target key individuals

Shutting off the water to California’s largely Republican Imperial Valley, ruining his opponents. Refusing to send federal aid to fight the Texas wildfires because Texas is a lost state for Obama politically. Drowning some largely Republican Missouri farmland to save a staunchly Democratic town in Illinois during the 2011 floods. Ordering the DOJ to go after Wall Street execs for receiving bonuses. Firing the head of General Motors. Oh, and let’s not forget the letter sent out by the DOJ to three climate bloggers where the Climategate II e-mails were linked; the DOJ threatened them, and then British police seized the computers of one blogger.

Ah, back to the paranoia again. Let’s see, fictional overblowing, fictional overblowing, fictional overblowing, routine investigation of, you know, the criminal activities that went on, something the Republicans strongly supported and which wasn’t really “ordered by Obama” in any meaningful way, and um… yeah, about that Russian hacker smear job that didn’t find any actual evidence of wrong-doing but still tried to ruin the careers and lives of climate scientists.

It’s almost like the DOJ should be investigating you know, actual crimes instead of being gutted and made “ideologically pure” like it was under Bush. I know it is a change for you, but you can try and keep up.

8. Control the press

Obama is the press.

Ha ha! Liberal media. Obama brainwashes the truth. Only Fox News is brave enough, but Fox News doesn’t exist otherwise we couldn’t pretend that Obama is never criticized.

Conservatism, for when believing 20 contradictory things which are all wrong is just too damn easy to do.

9. Dissent equals treason

Just look at the “Missouri Truth Squad.” How about the accusations made against the Tea Party , claiming they were inciting violence? How about the claim that Gabrielle Giffords was shot because conservative criticisms of Obama have incited violence?

Yeah, we should be able to dissent by shooting or threatening to shoot as many congresspeople as we want!

What? That term actually has a specific meaning, more in line with how things like OWS or the Iraq War Protests are treated like unamerican displays of subhuman lowlife who the cops are fully justified in breaking up with violence than a catch all term for “people disapprove about how we keep trying to kill them”?

Get the fuck out!

Next you’ll be saying that treason has a real definition that is more in line with the various conservatives calling for succession or armed resistance against the United States rather than a catch all term meaning anyone who supports anything remotely liberal.

10. Suspend the rule of law

What did Obama do when he made recess appointments while Congress was still in session? What did he do with Fast and Furious? What did he do when he refused to enforce the Defense of Marriage Act in court, or when Eric Holder refused to prosecute the New Black Panther Party for voter intimidation because they are black, or when he sent money to Kenya to promote the new, pro-abortion constitution in violation of U.S. law that does not allow American aid to be spent for that?

Yes, damn him for barely using a legitimate legal tactic for getting around unprecedented abuse of formalities and loopholes by Republicans! That surely is on par with directly ignoring international law with regards to torture. And furthermore, he refused to waste billions of federal dollars on right-wing boondoggles that had no bearing on reality.

I mean, rule of law means that Republicans are allowed to do whatever they want and Democrats have to follow whatever wingnuts want right?

Oh, Timmy, my poor addle-minded Timmy…

Sadly, No!

There has been a change in the seasons. A new year dawning brings momentary lucidity. And for the pallid flaks of modern conservatism, the early year reflection has brought only one phrase to mind:

“Holy Shit, are we assholes!”

I’m sure every brief sober morning brings that reflection to their mind before booze and projection do their dirty work of protecting their fledgling synapses from the horror, so this is nothing new to them. However, this year is an election year and one they look to be losing even before they’ve picked their sacrificial lamb for the slaughter.

As such, there is the quick straightening of ties and the frantic desperate increase in projection in only the way wingnuts know how desperate to make all their post-Obama-election insanity look the fault of some other bastards far far away.

And of all the publications to be scrambling, none are scrambling quite so desperately as that stalwart of “intellectual conservativism” known as National Review.

I have my wealth of options to pick from. All more IT’S ALWAYS PROJECTION than the last.

There is:

Shorter Arthur Herman, National Erase:
America’s Disarmed Future

Or maybe:

Shorter Artur Davis, National Disgrace:
Rosenthal’s Amnesia

But no, we’ve gone with human scum magnet, Mark Steyn in his valliant attempt to turn the 2009 War on Empathy into yet another example of evil liberals.

Mark Steyn, National Shitfaced:
The Left’s So-Called Empathy

Lest you doubt that we’re headed for the most vicious election year in memory, consider the determined effort, within ten minutes of his triumph in Iowa, to weirdify Rick Santorum. Discussing the surging senator on Fox News, Alan Colmes mused on some of the “crazy things” he’s said and done.

You always know you are off to a strong start when a conservative starts trying to box with Alan Colmes as if he was anything other than a token punching bag employed by Fox News to play the role of straw-liberal that is beaten like a puppy in Mitt Romney’s care in the wake of the “ingenuousness” of right-wing arguments.

Naturally of course, he fixates on Colmes “apologizing” for daring to slight the latest Not-Romney, our good friend Frothy Mixture Santorum himself.

My National Review colleague Rich Lowry rightly slapped down Alan on air, and Colmes subsequently apologized, though not before Mrs. Santorum had been reduced to tears by his remarks. Undeterred, Eugene Robinson, the Pulitzer Prize–winning Washington Post columnist, doubled down on stupid and insisted that Deadbabygate demonstrated how Santorum is “not a little weird, he’s really weird.”

Taking home a stillborn abortion (oh wait, we aren’t supposed to acknowledge that in wingnut world God is the world’s biggest abortionist) and sleeping and playing with the pre-formed corpse is not at all horror-movie creepy, especially when combined with Santorum’s other “peculiar” family stories fixated around his obsession with abortion and turning his family into his own cult-like breeding pit.

The short life of Gabriel Santorum would seem a curious priority for political discourse at a time when the Brokest Nation in History is hurtling toward its rendezvous with destiny. But needs must, and victory by any means necessary. In 2008, the Left gleefully mocked Sarah Palin’s live baby. It was only a matter of time before they moved on to a dead one.

Always the same from the right. Can’t focus on X because of Great Evil Y hurtling towards us. Can’t focus on the loss of civil rights and lying to get a war, Iraq might fly across the ocean with the smoking gun of a mushroom cloud. Can’t focus on why the economy fell into the crapper, The End of the All Holy Stock Market might be nigh. Can’t focus on fixing anything or the fact that a potential presidential nominee is a lunatic, the made-up debt crisis might be the mushroom cloud of a smoking gun of a Damn Will You People Just Shut Off Your Brains Already!

In 1996, the Santorums were told during the pregnancy that their baby had a fatal birth defect and would not survive more than a few hours outside the womb. So Gabriel was born

Yes, “born”. Strange, whenever a presumably non-white “slut” just “trying to mooch off welfare with her love of killing babies” and what not does the exact same thing, it’s always called, you know “an abortion”. But hey, don’t let facts get in the way of your whiny little screed about how liberals don’t have enough sympathy for an anti-abortion crusader’s tough choice for abortion.

I was a callow pup in my early twenties, with no paternal instincts and no great empathetic capacity.

And you stayed there forever.

There is something telling about what Peter Wehner at Commentary rightly called the “casual cruelty” of Eugene Robinson. The Left endlessly trumpets its “empathy.” President Obama, for example, has said that what he looks for in his judges is “the depth and breadth of one’s empathy.” As he told his pro-abortion pals at Planned Parenthood, “we need somebody who’s got the heart — the empathy — to recognize what it’s like to be a young teenage mom.” Empathy, empathy, empathy: You barely heard the word outside clinical circles until the liberals decided it was one of those accessories no self-proclaimed caring progressive should be without.

Oh, Mark Steyn, it’s moments like this that we here at Sadly, No live for. You just couldn’t resist could you? You had a simple task, defend the current Not Romney and make “the empathy problem” a failure of the left with a giant bag of projection, horseshit, and deliberate spin.

But you just couldn’t do it, could ya?

So many years trying to bottle up your hatreds at having to pretend to care about the suffering of other people, having those mean old liberals rub your nose in how little you cared about the suffering of those untermenschen who were not as privileged as you to prevent bad things happening to you.

Damn it, why should the Great Mark Steyn, god’s gift to assholes have to pretend like a liberal to care about the suffering of others or empathy even if it’s just to smear the liberals. It’s not fair!

You know, if the Right feels galled about being viewed as sociopaths, maybe they should employ fewer of them to write their transparent propaganda.

The usual rap against the Right is that they’re hypocrites — they vote for the Defense of Marriage Act, and next thing you know they’re playing footsie across the stall divider with an undercover cop at the airport men’s room. But Rick Santorum lives his values, and that seems to bother the Left even more.

Yeah, seeing hypocrisy as hypocrisy, will the perfidy of liberals know no bounds?

Never mind the dead kid, he has six living kids. How crazy freaky weird is that?

This crazy freaky weird: All those self-evidently ludicrous risible surplus members of the Santorum litter are going to be paying the Social Security and Medicare of all you normal well-adjusted Boomer yuppies who had one designer kid at 39. So, if it helps make it easier to “empathize,” look on them as sacrificial virgins to hurl into the bottomless pit of Big Government debt.

My god, Mark, it must suck to be you. I mean that seriously. I can’t imagine living a life trapped entirely inside the head of an asshole and only able to see the world through those frantic sociopathic eyes.

The real wickedness of Big Government is that it debauches not merely a nation’s finances but ultimately its human capital — or, as he puts it, you cannot have a strong economy without strong families.

Mark, wasn’t this originally a rant about how liberals don’t have empathy. You’ve gotten lost on your hobby-horse, you need to come back now.

Santorum’s respect for all life, including even the smallest bleakest meanest two-hour life, speaks well for him, especially in comparison with his fellow Pennsylvanian, the accused mass murderer Kermit Gosnell, an industrial-scale abortionist at a Philadelphia charnel house who plunged scissors into the spinal cords of healthy delivered babies. Few of Gosnell’s employees seemed to find anything “weird” about that: Indeed, they helped him out by tossing their remains in jars and bags piled up in freezers and cupboards. Much less crazy than taking ’em home and holding a funeral, right?

A) That would have been terrible if that had ever happened and wasn’t one of the many transparent lies you forced birthers trot out to try and justify your vile mean-spirited actions as somehow noble.

B) Yes, damn those vile abortionists for “birthing” the Santorum’s “live, viable and totally not aborted ‘baby’” in order to save Mrs. Santorum and thus save Mr. Frothy Mixture to traipse around Iowa running for president instead of having to stay home and actually raise the 6 artifacts he created as a testament to his penis.

How you wanna ride this one out Mark?

Albeit less dramatically than “Doctor” Gosnell, much of the developed world has ruptured the compact between past, present, and future. A spendthrift life of self-gratification is one thing. A spendthrift life paid for by burdening insufficient numbers of children and grandchildren with crippling debt they can never pay off is utterly contemptible. And to too many of America’s politico-media establishment it’s not in the least bit “weird.”

Yeah, trying to make sure people survive to see tomorrow by making sure they can eat, get medical treatment and find shelter in the middle of a depression you fuckers created while you faff about worrying about a made-up debt crisis which again, you created with ill-advised tax cuts and “off-the-record” war spending sure is the failure of empathy in play here.

Oh Mark Steyn, you wouldn’t be the transparent sociopath we want to dunk into a tank of piss if you’d given us anything less.

Brava and may the world show you all the empathy you showed us here in your stirring defense of human empathy.

Lloyd Marcus, American Wanker:
New TV Show Idea: All-American Christian

Well, well, well, if it isn’t everyone’s favorite one-man minstrel show, Lloyd Marcus. One might think our buddy Lloyd having given up sense, dignity, and basic human respect to chain his star to the plummeting train-crash that was the “Tea Party Express” might be going through something akin to buyer’s remorse just about now.

Well, if you thought that, you just don’t know Lloyd. He paid too much for the mandatory lobotomy to stop now and has decided to engage in wingnut’s favorite game: Privilege Fails.

Now, you think that might be difficult for LLoyd, what with being overly melaninated and a one-man-pride parade, but Lloyd should be committed, I mean, is committed to wingnut excellence.

And so has decided to take offense that a single show starring a muslim family has come into existence and thus has erased all Christian TV families from existence and catapulted us into Sharia Law.

Hmm, perhaps I better let him explain.

I have a great idea! How about a TV show titled “All-American Christian”? Christians have been getting a bum rap in cinema and the mainstream media for quite a while. In a spirit of fairness, compassion, and tolerance, a TV show promoting Christianity is simply the right thing to do. After all, the last thing we need is Christian-phobic Americans.

I know! It’s so terrible living in a world where there are no overly sentimental Christian families. No 7th Heaven, Touched By an Angel, Big Love, Christmas Shoes, anything on ABC Family or the Family Channel. Wait.

What world is LLoyd Marcus living on, cause I need to be living there like now.

And I love the assumption that the bad rap that Christians get is because of a lack of propaganda shows on television saying how wonderful they are and not the fact that Christians demand total ownership of all forms of culture so they can make shitty crap about white suburban families who’ll “get through” mild easily-solved sitcom problems with the “love of Christ” and a great big helping hand from the writers.

We must educate Americans to realize that Christianity is a religion of peace. Christians are not anti-American. The TV show will confirm that Christians are not very different from you and me, and they’re just as patriotic. Also, Christians would never attempt to force Biblical law down our throats.

Leave the sarcasm for the professionals Lloyd. It isn’t just trying to “mime the other side” but with an air of snide disrespect. Cause that just leads to fails like that last couple of sentences. Oh yeah, the patriotism of Christians sure is in doubt (when they support hippie liberal causes like that boring stuff Christ often talked about) and the fears about forcing Biblical law are totally as unfounded as the fear of Sharia Law.

Now, where can I find fair-minded, tolerant, and compassionate celebrities who will enthusiastically support and speak in defense of the show? I know! Russell Simmons, Bill Maher, and Rosie O’Donnell are a good start. These guys are all about fairness, tolerance, and compassion. I am extremely confident that they will leap at an opportunity to fairly portray Christianity.

Christians are not rioting, seeking to physically punish offenders, or lobbying to make it illegal to speak against their religion. Thus, beheading non-believers who reject their religion is not in the Christian recruitment manual. As a matter of fact, the founder of Christianity said, “With loving kindness have I drawn thee.”

Rosie O’Donnell, great advocate of women rights that she is, will surely love this. Christian women are not forced to be subservient to men. Under no circumstances does Christianity condone a husband beating, stoning, or beheading his wife. A Christian woman is pretty much free to be all she can be, from a mom to the governor of Alaska to president of the United States. Believe it or not, a Christian woman can even venture outside without having her head covered and face veiled. Thus, it makes perfect sense that the American Feminist Movement would rally around Christianity. Right?

What’s that Projection Meter? You can’t take anymore? Damnitt, you will take all this crazy damn you and you will like it.

Also, Lloyd? Saint Sarah ain’t coming to save your Self-Destructing Party.

Now then Projection Meter, why are you complaining when we still have gems like

I cannot think of a single group of people Christians seek to remove from the planet. While more than 18,167 deadly terrorist attacks since 9-11 have been carried out in the name of another religion, zero attacks since 9-11 have happened in the name of Christianity. We know that the American left is all about peace; “all we are saying is give peace a chance,” and so on. One can only conclude that Christianity’s nonviolent track record wins the peace-lovers’ endorsement. Correct?

to go. Projection Meter? Well fuck. It somehow managed to choke itself to death on its own extension cord. I didn’t even know it could do that.

And damn, I am really digging Lloyd Marcus’s world. No bad Christian sitcoms and a world where Anders Breivik, Jared Loughner, Scott Roeder, and so on and so forth never happened.

No wonder the bullshit half actions and collection of “guerrilla troops defending their home country in war time” seem like a threat to Lloyd in safe old USA and why he feels like an overly disrespected minority (but only because of the Christian thing).

I mean, if he wasn’t from that mythical land, he’d just be an asshole filled with projection, denying all right-wing Christian violence and actions and media presence and having a freak out because one single hour of cable TV is looking at a minority his squad of Christians want to remove from the planet.

And that’d just be crazy.

Unfortunately, Christianity does not have a “lying clause.” Another religion has a privilege authorized in its holy book called “taqiyya,” which means never feeling guilty for lying. In other words, taqiyya makes it permissible to lie to protect one’s religion. Common sense tells us that anything adherents of such a religion say about the intentions and motives of their religion should be taken with a grain of salt. Meanwhile, Christians are stuck with “Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.”

Yes, Thank All Holy Bob that Christians never ever bald-facingly lie while justifying it to themselves that its okay because they are doing it “for the greater God” and the “glory of All-Mighty Jesus”.

It is truly tragic that Bibles, after-school Bible studies, and prayer at school sporting events are being banned from public schools. Christian graduates are commanded to censor all references to God and especially “Jesus” from their commencement speeches. And yet, nationwide special concessions are being made for another religion — installing foot-bathing facilities, etc.

Damn straight. Hey, what’s public mean? And might that affect whether or not this oft-repeated whine was an example of legitimate grievance or an example of a powerful majority whining that they can’t force their religion on a captive non-believing audience.

Hey, what was that about Christianity and throats from earlier?

By the way, our government has sponsored the defacing of Christian icons. A photo of a crucifix submerged in a glass of urine was funded by the NEA (National Endowment of the Arts). The award-winning photo is titled “Piss Christ.” The Brooklyn Museum of Art, despite considerable controversy, exhibited the Holy Virgin Mary painted with elephant dung.

You know how Christians are a real oppressed minority unlike all those Muslims and fags out there? They constantly have to resort to the same example of “oppression” which is simply having their worldview being interpreted by a fellow-traveler in a seemingly disrespectful way 25 years ago.

Those other minorities have hosts of so-called “recent attacks” against them and rarely have to revive ancient minor grievances.

That’s how you know they are shifty lying bastards. Christians know that minor slights a quarter of a century ago are the real badge of oppression.

Keep fighting that fight, brave patriots. Some day you’ll walk in the sun, full and equal members of our society.

Sniff, so brave!

Christians are legally fighting the court-ordered removal of crosses which have been displayed — one out in the middle of nowhere — on sites for many years. Nativity scenes are becoming more and more taboo in public schools and government buildings. Our kids no longer go on Christmas break from school. It is now called Winter Fest-a-Something or Other.

It’s almost like “public” means something. I don’t know what, but I’m sure it’s short for “hates Christians”.

Some paranoid conspiracy theorists say that Christianity has infiltrated high levels of our government. Rumor has it that even President Obama is a Christian. However, this rumor has yet to be confirmed. I wish to go on record stating that I am not Christian-phobic. America was unarguably founded on Biblical principles. Therefore, I am completely comfortable with Christians influencing our government.

Ha ha! See, your well-documented proof of shadowy Evangelical forces playing with government policy is exactly as unfounded as our insane fever-dream about secret Muslims taking over the government because there’s one Muslim congressman and we’re using an old dog whistle about the President.

We just showed you liberals! Now take some ahistorical insanity and be about your day.

We can count on Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to aggressively work to make Christian-phobia punishable by law the way she is for another religion.

Okay, I missed a conspiracy theory along the way. Is this one of those “other countries have hate speech laws, so hate crime laws here will take away our right to hate-speech” things or something to do with Clinton being a secret muslim as well?

Damn it, how can I snark at 100% levels when the conspiracy theories move so damn fast.

So yes, the timing is perfect for an “All-American Christian” TV show. I am sure that Hillary; Obama; and all those compassionate, tolerant Hollywood-types will enthusiastically join in our effort to get out the truth about Christianity — a virtuous, misunderstood, and wonderful religion of peace.

Folks, this is gonna be great! I am so excited. For the debut of the “All-American Christian” TV show, I wonder if we can get Tim Tebow to make a special guest appearance. Wouldn’t that be awesome?

It seems that much like facts, sarcasm has a liberal bias as well. It was a gallant effort, Lord Marcus, but it will not win the love of fair Wingnuttopia. For your dusky countenance and fey displays will always meet with stern disapproval. Sadness and consternation!

May your days grow long in your mythical wonderful world free of Christian terrorists, bad Christian programming, and where the worst thing to happen to a minority was a 25 year old art exhibit. I shall miss it greatly as I return to my own much sadder time.

Fie and rot, a 7th Heaven rerun.

Shorter Dennis Prager, dennisprager.com:
Leftism Makes You Meaner

Shorter John Yoo, America’s Shittiest Website
Richard Cordray & the Use and Abuse of Executive Power

Shorter Elizabeth Lauren, The American Genius;
AD 2012 or 2012 CE?

• Forcing everyone to use C.E. instead of A.D. is just another way that Jews oppress Christians.

Blank Line

Alternate Shorter Elizabeth Lauren, The American Genius;
AD 2012 or 2012 CE?

• True inclusiveness would be if the Jews adopted and embraced Christianity rather than making Christians feel bad with all their complaining about Christ.

Blank Line

Another Alternate Shorter Elizabeth Lauren, The American Genius;
AD 2012 or 2012 CE?

• It wasn’t enough for the Jews to have crucified Christ the first time; they have to keep doing it over and over again.

Today’s wingnut butthurt is an old perennial and comes from someone calling herself Elizabeth Lauren over at The American Genius. This is Ms. Lauren’s second post ever, the first being one where she waxes nostalgic for the good old days of censorship which would have forbidden any poet from publishing a poem referring to genitalia. Today she’s climbed up on the cross and nailed herself to it over the usage of C.E. and B.C.E. in place of A.D. and B.C. Her argument seems mostly to be that it’s something the Jews baked up and this:

For a number of reasons, though, not only does the new dating standard fail in its desired effect, but it may ultimately cause unintended confusion and polarization, not to mention offense to the Christian majority.

Apparently people are missing tests and appointments and saying “Oh, you meant January 7, 2012 A.D.? You should have said so.” I’m already planning to try that. Of course, I may not respond in the same way when a restaurant tells me that actually my reservation was made for 9 p.m. on January 21 about four thousand years ago.

But, of course, the whole point is the “not to mention the offense to the Christian majority,” who apparently take offense at each and every breath drawn by anyone who doesn’t subscribe to their particular flavor of Christianity. Other offenses to the Christian majority: Jews refusing to name their children after Christian saints, Jews taking shelf space in the grocery around passover from Christian food and giving it to Jewish stuff like matzoh, Jewish stores being open on Sunday, and Jews insisting on putting those mezuzah thingies on their door frames as an open affront to their Christian neighbors.

This being The American Genius website, Ms. Lauren throws out a number of additional and similarly irrefutable arguments in support of A.D. and B.C., including one that I’ll call the Thor Appeal

We all in our daily lives, in a Western society with a lengthy and complex history, use a great number of names of pagan origin. Our weekdays — for example, “Thursday,” named for the Norse god Thor — originate in decidedly non-Christian cultural history.

This would be a really excellent argument, I suppose, if the dominant culture in the U.S. practiced Norse mythology and prayed to Thor in public schools, then the maintenance of the name Thursday might actually mean something.

Finally, Lauren argues that A.D. and B.C. aren’t offensive because people are too dumb to understand what those terms mean:

“Before Christ,” if one is concerned about sensitivity towards non-Christians, may not necessarily be viewed as referring to the belief system that Jesus is the Messiah, since it is not always known in contemporary culture that “Christ” means just that.

Similarly, making the reasonable assumption that Ms. Lauren doesn’t speak French, she can’t possibly be offended when I call her a putain because she has no idea what that means.

Anyway, I think that the proper solution is to get rid of A.D., B.C., C.E., and B.C.E. and replace them with A.B. and B.B. for before and after butthurt, with the index year being 2008, and I think you know why.

Done by Tintin, this 9th Day of January, 4 A.B.

Shorter Shannen Coffin, America’s Shittiest Website™:
Lies, Damned Lies, and NPR

Although I was quite prepared to give the best headline ever award for “Santorum Surges” to the numerous headline writers that crafted this classic with, obviously, a knowing wink to what Santorum really means, that was before I stumbled across John F. Di Leo’s “The Democratic Party’s War on the Poor” over at The American Genius.

This is sometimes why I think our job here at Sadly, No! is too easy. (It’s a good thing we don’t get paid for it.) Where really is the challenge to ridiculing wingnuts when they whip up headlines that have no basis in reality at all? And again where’s the fun when the ridiculous headline is illustrated by a preposterous non sequitur? Di Leo’s proof of the Democratic Party’s war on the poor is an escalator in Medellin. As in Colombia. As in a tiny third world country about a zillion miles from the United States and partly in another fucking hemisphere and where the only Democrats there are a few tourists getting drunk in hotel bars in Bogota. Yes, that escalator in Medellin is, somehow or other, proof of a war of the Democratic party against the poor.

The escalator that precipitated Di Leo’s hissy fit was built so that poor residents of a ghetto in Medellin could go from downtown to their homes in 5 minutes, replacing a 35 minute walk up 530 steps on the side of a mountain. How could anyone object to that, you must be wondering, but, if so, you’ve clearly forgotten that these are the kind of people who get upset when they hear that an orphanage is lavishing its residents with macaroni and cheese rather than the traditional and biblically mandated fare of stale bread and thin gruel. (If you give ‘em mac and cheese, they’ll never want to leave the orphanage and will become permanent parasites stealing my tax dollars, etc., etc. You may be laughing now at the preposterous notion that anyone would actually make an argument like that, but, if so, just be patient for a few minutes and let Di Leo get there all on his own.)

Now, why do we turn to a foreign country for an example of the critical failing of the American Democratic Party?

Gee, John, you beat me to it because I was asking myself that very same question.

Because the way American conservatives and liberals react to this story of misguided social programs is the American economic debate in a microcosm.

If you’re thinking that John is going to totally make up the liberal reaction to this story, then our work is done here and you can skip to the next paragraph. According to John, silly liberals like the escalators because they help poor people while keeping them poor, particularly because the stupid beaners didn’t know to cover the escalators so that they will now be destroyed by the first rainfall and the liberals won’t really care that this happens because the rain is not their fault.

Of course, the conservatives, who are truly wise, take the real lesson from the Medellin escalator:

[W]e see that the mayor and his friendly press down there in Colombia have exactly the wrong attitude: they are spending $6.7 million to help return people to a shantytown every day. What they should be doing is trying to free these poor people from Comuna 13 — to help them earn better salaries so they can, one day, come down from that mountaintop and never, ever be compelled to return!

But wait, you ask, couldn’t this argument be made against any form of public transportation? Certainly, he’s not going to condemn public transportation as well, is he? Sadly, Yes!

We subsidize the public transportation of our cities so that the poor can ride in an air-conditioned bus or train for free or nearly free.

All this does not make it a joy to be poor, of course. It’s still a miserable life. But all these freebies, all these misguided little benefits, have warped the ability of individuals to rationally judge the delta between their current lifestyle and their potential future lifestyle in a job, their potential future lives in the middle class.

Whoomp, there it is: the mac and cheese argument. Air-conditioned public buses will make the poor want to stay poor forever because they can get on an air-conditioned bus anytime they want and luxuriate their lives away rather than working hard to buy their own air-conditioned car. If you made all poor people walk to work, every single fucking one of them would be richer than the Koch Brothers in just a few months.

Sadly, no.