CONservative family values: the Republican *Christian* way.

The MASSIVE cognitive dissonance in US right-wing neo-CON politics lumbers on, like a huge prehistoric creature whose dysfunctional actions signal the ongoing extinction of its species.

First, this:

The son of Arizona's Senate president confessed that he and another counselor shoved broomsticks and flashlights into the rectums of 18 boys in at least 40 incidents at a youth camp in June.

Now Yavapai County prosecutors say they will drop all but one assault charge and likely recommend little or no jail time if 18-year-old Clifton Bennett agrees to plead guilty.

A similar agreement has been offered to co-defendant Kyle Wheeler, 19, who faces an additional assault charge for choking three of the boys until they passed out.

The plea agreements were first presented in court last week and could be completed at a hearing Monday.

Prosecuting attorney James Landis explained the plea agreement in court, saying the "broomsticking" was a hazing ritual and a punishment, not sexual assault.

But legal experts, sex-crimes prosecutors and victims'-rights lawyers say the acts clearly fit the definition of sexual assault.

The pleas, which describe the assault charge as "a non-dangerous, non-repetitive offense," have outraged parents who say their sons were victims of violent sexual attacks. The boys, who were 11 to 14 years old at the time, have had trouble going to the bathroom, sleep with clothes on, are afraid at night, and have undergone sexual-assault counseling. [...]

Lawyers for [Clifton] Bennett [...] described Bennett as an honor student and active member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, planning to go on a mission in September. "A felony conviction for assault will make his desire to complete his mission impossible," they wrote.

The outcome:

A judge on Friday sentenced the son of Arizona Senate President Ken Bennett to 30 days in jail and his fellow counselor to 45 days for a series of hazings at a youth camp near Prescott last June.

Clifton Bennett, 18, and fellow counselor Kyle Wheeler, 19, admitted to abusing 18 boys ages 11 to 14 — who had been hand-picked for a weeklong leadership camp — by poking them in the rear end with broomsticks, a flashlight and a cane as a punishment or just because they were in a bad mood. [...]

More than a dozen victims' parents spoke, calling the hazing sexual assault and molestation despite findings by state experts that there was no sexual intent behind the "broomings."

Both sides of the case expressed disappointment with the sentence. Family members and victims called it too lenient and said Bennett got a deal because of his father's position, while Bennett's family said he was treated with more scrutiny because of his father.

Bennett and Wheeler had each been charged with 18 counts of kidnapping and 18 counts of aggravated assault. Bennett was allowed to plead guilty to one assault charge while Wheeler pleaded guilty to two charges. Prosecutors dropped the other charges.

Notice the change in language from one media report to the other. Actions that were violent, forced upon children, invasive of their bodies and caused them damage and harm, are now described as "a poke in the rear end".

Did Jerry Sandusky use similar innocuous words to defend his behaviour when (or more likely if) Penn State football coach Paterno questioned him?

Afterward, Bennett and his father left the courthouse from the back to avoid media attention.

When reporters caught up with them, the elder Bennett said his son had made an unfortunate decision.

When asked how he felt about the sentence, Bennett said: "How would you feel if your son were going to jail?"

The families will probably launch civil suits. Clearly none of them gravitate in the exalted, privileged circles of political and oligarchal power that the Bennetts do.

The above is a photograph of serial sexual abuser Clifton Bennett.

I fear this man will re-offend, and he'll use the considerable resources at his disposal to avoid any form of accountability. This experience has probably also taught him how not to get caught, next time. Leave no witnesses.

ADDED: The Daily KOS nails it.

[...] when your son brutally traumatizes a bunch of 11 to 14 year-olds, you don’t whine about the sentence. You are down on your hands and knees begging forgiveness from the victims, for maybe having failed to meet your obligations as a parent.

But the overlords of Happy Valley – whether it’s a college campus or the state of Arizona - never teach this kind of accountability to their children because they don’t face it themselves. Their money, their connections, their fame, their manipulation of the system mean never, ever having to say they’re sorry and actually mean it, let alone pay an appropriate price for what they do.

I don’t want these people anywhere in or near the White House. Because they are the kind of people who will steal your children’s clean water for their fracking profits. They will let your children go to bed hungry and come to school hungry, so they can get another $150,000 off their taxes. And they will send your children to die in Iraq, or Iran, or wherever the next trumped-up conflict is, so they can continue to profit from war.

Amen.

Sarah Palin's Downward Spiral

Is that not a splendid headline about The $arah©™ Palin©™?

From here:

Palin's favorability among Republicans — not support for a presidential candidacy; but merely whether they like her — has usually been in the 70s or 80s, well above other prominent party members. But now it's in the 50s, right down there with the other sad sacks[...] So now intensity of support among primary voters, the only reason a Sarah Palin presidential candidacy has been taken with the least bit of seriousness, isn't much of a factor anymore. They prefer Mitt Romney, an abortion-loving plastic liberal from Taxachusetts, more than Sarah Palin.

And also. Too:

Here's a brief history of Sarah Palin's relationship with the establishment Republican party and its supporters in the press: They sat on their hands after John McCain picked her as vice president because she was able to fire up a despondent base; they continued to sit on their hands in the two years leading up to the 2010 elections because Palin raised tons of money while mobilizing the Tea Party; and now that that's over, they don't want her to run for president because she's an embarrassment to the nation and clearly incapable of doing the job even if she were to somehow win, which she won't.

But they can't just call her an incompetent joke in public. The base would rush to her defense! So instead they come up with meek, over-intellectualized excuses for why they don't like her and want her to disappear forever.

Best of all, now that The $arah©™ Palin©™ is shedding supporters faster than true pit bulls lose the lipstick, more ... dare we say? ... realistic and not-so flattering pix of her are popping up on the web.

Like this one, f'rinstance. Eh.

First Sensible Thing to Come from the Teabaggers

On the recent US election, the microscopy continues. They're pondering too -- do socially conservative issues help or hurt the Thugs?.

Some Teabaggers seem to think they hurt.

A gay conservative group and some Tea Party leaders are campaigning to keep social issues off the Republican agenda.

"On behalf of limited-government conservatives everywhere, we write to urge you and your colleagues in Washington to put forward a legislative agenda in the next Congress that reflects the principles of the Tea Party movement," they write to presumptive House Speaker John Boehner and Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell in an advance copy provided to POLITICO. "This election was not a mandate for the Republican Party, nor was it a mandate to act on any social issue."

I love this bit:

"When they were out in the Boston Harbor, they weren't arguing about who was gay or who was having an abortion," said Ralph King, a letter signatory who is a Tea Party Patriots national leadership council member, as well as an Ohio co-coordinator.

King said he signed onto the letter because GOProud seemed to be genuine in pushing for fiscal conservatism and limited government.

"Am I going to be the best man at a same sex-marriage wedding? That's not something I necessarily believe in," said King. "I look at myself as pretty socially conservative. But that's not what we push through the Tea Party Patriots."

Natch, LifeShite is SHRIEEEKING. Waaah! Noooo! We need our slut-shaming fix!

And besides, they say, you need us.

The [exit] poll found 30 percent of all voters said that abortion “affected” their vote with 22% of all voters backing pro-life candidates and eight percent saying they supported pro-abortion candidates — giving pro-life candidates a net pro-life advantage of 14 percent among all voters.

But these were mid-term elections, when more insanely obsessed committed voters turn out. More difficult to predict for the next presidential election.

So, will the Thugs throw the anti-choicers and gay-bashers under the bus?
Not bloody likely, says Bridgette P. LaVictoire at LezGetReal.

Among the groups who signed this letter is GOProud, who are about to find out that they will be sold up the river without a single secondary thought from the anti-LGBT Republicans.

Beware the scourge of unmarried women! (hint: they're not ladies)

Phyllis Schlafly: still shrieeeky and strident after all these years.

"Unmarried women, 70 percent of unmarried women, voted for Obama, and this is because when you kick your husband out, you've got to have big brother government to be your provider."

On Thursday, in an interview with Talking Points Memo, Schlafly repeated her link of single women, Obama and welfare, and added.

"Yes, I said that. It's true too. All welfare goes to unmarried moms. They are trying to line up their constituency for Obama and Democrats against Republican candidates."

And by the way, what exactly is that baked-solid entity stuck on Schlafly's head? I've cleaned up dog poop on the sidewalk that was more attractive than that.

Speaking of rightwing batshitcrazy ...

Michele Bachmann and Sarah Palin.

While it's a positive thing that two high-profile women in US politics appear to be supportive of one another, most of the pronouncements uttered by these 2 BFFs are lacking in substance and typical of the phenom described by Chet of The Vanity Press here.

In addition, Bachmann and her family have been receiving hundred$ of thousand$ of munee from the "Big Government" she and her fellow Tea Bag Party Patriots denounce. It's

Wingnut Welfare, in fact.

Here is a good description of the political trajectory Bachmann has charted in recent years, becoming more frantic and irrational in her claims and actions.

In a recent appearance at a Heritage Foundation luncheon, Bachmann defended BP and referred to attempts to set up a $20 billion escrow fund to pay for claims and clean-up "extortion" (in case you've been in a coma for the last six months, British Petroleum's massive oil spill is responsible for the worst environmental disaster in US history).

She asserted: "…If I was the head of BP, I would let the signal get out there: 'We're not going to be chumps, and we're not going to be fleeced.' And they shouldn't be. They shouldn't have to be fleeced and made chumps to have to pay for perpetual unemployment and all the rest..."

While Minnesota - Bachmann's home state and constituency - may actually benefit from the BP disaster since it's a major producer of bio-fuels, it doesn't explain why she would so rabidly defend the multinational corporation. Unless of course, it might be of benefit to her, and her re-election campaign.

The Republicans' Pitbull and his quest for new fire hydrants.

Rust never sleeps. Karl Rove has helped his party launch a new "grass-roots" organization intended to funnel rightwing billionaires' contribution toward the defeat of Democrat candidates in the US fall elections.

You may recall that Rove was lured to Toronto during the by ersatz doctor Charles McVety to highlight his mini G8/G20 extravaganza.

More about American Crossroads here. ReformaTories have a history of being coached by US experts in various sleazy political tactics.

Watch for some Canadian version of Rove's project to be spawned in the months to come, in support of the Cons' attempt to elect a majority government for Harper.

And now for something completely different ...

In the hoohaw leading up to the G-8/G-20 spectacle and photo opp for Stevie Spiteful, we missed a delicious little tempest in a teapot about $arah, Bristol and a US political satirist.


This is what set off the fury of Palin's groupies - a blogpost and a cartoon for Florida's Sun-Sentinel.

Back during the 2008 presidential campaign, when Sarah Palin and her family were introduced to America in all their homespun glory, I couldn’t help but imagine what the Republican spin machine would have done had Joe Biden’s daughter been the one to get pregnant out of wedlock as a teenager.

Because it was Sarah Palin’s daughter, however, the pregnancy became a celebration of life and an affirmation, somehow, of the emblematic American family. Hypocrisy is a commodity that has never been in short supply in American politics. The latest, most titillating case is that of U.S. Congressman Mark Souder of Indiana, a fierce protector of traditional family values (with all the usual anti-gay riffs), who just resigned from office.

Not only did he have sex with a staffer, but he even sat for a video interview with her touting the virtues of abstinence.

Well. The usual mob of fundamentalist religious rightwing zealots went ballistic, deliberately obfuscating the point of Lowe's observations (Bristol Palin marketing herself as a 30K per-appearance motivational speaker? that's a nifty mash-up of political opportunism and greed) while spinning it as an attack upon the sacred $arah and her holy progeny. This is typical:

Every parent viewing Lowe's cartoon should be outraged at his salacious, left-handed effort to demean Bristol Palin and to encourage America's daughters to embrace immoral practices.

As we've often observed when writing about Bible Spice and her traveling freak show, we just couldn't make this sh*t up.

Choice for Me. . . . yadayadayada

JJ beat me to this. (Dammit, I hadda watch Survivor and the sleaze Russell found another fucking immunity idol.) But the hypocrisy is too delicious to ignore.

The Republican National Committee’s health insurance plan covers elective abortion – a procedure the party’s own platform calls “a fundamental assault on innocent human life.”

Federal Election Commission Records show the RNC purchases its insurance from Cigna. Two sales agents for the company said that the RNC’s policy covers elective abortion.

Informed of the coverage, RNC spokeswoman Gail Gitcho told POLITICO that the policy pre-dates the tenure of current RNC Chairman Michael Steele.

“The current policy has been in effect since 1991, and we are taking steps to address the issue,” Gitcho said.

1991, you say? Wow. How many little Rethuglicans have been aborted in eighteen years, we wonder.

Hypocrisy. It's a Republican brand.

I link again. The only moral abortion is my abortion.

UPDATE: Zoom! That was fast. JJ beat me again: The RNC abortion party is over.

Carpetbagging Teabaggers, Part the Second

More on the carpetbagging teabaggers story, or as JJ styles it, the successful ratfuck in NY-23.

The local paper, which had originally endorsed the moderate Republican, Scozzafava, is now backing the local Democratic candidate, Bill Owens. Even better, they're saying narsty things about the carpetbagger.

The Watertown Daily Times initially endorsed Ms. Scozzafava as the best-qualified candidate in the race. We still think she is. However, in suspending her campaign she released her supporters' commitment to her. That left voters to choose between Mr. Owens and Mr. Hoffman.

Of the two, Bill Owens is by far the superior and only choice.

The Democratic candidate has demonstrated a willingness to listen to people about ways in which he could help the district as their representative in Washington. Mr. Owens has remained focused on the economy and job creation throughout his campaign. At the same time, he has shown an understanding of the military, a keen desire to help dairy farmers, an ability to work with labor unions and an eagerness to learn more about the vast, 11-county district that he hopes to represent.

Mr. Owens seems to approach politics and challenges with an open mind, a generous spirit and a can-do attitude. He has conducted a dignified campaign in comparison to Doug Hoffman.

Mr. Hoffman is running as an ideologue. If he carries out his pledges on earmarks, taxation, labor law reform and other inflexible positions, Northern New York will suffer. This rural district depends on the federal government for an investment in Fort Drum and its soldiers, environmental protection of our international waterway and the Adirondack Park, and the livelihood of all our dairy farmers across the district, among other support. Our representative cannot be locked into rigid promises and policies that would jeopardize these critical sectors of our economy.
. . .
It is frightening that Mr. Hoffman is so beholden to right-wing ideologues who dismiss Northern New Yorkers as parochial when people here simply want to know how Mr. Hoffman will protect their interests in Washington.
. . .
The Times endorses Bill Owens for Congress.

Let's find out a little more about the Democrat, shall we?

Owens is a 1971 summa cum laude graduate of Manhattan College with a degree in business administration and a 1974 top-half graduate of Fordham University School of Law.

Owens is a managing partner at Stafford, Owens, Piller, Murnane & Trombley, where he specializes in business, estate and tax law. The firm is an offshoot of one founded by Ron Stafford, a prominent Republican state senator.

He is also an adjunct professor in business law at State University of New York at Plattsburgh and in 2004, he was appointed by Republican Governor George Pataki to the College Council at that university. He has made regular appearances as a business analyst on WCFE-TV, a PBS television station in Plattsburgh.

When the Plattsburgh Air Force Base closed in 1995, he help create and worked for the Plattsburgh Airbase Redevelopment Corp. (formerly the Plattsburgh Inter-municipal Development Council), which recruited private companies to reuse the space. The base is now home to companies such as Bombardier Inc., a passenger railway car maker. Plattsburgh Airbase Redevelopment Corp. attests that more than 500 jobs were created at the site since the military left.

Now, if your stomach is feeling steady go watch the hilarious/nauseating teevee ad claiming that Nancy Pelosi owns Bill Owens, but that nobody owns the carpetbagger. Well, if you don't count the out-of-staters that funded and organized his dirty-trick laden campaign, that is.

ADDED: I just found the blog for the local public radio outlet. Interesting reading and comments.

UPDATE: Scozzafava is now openly endorsing Bill Owens.

Carpetbagging Teabaggers

The teabaggers have won the battle in a special congressional election in upstate New York. Just three days before the election, the Rethuglican candidate drops out, leaving the field to a local Democrat and a carpetbagging, teabagging nutbar (emphasis lovingitly added by moi).

Ms. Scozzafava had been under siege from conservative leaders because she supported gay rights and abortion rights and was considered too liberal on various fiscal issues.

The Republican National Committee, which had strongly backed Ms. Scozzafava’s candidacy, issued a statement applauding her decision and announcing it was now supporting Mr. Hoffman.

“Effective immediately, the R.N.C. will endorse and support the Conservative candidate in the race, Doug Hoffman,” the party’s national chairman, Michael Steele, said. “Doug’s campaign will receive the financial backing of the R.N.C. and get-out-the-vote efforts to defeat Bill Owens on Tuesday.”

Yet other prominent Republicans expressed concern that Ms. Scozzafava’s decision seemed likely to encourage conservatives going into next year’s midterm elections, raising the prospect of more primaries against Republican candidates that they deem too moderate. Party leaders — including Mr. Steele and Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker — had argued that local parties should be permitted to pick candidates that most closely mirror the sentiments of the district, even if those candidates vary from Republican orthodoxy on some issues.

“This makes life more complicated from the standpoint of this: If we get into a cycle where every time one side loses, they run a third-party candidate, we’ll make Pelosi speaker for life and guarantee Obama’s re-election,” said Mr. Gingrich, who had endorsed Ms. Scozzafava.

“I felt very deeply that when you have all 11 county chairman voting for someone, that it wasn’t appropriate for me to come in and render my judgment,” he said. “I think we are going to get into a very difficult environment around the country if suddenly conservative leaders decide they are going to anoint people without regard to local primaries and local choices.”

Ms. Scozzafava, a state assemblywoman and former small-town mayor, was nominated this summer by Republican county leaders who quickly found their choice second-guessed by the party’s conservative wing. Many officials in the district, a vast expanse from the Vermont border through the Adirondacks to Lake Ontario, were deeply resentful of the outside involvement.

Woowee. Newt Gingrich supported a candidate that the whackjobs called a 'radical liberal'. I think I just saw a formation of porkers overhead.

Here's some information on the carpetbagger and on the Democrat, who sounds like a good, smart guy. Law professor, even.

And here's the scoop on the dirty tricks the teabaggers employed, including fake websites and astroturfing.

The Teabaggers pulled out their really big guns. Sawah Palin not only endorsed the carpetbagging teabagger, but also 'trashed' the Rethuglican.

Hoffman [the carpetbagger] couldn’t answer the simplest questions on local economic and transportation issues posed by the editorial board of the Watertown Daily Times, whining that they were “parochial” and should have been given to him in advance. In my parochial school that was called cheating.

Palin, who resigned as Alaska governor in July, didn’t have to leave home to toss her grenade. She did it from the privacy of her laptop. I guess she also can see upstate New York from her front porch.

Yeah, well, they've won the battle but according to many pundits, they've likely handed the Dems a district held by Rethuglicans for nearly a century.

The wait won't be long. Election is Tuesday.

BONUS: Go read Frank Rich.

Inferno of Insanity

I am utterly fascinated by the conservative (so-called) mind. Before I got addicted to starting hanging out on the Internet, I had no idea how truly nutty those far-far rightwingnutz were. And my fascination has ballooned right along with the ballooning of the batshit craziness in the Excited States.

In the comments on a post at JJ's about a new 'culture war' game, toujoursdan wrote:

You might find this article interesting.

Democracycorps.com: The Very Separate World of Conservative Republicans

It seems clear that as society has gone through social, economic and demographic changes that have passed the right-wing by, they have retreated into ever smaller but more intense sources of information and then use the internet as an echo chamber.

I was going to blog about it and went to toujourdan's place only to find he said pretty much what I was about to say.

I remembered reading something else fairly recently about the conservative mind. Googling around, I found John Jost, a psychologist focused on something called system justification theory.

System justification theory addresses the holding of attitudes that are often contrary to one's own self-interest and therefore contrary to what one would expect on the basis of theories of self-enhancement or rational self-interest. Thus, our research focuses on counter-intuitive outcomes, such as the internalization of unfavorable stereotypes about one's own group, nonconscious biases that perpetuate inequality, attitudinal ambivalence directed at fellow ingroup members who challenge the system, opposition to equality among members of disadvantaged groups, rationalization of anticipated social and political outcomes, and tendencies among members of powerless groups to subjectively enhance the legitimacy of their powerlessness and, in some cases, to show greater support for the system than do members of powerful groups.

More googling got me to a blogpost by William Todd Schultz inspired by 'the stupendously ruthless' Republican National Convention last year. Its title is Is political conservatism a mild form of insanity?

He sums up Jost's findings on political conservatism:

Here are the facts. A meta-analysis culled from 88 samples in 12 countries, and with an N of 22,818, revealed that “several psychological variables predicted political conservatism.” Which variables exactly? In order of predictive power: Death anxiety, system instability, dogmatism/intolerance of ambiguity, closed-mindedness, low tolerance of uncertainty, high needs for order, structure, and closure, low integrative complexity, fear of threat and loss, and low self-esteem. The researchers conclude, a little chillingly, that “the core ideology of conservatism stresses resistance to change and a justification of inequality.”

The above list of variables is more than a little unsavory. We are talking about someone full of fear, with a poor sense of self, and a lack of mental dexterity. I always tell my students that tolerance of ambiguity is one especially excellent mark of psychological maturity. It isn’t a black and white world. According to the research, conservatives possess precisely the opposite: an intolerance of ambiguity and an inability to deal with complexity. Maybe that’s one reason why Obama seems so distasteful to them: he is a nuanced, multi-faceted thinker who can see things from several different perspectives simultaneously. And he isn’t preaching fear, either.

Insane? Yes.

And being howlingly stupid and/or ignorant just throws more gas on the inferno of insanity that is the US at the moment.

Republican family values.

LuLu at Canadian Cynic: Republican family values. brings this gem to our attention.

What I find perplexing is not the tactic that the fundamentalist religious right might champion as a double whammy - a strike against homosexuality and safe, responsibility-based sex education - but the reasons that the Republican leadership claim as the source of the problem.

Consider the following. DAMMIT JANET! comments the sub-text (our annotations are italicized).

A few minutes into his speech, Schwartz moved to the topic of pornography, calling it a “blight” and a “disease” that parents’ “sons” would encounter. (But not their daughters who might be coerced, likely by older men, to re-enact the brutalizing scenarios?) Noting that he was about to get “politically incorrect,” Schwartz said that it is his “observation that boys at that age have less tolerance for homosexuality than just about any other class of people”:

SCHWARTZ: But it is my observation that boys at that age have less tolerance for homosexuality than just about any other class of people. (If you exclude Pat Robertson and his thousands of acolytes.) They speak badly about homosexuality. (Peer pressure and bullying?) And that’s because they don’t want to be that way. (Given the choice between being beaten or killed by their peers and likely rejected by their family, the boys who feel the stirrings of their homosexuality will bury those feelings and over-compensate with violence against class-mates who are 'sissies'.) They don’t want to fall into it. (But they just might commit suicide.) And that’s a good instinct. (Survival? Yes that is a good instinct.) After all, homosexuality, we know, studies have been done by the National Institute of Health to try to prove that it's genetic and all those studies have proved it's not genetic. (Scientific studies are bogus if they don't support his beliefs.) Homosexuality is inflicted on people. (No. It is a scientifically documented sexual orientation. The bigotry of fundamentalist religious conservatives is inflicted on people.)

Schwartz then recalled “a very good friend” of his “who was in the homosexual lifestyle for a long time,” saying that he “had good conversations about, about the malady that he suffered.” (Your words? - likely not his, but then again if your gay male friend is a Republican he has learned to use the words of his persecutors judiciously to placate them.) He then relayed “an astonishingly insightful remark” his friend had made about the relationship between pornography and being gay:

SCHWARTZ: And one of the things that he said to me, that I think is an astonishingly insightful remark. He said, “all pornography is homosexual pornography because all pornography turns your sexual drive inwards. (Schwartz, you are really clueless. Your astute "very good friend" is telling you that most porn is androcentric and gynophobic.) Now think about that. And if you, if you tell an 11-year-old boy about that, do you think he’s going to want to go out and get a copy of Playboy? I’m pretty sure he’ll lose interest. That’s the last thing he wants.” (And your "very good friend" just told what he knew you wanted to hear.) You know, that’s a, that’s a good comment. (And it's all part and parcel of your "very good friend's" lifelong strategy of how to escape from the murderous hatred of schoolyard and religious rightwing bullies.) It’s a good point and it’s a good thing to teach young people. (Your sons, you mean. The girls get to attend Purity Balls with their daddies.)

Schwartz then added a slight caveat, saying, “if it doesn’t turn you homosexual, it at least renders you less capable of loving your wife.”

Or more likely to grow up to become a Republican politician who gets caught with his pants down.

Goin' ... goin' ... soon to be gone?

South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford - many recent news items invariably use the qualifier "embattled". This is why. Thanks to Sanford, hiking the Appalachian Trail has become a political euphemism for the illicit shenanigans of yet another adulterous, hypocrite, Fundie Christian Family Values ©™ Republican.

Now his travel history is under scrutiny, as many former supporters from his own party try to push him out of the statehouse.

Sanford, the embattled Republican governor who last week rejected calls for his resignation from the state GOP and 61 of the 72 House members from his own party, faces an ethics investigation of his travel habits. A growing number of legislators are discussing the prospect of impeachment.

The governor's travel became the focus of attention after he returned from a mysterious absence in June to announce an affair with an Argentine woman he later called his soul mate. The married father of four sons said he began the adulterous relationship while on a state trip to South America in 2008. ...

Throughout his political career, Sanford has cast himself as a frugal conservative, known to demand that state employees use both sides of Post-It notes. His 2002 gubernatorial campaign included attacks against other state officials for what he called wasteful travel expenses.

Both sides? How does that work, since only one side has the sticky glue strip? How does Sanford feel about the single-use wastefulness of toilet paper?

Mark Sanford: re-defining tacky AND sticky.

Prayer assaults: Attack of the self-righteous!

Why do fundamentalist christians pray for bad things to happen to those who don't share their religious beliefs? And when events such as tornados or plane crashes occur, these zealots will proclaim that it's a sign from God.

In Canada, claims were made that the potential closing of abortion clinics in Montréal was an answer to prayer assaults but it turned to be a false alarm - or perhaps a false prophet, it's challenging to keep track of all the christian rightwingnuttery at times.

As JJ blogged here, in the USA, "all manner of nutjobs can and do run for office on whacky platforms". And once voted into office by the gawd-fearing, they do what they threatened to do; become a festering sore in the side of a public or governmental institution impeded in its work by the sordid scandals or Rovian tactics of aforementioned elected officials.

Such an event, replete with the MASSIVE theatrics demanded by the rightwingnutters was held last week in Minnesota.

On Wednesday Rep. Michele Bachmann was part of a star-studded “teletownhall” meeting to discuss health-care reform. The event, billed “Keeping Faith with the Unborn,” was sponsored by the Susan B. Anthony List, an anti-abortion advocacy group. The organization’s president, Marjorie Dannenfelser, claimed that there were some 350,000 listeners on the line. Bachmann was joined by North Carolina Rep. Virginia Foxx, most famous for calling Matthew Shepard’s murder a “hoax” and former Colorado Rep. Marilyn Musgrave

... Bachmann repeated the myth, adopted early by Sarah Palin, that the health-care plans being debated in Congress would set up “death panels” to determine which old folks are entitled to health care. “Thank God that Sarah Palin said that,” she told the callers. “These are true.” In response to a caller from Minnesota who wanted to know if there was a plan afoot in Washington to require all medical doctors to perform abortions, Bachmann didn’t exactly shoot the suggestion down.

“Unless we explicitly restrict these items, I think we can fully expect that these radical pro-abortion individuals could very likely make those decisions,” she told the caller. “All of us who have labored tirelessly in the pro-life cause for years and years and years, we know what these people are capable of.”

But it was Bachmann’s fervent call to utilize prayer and fasting to beat back health-care reform efforts that was the true highlight of the call. “That’s really where this battle will be won — on our knees in prayer and fasting,” she told the
listeners.

Meanwhile, over in Minneapolis, some nutjob claimed that God sent a tornado to disrupt the Evangelical Lutheran Church convention because ungawdly things were happening. Some non-fundamentalist, non-zealot religious folks held a different view.

...at least one pastor disagrees with the idea that God sent the tornado. Marty Duren, a Southern Baptist pastor in Georgia, took issue with Piper’s conclusion.

"I have no trouble at all ascribing responsibility for the storm to God (even insurance companies did so for decades, though some now opt to term them "natural disasters"). I’m simply demonstrating the danger and seriousness with which those who claim in some capacity to speak for God, better be sure when assigning motives to Him. These types of attributions (including the wild claims of Pat Robertson over the years) open the doors for skeptics to point out the rightful contradictions in the way that we interpret events (”If a tornado bloweth upon the Lutherans, it is God; but, if a tree falleth on our house, it is an attack of Satan”). This inconsistency is a greater tool of the Evil One than any believer would care to admit.

Despite the weather, the social statement relaxing church teaching on homosexuality passed by exactly one vote. Two days later, under a sunny sky, the ELCA approved a measure to allow gay and lesbian clergy in committed relationships to serve the church.

As JJ warns: Incoming!!! We know what these people are capable of - indeed.

US Conservatives for Patients' Rights are Cons and Liars?

Quelle surprise - not.

Two British women have claimed they were duped into becoming the stars of a campaign to sabotage Barack Obama's healthcare reforms. Furious Kate Spall and Katie Brickell claim that their views on the NHS have been misrepresented by a free market campaign group opposed to Mr Obama's reforms in a bid to discredit the UK system.

Their anger came amid a growing backlash in the UK over the portrayal of the NHS by conservatives in America ...

JJ at unrepentant old hippie, wrote about how "Investors Business Daily" lied and then lied some more about Stephen Hawking and services available to UK patients also suffering from Lou Gehrig's disease from the NHS.

Mr Hawking himself defended the health system as he accepted America's highest honour, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, this week, saying: 'I wouldn't be here if not for the NHS'. ...

Ms Spall and Ms Brickell both agreed to appear in a documentary on healthcare reform. But neither knew that the footage would be used as part of a TV advertising campaign carried on US networks. Although standing by her views, Ms Spall said she was horrified by how the CPR had used her words.

'What I said is what I believe, and I stand by it, but the context it has been used in is something I was not aware would happen,' she said. 'The irony is that I campaign for exactly the people that socialised healthcare supports. I would not align myself with this group at all.'

Ms Brickell ... said her words had been 'skewed out of proportion' by the CPR. 'My point was not that the NHS shouldn't exist or that it was a bad thing. I think that our health service is not perfect but to get better it needs more public money, not less. I didn't realise it was having such a political impact.'

Dr Karol Sikora, a British cancer specialist who has often spoken out against the NHS, said he had also fallen victim to the same technique. He told the Guardian: 'They came and saw me in my office about a month ago and I gather I am appearing in some advert. They didn't tell me that would happen.' ...

CPR was set up by Richard Scott, a multimillionaire who founded the Columbia Hospital Corporation.

From here. Imagine that. "Conservatives for Patients' Rights" is funded by an organization actually working to conserve corporate rights in the provision of health care in the US.

Will Canadian Shona Holmes recant what she said and claim that she was also duped? Unlikely, as she would have to pay back the money that "Americans for Prosperity" probably gave her to sell out our public health care system.

Of Vultures and Rovian tactics.

Look who just found a way to grab headlines and ooze his way back onto the 2012 presidential wannabe candidates bandwagon. From Think Progress:

Yet another prominent Republican has endorsed former Alaska governor Sarah Palin’s astonishingly false claim, which she doubled down on today, that health care reform will lead to “death panels.” At the “GOPAC” political action committee convention in Illinois today, former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani said that though there are no “death panels” in any legislation, they would probably happen any way...

Mmm. Now if you put the Karl Rove thinking cap on to decode what's happening here, and you try to subsume yourself in that logic, one idea emerges. The concept of "death panels" is one that Republicans find quite intriguing and that might be quite useful to rid themselves of "inconvenient" people - the Helen Thomases, the Jimmy Carters, all the elderly and wise detractors and critics of their political regime.

Remember, that is one of the classic Rovian tactic - engineer a pre-emptive attack on your opponents that puts them in the position of defending themselves. Double whammy if you accuse them of doing something you've done or would do.

A Giuliani/Palin/ or Palin/Giuliani presidential ticket for the GOP? Stranger things can happen - and have.

Bonus reading - wherein Chris Kelly lets you ponder whether Sarah Palin is the new Harvey Lee Oswald.

CNN poll compares Palin to Quayle.

Gee, I wonder why.

Americans appear to be souring on Sarah Palin, according to a new national poll.

Thirty-nine percent of people questioned in a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey released Wednesday have a favorable opinion of the former Alaska governor and last year's Republican vice presidential nominee. That's down seven points from a poll conducted in May, and it's also nine points lower than the 48 percent who now say they now view Palin unfavorably. Forty-three percent viewed Palin negatively in May.

"Most of that change has come among Republicans and conservatives," says CNN Polling Director Keating Holland. "GOP voters still like Palin — two-thirds continue to have a favorable view of her — but she is not as wildly popular among GOPers as she was in the spring, when eight in ten Republicans had a favorable view of her." ...

Palin is considered one a number of Republicans who may want to make a bid for the 2012 GOP presidential nomination. "A 39 percent favorable rating makes it that much tougher for Palin to become president should she decide to run in 2012. Her favorable rating is almost identical to the numbers that former vice president Dan Quayle got just after leaving office in 1993," says Holland. Quayle formally declared himself a presidential candidate in 1994 but withdrew from the race in 1995.

From here.

Quotes!!!

Palin: "They're our next door neighbors and you can actually see Russia from land here in Alaska, from an island in Alaska. ... As Putin rears his head and comes into the air space of the United States of America, where do they go? It's Alaska. It's just right over the border."
Quayle: "Hawaii has always been a very pivotal role in the Pacific. It is in the Pacific. It is a part of the United States that is an island that is right here."

Palin: "Let me speak specifically about a credential that I do bring to this table, Charlie, and that's with the energy independence that I've been working on for these years as the governor of this state that produces nearly 20 percent of the U.S. domestic supply of energy." (The correct amount of energy produced by Alaska - only 3.5 percent.)
Quayle: "It isn't pollution that's harming the environment. It's the impurities in our air and water that are doing it."

There is more, so much more. Fun for hours.

How much more "far out" can Palin's fans take?

"... it's another example of Sarah Palin having difficulty figuring out how to enter into a serious debate about issues."

I've long wondered if there would be a point at which Sarah Palin went just a little too far for the political mainstream. A whole lot of political observers noticed the obvious lies, the cringe-worthy ignorance, the petty feuds, and the bizarre behavior, but wanted to maintain the fiction that Palin was a credible political figure. After all, John McCain wanted her to be one heartbeat from the presidency -- and 60 million Americans agreed.

Maybe, just maybe, her "death panel" message on Facebook -- complete with lies, poor writing, policy confusion, and family exploitation -- will be enough to convince the skeptical that Palin really is that far gone?

Gone, gone where? If only she were. But no, Palin keeps bouncing back, like a really really bad case of poison ivy.

Many Republicans and US conservatives are distancing themselves from Palin and her incoherent rambles on various topics. The attention-seeking narcissist also known as Bible Spice and Caribou Barbie added her glurge-y twist to the steaming pile of lies about the proposal to fund public health in the US. Nonetheless, she still has supporters, including Newt Gingrich. From the NYT:

The United States, like most countries, has long had a lunatic fringe who channel in the flotsam of delusion, half-facts and conspiracy theories. But now, with the light-speed and reach of the Web, “entire virtual crank communities,” as the conservative writer David Frum called them, have sprung up. They are fed, in the case of Sarah Palin, by people who should know better.

It would be interesting to read Frum's take, if he dares write about this debacle, regarding his fellow travellers in the GOP.

Afternote: Go read JABbering stooge's 'murrican take on Sa-wah. He blogged and posted at the same time DJ! did. You know what that means?

Poisoning the Well

Today, in "Terrorism" by any other name ... Canadian Cynic quotes Steven Pearlstein at The Washington Post on the extreme tactics deployed by the biggest, sorest, stupidest losers in the history of US presidential elections.

The recent attacks by Republican leaders and their ideological fellow-travelers on the effort to reform the health-care system have been so misleading, so disingenuous, that they could only spring from a cynical effort to gain partisan political advantage. By poisoning the political well, they've given up any pretense of being the loyal opposition. They've become political terrorists, willing to say or do anything to prevent the country from reaching a consensus on one of its most serious domestic problems. ...

When Democrats, for example, propose to fund research to give doctors, patients and health plans better information on what works and what doesn't, Republicans sense a sinister plot to have the government decide what treatments you will get. By the same wacko-logic, a proposal that Medicare pay for counseling on end-of-life care is transformed into a secret plan for mass euthanasia of the elderly. ...

Can there be anyone more two-faced than the Republican leaders who in one breath rail against the evils of government-run health care and in another propose a government-subsidized high-risk pool for people with chronic illness, government-subsidized community health centers for the uninsured, and opening up Medicare to people at age 55?

Health reform is a test of whether this country can function once again as a civil society -- whether we can trust ourselves to embrace the big, important changes that require everyone to give up something in order to make everyone better off. Republican leaders are eager to see us fail that test. We need to show them that no matter how many lies they tell or how many scare tactics they concoct, Americans will come together and get this done. If health reform is to be anyone's Waterloo, let it be theirs.

Meanwhile, on this side of the border in Ontario, the McGuinty government is implementing Dump Site 41, a project that will poison an immense aquifer that is a primary supply of water source to numerous municipalities in the area.

The dumpsite would sit atop the Alliston Aquifer, one of the largest underground pristine water reservoirs that extends from Georgian Bay to Lake Simcoe and the Oak Ridges Moraine and is linked to numerous streams, rivers and wetlands in the area that stand to be polluted. Ultimately, the polluted water would flow into Georgian Bay and Lake Ontario. Anyone who argues that leachate would be drastically diluted by the time it reaches these waters is missing the point: dilution is no solution—it’s an excuse. The threat is not only to the local communities. The area of the groundwater compromised by this dumpsite, which coincidentally is not even needed at this point, is vast.

Thanks to John Laforet for blogging about this environmental threat.

Noonan on Palin's "working-class" creds.

From the WSJ:

... Palin has now stepped down, but she continues to poll high among some members of the Republican base, some of whom have taken to telling themselves Palin myths.

To wit, "I love her because she's so working-class." This is a favorite of some party intellectuals. She is not working class, never was, and even she, avid claimer of advantage that she is, never claimed to be and just lets others say it. Her father was a teacher and school track coach, her mother the school secretary. They were middle-class figures of respect, stability and local status. I think intellectuals call her working-class because they see the makeup, the hair, the heels and the sleds and think they're working class "tropes." ...

What she is, is a seemingly very nice middle-class girl with ambition, appetite and no sense of personal limits. ...

America doesn't need Sarah Palin to prove it was, and is, a nation of unprecedented fluidity. Her rise and seeming fall do nothing to prove or refute this."The elites hate her." The elites made her. It was the elites of the party, the McCain campaign and the conservative media that picked her and pushed her. The base barely knew who she was. It was the elites, from party operatives to public intellectuals, who advanced her and attacked those who said she lacked heft. She is a complete elite confection. She might as well have been a bonbon."She makes the Republican Party look inclusive." She makes the party look stupid, a party of the easily manipulated.

One of the volatile issues for Palin has been whether boundaries have been transgressed by the MSM and internet media in using her family to attack and mock her. It would seem that sport is also gleefully played by rightwing neocons commenting at the Free Republic.


Merci to LuLu at Canadian Cynic, The important thing to remember, darlings ...