Amazingly enough, not all teenagers are horrible people.

It would have been so nice to go the rest of my life without talking about Mitt Romney, but something is bugging me and I need to get it off my chest.

You may have heard that this happened, and Mittens is unsurprisingly having to deal with a lot of bad press. At first I wanted to make some keen insight into how his teenage assholery relates to his current persona as a stiff, awkward, emotion-deficient robot, but no, what’s really getting under my skin at the moment is all these Internet commenters saying things to the effect of, “Oh, what does it matter if he bullied some kid in high school? We all know he’s an asshole anyway, so who cares?” Even worse are the ones saying, “Everyone’s an asshole in high school.”

Gee, how do I answer this? How about:

NO.

Holding another kid down on the floor and going at him with a pair of scissors is not some trivial, “We all do stupid shit when we’re young” fit of adolescent indiscretion. What Romney did to the late John Lauber was an act of violence, and a terrifying one at that. I’m willing to discuss the culture at the place and time, and how Romney didn’t get to be that way all by himself, but if you think Romney’s behavior was just typical teenage-boy bullshit, then you must have run with a really bad crowd. I never did shit like that in high school (though I suppose the expectations are different for girls?), my brother didn’t act like that, and I had a whole lot of guy friends and classmates who, amazingly enough, managed to get through their high school years without acting like bullies. Anti-social behavior is not inevitable simply because a guy is between the ages of 13 and 20, and when a grown man is called out for having attacked another boy at his prep school, he should show some remorse. He should, at the very least, admit that what he did was shitty and that he’s not proud of it. Such a resounding lack of acknowledgment is especially terrifying in a man who has raised five sons.

Free us from the tyranny of low expectations.

Jeff Sessions thinks the Dems FORCED him to show how much he hates women.

Jonathan Weisman of the New York Times has very nicely put together a handy round-up of people who hate women, as shown by their reactions to the latest renewal of the Violence Against Women Act. You’d think that protecting women from abusive, violent partners would be something that any politician would happily get behind, but this time, the Act includes some provisions that some GOP Senators and other defenders of Family Values just can’t stomach. The offending items include but are not limited to:

The legislation would continue existing grant programs to local law enforcement and battered women shelters, but would expand efforts to reach Indian tribes and rural areas. It would increase the availability of free legal assistance to victims of domestic violence, extend the definition of violence against women to include stalking, and provide training for civil and criminal court personnel to deal with families with a history of violence. It would also allow more battered illegal immigrants to claim temporary visas, and would include same-sex couples in programs for domestic violence.

Can you see where this is going?

“I’m Rick Perry, and I fail at not parodying myself.”

Oh, now really.

Aside from the bald-faced lying like a cheap rug—no, Rick Perry, nobody is stopping you from openly celebrating Christmas! Just don’t do it in your capacity as a taxpayer-salaried public servant!—there’s the very not-subtle juxtaposition of “gays serving openly in the military” with the (fabricated) liberal encroachments on Christians’ freedom to worship. Once again cross-pollinating the Christian persecution complex with the majoritarian-American sense of entitlement, he’s transparently pitting his fellow travelers against The Rainbow Menace, making gay rights antithetical to freedom of religion.

I know that there are some people who will lap that shit up. The meme of gays as the enemy of Christians isn’t yet dead, but it’s putting him on the wrong side of history. For the younger generations—that is to say, those who will still be voting after Rick Perry and the rest of the GOP Clown Car bunch are dead—if you pit equality of civil rights for gays against Christianity, more and more people will chose the gays. Record numbers of Millennials are losing their religion because their churches have nothing to offer but hate.

Besides all that, it’s a crappy video. I could have chosen better background music. I do like the jacket, though. It’s very Jake Gyllenhaal meets Heath Ledger.

 

Anti-choice bill has idiotic name.

Our old buddy Rep. Trent Franks (R-idiculous) is riding that hobby-horse again, using his highly salaried time in Congress to write bills to combat problems that don’t exist.

The Susan B. Anthony and Frederick Douglass Prenatal Nondiscrimination Act of 2011

…

restricts sex-selection abortion and race-selection abortion, and the coercion of a woman to obtain either. The woman seeking an abortion is exempted from prosecution, while abortion providers are held to account.

Right. There’s a real epidemic of abortion providers rounding up pregnant women and coercing them into aborting their female and/or black fetuses. Sure.

The use of Frederick Douglass’s name in the bill’s title, however, is especially hilarious. From what I recall of his writing, the rape and forced breeding of enslaved women was one of the horrors of slavery that he set out to expose. I don’t think he would have been on-board with this legislative hand-wringing over black women having too much abortion access.

I’ll say it again: Trent Franks does not care about black people!

 

Newt Gingrich, what is that I don’t even.

What exactly is this asshat trying to accomplish when he says shit like this?

I think what makes us different, and what makes us in some ways, when we have good leadership, much more ruthless and much tougher than any other country in world, is we don’t send soldiers and sailors and marines and airmen to war. We send our children. We send our fathers. We send our brothers and sisters. We send our mothers. And therefore there’s a preciousness to this decision unlike any other country I know of.

(I hesitate to call him an asshole; an asshole is useful.)

I’m sensing several layers of Wingnuttery being piled up here. If I’m not mistaken, Newt is telling this audience that,

1. Unlike any other country he can think of,

2. Americans recognize our armed forces as our family members, and furthermore,

3. That makes us more powerful and ruthless than other countries, so

4. We’re Number One.

I suppose it would be too much to ask of a GOPer to consider that after racking up thirteen figures’ worth of debt on invading Iraq and Afghanistan, maybe we should base our national self-worth in something other than our ability to wage war.

Does he honestly mean to say, though, that other countries don’t love their military personnel as family members? Does he think all other countries only enlist troops who don’t have families who love them? Or that everyone outside the USA ceases to love their relatives once they join the military?

Better yet, does he also really mean to say that America tops the charts in military might because our servicemembers are so much more loved by their families than in other countries, and not because, say, of the percentage of the federal budget we devote to defense?

Not that I assume Newt only says what he genuinely believes in front of his campaign audiences. I have no doubt this was a carefully crafted message tailor-made to suit his audience’s prejudices. That doesn’t make it less reprehensible, though. Regardless of how deeply the candidate believes such things, people do choose to listen to their messages, and those messages have consequences. I’m sure it must be very comforting to believe that American casualties in wars that we orchestrated from the ground up are so much more tragic than, say, the deaths of Iraqi and Afghan civilians and combatants, because we’re the ones who love our troops.

Mention rape survivor and Cardinal makes no sense.

Can someone please tell me whether this is sloppy journalism, or just a case of the Cardinal behaving nonsensically at the intersection of abortion rights and rape survival?

Cardinal Francis George of Chicago is apparently doing a mea culpa after attempting to shame Illinois’s pro-choice Governor:

“I deeply regret that,” George said Sunday afternoon, en route to Holy Name Cathedral in Chicago, where he was scheduled to present awards to parishioners for their dedication to ministries. “A rape victim demands all the respect and sympathy that anybody can give.”

Sorry, what exactly is going on? What did Governor Quinn do to get the Cardinal all torqued off at him in the first place?

George, leader of the Roman Catholic archdiocese of Chicago, and the five other bishops who oversee the church in Illinois released the statement Wednesday criticizing Quinn, a Catholic, for his plans to present an award Nov. 17 at the annual luncheon for the Personal PAC. The statement said Quinn had “gone beyond a political alignment with those supporting the legal right to kill children in their mothers’ wombs to rewarding those deemed most successful in this terrible work.”

So, first of all, Cardinal George is annoyed at Governor Quinn for being pro-choice; that much has been going on for a while. We’ll be having none of this “thinking for yourself” or “forming your own opinions on controversial issues” as long as you call yourself a Catholic; that independent-thinking nonsense is for those who we know are going to Hell anyway. The new development was that the Governor was presenting an award at a luncheon for Personal PAC, which is dedicated to electing pro-choice candidates to office in Illinois. Hence, the woman-erasing language of “supporting the legal right to kill children in their mothers’ wombs” when the Cardinal decided this was a step too far.

With me so far? Good.

This is where it gets tricky:

Quinn defended his decision to honor Goodman, whom he described as “a strong advocate of helping rape victims all over our state and the country.”

And that is when the Cardinal suddenly started backpedaling like a cyclist who missed his turn:

“I am not sure what we would have done,” he said. “If we had known this, that it was in fact an award to a rape victim, I think our own conversation would have been very different.”

I think what happened is that Personal PAC is hosting the luncheon, but the award isn’t really for supporting pro-choice candidates, it’s in honor of Jennie Goodman’s advocacy on behalf of rape victims, and Cardinal George didn’t want to be seen beating his fists on the floor over an award going to a woman who’s known as a defender of rape victims. It’s bad PR, you know.

Although, this is where Cardinal George’s language gets even creepier. Governor Quinn makes it about her advocacy in helping rape victims. Cardinal George makes it sound more like she deserves their respect simply for being a rape victim. It has nothing to do with anything she’s done and everything to do with what someone else has done to her.

Come to think of it, that actually tracks really well with womb-control logic. It’s all about taking away the woman’s agency. Her body does not belong to her. If she doesn’t get a say in whether to give birth, then there’s no reason why she should decide to have sex. It’s ultimately the same idea.

 

I just can’t look away from Mr. Frothy-Mix.

Dude’s like a train wreck. It is entirely possible that there is something seriously wrong with me.

But, you know, the train wreck is trying to become a presidential nominee, so of course he demands our attention. ThinkProgress shows us what he has to say about contraception. It’s fairly predictable:

[Sex] is supposed to be within marriage. It’s supposed to be for purposes that are yes, conjugal…but also procreative. That’s the perfect way that a sexual union should happen…This is special and it needs to be seen as special.

Hold on, let me dig up the full transcript, some brave soul at RH Reality Check found it at DKos so that you don’t have to watch the video:

One of the things I will talk about that no president has talked about before is I think the dangers of contraception in this country, the whole sexual libertine idea … Many in the Christian faith have said, “Well, that’s okay … contraception’s okay.”

It’s not okay because it’s a license to do things in the sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be. They’re supposed to be within marriage, for purposes that are, yes, conjugal … but also procreative. That’s the perfect way that a sexual union should happen. We take any part of that out, we diminish the act. And if you can take one part out that’s not for purposes of procreation, that’s not one of the reasons, then you diminish this very special bond between men and women, so why can’t you take other parts of that out? And all of a sudden, it becomes deconstructed to the point where it’s simply pleasure. And that’s certainly a part of it—and it’s an important part of it, don’t get me wrong—but there’s a lot of things we do for pleasure, and this is special, and it needs to be seen as special.

Again, I know most presidents don’t talk about those things, and maybe people don’t want us to talk about those things, but I think it’s important that you are who you are. I’m not running for preacher. I’m not running for pastor, but these are important public policy issues.

I think this guy actually lies awake at night with the paralyzing fear that the folks down the street are having more fun than he is. His idea of an “important public policy issue” is that all-consuming anxiety that someone, somewhere, might be happy.

Mr. Frothy-Mix, the party of Lincoln no longer exists.

Ed Brayton shows us another fish in a barrel, which is Former Senator Frothy-Mix playing “Who’s the most homophobic of them all?” with his fellow clown car passengers.

“I have been a long-time advocate for states’ rights. However, I believe as Abraham Lincoln did – that states don’t have the rights to legalize moral wrongs.

“Mr. Cain, Congresswoman (Michele) Bachmann and Governor (Rick) Perry all believe 50 different definitions of marriage is fine, I strongly disagree and will continue fighting for traditional marriage between one man and woman.”

Right. The Emancipation Proclamation was just like a nationwide mandate that civil marriage be restricted to heterosexual couples. Of course.

Former Senator Santorum apparently hasn’t gotten the memo that keeping Teh Gheyz out of marriage is no longer the position of a majority of Americans. We want to hear more about jobs, healthcare, the foreign occupations, immigration, and so on. You’re not going to win a national election by going in front of a country that’s struggling to pay the bills and boasting of your commitment to making sure same-sex couples can’t get married. I mean, Herman Cain, for example, at least has a tax plan. It’s a bullshit tax plan, but he has some ideas about how government pays for itself, which is actually relevant for those of us who work a regular 40 hours a week. And here we have Santorum talking about how he’s going to end the scourge of marriage equality. It’s like he’s trying to out-cuckoo Crazy-Eyes Bachmann, and he just doesn’t have the charisma.

 

Herman Cain accidentally commits truth-telling, is promptly punished.

TNC and Adam Serwer show us how Herman Cain slipped up in carrying out his duties as a Good Black Conservative Politician. Serwer points out that Cain has said a lot of racist shit about liberal blacks, which white conservatives thought was just fine. It’s only when he complains about the “insensitivity” of having a hunting property called “Niggerhead,” that he’s accused of playing the race card.

TNC elaborates, and makes the distinction that liberals (or at least a sufficient portion of them to make the necessary space) take racism seriously, whereas conservatives don’t want to bring up racism except to insist that the problem lies anywhere but with them. By forgetting that he’s supposed to be reassuring his fellow conservatives that there is no racism in their base, Cain got out of line, and his voter base will not stand for that.

I just want to add that Cain should have known better than to break form like that, for the same reason that he shouldn’t be surprised at the backlash he’s facing for calling a spade a vaguely spade-shaped thing. Cain benefited from “conservative anti-anti-racism” (thank you, Serwer) when he said that blacks have been “brainwashed” into voting Democratic, suggested that President Obama isn’t as authentically black as someone like MLK, and implied that black women need to be forced to have more unwanted babies. These were not risky lines to take as a GOP presidential candidate of the African-American persuasion; he was rewarded for talking that talk. Having participated in that environment already, Cain should have known that if he pointed to something obviously racist and complained that the property should have been renamed by now, that he would be in deep water with his base. These are the friends he has chosen.

Mr. Frothy-Mix does not understand how these Inter-webs work.

This is just too much:

A Google search for Santorum has generated some inappropriate results since gay columnist Dan Savage organized an online campaign to link graphic sexual terms to the socially conservative senator’s name.

Now, the Republican presidential candidate says he’s convinced Google could do something to remedy the issue, if the company wanted to.

“I suspect if something was up there like that about Joe Biden, they’d get rid of it,” Santorum said. “If you’re a responsible business, you don’t let things like that happen in your business that have an impact on the country.”

He continued: “To have a business allow that type of filth to be purveyed through their website or through their system is something that they say they can’t handle but I suspect that’s not true.”

Is it wrong to point and laugh at someone who does not understand how a search engine works?

Oh, since when has that ever stopped me?

*points* “Rick Santorum, did your mother drop you on your head?!”

It sure would be nice if you could wipe the face of the Internet clean of all the lube and fecal matter just by harassing Google, but I am afraid that Google does not create the lube and fecal matter, it merely shows us where the lube and fecal matter are. If Google did not provide us with that service, we would turn to Bing or Yahoo or some other search engine. The lube and fecal matter are bigger than Google.

If you want to fix your Google problem, this is what you do: do that search for your name, and visit the first page that comes up with the lube and fecal matter. Contact the owner of the site, and tell him to get rid of that nasty neologism. Go back to the Google search, and do the same thing with the second page. Keep going until they’re all gone.