Please ship me a railway car full of bleach now

I need to scrub out my brain.

So will you if you go read the comments on the piece of written by York, which I linked to yesterday, the one where he slips up and shows the real worldview of white male privilege in America (black folks shouldn't count, given that they aren't actually human, just like women aren't).

What is sickeningly ironic, and I mean the sickening bit literally, is the commenters who claim that racism is dead, even as they spout the most racist filth I have read in, well, years.

Living in the Academy has, apparently, protected me from some evil.  

God, these people are scum.  

Oh, well, then!

It all becomes clear!  Here's how Obama so unfairly won the election and is so unjustly popular in the U.S. polls!  Bryan York tells us!  Because pollsters are counting the opinions of those they ought not to -- only white males are really humans, and here we've been counting the votes of black folk! 

Hell, bad enough when we let women vote, which, as Serwer points out over here on Tapped, Ann Coulter already revealed to be the main cause of the downfall of America.

(And the Right wonders why even the rats are scurrying away from their tent these days.)

(And don't miss this charming touch from our friends on the Right.)

Why I Love Gin and Tacos

I don't know if you read Gin and Tacos -- it's my new favorite blog.

Lines like this are why:

"His ideological biases and his intellect are crossing lightsabers."

Ooo! Banned!

I've been banned by RightWingI'mMissingASparkPlug!

Just because I questioned her morals when she posted this, where she suggests that Jesus kills Mexicans to put Obama in his place. Odd how those on the Right can't take anyone who talks back, isn't it? Their kids they just bat around until they shut up. Prisoners, they torture. I guess I'm lucky I just got banned. So much for the Marketplace of Ideas.

But never mind her! Look here! Hannity has offered to be waterboarded for charity! Let's all give him all our nickels! Hey! It's for the Troops!

It's just LIKE being on the Swim Team...

Waterboarding, say the Torture Apologists on the Right, is just like joining the swim team.  Or watching a speech in the rain, or bobbing for apples, or sixteen other things.

Over on No More Mr. Nice Blog he's linked the famous Hitchens' clip again, the one where Christopher Hitchens agrees to be waterboarded, to find out if it's actually torture.

Go watch that puppy and talk to me about how it's just like playing in your daddy's hose in the backyard and so how is that torture, exactly?  

Prosecute!

Glenn says why, and many other wise things too.

Obama thinks he can make everyone happy on this one.  No.  The Right is Wrong here.  War Criminals can't be allowed to skate, or what stops the next Cheney-in-Power from deciding he'll just make up the rules as he goes along?

(And the Right might be cool with that now, but what if the next Cheney is named Che?  We have laws for a reason.)

That Ain't Torture!

All my adult life I've been educating the working classes, young adult and returning student alike, all over the country -- Idaho, North Carolina, various places in Arkansas --many of them conservative students, almost none of them leftist (more now than when I began), and I remain convinced, yes, even now, that education is the only answer. You don't fix problems by beating people up; you don't open minds by breaking heads. When someone is wrong, you engage that person. When a student in Idaho told me she didn't think prisoners should get free education while she was working so hard to pay for hers, I agreed that was an interesting thesis, and sent her to research the notion. She returned to me three weeks later, very upset. dr. delagar, she said, all my research is showing that educating prisoners reduces the rate of recidivism. This contradicts my thesis. What should I do? Hmm, I said. What do you think you should do?

So: I'm over on these rightwing blogs where I lurk. They're claiming that (a) torture works, so it's okay (b) or torture isn't torture, so it's okay (And besides the Nazis were worse! And the Muslims! And remember 9/11! Hey! Did you forget 9/11!) and (c) anyway, Obama is pro-abortion and that's torturing babies, so there!

I know not to argue. Don't argue with a pig, etc.

But motherfucking fucking shit.

Over on Rightwing I'm Missing a Sparkplug's Blog, for instance: this is one of the places where the argument got made that those on the Left have no right to even speak on this issue, given as we allow abortion, see, and that means we want to RIP babies SCREAMING from the wombs of their dear sweet mamas and, I don't know, suck their blood and eat their tender iddle livers, who knows, so how dare we speak against sticking a few electrodes to the testicles of a few terrorists to SAVE AMERICAN LIVES?

Commie socialists that we are.

Over there, the argument also got made that waterboarding, sleep deprivation, solitary confinement, and exposure to cold and wet conditions, as well as to loud obnoxious music and sounds, could not be torture. Why? Well, look: people stood in the rain and cold to hear Obama's speeches. Were they being tortured. Shucks, no. Also: people listen to loud obnoxious music all the time. Is that torture? And sometimes they also stay up late!

This was when I could take it no more and dropped into comments to introduce the notion of consent to their little worlds.

It did no good, as it never does. Conservatives have no concept on consent, I have begun to believe. I know they don't believe that brown and black and female people own or should own their own bodies; but now I have begun to understand that they don't think anyone should own their own bodies. I pointed them to that bit of American language wherein we are meant to believe that "all men are created equal," endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, suggesting that one of these rights was, in fact, the right to own and control one's own body, and that that body should not be subjected to certain things without one's consent.

I might as well have been speaking Greek.

(Or, as I occasionally tell the kid, you can lead a student to ideas, but you can't make him think.)

Update: See also Jesse at Pandagon on this issue.

And this, from EoAW.

War on What Now?

Twisty, over at I Blame the Patriarchy, comes out against the War on Drugs.

Yay, Twisty!

She points out what will not be a surprise to any of us -- that it is not actually a War on Drugs (no drugs are being harmed in this War -- more drugs are available than evah!) -- but a war on the poor and the brown.

That's how the Rich White Guys want it, so no shock the War on Drugs hasn't gone away yet, and shows no sign of being stopped.  How many in prison now?  2.2 million?  How much money is that costing, which we aren't spending on building schools, roads, alternative energy systems, universal health care, name your alternative choice?

Legalize drugs.  Start a War on Rape instead, if you gotta have a War.  I'm with Twisty!

Um...

Well, now, as all y'all all know, I am all for the 2nd Amendment.

But these people are looney enough when they're just waving signs.  

Now they're going to take all those guns they've been buying, plus their (racist) conviction that Obama-the-Socialist is destroying America to Washington, D.C.?  In July?

I've been trying really, really, really hard not to say the Right-Wing is stupid lately: I've been trying to critique their ideas, and their arguments.  I haven't been calling them morans, or fuckwits, or delusional whackjobs.

But what fuckwitted delusional whackjob -- seriously -- thinks this is a good idea?

Of course, maybe it's a joke?  Maybe it's not serious?

That's what I thought about the tea-bagging parties at first though (Protesting what, now?) and they turned out to be for reals...

The Classic Age Of Hard SF

Sigh. The good old days. Before womens and PC crap ruined SF. When White Guys ruled...well, if Texas does secede and John Ringo and OSC get their way, maybe we can get back to delightful books like these...

Prizes For the Excellent

I recommended this book way back I forget when -- I could look it up if I weren't so exhausted -- but now it's won the Pulitzer Prize, as it very well ought to have.

Make certain you aren't deeply depressed when you start reading it though.  It took me about a month to read it: I had to keep coming up for air, as it were.  Or I would punch mr. delagar, who was happily reading David Gresham novels beside me, and read bits to him: Can you believe this? I would demand.  Can you believe we did this to people in this country in 1911?  In 1920? Listen to this!

The Nazis did it to the Jews, too, he would say.

That's my point, I would wail.  The Nazis did it to the Jews, and everyone knows it!  We did it here, in Alabama, in Mississippi, all these people got rich off the blood of these men, and no one has a clue!

Slavery By Another Name, by Douglas Blackmon.

Read it if you can stand it.  It's a brilliant book, but horrifying.

They Ain't Racist!

And besides, feminists are ugly.

That's what's getting said on the Winger Blogs over those specious charges that the Teabag -- oh, excuse me -- the tea-parties -- are an entirely white folks, and an oddly motived event.

What, we wonder, are these whacks protesting? I mean, the bail-outs? Bushco passed those. And the debt? Bushco. And the fucked economy? Your team. So....what's Obama done, again, precisely, that you don't like?

Stimulus package? Most of that was Bush. Ooo, he passed ANOTHER?

Oooo, you mean you just think HE should stop spending money we don't have? On things you don't like? But you were fine with Bush spending money we didn't have?

Or is it PWB you don't like?

Okay, Just So I'm Clear

What's Okay With The Right-Wing 24%ers (or is it 19%ers now?):

• Torturing prisoners for bogus information
  
• Starting Wars Against Populations that Have Not Attacked us for No Good Reason
• Beating children (but only if they have it coming)
• Beating or raping women (only if they ask for it)
• Forced Pregnancy (only for sluts)
• Depriving Women of the Franchise
• Shooting Black People (Only if the Shooting is a Police)
• Depriving Poor Children of Health Insurance

What is Not Okay With the Right-Wing 24%ers

• Raising the tax rate on those making more that $250,000 by 3%
  
• Keeping the Estate Tax for those leaving more than seven million dollars behind
• Helping out families about to lose their homes by giving them some help with their mortgage payments
• Electing a black guy to be President, especially if his middle name is Hussein
• Muslims

Okay, then.

Who Knew?

Ellen Degeneres hates America!

Details here.

(Via Pandagon)

No. No. No.

What Glenn says here.

This was decided at Nuremberg.

Saying I was only following orders is no defense. An illegal order is not followed.

These people are war criminals. As much as I feel for anyone who wants to move on, who thinks the economy matters more, whatever, no. This matters. If we let this go, we are saying to anyone who thinks to cross this line in the future that they will cross it in safety.

Then what about the next prisoner who happens to be the wrong color, or the wrong religion, or the wrong sex? Muslim this time. Jew next? Maybe some atheist? Or a gun-toting psycho fundie who has spent too much time in the basement with his lunatic blog?

No. Draw the line now.

The War Criminals Who Ran Our Country

As amusing as the Tea-Baggers are, don't lose sight of the facts.

While they're out in their lawn chairs ranting because the evil Maobama is giving tax cuts to the middle class and raising taxes 3% on the wealthy (and this is somehow socialism/the Apocalypse/the Rebirth of Hitler's Reign), more and more of what their party did while they were telling the rest of us to shut up, because if we objected to one thing Bush did we (a) hated Freedom and (b) suffered from Bush Derangement syndrome, is leaking out.

Here: go look at this.

Tell me if you can read it without hating America just a tiny bit.

They're upset about fucking taxes?  Fuck them.

Oh?  And by the way?  Fuck them.

Wow

Just Wow.

Via Crooked Timber, this graphic novel

How Mirka Got Her Sword, which is just the best work of art/story/ bit of lit I have read all month.  You MUST go read it.  Now.  At Once.

Charming!

This link to EotW, I mean, where you can see the Obamas new puppy.

But you must read the comments: the posters have boldly braved the wingnut blogs for us, and come back with what the Right had to say about the puppy.  Have yourself a gigglefest.  It's nearly as cute as the whole Teabag issue.

Yay Bush!

Thanks to his destruction of the economy our income tanked this year, so that when it came time to pay our taxes we, for the first time since I became a real professor, did not have to pay hundreds of extra dollars in state and federal taxes.

In fact, we're getting a very tiny refund.  Huzzah!

Next year, even better!  Even if things get better! (We can hope, anyway.)  Since Obama is fixing the tax code for us -- here Scott at LG&M says most of what I've been thinking about the Wingnuts who are organizing their Teabag rallies claiming they're being oppressed by Obama's new tax plan, and that taxing the wealthy is Socialism, eek!

My favorite point is the one I shout at mr. delagar every time I see some tool with a no-taxation-without-representation  bumpersticker on the back of his pickup, here in Pork Smith: "You've GOT representation, you shitting TOOL!" I yell at them.  "WTF do you think your Congress IS?" 

"All right, calm down," mr. delagar says.

"Ain't MY fucking fault their side lost."

"Will you just drive the car?"

"Ain't hear their asses whining when that idiot Bush was spending us into disaster two years ago, is it?"

"Why are you yelling at me?"

"Well, fine, I'll pull him the fuck over and yell at him, will you like that better?"

"Can we just get to the bookstore?  Please?"

"Stupid ignorant backwards tool," I mutter.

"Rabbi Hillel says to love your neighbors," the kid says from the backseat.

"I would if they weren't such tools."

"Patriarchy-oppressed swearwords," she says.  "You owe me three dollars."

We had a tiny seder this year, being as we're broke -- just us and Uncle Charger.  However, interestingly, despite how poor everyone is, it was an oddly merry Seder.  We tried to feel afflicted, but it was difficult.  As Charger pointed out, how can we?

"I know," I cried, from where I was putting the roast potatoes in the oven.  "God, I keep thinking that -- President Obama!"

"Did you see the troops cheering him?" Charger called from the living room.

"It's so -- it's been so horrible, so long." I laughed.  "And now Vermont!"

"And Iowa!" he agreed.

So when it came to the bit of the Seder where we were supposed to consider those around the world who are still in captivity, to mourn for our afflicted fellows, well, we did our best.  But we were far too festive for people who had been slaves in Egypt, I'm afraid.

Next year in Jerusalem.

Jeez, Me Too

Poor Obama.  I know just how he feels.

"Lately, though, it seems like he'd rather talk about the resurgence of Taliban warlords...than the show."

High-Fructose Corn Syrup

Finally!

You've probably seem that commercial from the HFCS folk where the two mommies discuss corn-syrup and the stupid liberal one, who doesn't give her kids HFCS, has obviously done no research, and so gets stumped by the sensible one, who has educated herself, and knows that "in moderation" it's a safe, natural treat, yap yap yap?

Like anyone in America actually consumes HFCS in moderation these days, dude. (24% of most people's diets, that's what this guy says.)

Anyway, here's a science blog, Neurototopia looking at the question in detail.  News is both good and bad.

Yeah, Okay!

Iowa, like Sweden, has ruled that Gay Marriage is legal.

Supreme Court Justice Mark Cady, who wrote the unanimous decision, at one point invoked the court’s first-ever decision, in 1839, which struck down slavery laws 17 years before the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the right of a slave owner to treat a person as property.

Iowa’s gay marriage ban “is unconstitutional, because the county has been unable to identify a constitutionally adequate justification for excluding plaintiffs from the institution of civil marriage,” Cady wrote in the 69-page opinion that seemed to dismiss the concept of civil unions as an option for gay couples.

When the kid was weeping in my arms yesterday because everything was so terrible, this was one of the things I pointed to, to show her that we were, in fact, winning: gay people were being treated like humans in Sweden and Vermont and Mass. (and now Iowa!), thanks to Science (it works, bitches!), we have saved the ozone layer, dolphins are winning, the ACLU is on the case,
and who, who, WHO won in November?

Yeah, you rite!