Well, Yeah...

See, at my kid's school they wouldn't let her mention any criticism of America -- they did a "study" of Columbus each year, only of course it wasn't a study at all, but a simple recitation of the buffed-up story that's been created around Columbus. The kid knows all the rest of the story (not, interestingly, from us, but from a big fat book she bought on her own, one of those books kids love, Ten Thousand Wicked Facts You Never Learned in History Class, some title like that, I was leafing through it the other day, it's appalling good on child labor and union-busting and what got eaten in the Middle Ages, too).



My point here, and I do have one, is violent determination of the Right in this country that America be beyond reproach -- that the Left are traitors because we dare to criticise our nation -- it would go down a deal better if the Right were not, while insisting it was evil to speak ill of the country, also destroying everything this nation stands for.



Not to mention the nation itself. Hell, doing their best to destroy the world.



All the while living in deep denial about it.



Because if they don't say it, it's not happening, apparently.

Yeah, They're Not Racist

Glenn Beck mocks Obama's eleven year old.

"Those people" can't educate their children.

I'm sure this will end up being just like when Rush mocked 13-year old Chelsea Clinton's looks-- something the Right claims never happened.

Oh, Please

This is something I do not often admit, and I'm only doing it now under the influence of exasperation and a deal of rum: but in my youth I too was a libertarian.

I blame too much SF, too young.

The point is, I grew out of it.  

(I remember the exact moment, in fact.  I was on a houseboat on Bull Shoals lake talking to one of my Fundie uncles, who was trying to explain to me why I needed Jesus in my life, and I was explaining to him that I was an atheist and a libertarian, and we didn't need nothin' but guns and freedom, and he asked me what a libertarian was, exactly, and I started explaining to him how people didn't need governments or laws or anything but their own wits and boldness to make it in this here world, and the more I explained, the more I knew that every word I was saying was utter bullshit, and by the time I finished talking I was a libertarian no more.)

(OTOH, I am still an atheist, despite his devoted attempt to save my dark and evil soul.  Oh, well.)

Here is my point, and I do have one: Who, who, who over the age of 19 can truly believe this crap?

(See also this.)

Well, Of Course They Aren't Racists....

Here's your must-read blog post of the day.

My favorite bit:

Protest is only seen as fundamentally American when those who have long had the luxury of seeing themselves as prototypically American engage in it. When the dangerous and dark “other” does so, however, it isn’t viewed as normal or natural, let alone patriotic. Which is why Rush Limbaugh could say, this past week, that the Tea Parties are the first time since the Civil War that ordinary, common Americans stood up for their rights: a statement that erases the normalcy and “American-ness” of blacks in the civil rights struggle, not to mention women in the fight for suffrage and equality, working people in the fight for better working conditions, and LGBT folks as they struggle to be treated as full and equal human beings.

And this, my friends, is what white privilege is all about.

I Swear I Am Not Making This Up

Apropos of yesterday's post, the kid comes home from school yesterday, and we're having our afternoon bonding session (this is where we lie on my bed and discuss her day at school out of Herr Dr. Delagar's hearing, because he gets way too involved and angsty and, as the kid puts it, "gets on her" about minor events that I just find funny).

Anyway, after she told me who got in trouble today and who did not and who was a suck to the teacher and who was not and all the usual Upper El dramas, she added, "And Merry! Listen to what Merry said!"

Me: What?

The Kid: Merry said her daddy told her [imitates Merry's voice] that every little girl is Jesus' bride.

Me: (sitting up slowly): What?

The Kid: Her daddy says --

Me: What?

The Kid: She said her daddy told her that every little girl is Jesus' bride.

Me: (Staring at her.)

The Kid: (With satisfaction): That's what I said.

(May I add that Merry is about nine years old?)

They Were Asking For It

Every time I think they can't go lower, lower they go.

The Far-Right is still on about the racist name-calling that they say didn't take place before the HCR vote, even though Congressmen attest to the name-calling, not to mention the spitting (but of course they're just gay Congressmen and black Congressmen and women Congressmen, not to mention Democrats, so it's not like anything they say counts, not if you put what they say up against what people who weren't even there say or who were somewhere else in the crowd* and are good God-fearing Tea Party members say).  And anyway, if it did take place, any of it, well, it was because those Congressmen and women provoked it, by being in the wrong place at the wrong time, and by walking where they ought to have known not to walk.

You know, like women provoke their own rapes by going out in short skirts, and gay guys provoke beatings by being gay, and black people provoke lynchings by owning property in the South and shit like that.

Here's our buddy Rush to explain it to you, in case you're confused:

LIMBAUGH: I know it didn't happen. There's no evidence it happened. If they had videotape evidence that it had happened, they would have shown it. They don't have it. They were trying to create it. They were being provocative. They were being contentious. There's no reason that that group of people from Congress had to walk through the crowd. They never go to the Capitol that way. They get there in the underground tunnels. They want -- and Pelosi carrying that big gavel with that, you know, excrement-eating grin on her face. They were trying to provoke everybody into an incident. 

*From "Creekrat" in comments:

"I WAS THERE !!! I saw none of this. Lot of chanting, but great folks who care about this country. Not a speck of trash left behind, either !!"

It's so sweet, isn't it?  How the Republicans never litter or cuss?  Guess it's because they all have Jesus in their hearts the way they do.

Gah

You may not want to look at this one.  It's beyond appalling.

I'll give you a brief description, so you can decide before you click: a cartoon showing Obama as a rapist, just having raped America, represented by the Statue of Liberty.  He's telling her to shut up and stop whining, since she consent to the rape when she elected him, and he'll be back whenever he wants to do it again, "Immigration, Capn'Trade," he says, "whatever I want.  And next time I'll bring friends."

But of course it's not racist.  Oh NO. 

Because no one ever used THAT trope to oppress black men in the country, black guys raping the women.  Nah.

That's their defense these days, though:  I'm seeing it everywhere on the Right.  Whenever they do something appallingly racist like this and someone reacts and says, wow, son, that's a little, uh, racist, they say, don't you ever get tired of playing the race card?  

Apparently they think that's the tactic that works.  I guess it does in their circle.

(See also here.)

Good Golly

I don't know if you have happily managed to avoid the site Big Hollywood yet, but, um...

...good God.

(I'm just warning you, you'll start gagging halfway through.)

What? Are There No Workhouses?

Sweet little Right-Wing Social Darwinists, you gotta love'm.

This one, South Carolina Lt Governor Andre Bauer, who is running for Governor, BTW, wants to cut school-lunch programs -- stop feeding poor children if their parents miss PTA meetings or other benchmarks.

"My grandmother was not a highly educated woman, but she told me as a small child to quit feeding stray animals. You know why? Because they breed," [SC Lt Gov. Andre] Bauer said, according to the Greenville News. "You're facilitating the problem if you give an animal or a person ample food supply. They will reproduce, especially ones that don't think too much further than that. And so what you've got to do is you've got to curtail that type of behavior. They don't know any better."

They're all vehemently Pro-Life so long as the fetus is still pre-born.  Once the little nipper's out & running, hah, you're on your own, you little stray!

Snick!

New Law Requires Women to Name Baby, Paint Nursery Before Getting Abortion.

Hey!

Don't give'm any ideas!

Why We Should Love the GOP

Yeah, why was that again?

The GOP these days...

I don't usually agree with Andrew Sullivan, but I gotta give him a big heh yeah for this post.

If you believe in torture, support the GOP. That's what conservatism is now all about.

Meanwhile, I can't stop listening to Rilo Kiley.

Thieving Another Post

This one from Punkass Blog -- you'll remember Franken's bill, asking for an anti-rape clause in gov't contracts, the one 30 Republican Senators voted against (cause they're both pro-life and pro-rape, these guys, which makes perfect sense, really, when you think about it) -- anyway, here's a clip from Jon Stewart dealing with it.

Have fun!

But Girls Just Like Pink!

You'll remember our sweet Con Iggulden, he of The Dangerous Book For Boys, who insisted, along with half the (conservative)(and home-schooling) world that he was not a misogynistic sexist, that little boys were just different from girls, that was all, and in his vast experience as a teacher he had come to realize that modern day schooling and childrearing was destroying boys, trying to turning hearty tough little boys into girls, just because the feminists and nasty teachers liked it that way, and so on, et cetera, you've heard this song before.

Well, he's back.

I open one of the catalogs I used to buy Hanukkah presents for the kid from, because it had cool toys, puzzles and kits and art supplies, and what do I find?  Yes, indeed.  On one page, The Dangerous Chemistry Set For Boys.

On the opposing page?  Spa Science, for girls.

Because, see, boys want to do chemistry, and be scientists.  Girls want to make perfume and facials and bubble bath.

I swear, this country was more evolved in 1910 than it is now.  Go read Dear Enemy and tell me I'm wrong.

More from the Right

Silly Women!  Votes are for Men!

Which you can bet in public some on the Right will claim not all of them believe this, and sure, not all of them do, just like not every Republican is racist.

On the other hand, we've got all those "studies" they love to do, showing how "if only" women didn't have the vote (or brown people didn't, or those with more than 13 years of education didn't, et cetera et cetera), Republicans would have swept every election since 1940.

So what's that tell us, except that when they're alone in their manky little hearts, they think only people who believe exactly what they believe ought to have the franchise?

Update: Ha! Here's Myca, who said what I was trying to say, over at Alas, a Blog, earlier than I did and much better!

Another Edition of

They're not racist...

That 9/12, it just keeps on giving.

I remember watching an episode of NYPD Blue about ten years ago where this white kid, poor little white kid from the burbs, gets arrested for some status crime like vagrancy, and his rich stepdaddy won't come get him, wanting to teach the kid a lesson, some plot point like that, so they're going to have to hold the poor little rich white kid in juvie with the evil criminal trash kids, and Sipowitiz takes him in and, ooo, lingering shot of the scary bad kids...

I'm like, what? What?

Because what was scary about these bad kids?

You've guessed it. It's that they were all brown. Brown and black. Ooo, poor white kid has to be locked up with black guys. Not black adults, mind you -- black teenagers, what looked like 13-17 years old. Oh, my, how eeeevil.

That's what we have in this little story. The adults from South Dakota and the "mid-western" state, who have been talking trash about Obama, they're fine. They're not an issue. No threat possible, though there are lots of them too, and they're sitting in a huge group, and I have no doubt laughing and saying some scary things, and possibly some of them are large. But -- they're white! So!

Nine to ten (young) black males? Eeeevil!

Yeah, Riehl's not racist.

They're Not Racist

Check out the signs from that 2 million* teabagger march on DC.

People on the Right, as well as those who are opposed to Obama, keep trying to tell me it's nothing to do with him being black.  It's the deficit, they claim, or his policies.  It's because they pay their way and they think everyone else should too.  "My dad works hard," one of Zelda's students told her, "so why should these bums get a free ride?"

I might believe these arguments if their signs didn't show that they believed the bums were brown, or spoke with accents that did not match their own; or, of course, if they had ever once attended any sort of march like this when George W. Bush was destroying our economy.

(Pictures via Majikthise)

*That's in wingnut math.  It was closer to 70,000 the way the rest of us count. (See Nate at 538 for a thorough examination of the subject.)

100% White Males

Rachel Maddow kicks Uncle Pat around again.

Not that he doesn't deserve it.  Hee.

Here's What Pro-Life Really Means

Gah.

But That's Racist!

See, in the Whackawing world, nominating anyone other than the white guy is both racist and sexist.

Why, you wonder?  Why can't they think for one minute that Sotomayor might be the best candidate for the job?

Well, duh.  That's easy.  Girls and brown people are never the best people for the job.  If they were, God would have made them white and male.  

Also, as everyone knows, brown women are racist and stupid.

Silly questions!

(See an analysis of the validity of the Right's talking points here.)

(See also: ABW on the issue.  Don't miss Paul in comments!  What a treat! The Angry White Male of Privilege Explains the World to Us!)

(And for further rebuttal see this too.)