Denali: a quick review

The "big scandal" last week was the renaming of an Alaskan mountain to its original name, which, the Right claimed, was an obvious overreach of presidential power and a blatant example of the tyrannical Obama administration desecrating American history!

The rest of the country yawned. Except in Alaska, where they poured another drink and said "About damned time."

The outrage pretty much played itself out almost as quickly as it began, but let's take a quick run-through of the actual facts of the situation.

On Friday, August 28, U.S. Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell issued the order changing the name to Denali.

Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH) expressed his deep disappointment on Sunday night about the decision. Of course, since he spends every day looking for new things to complain about regarding Obama, nobody really cared.

Another Ohio congresscritter, Rob Portman, whined on Facebook that "This decision by the Administration is yet another example of the President going around Congress." Which is technically correct - it's a job that Congress didn't need to be involved in. The Secretary of the Interior was just making an administrative correction to the record, changing the mountain to the name preferred by the people of that state.

But perhaps you should hear the whole story.

See, the Athabaskan natives who inhabited the area called it Denali, which, loosely translated, meant "that big fucking hill over there." (OK, admittedly a very loose translation.) The Russians, when they owned the area from around the mid 1700s until 1867, called it Большая Гора (Bolshaya Gora) or "Big Mountain" basically the Russian translation of Denali. The Russians left, and it was Denali again (with a brief period as Densmore's Mountain in the late 1880s and early 1890s, after the first English-speaking white man to reach the base of the mountain).

In 1896, a gold prospector named named William Dickey wrote an account in the New York Sun about his travels through Alaska, and took it upon himself to name it "after William McKinley of Ohio, who had been nominated for the presidency, and that fact was the first news we received on our way out of the wonderful wilderness."

(Side note: McKinley was a strong proponent of the gold standard, so it follows that a gold miner would be a big fan.)

William McKinley was elected president the following year. The United States formally recognized the name Mount McKinley after President Wilson signed the Mount McKinley National Park Act of February 26, 1917. Which confused the Alaskans, most of whom had been calling it "Denali" all this time.

In his entire life, McKinley never visited Alaska, and in fact, he'd been dead for almost 60 years before it became a state.

In 1975, the Alaskan legislature backed a proposal to switch the name back to Denali. But when the Board on Geographic Names requested public comment on the matter, Ohio Rep. Ralph Regula, who represents the district where McKinley grew up, swiftly came to Mount McKinley’s defense. He convinced the entire Ohio congressional delegation to oppose the recommendation, and the names committee put off the matter. He also added an amendment to the 1980 legislation expanding the national park around the mountain that would rename the park “Denali,” but keep "McKinley" for the peak, in hopes that a compromise would settle the debate.

So basically, it's just Republicans and people from Ohio whining about it. Because apparently, "state's rights" doesn't mean as much in the GOP as it once did.

Bristol Palin, taking a break while waiting to whelp yet another out-of-wedlock child, weighed in to complain "By the way, no one is buying the 'Denali is what the Alaskans have called it for years' line. I’ve never called the mountain Denali... and neither does anyone I know..."

Bristol, permit me to introduce you to someone you might be interested in. Her name is Sarah.

Right about a minute and a half in, Sarah says "Denali, The Great One, soaring under the midnight sun." It's subtle. You might have missed it, particularly if you nodded off like most of us do when your mom starts talking.

Rob Portman (R-OH) took to Facebook to whine "I now urge the Administration to work with me to find alternative ways to preserve McKinley's legacy somewhere else in the national park that once bore his name."

Well, I'm sure there's an outhouse up there somewhere that could use a name plaque. Because seriously, what the hell business is it of the people of Ohio to try and interfere with a matter internal to Alaska? Send them a statue - I'm sure they'll be happy to mount it in front of the Visitor's Center. Or name something in your own godforsaken state after him.

Once again, our friends in the GOP just started whining as soon as they saw Obama's name. This one fell apart on them pretty quickly, but I'm sure they'll be on to something new soon enough.

Maybe they can complain about the color of Obama's suit again. That one was pretty funny.

Whatever happened to Trump University?

The Republican party has been trying to reach out to the Hispanic community to garner votes, and it's been a struggle for them. A struggle that Donald Trump made worse two weeks ago, saying that all illegal immigrants were drug dealers, rapists and criminals. ("And some, I assume, are good people," he grudgingly added.)

The Hispanic community was understandably outraged. And Trump, as he does, refused to back down from those statements.

Obvious anagram Reince Priebus, chairman of the Republican National Committee, had to call Trump to tell him to tone down the rhetoric, because it was hurting the Republican brand. That's not likely to work - whether it was negative or positive attention, he got attention for his remarks, and that's what Trump lives for.

(On a side note, who was the first person to call him "Obvious anagram Reince Priebus"? Because I'd like to shake that guy's hand.)

Donald Trump has been called "the id of the Republican party," which is accurate enough. He is the embodiment of the basic, instinctual drives of a person, the reptilian forebrain slipped into human skin. But more than that, he is also the Ego of the Republican party. By any definition. He is a self-serving, self-centered evangelical preacher of the Word of Trump. He, himself, is the center of his entire universe, and nothing is more important to him than building himself up, so that others can marvel at how important he is.

Trump feels the need to keep reminding people that he's "really, really rich." Well, of course he is: his father was a multi-millionaire real estate developer. The children of rich people tend to be rich, too.

The man who's filed for bankruptcy four times wants us to trust him with America's economy. That seems like an obviously stupid idea to anybody who thinks about it, but Trump is trusting most of America to be as stubbornly ignorant on as many subjects as he is. (And sadly, that may be a good bet.)

The man has had to close or sell off almost as many casinos as he's opened. And it's really hard to lose money with a casino. But it's easy to set up a scam, isn't it?

People, it's only been two years. Has everybody forgotten that Donald Trump got sued by the State of New York for a scam called Trump University?

The lawsuit, which seeks restitution of at least $40 million, accused Mr. Trump, the Trump Organization and others involved with the school of running it as an unlicensed educational institution from 2005 to 2011 and making false claims about its classes in what was described as “an elaborate bait-and-switch.”

In a statement, Eric T. Schneiderman, the attorney general, said Mr. Trump appeared in advertisements for the school making “false promises” to persuade more than 5,000 people around the country — including 600 New Yorkers — “to spend tens of thousands of dollars they couldn’t afford for lessons they never got.”

The advertisements claimed, for instance, that Mr. Trump had handpicked instructors to teach students “a systematic method for investing in real estate.” But according to the lawsuit, Mr. Trump had not chosen even a single instructor at the school and had not created the curriculums for any of its courses.

...

The inquiry into Trump University came to light in May 2011 after dozens of people had complained to the authorities in New York, Texas, Florida and Illinois about the institution, which attracted prospective students with the promise of a free 90-minute seminar about real estate investing that, according to the lawsuit, “served as a sales pitch for a three-day seminar costing $1,495.” This three-day seminar was itself “an upsell,” the lawsuit said, for increasingly costly “Trump Elite” packages that included so-called personal mentorship programs at $35,000 a course.

The details of this story kept getting more and more bizarre as press conferences were held and details were leaked.

Attorney General Eric Schneiderman says many of the 5,000 students who paid up to $35,000 thought they would at least meet Trump but instead all they got was their picture taken in front of a life-size picture of "The Apprentice" TV star.

...

The lawsuit says many of the wannabe moguls were unable to land even one real estate deal and were left far worse off than before the lessons, facing thousands of dollars in debt for the seminar program once billed as a top quality university with Trump's "hand-picked" instructors.

(More details can be found here and here.)

There is very little in Donald Trump's business dealings that aren't self-serving, shady, or both. This might make him the perfect Republican, but it would make him a very, very bad president.

The Maine Thing is Being Fertile

In Maine, we have found something almost as rare as a 3-legged Sasquatch. It's a Republican who wants to expand the Affordable Care Act.

Maine Senate Majority Leader Rep. Garrett Mason authored a bill that would force insurance companies to pay for fertility treatments. Which sounds, for a Republican, almost sympathetic: you have a couple trying desperately to have a child, and finally reach the point where their only solution is medical treatment that would cost thousands of dollars that they just can't afford. And Maine wants to make their lives just a little bit better.

Except for one thing: it includes a morals clause. The original language of LD 943, An Act to Provide Access to Infertility Treatment, has the following provisions:

A. The covered individual must be married;
B. The covered individual's infertility may not be the result of a sexually transmitted disease

And once again, the "small government Republicans" want to ensure that they can get the government to intervene in women's personal lives. Because everybody deserves the chance to have children, unless they're a slut. Because god knows that if they had an STD, they must have proven that they're unfit parents, right?

Now, Mason has said that he's open to removing the provisions. "I'm totally willing to do something that fits Maine better, and that is why we have the committee process."

Which is probably best. It's good that he's willing to remove these ignorant nanny-state provisions. I mean, it totally shows what a completely unthinking, small-minded, judgmental, moralistic fucknozzle Garrett Mason was to include them in the first place, but still. It's nice that he's willing to put them aside.

Because in its original form, this bill would lose the first time it went before the Supreme Court, which should have been obvious to anyone with the brain power of an Eastern White Pine (the State Tree of Maine).

It's good to know that rape victims who received an STD from their attacker might have had a good chance of being declared "unfit parents" in Maine, thanks to this simpering, slack-jawed, puffy-faced used car salesman.

I'm a little curious whether, if a couple has a divorce midway through treatment for infertility, would they be on the hook for the entire bill? Or just for the portion of the infertility treatment that came after the divorce was finalized? And would there be a "statute of limitations" for divorce? How long would the new parents need to stay married before the state wouldn't arrest them?

This bill has, at least, one area where it isn't discriminatory. Maine has recognized same-sex marriage since 2012. So at least it would be easier for lesbian couples to get pregnant.

"But it's OK! He was a thug!"

You've probably heard that there's a little bit of unrest in Ferguson, Missouri. It's right outside of St Louis, and there seem to be some unhappy people there.

See, according to eyewitnesses, a cop confronted the teen, then shot him. The details are a little sketchy, but according to eyewitnesses, the cop told the teens to "get the fuck off the street," started to drive off, and then came back, shouting something to the effect of "What'd you say?!?" And then Michael Brown was shot.

Like I said, the details are sketchy, because, obviously, the cop had a different story than the three eyewitnesses. A lot of the people watching this story from a distance were thrilled when the police released video showing somebody who looked kind of like Michael Brown stealing a box of cheap cigars (Swisher Sweets, if you're curious), because, obviously, Brown was a "thug," and the cop was a hero.

(That's something else: why is it that black teens are now "thugs," if they might be linked to any type of crime, even a misdemeanor? I don't see that word applied to a lot of white kids. Is this like people calling Obama "arrogant" for doing his job as president? Since they aren't saying "uppity," that makes it OK, right?)

There's just one problem with that narrative: the cop in question, Darren Wilson, didn't know that Brown was allegedly involved with any crime other than jaywalking. The police chief has admitted it.

So, the question remains: is it OK for the police to shoot unarmed teens, as long as they can tie them to a crime later?

I can't see any way that might be abused.

This Month's Right Wing Hero: Cliven Bundy

I suppose that it's possible that you've been stuck in a cave for the last two weeks or so - maybe you're an amateur spelunker (I suppose those still exist). Or perhaps you actively avoid even looking at anything about Nevada (and who could blame you?)

If so, let's recap. We have a cattle rancher in Nevada named Cliven Bundy (apparently, "Cliven" is a reasonable choice for a name if you're from those parts). For the last twenty years, Bundy has been grazing his cattle on land owned by the Bureau of Land Management. That's not a crime: the BLM allows ranchers to do that all the time. The thing is, they charge a fee. And Bundy has never paid his grazing fees in over two decades.

He's claimed that he inherited grazing rights from his grandmother, because some of her ancestors kept cattle in the Virgin Valley since 1877. If this was true (and there's no evidence that it is), that just means that Bundy comes from a long line of criminals: the US Government has owned that land since it was given to us by Mexico (you know, after we took it from them) in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848.

Let's just look at it this way: if you had flowers growing wild in your backyard, and your neighbor kept kicking down your fence and picking those flowers, you might get a little cranky, right?

Now the grazing fees aren't exactly exorbitant - they haven't changed in decades, and tend to be about $1.35 per animal per month. That's a lot less than feed costs, but Bundy didn't want to pay it. He's used a lot of different arguments over the years, but his latest one is kind of fascinating: he doesn't recognize the existence of the US government.

(The fact that he made that statement immediately raised red flags for me. That philosophy, and his use of the phrase "sovereign," is a mark of what's called the Sovereign Citizen Movement, a group of right-wing terrorists who don't believe that they need to follow pesky things like "laws.")

Once he made some noise about being anti-government, our intrepid insurrectionists over at Fox "News" decided to make a working-class hero out of him, without doing even the most basic research into whether he was a dangerous lunatic.

And sure enough, once Fox "News" started trying to make a hero out of a man stealing from the government, some of his Sovereign Citizen friends (and a bunch of other random nutjobs) came along to help him fight off the government trying to collect the money he owed them.

On Salon, Eric Stern put together almost two dozen of the various lies Fox "News" was trying to spread before Cliven started speaking his mind in public, and there's some real winners there. One of my favorites was actually made by a member of the Nevada legislature:

"Nobody has seen any bill for $1.1 million. It doesn't exist." (Michelle Fiore, R-Nevada Assembly, on MSNBC) Bundy says he has "never been sent a bill" but also says he never opens mail from the U.S. government because he does not recognize the U.S. government’s existence.

That just about says it all, doesn't it? But that's where it starts to get really interesting. Because then, somebody in the conservative media made the mistake of letting him talk on camera.

What happened was, Bundy liked being the center of attention, and he started holding daily press conferences. And even when the press dwindled down to (on this particular day) one reporter and one photographer, Bundy kept talking. Unfortunately for him, the reporter in question was from the New York Times.

"I want to tell you one more thing I know about the Negro," he said. Mr. Bundy recalled driving past a public-housing project in North Las Vegas, "and in front of that government house the door was usually open and the older people and the kids — and there is always at least a half a dozen people sitting on the porch — they didn't have nothing to do. They didn't have nothing for their kids to do. They didn't have nothing for their young girls to do.

"And because they were basically on government subsidy, so now what do they do?" he asked. "They abort their young children, they put their young men in jail, because they never learned how to pick cotton. And I've often wondered, are they better off as slaves, picking cotton and having a family life and doing things, or are they better off under government subsidy? They didn't get no more freedom. They got less freedom."

It was probably right about that point that the right-wing media screamed and ran away. But Bundy wasn't done - not by a long shot. He had an all-access pass to the media, and decades of evil built up in his soul. He wasn't going to shut up just because his new "friends" stopped taking his calls.

He started appearing on any talk show that would have him, basically repeating the mantra that "I'm not a racist," and interspersing it with statements like this.

If I say 'negro' or 'black boy' or 'slave' … if those people cannot take those kind of words and not be offensive (sic) then Martin Luther King didn't do his job.

Or he'd double down on his remarks.

Are they happier now under this government subsidy system than they were when they were slaves, and they was able to have their family structure together, and the chickens and garden, and the people had something to do? And so, in my mind I’m wondering, are they better off being slaves, in that sense, or better off being slaves to the United States government, in the sense of the subsidies. I’m wondering. That’s what. And the statement was right.

Proving, if nothing else, that he had no idea what slavery really was. On the other hand, in an interview on CNN, he proved that he understood how Fox "News" worked.

The CNN host suggested that Bundy had been abandoned at Fox News, something he said was apparent by the fact that the rancher was appearing on his network and not Fox.

"I don't think I've been abandoned. I think maybe they misunderstood me a little bit," Bundy said. "But I think Fox and I, I think, Hannity and I are just right on. I have no doubt that he would support me if he understood really what's in my heart. And I think he does understand me."

There was a time in America when the right wing had some reasonable members. But as they've gradually drifted down the rabbit hole, they've begun embracing more and more radical ideas. And now they've reached the point where everyone they embrace as a hero, from Ted Nugent to George Zimmerman, and now Cliven Bundy, has proven to be not just deeply flawed, but pathologically insane.

Perhaps they should take the hint, and realize that the problem lies, not in their heroes, but somewhere deeper in their philosophies.

Meanwhile, off in the distance, Cliven Bundy continues to spout authentic frontier gibberish.

Fred Phelps: a premature obituary

So, apparently Fred Phelps is in a hospice and on the verge of death.

The founder of the Westboro Baptist Church is clinging to life, despite the combined wishes of the majority of the American population.

Apparently, although the Westboro members refuse to talk about it, Fred was voted out of the church by the other members, according to people like his estranged son, Nate Phelps (who regained his sanity 37 years ago and left the church).

Now, it's possible that the other members of Westboro Baptist Church realized that Fred was the worst person in America, and decided that they didn't want him around any more. It's just as likely, though, that much like the Tea Party and the Republicans, they've decided that Freddy was holding them back from reaching the true depths of hatred available to them.

Here's the thing, though. Our boy Freddy isn't dying because of some unexpected illness or because his body finally got tired of his shit. It appears that he is dying from an extended tantrum.

After Phelps was voted out of Westboro Baptist Church this past summer, he was moved out of the church and into a house, where he was watched to ensure he wouldn’t harm himself, a son estranged from the church said Sunday. Phelps eventually stopped eating and drinking, and on Sunday, he was near death.

And at age of 84, you can't do that to your body, as Fred has apparently just discovered.

So, having warped the minds of at least three generations of followers, Fred has just learned that you can't keep your body running for over eight decades on a diet of hate, and then try to replace it with sadness.

When he finally stops wasting our oxygen, he will not be missed.

You riled 'em up, GOP. Now you have to deal with 'em.

Last night, the President gave his State of the Union speech for 2014. The thing is, there wasn't just one response to it. There was the "official" Republican response from Cathy McMorris Rodgers (I'm not clear if she's Fred Rogers' evil twin, or if that lady from the Harry Potter books doesn't just wear pink any more), and then there was the Tea Party response (because, as my momma always said, "stupid is as stupid does"), and then, only on Youtube, Rand Paul gave his own "Tea Party Response," speaking for the Batshit Insane caucus.

Let's all take a moment to enjoy the current dynamics playing out within the Republican Party. They've split into a bunch of tiny, warring factions, each out to stab all the others in the back. They're trying their best to hide it, but they really aren't doing a good job, as last night proved.

The problem, you see, is that in 2008 the Republicans felt that, in order to defeat Obama, instead of taking up a more reasonable stance on a few key issues, they needed to mobilize the morons and the low information voters. Unfortunately, some of the newly-active mouth-breathers refused to retreat to their sofas and soap operas after the election, and kept right on chanting, picketing, and writing increasingly incoherent diatribes and tweets.

Social media had given them new access to vast fields of topics that they knew nothing about, and they felt that it was their duty to prove how little they knew. And the best way to do this was to elect people just as stupid as they were: enter Ted Cruz, Louis Gohmert, and all of their ilk.

While there may have been some dissension in the GOP during Obama's first term, things really started coming to a head during the government shutdown debates back in September, when the nominally intelligent Republicans realized that their new, hyperpartisan friends were not just willing, but actually eager, to see the government collapse - after all, the wet dream of any dedicated small government enthusiast would have to be government disappearing completely.

People like Libertarian Fox Business wonk John Stossel wanted lawmakers to "shut down more," and "I'm hoping the shutdown will wake people up... and say 'hey, maybe we don't need all this stuff.'" (A philosophy that ignores the 24 billion dollars that the 16-day shutdown cost the taxpayers, or the billions lost by businesses across the country that are more difficult to calculate.)

The most prescient (or in this case, conniving) saw it coming months earlier: Karl Rove, in the runup to the upcoming midterm elections, basically told his donors "yes, I wasted $300 million in 2012, and if you don't give me more money, the Democrats will win again!"

That's a venal and dishonest strategy, in that it ignores the fact that most of the money he takes from the gullible rich will be going to fight the new breed of rabid Tea Partiers that he helped create.

Speaker of the House John Boehner has become openly dismissive of the Tea Party fringes. And he isn't the only one. And the Tea Party, on their part, has no love for the establishment Republicans, even the ones who danced to their tune as hard as they could (just not to the point of destroying the economy).

Millions of dollars are being raised, on both sides, as Republicans prepare to square off against other Republicans for the future of the Republican philosophy.

The best result that we can hope for, really, is that nobody learns any lessons from the trouncing they're about to get, and the GOP stays divided through the 2016 elections. In the meantime, though, I'm just going to sit here with my popcorn and watch the fireworks.

Who remembers Nicaragua?

So, on Face the Nation this weekend, Peggy Noonan called New York mayor Bill De Blasio a "Sandinista" – she tried to walk it back almost immediately, as soon as the host called her on it.



But, you know, it's a funny thing: that idea seems to be the latest right wing talking point. In November, Rush Limbaugh called De Blasio a Sandinista and a communist, as did the pundits on Fox "News."

So let’s be clear what’s going on here: the right wing is assuming (perhaps justifiably, considering how they’ve destroyed education) that nobody knows who the Sandinistas were. But before we get to them, the first thing you should know is that the Somoza family ran Nicaragua for 43 years (either directly or through puppets); they were wonderful guys, who kept power through assassination and torture; their relations with the US finally fell apart finally when the Nicaraguan National Guard was caught on tape gunning down ABC reporter Bill Stewart (and his translator Juan Espinoza) in early 1979.

In 1979, the Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional (FSLN) overthrew the Somoza regime by force: the only way possible when faced with a tyrant, with a secret police force and a prison full of anyone who spoke out against them. In 1988, Bill De Blasio traveled to Nicaragua, and came away with admiration for what the Sandinistas were accomplishing to help their people.

And, admittedly, the Sandinistas got a little repressive later on - mostly in order to fight the Contras (more on them later), but never, by any stretch of the imagination, did they get as bad as the government they replaced.

But Peggy Noonan was speechwriter for Ronald Reagan, who supported the Somoza regime. This was not surprising, because Reagan had this habit of supporting murderous thugs around the world, like the Taliban, the racist government of South Africa and their policy of apartheid, Augusto Pinochet in Chile, and many others. Essentially, it wouldn't matter how many of his own people a dictator killed or tortured: if they bought their guns from the US instead of the USSR, Reagan liked them. He was friendly that way.

In fact, one of the most memorable acts of the Reagan administration (you might have heard of it) was when they quietly sold arms to Iran (the same country that had just recently taken over their American embassy), and funneled the money to a terrorist organization called the Contras.

Remember the Contras? They opposed the Sandinista government. And they showed their opposition through the gentle, humanitarian tactics of rape, murder, destruction of entire towns, kidnapping, blowing up health care clinics, and targeting doctors for assassination. You know, just good, clean fun; these were the people Reagan supported.

So, let's draw a few lines: Peggy Noonan worked for Reagan, who supported the Contras, who were opposed to the Sandinistas. So I guess it's understandable that Noonan might think badly of the Sandinistas, as well.

Because she, too, apparently loves murderous thugs and hates freedom. At least, that’s the impression I get. Can anybody explain what it is that I might be misunderstanding?

The righteous hates falsehood, but the wicked brings shame and disgrace. (Proverbs 13:5)

We'll discover over the course of the next few days (or possibly hours) whether the GOP hates the Affordable Care Act more than they love the United States of America.

Over the last two weeks, the Republicans have continued with their basic tactic of lying about every facet of the debt standoff, at every phase of the fight. They continue to try and claim that this is "Obama's shutdown," despite the fact that they've been planning the shutdown for months.

Although the law's opponents say that shutting down the government was not their objective, the activists anticipated that a shutdown could occur — and worked with members of the Tea Party caucus in Congress who were excited about drawing a red line against a law they despise.

A defunding "tool kit" created in early September included talking points for the question, "What happens when you shut down the government and you are blamed for it?" The suggested answer was the one House Republicans give today: "We are simply calling to fund the entire government except for the Affordable Care Act/Obamacare."

And to get to this point, Boehner even admitted that he had made a deal over the budget, which he then simply broke. Because he's a lying bag of douche.



And the lies go on: they can't even tell the truth about the basic issue here. The Congressional GOP is not allowing a raise to the debt ceiling. Let's ignore the fact that every other president in history has gotten debt ceiling increases without a fight. (And most especially, let's not point out the one single difference between the current president and every other president throughout history. What's the one thing that's different? Is he more liberal than any other president? Even Jimmy Carter? Although you're coming close to the real answer at that point - Jimmy Carter was from Georgia, and the population of Georgia is over 30% black, second highest in the nation.)

And let's ignore the fact that the debt ceiling was raised seven times under Bush, and eighteen times under Reagan. We're ignoring that. What we're looking at is the basic fact of what the debt ceiling is.

The "debt ceiling" is the ability of the Treasury to sell bonds to pay the government's bills. (That's shorthand. Here's a slightly more detailed explanation.) That doesn't mean we're on a spending spree, or wandering through Sears making impulse buys - this is the money to pay the bills that America already owes.

And that's the ugly secret that the Republicans don't want to mention. Aside from the continuing bills - you know, pensions, power and pencils - we need this money to pay off the budget. The budget that was passed by both the Democratically-controlled Senate, and by the Republican-controlled House of Representatives.

Our friends the Republicans have packed the budget with billions of dollars of unnecessary spending. Like a defense budget loaded with spending that the Pentagon didn't even want. Like the billions spent annually in oil company subsidies.

But the problem runs deeper than that. There is a small minority of the GOP who don't see the government going into default to be a problem. They believe, in fact, that we should "repudiate" all government debt - simply tell the world that we don't believe in it, and aren't going to pay it. They believe that destroying the US economy, triggering a catastrophic recession, and throwing world financial markets into meltdown, is a small price to pay to meet their goals.

Do you want to know why the president can't negotiate with the GOP? Because you can only conduct actual negotiations when you can trust the other side to live up to their side of the agreement. That's why there's the phrase "you can't negotiate with terrorists." Even if they get the helicopter and the money, you can't trust them not to kill the hostages.

Or in this case, destroy the economy.

_______________

Update (10/16/2013): It may not be related, but since it's obvious that the GOP has been planning this government shutdown for months, isn't it interesting that Teabagger Congressman Joe Barton started cashing out of the stock market back in August? Maybe some of them DID understand what the term "global economic disaster" means. And just didn't care.

Such are all their wicked works, and there is no truth in them.

Although most Democrats already know that most Republicans are, as a group, pathological lying sacks of shit, perhaps it will be the government shutdown that brings this fact into focus for most of America.

I doubt it - much of the country is blinded by partisan hatred of our president, and the many of the rest will stick with the "both sides do it" cop-out. But a guy can hope, right?

This tiny-minded Koch-sucking group of overwhelmingly Caucasian males has, for the most part, stopped even trying to tell the truth, because they know that any lie they tell will be twisted by a compliant press to extract what few grains of reality might have accidentally been included.

Alternatively, when there isn't a passing relationship with the truth in whatever ignorant statement they vomited up, Fox "News" and the right-wing blogs will simply repeat it over and over, louder. And through sheer repetition, the hope is that the inbred paste-eaters making up their "base" will come to believe it anyway.

And sadly, this tactic all too often works.

The GOP has turned the act of making ridiculous untruths a standard move in their playbook. They've been lying about the Affordable Care Act for so long, and in such idiotic ways, that they can't even make lucid arguments any more. They just devolve into random spewings of illegitimate talking points and mindless babble.

These "fiscal conservatives" who are so worried about passing along the costs to our children? They're costing the country $300 million per day that the government is shut down.

John Boehner's latest mantra is that he won't even allow reopening the government to come to a vote, because it couldn't pass. Which is an open and blatant lie, as just a little math will tell you. But it doesn't matter. Why would Boehner want to allow the government to reopen? There is ample evidence that the GOP has been trying to shut down the government since at least 2010.

The GOP has lied about the Affordable Care Act so hard, and for so long, that the drooling illiterati don't even know what they want any more. In poll after poll, they show that they support every aspect of Obamacare; they just hate anything named "Obamacare." This is so universal that late night comedians can create viral videos around the concept.



One of the GOP's current talking points is that Obamacare must be defeated because it was "rammed through in the middle of the night without a single Republican vote." Which, of course, ignores an entire year of committee meetings, and dozens of compromises and changes to make it palatable to the Republicans who then voted against it, because you can't trust them to keep their agreements.

But the brightest zit on the GOP nose, the puddle of puke that they keep returning to, is "he won't meet with us." Which is eyeball-meltingly stupid. He's met with them multiple times - he just hasn't caved in to their demands. Because you don't negotiate with terrorists.

In fact, that's probably the one fact that's driving them into the most stroke-inducing paroxysms of rage. Obama has been compromising and negotiating with them for so long that, now that he's standing firm on a position, they don't know what to do.

So they've shut down the government, after planning on it for so long. And now that they've done it, they don't even know what they actually want. The few who realize that defunding "Obamacare" is a losing proposition don't care. Rep. Marlin Stutzman (R-Ind) accidentally let slip the fact that they really don't care about the American people any more - they govern with the calm logic of a six-year-old throwing a temper tantrum. "We're not going to be disrespected. We have to get something out of this. And I don't know what that even is."

The lunatics have taken over the asylum. They've taken their hostages and are screaming about what they're going to do to them. It may be time to reactivate Seal Team Six.

It's just a question

Spread it around. See who has an answer.

Somebody's trying to sound butch!

You have to feel sorry for David Dewhurst. It has to be rough to be the lieutenant governor under Rick Perry - I mean, Dewhurst is no Rhodes scholar himself, but when you're second fiddle to a brain-damaged chimp, you must spend a lot of nights curled around a bottle of cheap whiskey, rocking yourself and sobbing uncontrollably.

I mean, he was in charge of the Texas Senate as they tried to ban abortion, and he failed. Sen. Wendy Davis, D-Fort Worth, filibustered for over 12 hours, until they were able to take her off the stage with three challenges: two of them, that she didn't stay on topic, involved her talking about Planned Parenthood and invasive sonograms - both of which are directly involved with abortion. So, bullshit right there.

Then, forgetting that the world was watching, they held a vote after the Senate was required to close down, and tried to fake the record. But the public wouldn't let them get away with that, either, and the vote was declared null and void.

So Dewhurst, being a good'ol'boy from Texas, felt he had to talk tough to hide the fact that he was beaten up by a girl wearing pink sneakers. The sad part is, he isn't very good at it.

Apparently, having witnesses when you try to cheat and break the rules is now called "Obama-style, mob-rule politics" - which I suppose you can understand, considering the back-room nature of traditional Texas politics.

But I think the best part of Dewhurst's sad little rant is what he chose as a battle cry.

Come and Take It!

Why does that sound like a bottom, kneeling in bed and calling to his top? Somebody needs to give Dewhurst some lessons in looking macho before he embarrasses himself further.

Maybe Wendy Davis is available.

Aren't we tired of this yet?

Much like Benghazi, the Congressional Republicans, desperate for any scandal they can find, are trying to flog the IRS story into some impeachment-worthy conspiracy, when it's actually just a simple case of a group of bureaucrats trying to do their jobs.

The current version of the "conspiracy" here is: Obama ordered the IRS to investigate right-wing political organizations because he is a power-hungry tyrant!!

I think that pretty much covers it, but by the time you read this, it might have morphed into something that sounds even scarier.

The Republicans know that power-hungry tyrants do this kind of thing, because this is something that Republican presidents have done for decades: Nixon tried to use the IRS against his political enemies (it was one of his articles of impeachment), but wasn't allowed to; and the IRS under George W Bush was infamous for targeting liberal groups, like Greenpeace, the NAACP, and churches that spoke out against the war.

Congress has convened five hearings, and have turned up nothing but lies and half-truths in their efforts to smear the president. IRS officials have resigned or been fired, because people further down in the organization were trying to do their job as best they could.

The entire administrative structure of the IRS has been lambasted by the Republicans for their "lack of leadership" (completely ignoring the fact that there is no leadership because the Republicans in Congress have blocked every appointment Obama has made - including his appointment of an IRS director - for the last five years).

The IRS is an easy target, because nobody likes paying taxes. The fact that they already have a negative image in most people's eyes makes smearing them much easier. But, for once, they aren't the bad guys.

Let's start from the beginning. The tax code gives us a number of different classifications based on what we do. One of them, a tax-exempt status, is designated 501(c)(4), and it's defined as "Civic leagues or organizations not organized for profit but operated exclusively for the promotion of social welfare, ...the net earnings of which are devoted exclusively to charitable, educational, or recreational purposes."

This allows groups to be formed to construct basketball courts for inner-city kids, build a gym for a high school, set up after-school reading programs, operate food banks, or any other activity that can be defined as "social welfare." And it goes further: to prevent people from arguing that defeating a politician would qualify as "social welfare," the IRS specifically excludes political organizations from this particular tax-exempt status.

(ii) Political or social activities. The promotion of social welfare does not include direct or indirect participation or intervention in political campaigns on behalf of or in opposition to any candidate for public office.

And that inconvenient fact is what the Teabaggers want everybody to forget.

So, after the Citizen's United ruling in 2010, the number of groups applying for 501(c)(4) status doubled, and an already overworked IRS tried to keep up. A couple of workers in the Cincinnati office realized that they could pull up a large number of the "bad" applications by searching for political terms in the applications. (Remember - politics are't allowed for these guys.) Unfortunately, all of the terms they came up with happened to be conservative - probably because conservative groups, and particularly Tea Party groups - had a long history of financial discrepancies.

But when the Cincinnati group explained their test to IRS exempt organizations division chief Lois G. Lerner, she objected to it and it was changed. A few months later, the IRS would release new guidance that suggested scrutinizing “political action type organizations involved in limiting/expanding Government, educating on the Constitution and Bill of Rights, social economic reform movement,” and after that, “organizations with indicators of significant amounts of political campaign intervention (raising questions as to exempt purpose and/or excess private benefit.)”

Which showed that the GOP was just playing political games when they called for the resignation of the acting IRS Commissioner, since the language had already been corrected by the time he sat down in the big chair. The Commissioner in place when the "bad" language was there? Bush-appointee Douglas Shulman.

Were more conservative groups reviewed than liberal groups? Absolutely. And you know why? Because there were more conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.

Conservative groups accounted for about 84 percent of the spending reported to the FEC — mainly through Crossroads GPS, Americans for Prosperity and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Liberal groups spent 12 percent of the dark money. Nonpartisan groups made up the rest.

In actual fact, the congressional investigation has not only found nothing, they now have evidence clearing the White House. But Darrell Issa (R-CA) is the chairman of the House Oversight Committee investigating this lack of a scandal, and he's been running one witch hunt after another since Obama came into office. And now, it turns out, he's sitting on the evidence.

House Oversight Committee ranking Democrat Elijah Cummings on Sunday said that the so-called scandal involving the Internal Revenue Service’s (IRS) targeting of tea party groups was "solved," but Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA) has refused to release the testimony of a "conservative Republican" IRS manager because it indicated that the White House was not involved.

Last week, Issa had told CNN host Candy Crowley that IRS agents "were directly being ordered from Washington," but he declined to produce complete transcripts of the testimony of IRS employees to back up his claims.

On Sunday, Cummings explained to Crowley that he had "begged" Issa to release the full transcripts. "He's the chairman of the committee, we're not in power," the Maryland Democrat pointed out. "If he does not release them, I will. Period."

"I’m willing to come on your show next week with the chairman, with the transcripts, if he agrees to do that," he added. "But if he doesn't, I'll release them by the end of the week."

These are some of the little facts you need to remember if the subject of the IRS "scandal" comes up.

The end of an error

Well, it happened. Michele Bachmann announced today that she won't be running. And comedians across the country suddenly feel the weight of a great depression.

I won't lie. She is, by herself, everything that's wrong with America today. Fear-mongering, stubbornly ignorant, and wildly partisan; but she brought so much entertainment into our lonely lives. Every time she opened her mouth, it was like the Muse of Comedy showered us with rose petals.

I mean, who can forget, back in 2009, her attempts to be disengenuous?

"I find it interesting that it was back in the 1970s that the swine flu broke out then under another Democrat president Jimmy Carter. And I'm not blaming this on President Obama, I just think it's an interesting coincidence."

I mean, yeah, it's true that the swine flu epidemic happened under Ford, not Carter, but who are we to quibble over little things like "facts" when we've got talking points to manufacture, right? Or in 2008, when she called for a new McCarthyism?

"I wish the American media would take a great look at the views of the people in Congress and find out: Are they pro-America or anti-America?"

But she was alway a uniter, not a divider, right?

Or her astute grasp of history?

"But we also know that the very founders that wrote those documents worked tirelessly until slavery was no more in the United States... I think it is high time that we recognize the contribution of our forbearers who worked tirelessly -- men like John Quincy Adams, who would not rest until slavery was extinguished in the country."

You have to admire the work ethic of someone like Adams, who would continue to work for 20 years after he left office - and even 15 years after his death! - to get the Emancipation Proclamation passed. That's the kind of go-getter we don't see any more.

Now, of course, the fact that she's being investigated for both financial and ethical misconduct has nothing to do with her dropping out of the race. Nothing at all. (It also didn't stop her from renewing her call for Obama's impeachment. Although, unlike her, Obama hasn't broken the law.)

She'll be back in the public eye soon enough; after all, grifters gotta grift. I'm figuring that, six months from now, she'll be a lobbyist, a Fox "News" contributor, or maybe a televangelist. But she's too much of an attention-whore to drop out of sight.

It's always possible that she'd run for Senator, but unlikely. Under Obamacare, Minnesota has been able to afford to stay on its meds, and the latest polls show Franken destroying her in a head-to-head match-up.

Of course, Bachmann claims that Big Government is destroying America. So you would hope that she's going to forfeit her pension from Congress, which, after eight years of misrepresenting the people of Minnesota, equals just shy of $24,000 a year, at this point. Somehow, I don't see that happening.

Kokesh and the Marching Morons

When you look into the career of Adam Kokesh, you realize that he's pretty much just a media whore, who bases his entire schtick on anarchy and "government bad!" In his opinion, governments shouldn't be able to stop people from doing whatever they want to do. That's pretty much the extent of his philosophical depth, as far as I can tell: "you're not the boss of me! I can do what I want!"

I'm pretty sure he isn't married: he couldn't share the spotlight. Life with him would be one constant tantrum-fest.

He likes to stage random events where he can demonstrate that the government is power-hungry and out of control. But most of his problems seem to stem from his own inability to accept authority. He's been reduced to social media and YouTube, since, ironically, even Russia Today (a Russian-funded propaganda channel) got tired of his bullshit.

In the larger sense, I guess I have to appreciate that Kokesh is happy to piss off both sides equally - I can't find a mention of him on any right-wing website that doesn't call him "paid Russian agent Adam Kokesh." But in the end, that isn't enough: he's too busy marketing the one product he has - himself - to be anything more than a self-absorbed yutz.

His latest gag, though, is exactly what a disaster looks like in the fetal state: it's a bad idea waiting to blossom into a nightmare.

On the morning of July 4, 2013, Independence Day, we will muster at the National Cemetery & at noon we will step off to march across the Memorial Bridge, down Independence Avenue, around the Capitol, the Supreme Court, & the White House, then peacefully return to Virginia across the Memorial Bridge. This is an act of civil disobedience, not a permitted event. We will march with rifles loaded & slung across our backs to put the government on notice that we will not be intimidated & cower in submission to tyranny. We are marching to mark the high water mark of government & to turn the tide. This will be a non-violent event, unless the government chooses to make it violent. Should we meet physical resistance, we will peacefully turn back, having shown that free people are not welcome in Washington, & returning with the resolve that the politicians, bureaucrats, & enforcers of the federal government will not be welcome in the land of the free.

There's a remote chance that there will be violence as there has been from government before, and I think it should be clear that if anyone involved in this event is approached respectfully by agents of the state, they will submit to arrest without resisting. We are truly saying in the SUBTLEST way possible that we would rather die on our feet than live on our knees.

Really, Adam? You design an event to appeal to the paranoid lunatics with a penchant for violence, and you don't see where it can go horribly, horribly wrong? So I thought I'd make a suggestion.

The DC Metropolitan Police Department has a contact email address right their on their site, so I used it.

You guys don't get enough respect to begin with, and now you have to deal with an internet-celebrity drama queen and his planned act of "civil disobedience." On behalf of the sane people of America, let me apologize to you. You're put in the unenviable position of dealing with a man who wants to attract paranoid gun nuts to try and start a confrontation.

This is an unsolicited suggestion, so take it for what it's worth, but perhaps what you want to do is not treat it as a show of force, but simply an act of crowd control and mass processing.

They've published their planned route, which starts by marching across the Memorial Bridge. Now, that goes right into the mall around the Lincoln Memorial, which is going to make this a logistical nightmare anyway. But if you close the Memorial Bridge off to vehicular traffic and use a lot of crowd-control fences to block them off when they're distinctly in the District, you'll have already disrupted their plans. Then you set up a bunch of folding tables and chairs so that you can process 40 or 50 at a time, and a person with a loudspeaker advising them "Are you aware that you're breaking the law? This is your opportunity to turn around." Then, for any of them that continue, have a smiling officer direct them to the next open table where they can sit for the initial processing.

The Facebook page for the march says that they want it to be "a non-violent event" and "if anyone involved in this event is approached respectfully by agents of the state, they will submit to arrest without resisting." So take them at their word.

You'll probably want to have some quick reaction teams nearby, but don't have them visible to the idiots. Just professional uniformed police officers.

Borrow a lot of gun racks from the National Guard, and do the minimum processing on the scene, including, obviously, confiscating their weapons ("Oh, no, sir. You'll get a receipt, and you'll get it back when this is all over.") Two-part receipt, with half tied to the weapon and the other half given to the owner. Quick frisk to find any other weapons, basic paperwork at the table, hustle them out of sight into GP Large tents set up on either side, and when you have good-sized group, put them on buses to finish the processing elsewhere.

Mostly, you want to break them into manageable groups, get the ringleaders shipped out fast where they can't make a spectacle (that being Kokesh's big plan), and keep them moving. And anybody who wants to go back across the bridge to Virginia? Don't stop them. Once a few of them decide they don't want to get arrested today and start walking back, more will join them.

Everybody you arrest gets fined, run them for outstanding warrants, check that the firearms are legal somewhere, and let them go. They get the various weapons back after all the checks are done and you know that everything is clean, if the owner goes to a specific location (a National Guard armory, for instance - someplace you can secure that many weapons), Monday through Friday from noon to four. (You're under no obligation to make it easy for them, are you?)

Like I said, mass processing. Break up their momentum. Let their "statement" fizzle out. Anyone who wants to be arrested gets their wish. Everybody wins.

But mostly, good luck.

The cops can't let the march happen, and a show of force is just a mistake. I have no idea what they'll do, but with any luck, Kokesh will end up looking like more of a fool than he usually does.

The rocky nook with hilltops three/Looked eastward from the farms

So, what is our takeaway from the Boston bombing? Three people were killed, and over 170 people were injured. What should we do about it?

Well, Senator Lindsey Graham (belle of the ball and well-known Scarlett O'Hara impersonator) believes we should take away the rights of American citizens, skip having a trial entirely, and pull out the whips and cattle-prods.


Wonkette published a list of people who they suggested should eat a bag of dicks on the subject. But I'm pretty sure Lindsey has dreams like that, and I'm not in the business of making him happy.

Over on the openly-insane side of the argument, we have Alex Jones of the conspiracy-theory site infowars.com saying that the Obama administration staged the whole thing in order to establish martial law and take away our rights. (On the other hand, a blogger at Forward Progressives makes an equally persuasive argument that Alex Jones’ desire for farm animals fuels his distrust for the government.)

Jones wasn't the only conspiracy theorist to go completely bugnuts over this whole thing. There was just too much misinformation out there for their tiny little brains to process. For one thing, the media certainly failed to do anything except look like incompetent idiots (here's a visual representation of who said what and when, if you're curious.) The most egregious lies, of course, came from publications owned by Rupert Murdoch: the New York Post, Wall Street Journal and Fox "News" Channel.

Easily the worst of those three was the tabloid NY Post, who decided to devote their front page to two bystanders who the Post implied were the bombers. Because, hey, they had dark skin, right?

One of them, a high-school track star, turned himself in to the police because he didn't want to get attacked by people who still believe that the NY Post covers the news.


Social media wasn't much help - Twitter and police scanners allowed the innocent people to end up smeared as "suspects," or sometimes, to create people who didn't exist.

Meanwhile, at 2:14am Eastern, an official on the police scanner said, "Last name: Mulugeta, M-U-L-U-G-E-T-A, M as in Mike, Mulugeta." And thus was born the newest suspect in the case: Mike Mulugeta. It doesn't appear that Mulugeta, whoever he or she is, has a first name of Mike. And yet that name, "Mike Mulugeta," was about to become notorious.

One of the things that spurred many a paranoid rant, of course, was the fact that a Saudi man was (or wasn't) taken into custody (or to a hospital, or escaped) after being seen planting a bomb (or running from the scene, or acting suspticiously), and then was released (or disappeared, or was taken up by the alien mothership).

Yes, "facts" became remarkably fluid over the course of last week.

What basically happened was a simple combination of paranoia and racism.

A twenty-year-old man who had been watching the Boston Marathon had his body torn into by the force of a bomb. He wasn't alone; a hundred and seventy-six people were injured and three were killed. But he was the only one who, while in the hospital being treated for his wounds, had his apartment searched in "a startling show of force," as his fellow-tenants described it to the Boston Herald, with a "phalanx" of officers and agents and two K9 units...

Why the search, the interrogation, the dogs, the bomb squad, and the injured man's name tweeted out, attached to the word "suspect"? After the bombs went off, people were running in every direction—so was the young man. Many, like him, were wounded; many of them were saved by the unflinching kindness of strangers, who carried them or stopped the bleeding with their own hands and improvised tourniquets....

In the midst of that, according to a CBS News report, a bystander saw the young man running, badly hurt, rushed to him, and then “tackled him,” bringing him down. People thought he looked suspicious.

What made them suspect him? He was running — so was everyone. The police reportedly thought he smelled like explosives; his wounds might have suggested why. He said something about thinking there would be a second bomb — as there was, and often is, to target responders. If that was the reason he gave for running, it was a sensible one. He asked if anyone was dead — a question people were screaming. And he was from Saudi Arabia, which is around where the logic stops.

He was cleared by the authorities. But not by social media. And he has now become another puzzle piece for the paranoid to obsess about.

And our right-wing media continues to fan the fear. We have columnists ranting in national outlets that this attack (which, as I mentioned above, killed 3 people and injured 170) was literally worse than 9/11, or the Oklahoma City bombing, or any attack ever, all the way back to the Great Flood!

Huh. If you think about it, the Biblical Flood was just another mass killing. What does that make God?... It is the Old Testament, so it could be argued that He was Middle Eastern...

Sorry. Seem to have gone off on a tangent, there...

So, what should we take away from this experience? Well, while there were more injured, there were less people killed than there were at Sandy Hook. We should probably react to this tragedy just the same way we did to that one. Just as much should get done because of this, as will get done because of that.

And maybe, just maybe, the media can get its head out of its ass, and go back to reporting facts, instead of rushing to get something (anything!) out there to the public, and to be first!

Somehow, I doubt that any of this will be the case. But we can hope.

Jindal and Tonic

Bobby Jindal got some traction last week by telling the GOP that it was time to "stop being the stupid party." And, you know, it would be awesome if they could do that. But let's consider the source, shall we?

This is Bobby Jindal, after all. The man who claims to have exorcised a demon from his girlfriend in college. An act which apparently made him believe in an even stronger-than-average "War on Christianity," since he decided, a few years ago, that churches should be allowed to set up their own armed security forces. Because that's worked so well throughout history, like with the Inquisition, or the Crusades.

Of course, Bobby is also a big supporter of handing tax money to churches. Like giving them education funds. Even if they use biology textbooks that teach that the Loch Ness monster is real:

"Are dinosaurs alive today? Scientists are becoming more convinced of their existence. Have you heard of the 'Loch Ness Monster' in Scotland? 'Nessie' for short has been recorded on sonar from a small submarine, described by eyewitnesses, and photographed by others. Nessie appears to be a plesiosaur."

Which goes to explain, in part, why Louisiana's education system ranks third worst in the nation.

Jindal also thinks it's a good idea to drastically cut Medicaid, which doesn't make much sense when there's only one state with more people below the poverty line (per capita) than yours.

(Mississipi, if you were wondering.)

But maybe it just makes sense. When your hellhole of a state also sports the highest infant mortality rate, the fifth-highest maternal mortality rate, the fourth-worst life expectancy rate, and the fifth-highest obesity rate in the country, all that medical care is just being wasted, isn't it?

It does lead you to wonder, though: how low do you have to go before Bobby Jindal can see that the GOP is being the stupid party?

Carry his rape-baby or go to jail.

One of the reasons that the Republicans couldn't win the election in 2012 was that they were continuing to appeal only to the white male demographic.

They didn't bother worrying about hispanic vote: look at their reaction to the Dream Act. Or their "walls, razor wire and armed guards" view of immigration policy. Or the continued push toward "English-only" legislation.

They didn't give a tanned damn about the black vote: check out their full-throated support of George Zimmerman, who apparently felt threatened by the existence of skinny teenagers armed with Skittles. For that matter, note the dog-whistles (and occasional open racism) distributed through their attacks on our first black president.

And going into the home stretch of the election, the GOP seemed to double down on their "War on Women," with lawmakers talking about "legitimate rape" and trying to make it harder for a woman to get a legal medical procedure, than it is for a convicted felon to buy military-grade hardware.

Full disclosure: I am not a big fan of the term "War on Women," but I'm at a loss what else to call it. The opposite of "Women's Lib" would be "Women's Enslavement," but that's a bit hyperbolic, so I'm not going to even touch it. In fact, "War on Anything" is pretty well over-used, because they can be such a convenient shorthand. Will some linguistics major please look into this for me?

In regards to the GOP policy toward women, they have a radical portion of their party who keeps trying to turn back the clock to a mythical Fifties, where the blacks and hispanics were all happy in their low-paying jobs, and the few women in the work force (the ones who weren't staying at home baking) were available to be chased around the desk playing hard-but-not-impossible-to-get.

See, in their views, a Woman's Purpose (subtitle: "Assigned To Her By God") is to be forever in a subservient role, helping Her Man, cleaning, cooking, and procreating. If she gets a job, she's still expected to get home in time to get the kids from daycare and cook dinner. And this is pretty obvious by how they try to legislate.

Hell, at least blacks were considered three-fifths of a person. In some quarters, women are lucky to get that much appreciation today, especially in in the paycheck.

(And I'm not saying that the melanin-enhanced peoples have it much better; I'm just trying to make a rhetorical point here...)

And one of the things they want to avoid is even the possibility that a woman will have control of her own genitals.

Simple logic and actual scientific studies have shown that adequate sex education and access to contraception both decrease abortions (and we even have the actual examples of places like Denmark, where abortion is available, but almost unheard of), but we still have the insane cognitive dissonance of opposition to abortion, and contraception, matched up with support for abstinence-only education.

Which brings us to my own (adopted) state of New Mexico.

Now, I'll admit that I have little or no use for Huffington Post. There are a number of reasons for this, but I'm going to give them credit for one thing: they were the first news outlet to break this one.

A Republican lawmaker in New Mexico introduced a bill on Wednesday that would legally require victims of rape to carry their pregnancies to term in order to use the fetus as evidence for a sexual assault trial.

House Bill 206, introduced by state Rep. Cathrynn Brown (R), would charge a rape victim who ended her pregnancy with a third-degree felony for "tampering with evidence."

Now, since Huffpo broke the story, it's been picked up by other news groups, and the public outcry against this brain-meltingly obvious idiocy has made Representative Brown very sad. She's now trying to explain to everybody how she was being "misrepresented."

Rep. Cathrynn Brown, a Republican from Carlsbad, said Thursday she will revise the bill, which she said was intended to target perpetrators of rape or incest who try to cover their tracks by forcing their victims to have abortions...

Although the clause regarding intent would seem to preclude rape victims from being charged, several critics read the bill as possibly including them. Brown said she will clarify the language to remove any ambiguity.

Yeah, but while that may be the way she tried to sell it (and I'll give a tip of my hat to Ted for pointing it out to me)... well, in her defense, she's an idiot. Just how often, exactly, does a rapist drag a woman to a doctor to abort his rape-baby?

Because, yeah, the way she was selling this to her friends and supporters probably sounded just like that. The version on her own website has been undergoing daily changes since it went up, but has been warm and friendly to the poor beleaguered victim since day one. But the one that was introduced to the state legislature had some... well, let's just call them "inconsistencies" from the story Ms Brown has been trying to sell.

See, here's how it was presented:

AN ACT

RELATING TO CRIMINAL LAW; SPECIFYING PROCURING OF AN ABORTION AS TAMPERING WITH EVIDENCE IN CASES OF CRIMINAL SEXUAL PENETRATION OR INCEST.

BE IT ENACTED BY THE LEGISLATURE OF THE STATE OF NEW MEXICO:

SECTION 1. Section 30-22-5 NMSA 1978 (being Laws 1963, Chapter 303, Section 22-5, as amended) is amended to read:

"30-22-5. TAMPERING WITH EVIDENCE.--

A. Tampering with evidence consists of destroying, changing, hiding, placing or fabricating any physical evidence with intent to prevent the apprehension, prosecution or conviction of any person or to throw suspicion of the commission of a crime upon another.

B. Tampering with evidence shall include procuring or facilitating an abortion, or compelling or coercing another to obtain an abortion, of a fetus that is the result of criminal sexual penetration or incest with the intent to destroy evidence of the crime.

C. Whoever commits tampering with evidence shall be punished as follows:

It then goes on to explain, if you're curious, what crimes will be added (or applied) to everybody involved, with no question about who it is (the rapist, the victim, or the doctor). And that's it. Short, sweet and stupid.

So, if you get raped, and then you get an abortion, you go to jail. It's a simple equation.

"Ah," but the calm, rational side of you explains, "it's right there in the bill! You have to have 'the intent to prevent the apprehension' of the rapist! Obviously, a victim isn't going to do that, right?"

Well, aside from the fact that "calm" and "rational" can rarely be applied to the anti-abortion lobby, let's consider for a minute. There's a term that needs to be applied here: "Thought crime." It's illegal to get an abortion that might tamper with evidence. Unless you can prove that you hadn't intended to tamper with evidence. You have to prove what you'd been thinking about.

"But... but... but..." your calm, rational side sputters, not yet willing to give up. "That isn't true! The state has to prove that you were planning to tamper with evidence!"

No, afraid not. The state has to prove that you did tamper with evidence, and then show that you might have still harbored feelings for the rapist. (Not hard to do, if it's, say, your dad, or some guy you haven't actively attacked with a knife...) After all, you got the abortion. They can prove that happened.

A woman still gets blamed for getting raped if she dresses "too provocatively" or goes to the wrong part of town. We tell women how to avoid getting raped; we don't tell men "don't rape."

We just assume that the natural state of man is "rapist." Since he's going to try to have sex regardless of any other factors, it's her job to avoid getting in that position.

If you then factor in the concept of "Stockholm Syndrome," please try to explain where this won't go wrong. Women already get accused of fabricating rape charges because they had sex, but then had "second thoughts" the next day.

Our society has some seriously messed-up priorities when it comes to rape.

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Update (1/28/2013): So, I just corrected the formatting in the text of the bill. I tried to show it the way it was presented on the legislative website (with paragraph B underlined and the rest of it) and just managed to make it invisible. So now it's just shown as text, because some people shouldn't be allowed to use HTML.