Welcome to Amurica, Andrea Mitchell

So MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell was talking to serial rapist and Santorum backer Foster Friess, and the two of them, along with the rest of us innocent bystanders, traveled back to the year 1955. But we weren't there to save Doc Brown from the Libyans. No, we were there because 1955 was the only place that Foster Friess felt comfortable saying this:

"This contraceptive thing, my gosh, it's so... inexpensive. Back in my days, they used Bayer aspirin for contraceptives... The gals put it between their knees, and it wasn't that costly."

 If you're under 40 years old, like me, you don't know what that means. I will never know what that means, in a visceral sense, but I'm pretty sure that Foster Friess is saying that if women keep pills between their knees, as emperor penguins protecting their eggs during the long Antarctic winter, then they can't walk outside. And if they don't go outside, then Foster Friess won't have to rape them, like he did with 14 women across southern Ohio in the summer of 1990.

Andrea Mitchell, for her part, felt the chill of interminable winter spent in Antarctic darkness as soon as Friess said what he said, because then she said:

"Excuse me, I'm just trying to catch my breath from that, Mr. Friess, frankly," she said, after a pause.

Now, if you are familiar with what usually happens on mainstream cable news, each and every day, then you will know the incredibly stifling restraint on the part of pundits like Andrea Mitchell, at the constant onslaught of right-wing extremism. The record is abundantly clear that as the conservative movement and their corporate backers have become more extreme, more absurd, more aggressive, people like Andrea Mitchell have maintained a faux-objectivity, an objectivity that has nothing to do with observing and reporting on the world as it is, but is instead utterly absorbed with criticizing both sides of a political fight equally. (And they don't even do that very well, mostly because of who they recognize as legitimate players on the liberal side.)

One cause of this faux-objectivity is the fact that people like Andrea Mitchell have been insulated from the effects of forty years of conservative economic policy. They haven't been personally effected by stagnant wages and having to turn to the casinos on Wall St. in order to finance a meager existence. And if Mitchell doesn't know what that's like, then she doesn't know what it's like to be living like that and dealing with right-wing social engineering that limits the options of women and girls in the middle class and below.

Or, maybe she has had a glimpse of what that's like? Perhaps Mitchell's emotional, human reaction to Friess's sexist provocation suggests that she does remember living in America in the 50's and 60's, when all women and girls were treated like poor women and girls are today.

Well, you get what I'm saying here. I hope this is a learning experience for Mitchell. I hope the next time she's talking to Chris Matthews or whoever about the religious freedom of Catholic men to keep their womans in the kitchens, that she at least raises the possibility of religious freedom being a cover for sexism. And if Matthews calls her a dumb broad, then Alan Greenspan, Mitchell's husband, could try and kick Chris's fat ass. And that'd be fun...

Heaven's Pre-Election Thread

Jesus: So I was walking down Wall St. the other day, and I stopped and stared at that statue of the bull-- you know the one with its ass and balls exposed like some goddamn altar to Baal? I was staring right into that bull's balls, looking at my reflection in them. Then some city maintanence worker drops by, and he cleans and polishes the balls. For a moment, I cracked up cuz it reminded me of the ball-polishing scene in Big Lebowski. (Don't fuck with the Jesus! ROFLGANGER) Anyways, when I snapped out of that, I thought about everything those bull's testicles symbolize, and I thought about Obama and the election and Democrats dragging their ass, and I asked myself, "Do we have to await God's judgment on these Wall St. types to get any justice?"

Billy Graham: Jesus, we are all frustrated over the economy. We should not act rashly. Awaiting God's judgement seems like a good idea.

Jesus: Fuck off, Graham. It was a rhetorical question.

Billy Graham: right, I'll fuck off now.

Karl Marx: @Jesus- You know, we do have to await God's judgment on these folks to get any justice. That's why religion exists; it allows the elites to escape all accountability for their crimes.

Jesus: Karl, I happen to know that God exists. I am the son of God. I perform miracles.

Karl Marx: Jesus, I'm not saying God doesn't exist. I'm saying that organized religion is totally effed in the A. It's a tool of the powerful.

Jesus: Granted, it's a tool sometimes. It's abused sometimes. But Christianity was totally grassroots for three centuries.

Karl Marx: ...before it was astroturfed by Constantine

Jesus: ... before it was saved from Roman astroturfing by God, who totally smote the Romans for being asshats, in His Holy Estimation

Karl Marx: .. . before it was re-astroturfed by Charlamagne

Jesus: ... before it was saved, again, from astroturfing by God's Holy Smiting Bolt

Karl Marx: Really? We're gonna keep on doing this? It's your position that God smites everyone who uses Christianity to wield power?

Jesus: Yes, often-- I mean, generally, in the long run. But look, even if God missed a few smitings (ahem, Billy Graham), He totally kept Christianity OG gansta. Cuz if Christianity were totally about power, then how did the stuff about the camel and needle get through the censors? Or the part about David screwing his not-wife? Or the four gospels? Why would a religion need four stories about how I'm awesome? It wouldn't, unless it was interested in getting the story straight.

Karl Marx: That's a good defense of Christianity, Jesus, but it doesn't refute my argument that religion IS used as a tool of the powerful. And until God pre-smites everyone who wants to be a d-bag in Your Name, then we have to deal with the resulting d-baggery on our own.

GOD: Hey guys, may I say something here? Karl Marx is right.

Karl Marx: Awesome. So can we expect smitings and pre-smitings and the outing of all right-wing homophobic preachers?

GOD: Um, no, but I can push up the date of the Rapture. Let me check my palm...

Jesus: Shit, dad, you don't have an iphone yet?

GOD: Fuck no, fuck ATT. Wiretapping motherfuckers... I'm using Credo Mobile.

GOD: right, I can fit the rapture in August 2017, assuming a republican is president.

Karl Marx: I got Tim Pawlenty.

Jesus: Too moderate. It'll be Dick Cheney's re-animated head.

GOD: Nah, General Petreus. Trust me, shit's in the bag.

the evolution of elite conservative thought:

John Adams, Federalist: "Let the human mind loose. It must be loosed. It will be loose. Superstition and despotism cannot confine it."

Newt Gingrich, Republican: "I think this is one of the most critical moments in American history. We are living in a period where we are surrounded by paganism."

footprints of wingnuttery

Just saw a Vanguard documentary on the Ugandan anti-gay climate at the time that the Ugandans were considering a bill which would have punished gay people with life-imprisonment or death. It was fucked up. I remember the row it created. Rick Warren had to issue a condemnation of the Ugandan bill because the fuckwit was part of a cretinous milieu of wingnuttery that has descended on Africa recently. The American Right has come to Africa under the pretenses of missionary work and fighting HIV. But what they are really doing is spreading right-wing ideology. The main dude spreading the hate, fiery evangelical Pastor Ssempa, said two things that drew my immediate attention: "liberal media" and "George Soros." Now who do you think taught the goodly pastor about the twin terrors of the liberal media and George Soros? Probably not Jesus.

Cal Thomas: "Obama tells kids about Jesus; Jesus rolls in grave -- wait..."

Cal Thomas, who is a syndicated columnist and not an anonymous pussy blogger, is outraged about Obama's lesson to children about the true meaning of Christmas, which is apparently that Jesus was a hippy: 

The president spoke of what Jesus "symbolizes for people all around the world," which he said, "is the possibility of peace and people treating each other with respect." And then, in the best tradition of a community organizer, the president said Jesus is about "doing something for other people." Even the "three wise men" were invoked to support the president's idea of wealth redistribution: "...these guys ... have all this money, they've got all this wealth and power, and they took a long trip to a manger just to see a little baby."

And what conclusion should be drawn from that journey? The president told the children, "...it just shows you that because you're powerful or you're wealthy, that's not what's important. What's important is ... the kind of spirit you have."

To the president, this means the spirit of government taking from the productive and giving to the nonproductive. To him, Jesus is a socialist, or perhaps an early Robin Hood. Any first-year seminarian (if the seminary is a good one) could destroy this flawed exegesis.

Jesus of Nazareth was not a symbol. Neither was He just a good teacher as some who do not fully accept His teachings about Himself like to claim. As Paul the Apostle put it, "Here is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners -- of whom I am the worst." (1Timothy 1:15)

(Yeah, Paul was a douche.) Anyway, Cal Thomas is clearly the Antichrist, but if you don't believe in that sort of thing, he's also just plain mean-- and crazy.