While you chew over the utterances of some dumb redneck in Tim F’s last post, just remember that same-sex marriage is now legal in New Mexico. Haters gonna hate, especially when they’re losing.
Read a fucking book.
mistermix has been a Balloon Juice writer since 2010.
Nothingburgers Don’t Lawyer Up
I don’t read a lot of Bob Somerby, but what I’ve read has usually been pretty smart. But I don’t get his latest, lengthy and fairly nasty examination of Rachel Maddow’s work on the Chris Christie bridge scandal. Here’s a sample:
Rachel engaged in free insinuation, trying to provide us with our nightly Christie hard-ons.
Luckily, we were able to answer her question. If the traffic study line is proven to not be true, Chris Christie will say that he didn’t know.
Presumably, his claim will be true. That’s what happens to Christie.
We had a different question after last evening’s latest silly con. What happens to the IQ of the liberal world with this very bad, very willful person behaving like an escapee from Fox News, to which she neverpersonally applied for a job?
Maddow’s treatment of this story has marked a watershed for her program. She’s been playing us rubes every step of the way, turning her program into pure propaganda.
Every minute she has burned on this bullshit could have gone to a real news topic. For example, she could have tried to help the public know more about low-income schools.
She doesn’t care about low-income schools. Maddow is playing her viewers for fools.
Two of the main players in this supposed non-scandal lawyered up yesterday. Maybe Maddow is onto something.
When I started reading about the bridge story, I thought it actually might be a big deal, not simply because Christie was directly, personally involved (who knows if he was), but because the more dirty Jersey laundry that gets aired around Christie, the better. If Maddow wants to push the story, I don’t see the harm if she’s not making shit up. There’s a line somewhere between protecting the precious IQ of the liberal world, and asking tough questions from a partisan angle. It might be more seemly and civilized to be a polite, intelligent loser who gives Chris Christie the benefit of the doubt, but I’d burn a few IQ points to make sure that asshole doesn’t get anywhere near the Oval Office. And the worst thing that could happen to low income schools isn’t Rachel Maddow failing to talk about them on her program, it’s President Chris Christie.
Super, Super, Super, Super Sorry
Here are a few excerpts from a day in the life of Rob Ford, still Mayor of Toronto, who I’m sure David Brooks would call Canada’s Thought Leader. Open thread.
Update: Since Rob does love a good apology, I realize it might not be clear just what he’s apologizing for. Just to be clear: this is not his apology for calling a Toronto Star reporter a pedophile. That’s a different apology.
Girl See What You Have Done
Michigan is getting some attention because they are requiring prospective sluts who were asking for it anyway buy a rape rider in case they are raped and need an abortion, because it would make baby Jesus use his personal handwritten copy of the Constitution as a crying towel if the Jesus-ordained government allowed private insurance to pay for their legal medical procedure. Of course, as Tara Culp-Ressler at ThinkProgress points out, this is nothing new:
Michigan has recently been thrust into the national spotlight, now that state lawmakers have approved a measure requiring women to buy a separate insurance rider for abortion coverage. That restriction has been widely decried as a cruel and misogynistic policy, particularly since it doesn’t include an exception for victims of rape. Opponents have referred to it as a “rape insurance” law, emphasizing the particular burden that it places on victims of sexual assault. Pro-choice groups are considering a petition drive to attempt to repeal it.
That’s certainly been an effective messaging strategy to rally opposition to the legislation. A lot of people are fired up about “rape insurance.” But Michigan is hardly the only state that bars women from using their insurance plans to cover abortion care. It’s not even the only one that doesn’t make any exceptions for rape victims. On the contrary, this is actually quite a common policy on the state level.
On yesterday’s Savage Love podcast, Dan had a caller who worked in an abortion clinic (I believe her title was “first assistant babykiller”), and she was wondering whether to come out to her rabidly anti-abortion parents and inlaws about it. Dan waffled around and basically said “No”, because there is just no reasoning with those people. Yet these maniacs, who are nowhere near a majority, are oppressing women in states that aren’t completely blue. It’s just goddam infuriating.
Kill It Before It Grow
Sheriff John Cooke tells us his deputies are too stupid to enforce complex laws:
When Sheriff John Cooke of Weld County explains in speeches why he is not enforcing the state’s new gun laws, he holds up two 30-round magazines. One, he says, he had before July 1, when the law banning the possession, sale or transfer of the large-capacity magazines went into effect. The other, he “maybe” obtained afterward.
He shuffles the magazines, which look identical, and then challenges the audience to tell the difference.
“How is a deputy or an officer supposed to know which is which?” he asks.
Because cops never have to make judgement calls about any kind of complex technology. Just ask any kid who’s built a hot rod and had the cops stop him, pull out rulers and go over every inch of the car with a fine-toothed comb.
Weld County is the Greeley area, which is the Northeastern part of Colorado where the wingnuts want to secede. However, Weld did not vote with some of the smaller rural counties when the secession vote was taken. That said, I’m sure the good Sheriff knows his audience, because the Times, as usual, buried the lede:
“In my oath it says I’ll uphold the U.S. Constitution and the Constitution of the State of Colorado,” [Cooke] said, as he posed for campaign photos in his office — he is running for the State Senate in 2014. “It doesn’t say I have to uphold every law passed by the Legislature.”
Frank’s Boots Were Made for Walking
It seems like the new Pope isn’t spending time prettying up his papal vestments and shoes like the last one. Instead, he’s cracking down on the nuts who want to fetishize the Latin Mass:
Pope Francis may have been named Time magazine’s Person of the Year, but he has come under scathing criticism from a growing number of traditionalist Catholics for cracking down on a religious order that celebrates the old Latin Mass. The case has become a flashpoint in the ideological tug-of-war going on in the Catholic Church over Francis’ revolutionary agenda, which has thrilled progressives and alarmed some conservatives.
[…] The Vatican in July named the Rev. Fidenzio Volpi, a Franciscan Capuchin friar, as a special commissioner to run the order with a mandate to quell the dissent that had erupted over the liturgy, improve unity within its ranks and get a handle on its finances. In the same decree appointing Volpi, Francis forbade the friars from celebrating the old Latin Mass unless they got special permission, a clear rollback from Benedict’s 2007 decision.
[…] And on Dec. 8, he took action, issuing a series of sanctions in the name of the pope that have stunned observers for their seeming severity: He closed the friars’ seminary and sent its students to other religious universities in Rome. He suspended the activities of the friars’ lay movement. He suspended ordinations of new priests for a year and required future priests to formally accept the teachings of the Second Vatican Council and its new liturgy or be kicked out. And he decreed that current priests must commit themselves in writing to following the existing mission of the order.In a letter detailing the new measures, Volpi accused friars loyal to Manelli of seeking to undermine him and accused some of embezzlement. He denounced a cult of personality that had grown around Manelli, saying it “reveals a great spiritual poverty and psychological dependence that is incompatible with” the life in a religious community.
Speaking of spiritual poverty and psychological dependence, I liked Frank’s response to Rush Limbaugh’s accusation that he’s a Marxist:
The ideology of Marxism is wrong. But I have met many Marxists in my life who are good people, so I don’t feel offended.
Sandy Hook
Am I the only one who thinks that shame is the reason we had a pretty subdued remembrance of the Sandy Hook shootings yesterday? Beautiful little children were killed, it was awful, and Congress didn’t change a fucking thing. Here’s CNN’s shitty round-up of where we are one year later.
Whether the United States has reformed its gun laws after the Newtown massacre may depend on your point of view.
Clearly, America affirms a right to bear arms.
President Barack Obama was unable to persuade Congress, as he vowed in Newtown’s aftermath, to “come together and take meaningful action to prevent more tragedies like this, regardless of the politics” about gun reform.
Obama failed to even expand background checks on firearm buyers, though he signed 23 executive actions to strengthen existing gun laws and take related steps on mental health and school safety.
However, Paul Barrett, author of “Glock: The Rise of America’s Gun,” said it’s easier today to own a firearm in some states than a year ago.
The story continues by listing those places that have reformed their laws, but the framing is the way the gun lobby likes it. We freedom loving Murcans decided that we just weren’t ready for more gun legislatin’. We love our “right to bear arms” more than we want to keep kids and teachers safe from psychos with arsenals. A few librul states did something but they don’t count.
Bullshit.
Obama did everything he could with executive power. Republicans and “conservative” Democrats in Congress loved their jobs so much they couldn’t even enact simple changes that a vast majority of the population agrees upon, because they were piss-pants scared that the NRA and a small minority of gun nuts would put them out of office.
The natural human response to this gross cowardice and dysfunction is to look away, and that’s more-or-less what we did yesterday.