Oh, This is Nice

Just a reminder, if we needed one, that no matter what happens in Hawaii or how loud the post-election anti-Prop 8 protests were or how many lesbians finagle marriage licenses in Tucson, the crap is still out there, and it's thick. The following is merely a short excerpt from a full-page ad run in the Salt Lake Tribune.

For example, by holding hands and kissing in the public area of: an apartment complex playground, in a family neighborhood, at a party, or to present one's self as a homosexual person in the workplace, is stating and displaying that he or she practices sodomy, and if backed by law, will force the acceptance of homosexuality as a relationship equal to a man and woman relationship.

Quelle horreur. By holding hands in "the public area of a party"--do you need a press pass to get in there? I am confused--you send a message about a specific sexual practice. Kinda throws our annual Christmas party into a whole new light; O Holy Night indeed! I'm not sure what message is sent by a straight couple holding hands, although the way this is written, apparently all hand-holding couples are broadcasting their affinity for non-P/V sex, since orientation isn't exactly specified there in the present active participle. Utah, you can has it. I was there once, or at least my right hand was, for maybe ten seconds while playing at the Four Corners Monument. That will be plenty for one lifetime.

Top!Secret G-woman knows how to keep me cheery! By sending along stuff from Andrew Sullivan she knows I didn't get around to reading!

Friday Fun Day in BoltLand

Snuggies frighten me. I'm glad somebody has take action.

Barry, Object Lesson. Object Lesson, Barry.

Okay, Mr. Bipartisanpants. You made a big deal about wanting to reach across the aisle and work with legislators from both parties to solve this giant economic disaster that both Democratic and Republican lawmakers contributed to, and that both Democratic and Republican voters are suffering from. That's great and noble and a wonderful example for our nations children and, apparently, fairly short-sighted.

You agreed to strip funding for Medicaid family planning from the package because it got John Boehner's purity-drenched undies in an uncomfortable knot (in fact, it gave him such a whopping case of the vapors that he totally accidentally said the program would cost 100 million dollars rather than actually saving 70 million dollars over the next ten years and providing comprehensive healthcare to thousands of women who can't afford it otherwise). You did this because both sides have to compromise and sacrifice certain things in the spirit of cooperation, right? And because poor women are so used to taking it in the teeth anyway, the Medicaid family planning was the easiest symbolic sacrifice to make in order to win Republican support for a stimulus plan that was guaranteed to pass the House anyway due to the Democratic majority, right? Right?

The vote was 244-188, with Republicans unanimous in opposition despite President Barack Obama's pleas for bipartisan support.

Oh. Well, that was totally worth it, then. It was also totally worth it to commit $275B to tax cuts and only $90B to infrastructure projects. Because it's far more important to give individuals $500 tax breaks that will most likely go either straight to a credit card bill or to China, via Wal-Mart, than to fix bridges that will, say, allow millions of people to drive over the Mississippi River for the next forty years without winding up sandwiched between cement and dirty water.

Yes, you signed the Ledbetter Act, and that's both way awesome and way overdue. That makes me happy, and I'm still happy you won. But for fuck's sake, stop giving away shit when--remember this?--you won, and when you already have the votes you need lined up, and when you know the other side will sit on their hands no matter how much woman- and minority- and gay-repressing stuff you cede to them in the name of "bipartisanship." They know they're losing the war, but they'll happily posture all day to wring every last concession out of you they can. You think you're being cooperative. They think you're being a pussy and are ready to jump all over that six ways to Sunday.

Bush never quite got the "fool me once" saying down. You need to make it your mantra.

Well, That Didn't Take Long

What was I saying about being too distracted by Christmas stuff to be able to get riled about goings-on in the real world? Yeah, well, that's over. Obama has made his pick for inauguration invocation-giver. And he picked evangelical megachurch purpose-driven pastor Rick Warren. Rick Assassinate-Ahmedinejad-And-Abortion-Is-Equivalent-To-The-Holocaust-And-Oh-By-The-Way-Gay-Marriage-Means-Ministers-Will-Go-To-Jail Warren.

Pastor Warren, while enjoying a reputation as a moderate based on his affable personality and his church's engagement on issues like AIDS in Africa, has said that the real difference between James Dobson and himself is one of tone rather than substance. He has recently compared marriage by loving and committed same-sex couples to incest and pedophilia. He has repeated the Religious Right's big lie that supporters of equality for gay Americans are out to silence pastors. He has called Christians who advance a social gospel Marxists. He is adamantly opposed to women having a legal right to choose an abortion.

Neat! We voted for change and got an inauguration speaker that couldn't be much Bushier unless he grows the goatee out into a full neckbeard!

Fuck. We've been looking at the Cabinet, we've been looking at the Blagojevich connections or not, we've been looking at the goddamn puppy possibilities and feeling pretty good. Should we continue to focus on the Education pick and avert our eyes from Warren because he just doesn't matter, or does Pastor Prop 8 matter just a little more than that?

Maybe this is simply a craven ploy, a right-wing trump card played to finally negate the Rev. Wright card the Republicans led (and somehow slipped back into their hands to play again and again). After all, most of us who voted for Obama managed to roll our eyes and shrug Wright's histrionics away; shouldn't we do the same with Warren? I do not think so. I do not think so because this was a calculated move to create an association for some incomprehensible political end rather than failing to sever an existing long-term association. I do not think so because Rick Warren does a hell of a lot more to foment bigotry and operationalize it in law than Jeremiah Wright could ever dream of. Wright is annoying. Warren is fucking dangerous.

Or maybe it's not craven politics at all and Rick Warren is the guy Barack Obama really thinks is the best to speak to the nation's soul on the occasion of his inauguration. And that one I don't want to think about at all. I can handle him being an unapologetic politician. I can't handle him being the kind of douchebag who thinks Rick Warren should be pastor-in-chief for even ten minutes.

More howling may be found at FireDogLake, Atrios, Americablog, Washington Monthly, Shakesville, Digby, Bilerico, and Pam's House Blend.

Thanks, Top!Secret G-woman!

Object Lesson

On the same day that we find out about George Bush's on-the-way-out-the-door proposed rule preventing federally funded medical facilities from firing or otherwise disciplining employees who refuse to perform the parts of their jobs involving abortion, sterilization, or contraception as long as they play the conscience card--and making de facto reproductive choices for people unlucky enough to be depending on them in the process--a co-worker forwarded this picture taken in Uganda by her international public health worker sister:

This is the Bush reproductive healthcare legacy in action. Good luck with your adult lives, kids. And especially you, little girl.

One Step Forward, Two Million Steps Back

Meanwhile, in the What The Flying Fuck Department, we have this amazing and distressing story about prevalent, pernicious racism in America in the wake of Obama's victory.

Obama has received more threats than any other president-elect, authorities say.

● At Standish, Maine, a sign inside the Oak Hill General Store read: "Osama Obama Shotgun Pool." Customers could sign up to bet $1 on a date when Obama would be killed. "Stabbing, shooting, roadside bombs, they all count," the sign said. At the bottom of the marker board was written, "Let's hope someone wins."

● Racist graffiti was found in places including New York's Long Island, where two dozen cars were spray-painted; Kilgore, Texas, where the local high school and skate park were defaced; and the Los Angeles area, where swastikas, racial slurs and "Go Back To Africa" were spray-painted on sidewalks, houses and cars.

● Second- and third-grade students on a school bus in Rexburg, Idaho, chanted, "Assassinate Obama," a district official said.

● University of Alabama professor Marsha L. Houston said a poster of the Obama family was ripped off her office door. A replacement poster was defaced with a death threat and a racial slur. "It seems the election brought the racist rats out of the woodwork," Houston said.

● Black figures were hanged by nooses from trees on Mount Desert Island, Maine, the Bangor Daily News reported. The president of Baylor University in Waco, Texas, said a rope found hanging from a campus tree was apparently an abandoned swing and not a noose.

● Crosses were burned in yards of Obama supporters in Hardwick, N.J., and Apolacan Township, Pa.

● A black teenager in New York City said he was attacked with a bat on Election Night by four white men who shouted, "Obama!"

● In the Pittsburgh suburb of Forest Hills, a black man said he found a note with a racial slur on his car windshield, saying, "Now that you voted for Obama, just watch out for your house."

Seriously? Seriously, what the fuck? "Let's hope somebody wins" a fucking assassination pool? I am at a distinct disadvantage when it comes to dealing with drooling mouthbreathers like this, much as I am at a disadvantage in dealing with anti-gay bigots, because I don't understand them, and by don't understand I mean I don't have the first fucking clue of how people can actually think this way in 2008. I'm not blind to their existence--that's not the part I'm having trouble conceptualizing--but I can't begin to wrap my brain around what it means to think that way about fellow human beings. Like to the point that you think the world is ending and hope that a man, a husband and father, will be murdered just because he's black and happens to hold the highest office in the country. I freely admit to having biases of my own--Mormons are tops on that list these days--but I don't wish death and destruction on them, and still manage to evaluate individual people as people first, with my main criteria being do you treat other people well and are you honest and reliable? Utter vitriol and hatred are things I reserve for individuals I know personally and for whom I have indisputable evidence of being shithead blackguards.

Hanging effigies? Burning crosses? Leaving boxes of shit on somebody's doorstep? Encouraging little kids to chant for a murder? All because... the black guy won. And/or you suspect the person you're targeting voted for the black guy for president. All across the fucking country.

Way to go, America. At least I'm not just fixated on the gay thing when I get depressed about the state of the nation now.

Oh Jesus Christ

Oh, look.

Sen. John McCain's senior foreign policy advisor cites a steamy romance 50 years ago with a Brazilian babe among the things that illustrate the candidate's decades-long interest in Latin America.

''Talking a little about his personal experience, he was famously born in Panama and has traveled all over the hemisphere for many years.'' Fontaine said. ``In fact, I saw, I guess it was last week, that his old girlfriend in Brazil has been found from his early days when he was in the Navy and was interviewed. She's a somewhat older woman now than she was then, but it sorta speaks to the long experience he has had in the region -- in the most positive terms.''

Neat! You know, I spent two summers in Peru when I was an undergrad. The third-ranked golfer in Peru at the time spent most of June and July of '89 trying to get into my pants, so this must mean I'm in line for an ambassadorship and a sponsor's exemption at the next LPGA event. I can't wait!

I'm also trying to figure out how the experience of being born in Panama and boning a Brazilian hottie makes a man think that Spain is part of Latin America, but really, who wouldn't get confused in all that muy caliente tropical heat and humidty?

Wait, Wait, There's More

*headdesk*
*headdesk*
*headdesk*

Errrrrrrr

Remember way back when I was posting daily Maddow clips, because they were entertaining, insightful, intelligent, and informative? Yeah, this is the opposite of that:

Remember, this is the person John McCain claims probably knows more about energy than anyone else in the United States.

Well, if she knows more than anyone else that must mean she's an intellectual elite, which I suppose would explain the dense, incomprehensible syntax of her fungible oil and coal rambling above, right? Right??? As we speak, Palin is holed up in Cornville, AZ at one of the McCain estates (Cornville? really?), cramming for tomorrow night's debate with the help of Steve Schmidt and Randy Scheunemann. A nation waits, giddy.

Oh My.

Well, that went... well. in an exchange captured by television cameras, Ms. Palin was greeted by Asif Ali Zardari, the new president of Pakistan, and a delegation of Pakistani officials.

“I am honored to meet you,” Ms. Palin said.

“You are even more gorgeous than you are on the (inaudible),” Mr. Zardari said.

“You are so nice,” Ms. Palin replied. “Thank you.”

“Now I know why the whole of America is crazy about you,” Mr. Zardari continued. At which point an aide told the two to shake hands.

“I’m supposed to pose again,” Ms. Palin said.

“If he’s insisting,” Mr. Zardari said, “I might hug.”

Holy Christ. The Pakistanis think she's a GILF too! And George W. Bush no longer has sole possession of the trophy for World Leader Who Says the Darndest Things All the Goddamn Time! Awesome on two counts! Angela Merkel must be so pleased! And writers at SNL and the Onion are again sobbing into their beer, since nothing they come up with can top the absurdity that follows this woman's wake on a daily basis. As Jon Stewart said, we can't make this stuff up... and, unfortunately, we don't have to.

Please Join Me in Encouraging Tom Coburn to Get Up Off His Inexplicably Anchored Ass

Lesson one: nobody gets shit done like Oprah. She has mobilized her hundreds of thousands of viewers to push the Senate to bring SB 1738 (the Protect Our Children Act) to a floor vote, where enough bipartisan support is already lined up to pass it and provide a billion dollars of funding for law enforcement dedicated to prosecuting the subhuman assholes who rape little kids and circulate the resulting video and photos around on the internet. Sounds like a no-brainer, right? I mean, who could be against protecting children from the most hideous abuse you can imagine?

Oh. Tom Coburn (R-Hell) can. Coburn has put a hold on this legislation, hoping to string it out until the Senate recesses on September 30 so it will die without seeing the floor. Mr. Family Values hisself thinks it's less important to stop people who would anally rape an infant and then post the video along with how-to instructions in a chat room than to stop discretionary spending that hasn't been pre-sourced down to the penny. He doesn't like the fact that it will cost a billion dollars.

Yo, Tom: bring the guys home from Iraq a day and a half earlier than planned and voila, there's your billion right there.

Fucking asshole.

I know far too many women who were raped as children by their male family members. Full stop. So I get enraged to the point of murder when I hear someone brushing off the issue of child rape, particularly when it's a person who's in a position of power to make a difference. This is not a time when it's okay to do some partisan grandstanding for your own profit. If you live in Oklahoma, please call Senator Coburn's office and politely ask him to get his head out of his ass and let the Senate proceed on their first, best duty, which is ensuring the well-being of the American people. Promise to talk to them about the abortion thing later, if you must, but for now, remind the senator that it's really a good thing to protect the most defenseless among us who have had the sad fate to have already been born into a family where they are treated as disposable sex toys rather than as children. If you don't live in Oklahoma, call your senators and ask them to turn the screws on Coburn if they're Republicans, or on Harry Reid if they're Dems. Ask them to act like goddamn adults for once and do the right thing. And do it quickly.

Thank you.

In Which We Come to a Sad Realization

Oh, "in which we are dragged kicking and screaming out of denial" might be a more apt title, but the sad sad fact I can no longer ignore is that the Democratic Party exists solely to piss me off. Sure, McCain has ramped up the McNasty in the past few weeks, but he's been spouting distortions and misdirection and, and, what's the word that means the deliberate opposite of the truth? Oh, yes, lies, pretty much from day one of his candidacy. And the best Obama and the Dems can do as the electorate laps it up and runs around the house on a sugar high, crashing into the side tables and wrecking our best knickknacks from that trip to the National Archives, is say nyah nyah, old fart can't send an e-mail, but we sure do appreciate his heroic service to our country. They refuse to hit back hard because they said they'd stay on the high road--as did some other guy, if we recall correctly, some guy named Hero McHonor or something--and by god, they're going to stay out of the mud no matter how much the other guy flings into their faces as he merrily trip-traps into the White House and the country goes around the last bend into the deepest depths of the shitter.

Then we have the brave and mighty House Democrats getting so spooked by the spectre of thousands of Republicans chanting "drill, baby, drill" at the convention and tens of Republicans chanting "drill, baby, drill" at McCain's last campaign appearance that they abandon scientific evidence, economic evidence, and their own good sense and vote to allow offshore drilling that will do exactly nothing to solve either the current energy crisis or the future crises we keep putting off solving by adopting this kind of idiotic no-effect stopgap measure.

Maddow always says it better than I do:

A three-word chant is all it takes to make the Democratic majority knuckle under to a knucklehead position? I'm sure glad we all worked so hard two years ago to put more blue butts in those seats. I'm sure glad Nancy Pelosi has morphed into such a firebrand leader who works tirelessly to right the wrongs perpetrated by years of Republican control.

I'm mostly glad I'm too old to drink much any more, because these motherfuckers would have me under the table every damn night.

All I Am Going to Say About Lipstick

We're getting perilously close to that breaking point I didn't think would come for me, the one where I back away from the campaign in disgust and resign myself to being fucked over by my Dumbfuckistan brethren yet again. Wanna get depressed? Read the inevitable comment threads following any online organ's coverage of this non-story that nonetheless has morphed into proof positive that Democrats are elitist sexist misogynist bigots who hate strong women. Did I say "depressed?" Perhaps I meant by that "fucking ready to strangle the next motherfucker who utters the words hockey mom or Bridge to Nowhere to me."

Let me see if got this straight. When someone at John McCain's town hall directly references Hillary Clinton by asking, "How do we beat the bitch?" it's something to be laughed at and cheered. When Barack Obama uses the phrase "lipstick on a pig" in reference to John McCain's policies and only John McCain's policies, somehow it's a disgraceful insult to Sarah Palin specifically and all women on the planet generally. Because Sarah Palin said the word "lipstick" in her convention speech. One time. So obviously every future use of the word can only be understood as a direct personal reference to Sarah Palin.

Other words that by default are now out of play: mom, hockey, mayor, son, daughter, America, responsibility, dude, snow machine, my, an, the. Good luck with that, rational America. Oops! Shouldn't have let my thinly disguised hatred of country and motherhood and Maybelline pitbulls slip out like that!

Oh HELL THE FUCK NO.

What the fucking fuck? Watch this and see if you can not fling something through the screen.

Seriously, how... what... *sputter* what the fucking hell is wrong with these people?

Go back and watch it again. Specifically, watch what they do with the image of Obama's face beginning at the :22 mark. As the words "Learning About Sex" flash on and fade from the screen, his face is subtly altered by shortening his chin and amplifying the width of his lips--in short, transforming a photo of what appeared to be a quietly reflective smile into a creepy leer.

I've watched it ten times in a row. I'm not making this up. It's blatant and completely disgusting. It's completely shameless. Watch it and please tell me I'm wrong.

Oh, and the "sex ed for kindergarteners?" It was designed to teach five-years-olds to discern inappropriate touching. To protect them from sexual abuse. And while Obama voted for the legislation, he didn't sponsor it, so pinning its existence on him in the first place is a lie. In the face of the absolutely reprehensible content of the rest of the add, that's a pretty fucking small quibble, but there's McCain for you. Start with a false premise and never look back.

Obama spokesman Bill Burton was the first to strike back at McCain, but he sure better not be the last. Obama himself needs to stand up and say ENOUGH. He needs to echo Burton and amplify him a hundredfold:

"It is shameful and downright perverse for the McCain campaign to use a bill that was written to protect young children from sexual predators as a recycled and discredited political attack against a father of two young girls," Obama spokesman Bill Burton said in a statement.

Burton noted that in a recent interview with Time magazine, McCain refused to define 'honor.' "Now we know why," Burton said.

You can't make a big enough deal about this. McCain misrepresented Obama's role in the legislation, twisted the purpose of the legislation, and digitally altered an image of Obama to make him look like a creep who gets off thinking about five-year-olds talking about sex. McCain has no shame. McCain has no honor. He is a lying bastard who has not a shred of decency and deserves nothing but public vilification. It's beyond the pale. There is no lie too blatant, no disgusting conduct too brazen for this guy. I do not have enough words to express it.

Just One More

Hey, check out this representative excerpt from a OMG awesome op-ed in the Daily Star about the GOP convention!!!11!1!!

Everyone who has been to a sports event knows how the emotion of the crowd is contagious. The most fun chant for me was "drill, baby, drill" used by three separate speakers. There are probably enough Democrats who would vote for domestic drilling so that it would pass, but House Speaker Nancy Pelosi probably will not allow a vote. This appears to me to be wildly irrational.

We are sending almost $700 billion a year overseas — the largest transfer of wealth in human history — and it is going to our enemies: Iran, Venezuela, Russia, who will do us harm with it. With all the hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico, there has been not one major spill.

Such as. It's an all-over-the-place non sequitur fest! The most fun chant for me was "drill, baby, drill" used by three separate speakers! Fun! Was this written by a seventh grader? No! It was not! It was written by Tom Horne. Who is the superintendent of public schools in the state of Arizona.

In Which We Watch as Much of the Rudy and Palin Speeches As Our Stomach Can Manage

Oh, boy. I started with a little Giuliani here and there, flipping between him and a very bad CONCACAF Champions League game when I couldn't take any more of either, and am at a loss for words to describe my reaction to both the words coming out of his mouth and the rabid response they elicited from the GOP convention crowd, although "dumbfounded" and "appalled" are strong contenders. "Zero" appears to be the nickname they're settled on for Obama, given that the conventioneers jeered zero, zero, while incongruously waving the index finger/thumb "okay" circle sign in the air every time Rudy mentioned him not having the kind of executive experience mayors of major urban centers like New York or Wasilla have. And as they jeered, Rudy cackled and egged them on. Decorous, it was not.

I keep forgetting this is the group that gleefully waved purple band-aids in the air in 2004 to mock John Kerry's combat injuries in Vietnam. The "zero" thing was a touch classier than that, but not by much.

And mock they did. They mocked Obama's past as a community organizer. They mocked his (still borne out by available evidence) assertion that a troop surge alone would not be sufficient for stabilizing Iraq. They mocked his desire for change. They mocked his audacity in pointing out that increased oil drilling will do exactly nothing to alleviate the petroleum-based energy crisis.

They never met a one- or two-syllable chant they didn't like. "Drill baby drill" was another good one.


Ancestors of the GOP, imprinting proper convention behavior into genetic memory.

Sigh. Then there was Palin.

My girlfriend had the good fortune to get a phone call, so she spent a lot of the speech in the back not having to hear it, leaving the dogs to field my repeated questions that alternated between what the hell is this and seriously, can someone please tell me what the fuck is going on here?

They didn't know either. Palin smirked and echoed Giuliani's mocking of the whole community organizer thing. For a party that's made a cottage industry of faith-based community organizations as the entities best equipped for dealing with social problems, they spent an awful lot of time belittling the people who beat the bushes at that lowest community level in an attempt to work for positive change. Maybe if more community organizers had been active during Palin's mayorship, Wasilla wouldn't have been the meth capital of Alaska?

She repeated McCain's absurd accusation that Obama would prefer to lose Iraq if it meant him winning the White House. She repeated the unfortunately nuance-required guns 'n' religion bitterness statement. She repeated the Obama-as-Washington-elite meme. She repeated the lie that she stamped her foot and said no to the Bridge to Nowhere. Did you know John McCain was a POW? She mentioned that too. She dismissed Obama's legislative record, including his bipartisan work on laws that halted weapons shipping and his co-sponsorship of ethics reform legislation. Then there were the oversimplified or stretched truths on taxes. And the fear-mongering on Al Qaeda, since John McCain wants to protect America and Barack Obama is terrified that the terrorists won't be read their rights.

All of this in a folksy, smirking, sing-songy voice (I am either deeply relieved or deeply disappointed that she didn't point out her husband's cute butt) that is guaranteed to win the hearts of middle America. Isn't she adorable? Oh, what a spitfire! And she didn't need any feminists' help to get there!

Pardon me while I vomit.

It is very interesting that at least some Republican analysts don't get the Palin selection (Peggy Noonan and Mike Murphy caught on an open mike, YouTube video here, h/t Top!Secret G-Woman). If you have half a brain, you see what a disaster this is. But since the majority of the voting public acts like they don't even have that much, I think it's a real possibility that we're fucked. The average voter is going to lap this shit up and ask for more, reveling in the barbed attacks and snide delivery and giddy crowd noise, probably never noticing that Palin didn't say a word about what her administration was actually going to do beyond drill baby drill.

Note 1: Oh, and by the way... I'm really done thinking about the pregnant kid. But since the Palin camp was the one that announced the pregnancy, and since Palin decided to haul the boy involved along to DC for the convention and stick him up on the stage, and since the McCain campaign decided to make a photo op of Walnuts greeting the boy at the airport, please spare me any forthcoming crap about desiring privacy for your family during this difficult time. You played this perfectly, Hockeymom, by building up your kid as a saint for choosing to keep the baby and for having planned to get married anyway. So no more.

Note 2: Rundowns here: the text of the speech, Yahoo fact-checking, Jezebel liveblogging.

AG Mukasey Inadvertently Provides Footnote for Entire History of Bush Administration

The career track at the Department of Justice is supposed to be politics-free. It's right there in the rules, or, as we here at BoltCentral quaintly tend to think of them, "laws." DOJ policy and the civil service laws prohibit making personnel decisions on the basis of political affiliation, so when Monica Goodling routinely included numerous explicitly political questions in the interview process for career applicants, she broke the law.

The response of the chief law enforcement official in the US to the documented lawbreaking by an official in his own department?

Not every wrong, or even every violation of the law, is a crime.

And there you have the Bush Administration summed up in thirteen little, mostly single-syllable words. Not every violation of the law is a crime. It's okay if you're a Republican. When the president does it, that means it is not illegal. Some animals are more equal than others. The simplicity and unabashed delivery are what make it so terrifying.

Oh, for Fuck's Sake

Seriously, John? Seriously?

Former Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards on Friday admitted to an extramarital affair while his wife was battling cancer. He denied fathering the woman's daughter. Edwards told ABC News that he lied repeatedly about the affair with 42-year-old Rielle Hunter but said that he didn't love her.

He said he has not taken a paternity test but knows he isn't the father because of the timing of the affair and the birth.

A former Edwards campaign staffer claims he is the father, not Edwards.

Banging somebody else while your wife was battling cancer and, by the way, tirelessly fighting off the GOP slime machine for you? What the fuck is wrong with you? Seriously, what the flying fucking fuckity fuck fuck is fucking wrong with you? Did you think nobody would find out about this? Did you think even a teeny tiny bit about the amount of ammunition you were stockpiling for Republican campaigners who you knew would gleefully use it to blow holes in whoever your party nominated? Or was it just more important to be able to stick your dick into somebody who wasn't going through chemo? Way to keep us reasonably close to the moral high ground, asshole.

Maybe we should be grateful it wasn't a 20-year-old intern. That would have been marginally worse, but the whole baby issue cancels out the appropriate age issue. Asshole.

The Inevitable Next Step Comes a-Trip-Trappin' Down the Hall

Don't worry about that little Conscience Clause thing, they told us. It only protects the delicate sensibilities of fundamentalist pharmacists who don't want to hand you certain kinds of perfectly legal and prescribed medications. After all, you're an American, right? You like freedom of religion, right? So don't think of your inability to get contraception when you ask for it as the elevation of one person's religious beliefs over your own, or your lack thereof. Just reframe it as a constitutional celebration and you'll be fine! Would you like some pre-natal vitamins instead? I would be happy to give you those. What? You still want those birth control pills? Well, then maybe you should have thought about going to pharmacy school and opening your own abortifacient candy shop before you had sex, you stupid slut. Now step aside. The guy behind you needs his Viagra and has been waiting four full minutes while you've been here whinging.

Predictably, now the conscience meme has spread beyond the initially promised narrow spectrum of pharmacists, nurses, and doctors to the entire range of healthcare funded by the federal government. The Department of Health and Human Services, perhaps bolstered by the growing tendency of state education departments to decide "science" means "whatever we damn well say it is," has taken the mind-bending step of basing crucial biological definitions on public opinion polls. Zogby polls. Which typically have an error in the +/- four million percent range.

In a spectacular act of complicity with the religious right, the Department of Health and Human Services Monday released a proposal that allows any federal grant recipient to obstruct a woman's access to contraception. In order to do this, the Department is attempting to redefine many forms of contraception, the birth control 40% of Americans use, as abortion. Doing so protects extremists under the Weldon and Church amendments. Those laws prohibit federal grant recipients from requiring employees to help provide or refer for abortion services. The "Definitions" section of the HHS proposal states,

Abortion: An abortion is the termination of a pregnancy. There are two commonly held views on the question of when a pregnancy begins. Some consider a pregnancy to begin at conception (that is, the fertilization of the egg by the sperm), while others consider it to begin with implantation (when the embryo implants in the lining of the uterus). A 2001 Zogby International American Values poll revealed that 49% of Americans believe that human life begins at conception. Presumably many who hold this belief think that any action that destroys human life after conception is the termination of a pregnancy, and so would be included in their definition of the term "abortion."

Something like 40% of Americans also believe in the Genesis creation story and eschew evolution, so I expect HHS to make the administration of medications based on evolutionary biology optional as well. Enjoy your camphor oil, people, and be sure to close up your windows tight so you don't get the night vapors!

Jesus. Why does this matter? It matters because of this:

Up until now, the federal government followed the definition of pregnancy accepted by the American Medical Association and our nation's pregnancy experts, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, which is: pregnancy begins at implantation. With this proposal, however, HHS is dismissing medical experts and opting instead to accept a definition of pregnancy based on polling data. It now claims that pregnancy begins at some biologically unknowable moment (there's no test to determine if a woman's egg has been fertilized). Under these new standards there would be no way for a woman to prove she's not pregnant. Thus, any woman could be denied contraception under HHS' new science.

Any woman could be denied contraception by HHS. If your employer-provided health plan continues clinging to a slender thread, you'll be okay, provided, of course, you have access to a pharmacy whose employees are required to do their jobs rather than proselytize. If you rely on federally funded clinics--in other words, if you tend disproportionately to be low-income and/or a woman of color--you're screwed. Twice.

All together, please. Science is indeed a consensus, but it's not a democracy. Public opinion is lovely but has exactly no relevance to the definitions portion of the program. Against abortion? Don't have one. Really super duper against it? Don't go into healthcare.

Thanks to Top!Secret G-woman for the tip, and for starting my day on a very stabby note.

Huh.

Proof that the Blog-Cuss-O-Meter is seriously fucked up:


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