Category: Politics

An unattributed list of how I think about various media figures who believe themselves qualified to pass judgment on what it takes to be manly and expect me to follow their advice lest I will be considered no-true-man:

• Twink Lumberjack
• Ventriloquist’s Dummy who needs to claim 3 more human souls to become a real boy
• Literal sack of bees
• Real estate developer who’s going to bulldoze the goondocks at noon
• Satan from that weird Mexican Santa Claus movie has really let himself go
• A penis which, despite being the size of a man, still seems really, really small
• The dude who stole Pee-Wee’s bike
• Pillsbury Dough-Bigot
• Ripped Lex Luthor, the only person on this list where I can actually understand why people listen to him even though he’s a monster.

I’m not going to say who’s who, so if you are upset about how I’ve described your favorite manosphere figure, just assume I’m talking about some other twink lumberjack.

There’s something that I think progressives misunderstand in the struggle for voting rights. They’re not wrong about their own position, but by failing to understand their opposition, they’re putting themselves at a disadvantage in winning the argument.

See, it is rightfully curious that so many conservatives can, with a straight face, insist that it is bad for democracy to ensure that people be able to vote – that it is more democratic to reduce the franchise, and that elections where more of the population vote are inherently unfair, illegitimate, or “rigged”. For the most part, I think progressives assume this is simply down to conservatives being lying sacks of shit who want to win by hook or by crook. And certainly that does describe a politically powerful segment of the current elected and, ahem, emeritus leadership of the Republican party, I don’t think it properly accounts for the opposition.

Frankly, I think you’ve got maybe 25%-30% of the Republican party who just outright believes that they should win every election by hook or by crook and elections be damned. And if you find that number insulting, remember, 27% on a survey is basically the “crazification factor”. There is no statement so completely inane, insane, outrageous or wrong that 27% of respondents won’t earnestly agree with it.

The trouble is that on top of that 30%, there’s another 30% who are wrong in a subtle broken-computer-in-a-60s-sci-fi-story sort of way. And it’s a hard kind of wrong to disillusion them about. To wit, they don’t know what “fair” means.

These are the people who will tell you that weather forecasts are inherently bullshit because “There’s always a 50% chance of rain: either it will rain or it won’t.” Because… Well, because they learned probability in middle school from a teacher who didn’t like math and haven’t given it a lot of thought since. Their mental model of what “fair” means is “like a coin-toss”. They have no other understanding of the concept of fairness. So they’ve internalized a notion that any time there are two options, “fairness” dictates that one option is chosen half the time, and the other option the other half. They like the idea of different parties controlling the White House and the legislature. They like the idea of alternating between Republican and Democratic presidents. They think that’s “fair”. And so, if they think that getting everyone to vote will cause one side to win way more than the other, in their mind, that is unfair completely regardless of the reason. Even if the reason is, “Because way more people want the Democrats in power,” that doesn’t change the fact that their notion of “fair” requires a near-equal divide of power between the parties, and thus more people voting is less “fair”.

I’ve had people tell me, on the issue of DC statehood, that it is reason enough to oppose it that it would create an extra blue state without creating a red state – they seem to believe that there is a requirement that states be added in red-blue pairs. Never mind that the current numerical distribution of states isn’t even. If we want things to be “fair”, it has to be a coin-toss.

And this attitude is not limited to Republicans, but the Republican leadership understands it and knows how to exploit it; the Democratic leadership doesn’t. So the Republicans say, “We want to gerrymander the districts so that each side will consistently get about* 50% of the seats,” and their audience says “Well that sounds fair.” The Democrats say, “We will balance the congressional districts so that they accurately reflect the 60-40 split in the population,” and the audience is outraged that the Democrats are trying a power grab to ensure they get 60% of the seats rather than the 50% which fairness dictates. (Hey, what’s that asterisk? Nothing, nothing. Well, it’s “When we say ‘about 50%’ we mean ‘We will consistently get 51-60, they will consistently get 40-49’,” but never mind that)

And the more the Democratic leadership says, “We just want it to reflect the actual distribution of poltical views,” the more both sides hear, “We’re not happy with a roughly-50-50-split and want more.”

This notion that fairness requires an equal probability of victory might sound strange given how closely it approaches the idea of “If the Republicans don’t have a majority of the people on their side, we should give them subsidies Affirmative Action From Each According to his Means To Each According to his Needs an advantage to make it fair.” But that’s not how they see it. Of course it isn’t.

But maybe it could be?

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The title of this article is a reference to a character from He-Man and the Masters of the Universe. Due to the slipshod ’80s toyetic “We don’t give a crap about continuity, just sell the toys,” nature of the franchise, there was some confusion between different parts of the franchise whether the character of Zodak was a hero or a villain (I think it was originally just because he had clawed feet). Also whether it was “Zodak” or “Zodac”. As the franchise settled down and tried to wrangle some kind of continuity out of this weird-ass Conan rip-off, they settled on the explanation that while Zodak might be personally sympathetic to the side of good, his official loyalty was to the balance between good and evil, and thus he was duty-bound to help out whichever side was losing. Which was usually the bad guys, because He-Man villains were, for the most part, incredibly stupid.

Depending on the outcome last night, I am one of several forms of indisposed.

Depending on the outcome last night, I may return to a normal schedule next week.

Depending on the outcome last night, this may be the last you hear from me.

I’m tired of being told how we should be civil and stay friends with our political opponents. If with your vote, you are choosing to oppress my gay friends, threaten my black friends, threaten my Jewish friends, delegitimize my Hispanic friends, kill my friends with chronic medical conditions, give me the plague, and leave a planet uninhabitable for my children, it is not reasonable to expect me to be nice to you and frankly, I wish you’d have the honesty to hate me to my face rather than gaslighting me with “civility” whole you attack me, my friends and everything I hold dear.

 

Sometimes I get discouraged and am not sure whether it is worth the effort to maintain this blog given how low my readership is.

But for today, I’m going to remember this:

Sorry to keep my ones of readers waiting again, but today is kind of a somber anniversary, and I have been continuously angry basically all day, every day, and I don’t feel like writing anything today.

So here is a creepy picture of the President of the Electoral College of the United States mere seconds before he ate that bird live.

 

Last week, I caught part of an interview with a defender of North Carolina’s House Bill 2 on NPR. This is, just to recap in case you are from Mars or something, the infamous “Bathroom Bill”, which, in addition to forbidding cities from passing local laws protecting the rights of the LBGT Community, specifies that a person’s gender assigned at birth, as evidenced by their birth certificate, shall be the sole arbiter of which public rest rooms they’re allowed to use. In response to the passage of the law, businesses such as PayPal have cancelled plans to expand into the state, New York, California, Washington and other locations have forbidden non-essential travel to the state for government employees, and Bruce Springsteen has cancelled a concert there. Defenders have for the most part backpedaled from saying outright that this bill is about them seriously just wanting trans people to just cease to exist and insist that it’s really about sex offenders who would be “emboldened” to “pretend” to be trans in order to sneak into the ladies room and commit sexual assault, since, apparently, someone who wants to commit sexual assault is liable to say, “Gee, I’d really like to go in there and break the laws against sexual assault, but breaking the law against going into a ladies’ rest room is just beyond the pale.”

Anyway, I just want to vent a little bit here about the arguments being made in defense of this nonsense.

1. On the boycotts: funny, isn’t it, how the same people who claim we should “vote with our wallets” cry foul when our wallets decide we want nothing to do with a bunch of bigots.
2. On The Boss Specifically: How exactly does someone get into the mindset, “I really liked Springsteen until I found out that he strongly supports equal rights and opposes oppression, which is something about him I had hitherto never suspected because I have not actually ever listened to any of his songs.”
3. Sayeth the defender, “Well those companies that are pulling out of North Carolina have no problem outsourcing American jobs to third world countries with far worse human rights violations!” Um. You know that’s not exactly flattering, right? New state motto: “North Carolina: We’re technically better than a third world police state.”
4. Sayeth the defender, “Just ask any five year old whether a man should be allowed in the women’s rest room!” Leaving aside for the moment that a transwoman is not a man, are you entirely sure that the musings of a five year old should be the basis for public policy? Admittedly, my son is only four, but we’re still struggling to break him of the belief that a woman shouldn’t be allowed to wear the color blue, because blue is a “boy color”.
5. Also, however he feels about bathrooms, my four-year-old has absolutely no problem walking around in mixed company naked from the waist down, so maybe you should actually ASK a five-year-old how bothered they are by this
6. Also, my son uses the women’s restroom pretty much every single time he goes anywhere with his mother, and once she’s old enough, I’m quite sure there will be times when I’ll be taking my daughter to the men’s room, so I challenge this whole “Any five year old knows that men shouldn’t be in the ladies’ room” thing.
7. Also, it’s only been like three years since people were making the, “If you ask any five-year-old, they’ll tell you that marriage is between one man and one woman,” argument.
8. Actually, let’s go back and stop leaving aside the whole “a transwoman is not a man” thing. You show your hypothetical five-year-old a picture of Caitlyn Jenner and ask which restroom she should be allowed to use. I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that your hypothetical five-year-old isn’t going to ask to see a birth certificate.
9. While we’re at it, can we dispense (or “dispel” as former presidential candidate Marco Rubio would put it) with the repeated claims that these bathroom bans are “common sense”. Here’s a nice “common sense” adage for you: “If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, swims like a duck, and flaps like a duck, it’s probably a duck.” If someone tells you they’re a woman, dresses like a woman, and wants to use the women’s rest room, it’s not “common sense” to demand to see a birth certificate before you let her take a leak.
10. If anyone really thinks that a law requiring one to use the rest room matching the sex on one’s birth certificate is the only thing stopping sex offenders, perhaps we could just replace the Triangle-Stick-Person symbol with the bat-symbol, because criminals are a cowardly and superstitious lot, and won’t go into a bathroom if they think Batman is there.

via TPM Livewire:

Heidi Cruz: Ted Shows America ‘The Face Of The God That We Serve’

“We are at a cultural crossroads in our country, and if we can be in this race to show this country the face of the God that we serve—this Christian God that we serve is the foundation of our country,” she said. “Our country was built on Judeo-Christian values. We are a nation of freedom of religion, but the God of Christianity is the God of freedom, of individual liberty, of choice and of consequence.”

(If you have the chance, check out my essay on They Live)

I don’t know about you, but I thought the most impressive moment of Saturday’s debate was when the republican presidential candidates all agreed to remove their human masks and reveal their true faces underneath.

It all started when Marco Rubio suffered from a system glitch that caused him to just repeat the same sentence over and over. By way of explanation, he unexpectedly peeled off his skin to reveal himself as a robot, to the surprise of absolutely no one.

Not to be outdone, Ted Cruz immediately removed his own face, showing the audience that he was, in fact, a lizard person. Experts believe this bold move may help him in the New Hampshire primary, as the revelation was met with optimism from the crowd. Said one audience member, “He always seemed like such an asshole when I thought he was human. But as lizards go, he’s actually kind of warm and personable, relatively speaking.”

Less-well received was Governor Jeb Bush’s desperate attempt to claim some of the spotlight by shedding his skin. The move backfired when the audience discovered Bush to be literally empty inside, his thin, pinkish outer layer concealing only a void. Dr. Ben Carson was the next to doff his human disguise, shocking the audience, who had not anticipated that he would turn out to be a tall stack of cats wearing a suit. After the debate, a Carson campaign staffer commented, “We’re as surprised as everyone. I think we’d all assumed that Dr. Carson’s true form would be a man-shaped Jello mold. But it kinda makes sense when you really think about it.”

It had been widely speculated before the debate that should Donald Trump ever remove his human facade, he would be revealed as an eldritch horror, more hair than man, and that the very sight of his true form would drive all who gazed upon it irretrievably mad. His comments in the debate advocating torture did little to quiet these suspicions. Everyone was greatly relieved, therefore, when he removed his own face, revealing only another, slightly smaller Donald Trump underneath.

The most surprising move of the evening, however, came from Governor Chris Christie. The New Jersey governor removed his mask and fat-suit, showing his true form to be Old Man Withers, owner of the haunted Atlantic City amusement park, who had engineered the entire presidential campaign as a distraction to a complicated insurance scam in the wake of Superstorm Sandy. The Christie campaign released a statement post-debate explaining that Governor Christie, “Would have gotten away with it too, if it weren’t for those snooping kids.”

Governor John Kasich of Ohio was reportedly “disappointed” that no one noticed his own revelation. Cameras did not catch Kasich’s unmasking, on account of none of them were pointed at him.

Political commentators are eagerly awaiting this Thursday’s Democratic debate, to see if the candidates will attempt to match their GOP rivals. There is widespread speculation that Hillary Clinton will reveal herself to be some sort of amorphous darkness. Experts are divided over whether Senator Sanders will turn out to be the anthropomorphic embodiment of the denied and deferred hopes and dreams of the younger generation, or just Justin Bieber in old-age makeup, shamelessly trying to illegally seize the presidency for Canada.

Note: Numbers exclude performers in adult media.

• Number of people whose gender I have determined by observation of their genitals: 1
• Number of people whose gender I have determined by their chromosomes: 0
• Number of people whose gender I have determined by assuming their self-reporting (Or that of their representative) to be correct: All the rest of them

 

No union is more profound than marriage, for it embodies the highest ideals of love, fidelity, devotion, sacrifice, and family. In forming a marital union, two people become something greater than once they were. As some of the petitioners in these cases demonstrate, marriage embodies a love that may endure even past death. It would misunderstand these men and women to say they disrespect the idea of marriage. Their plea is that they do respect it, respect it so deeply that they seek to find its fulfillment for themselves. Their hope is not to be condemned to live in loneliness, excluded from one of civilization’s oldest institutions. They ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law. The Constitution grants them that right.

The judgment of the Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit is reversed.

It is so ordered.

576 U. S. ____ (2015)

Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Scalia, Thomas and Alito all wrote dissenting opinions, which I find very strange because they all said basically the same thing, repeating the kind of douchey old argument that the decision should be settled by the legislature, because spirited debates about the rights of a minority are more valuable to society than actually granting rights to a minority. Roberts put it in a very respectable classically conservative, “This is the sort of thing the people should work out together rather than the nine of us deciding by fiat,” way. Scalia and Alito instead offered vague threats about the horrors that will ensue if the Supreme Court’s power goes unchecked.

Also, Thomas has a beef with the whole concept of substantive Due Process and at one point seems like he’s edging right up to saying “Slavery wasn’t so bad.” (“Slaves did not lose their dignity (any more than they lost their humanity) because the government allowed them to be enslaved,” he writes, disputing the notion that same-sex marriage bans are an affront to the dignity of same-sex couples)

I feel kind of bad for Roberts, who’s clearly trying to be a voice for moderation and slowing down and thinking things through and mostly just reminding us what we’re giving up (Albeit in a way that ignores both the track record for the majority deciding to grant rights to the minority just out of the goodness of their harts, and the fact that real harm is being done to real people while the American People struggle to make up their mind), saddled with the Three Stooges.