The Stuff I Didn't Get To -- 6/1/09

The Big Dick

-Headline(s) of the day-
"Cheney says he supports gay marriage." (1)

"Waterboarding was 'well done,' Cheney says." (2)

"Cheney confuses President Obama with bin Laden." (3)

It was a busy day for Big Dick Cheney. During a speech to the National Press Club, Dick said all three things, giving him a truth to horseshit percentage of about 33%. He's inching closer to reality, as previous speeches had a horsehit percentage of nearly 100%.

Still, you know the people who support torture and think the president's a secret Muslim terr'ist aren't gonna go for that whole "yay for gay marriage!" thing. Not that he didn't give it a good shot.

"I think that freedom means freedom for everyone," said Dick. "As many of you know, one of my daughters is gay and it is something we have lived with for a long time in our family. I think people ought to be free to enter into any kind of union they wish. Any kind of arrangement they wish. The question of whether or not there ought to be a federal statute to protect this, I don't support. I do believe that the historically the way marriage has been regulated is at the state level. It has always been a state issue and I think that is the way it ought to be handled, on a state-by-state basis... But I don't have any problem with that. People ought to get a shot at that."

For the record, even here he's wrong. Marriage hasn't always been handled at the state level. I give you Loving vs. Virginia, where the Supreme Court -- i.e., a body at the federal level -- declared bans on mixed race marriages unconstitutional and overturned state laws to the contrary nationwide.

But I guess he wouldn't be the Big Dick if he didn't shovel BS on even this issue. That's what being the Big Dick is all about. (Raw Story (1), Raw Story (2), and Raw Story (3) -- hey, they were all in the same RSS feed, sue me)


-Cartoon time with Mark Fiore-
Hey kids, when it comes to terrorism, are you tough or a wuss?


Click for animation

If you want to be a grownup, don't listen to Sean Hannity, Harry Reid, or Rush Limbaugh. They're pansies. Bullies steal their lunch money and kick sand in their faces at the beach. (MarkFiore.com)


-Bonus HotD-
"Just 11% of Republicans are Hispanic or Non-White."

That compares to 36% of Democrats and 27% of Independents, according to a Gallup poll. Non-Hispanic whites make up almost 70% of the US population, so they're way over-represented in the GOP.

And what's the White Guy Party doing right now? Complaining that a Hispanic Supreme Court nominee might be racist.

I'm guessing that's not going to go so well. (Political Wire)

Right Worries that Anti-Abortion Terrorism Might Spark Bad PR

Oh no, no one should try to politicize a doctor's murder. That would be unseemly. The people who march around with photos of aborted fetuses worry that the murder of Dr. George Tiller might become a political issue.

Associated Press:

Anti-abortion leaders voiced concern Sunday that the Obama administration and other Democrats may try to capitalize on the murder of Dr. George Tiller to defuse the abortion issue in upcoming Supreme Court confirmation hearings.

Many anti-abortion groups condemned the killing of Tiller, a prominent abortion provider who was shot dead at his church in Wichita, Kan. But they expressed concern that abortion-rights activists would use the occasion to brand the entire anti-abortion movement as extremist.

They also worried that there would now be an effort to stifle anti-abortion viewpoints during questioning of Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor. Her exact views on abortion aren't known, but conservatives fear she supports abortion rights.

Said the Rev. Patrick Mahoney, an anti-abortion activist: "No one should use this tragedy for political gain."

Here's an important point to remember -- there isn't going to be any fight over Sotomayor. Republicans are going to make a lot of noise, then confirm her. Unless she has some weird tax issue, she's in easily.

But how hypocritical is it for people who throw around the words "baby killer" to worry that someone might politicize a murder of an actual, non-hypothetical human being?

Top anti-abortion wingnut Randall Terry wasted no time in being crazy. "George Tiller was a mass murderer and we cannot stop saying that," Terry said. "He was an evil man -- his hands were covered with blood." According to AP, Terry worries that the Obama administration "will use Tiller's killing to intimidate pro-lifers into surrendering our most effective rhetoric and actions."

You mean like all that "mass murderer/blood on his hands" shit? Yeah, that was real effective, you son of a bitch. It sure put one abortion provider out of business, didn't it?

Griper Blade: We Were Warned

Yesterday, Kansas abortion provider George Tiller was shot dead at church, while he wife sang in the choir. Scott P. Roeder was arrested in the killing a short time later. Tiller, one of the few doctors in the nation performing late term abortions, had been dubbed "Tiller the Killer" by anti-abortion groups and had suffered from this sort of terrorism before. According to Agence France-Presse, "A lightning rod in the bitter culture war over abortion, George Tiller has been picketed, bombed and shot in the arms."

The term "pro-life" has often seemed this inapt -- Tiller wasn't the first person to die at the hands of anti-abortion zealots. A more apt term would be "pro-forced pregnancy," since their goal is actually to force women to remain pregnant against their will. "Pro-life" is just a PR term -- only lunatics and neocons are "anti-life." And, as we've just seen demonstrated, anti-abortion extremists are often very selective about whose lives they're "pro-" about.

But we were warned about this. We were told that there was a danger of this happening. A Department of Homeland Security report listed right wing extremists -- including those in the anti-abortion movement -- as the greatest domestic terrorism threat facing the country. The right, for their part, were quick to take offense, as they always are. While they like to portray themselves as rugged individualists, heirs to the cowboy myth, they're the whiniest bunch of cowpokes in American history. Quick to point their fingers at everyone else, let someone hold them responsible for their rhetoric and they break down in tears and play the victim card.

Never mind that the report singled out the "far right" -- nazis, religious zealots, survivalist groups, and anti-government militia types -- mainstream Republicans were quick to claim these lunatics as their own. That's the difference between left and right; the right refuses to condemn their own nuts until it's too late. You don't have to look far to find a conservative pundit condemning Roeder's crime, but you'd have one hell of a time finding one willing to condemn the extremes of the anti-abortion movement. Even today, when all the hysterical "he's a murderer!" talk has led to its logical conclusion... [CLICK TO READ FULL POST]