Silly women, why did you think you mattered?

Sorry dudes, but we women vote and we don’t care for the likes of Ben Quayle. Quayle’s denials of his involvement with the Dirty Scottsdale website are comical but his misogyny is not. He made comments on Dirty Scottsdale denigrating women as sex objects and is now running on a “family values” platform of wanting to take away our reproductive rights. He couldn’t even give Greta Van Susteren a straight answer to her question of whether Dirty Scottsdale and The Dirty sites degrade women. Quayle is a giant hypocrite who had his fun in the Scottsdale club scene and then, upon deciding he had political aspirations, embraced social conservatism.

Quayle boasts of his “lifelong” social conservatism on his campaign website. IOW, he’s for imposing a harsh and punitive sexual moral code on the little people (women especially) while while he and his rich pals can have a grand old time having “youthful indiscretions” until whenever.

Screw that. And screw anyone who thinks “Brock Landers” doesn’t matter and that Ben Quayle’s disparagement of women and his deplorable hypocrisy don’t matter.

Women matter, guys, and Brock Landers might just get the hell knocked out of him at the ballot box in November.

Today’s Two Minute Hate is another front page USA Today report about “illegal-migrant births”. Which are “soaring”. That’s the headline. The article itself is balanced but I think the intent of that headline and the placement above the fold on the front page is pretty unmistakable. Our problem isn’t the billionaires who wrecked the economy and Republican politicians obstructing every effort toward a solution. It’s those anchor babies.

Imagine Shallow Hal with money, a family name, and no movie plot device to teach him a valuable lesson of the intrinsic beauty and worth of other human beings.

I give you Exhibit A, par excellence..

I have a feeling this isn’t going to end well for “Brock Landers”.

The nutjob story in a nutshell, from Mashable:

The conservative-leaning group utilized a Yahoo Group and a service called coRanks to tell its nearly 100 members to Digg or Bury certain stories multiple times per day. It was founded in May of last year, meaning that this group has been operating for more than a year. The accused ringleader is Bettverboten, a still-active Digg power user with more than 1,500 submissions and 73,000 Diggs.

Those are some impressive numbers. I can only imagine how many articles this group buried over the year. On one hand, I’m envious of their organizational skills and dedication. On the other hand, who has the time?

But like I said, while I’m very happy for my LGBT brothers and sisters today, this is about me! Me me me!!

Judge Walker’s decision notes that attorneys for the defendants were from a coalition of social conservative organizations. Gov. Schwartzenegger and Attorney General Jerry Brown were named as defendants in the suit but both declined to participate. The defense team is affiliated with Protect Marriage, the official campaign for the 2008 ballot initiative. On the campaign’s website protectmarriage.com, you can find a pdf of the Witherspoon Report, a 2006 issue paper that was the basis for much of the pro-Prop 8 testimony in the trial. Brief synopsis: Marriage is really, really, really good for society. Really. Especially for children. Oh, and marriage can only be between a man and a woman because men and women bring different skill sets to the union which are necessary for the proper raising of children. Did we mention that marriage is all about the children?

Starting on page 24 the report describes what authors see as the Four Threats to Marriage. They are: divorce, illegitimacy, cohabitation, and Teh Gheys. Say, the first three mostly involve straight people, don’t they? And divorce breaks up more marriages than, well, anything, doesn’t it? But I digress. I must take umbrage at the Witherspoon Report and the entire “protect marriage” movement on behalf of myself and heterosexual childless curmudgeons everywhere. Um, helloooo. What am I, chopped liver?

Let me tell you something, Protect Marriage people, you should be keeping closer tabs on me and my ilk. In 2003 19% of women age 40-44 did not have children, compared to 10% in 1976. You’re worried about gay people wanting access to the institution of marriage and (for some of them at least) the opportunity to raise children? Really? You see that as a more pressing threat to your ideal than divorce, single parenthood, cohabitation, and (especially) voluntary childlessness? Seems to me that if you think “procreation is intrinsically connected to marriage”, and you think gay couples should be denied the right to marry based on that, then you must view the reverse as true – that marriage is intrinsically connected to procreation. That means you should be preparing legislation to deny the right to marriage to any couple unable or unwilling to procreate. You should be doing your utmost to stop a childless curmudgeon like me from being able to marry my boyfriend. Along with post-menopausal women and any couple where one or both of them are infertile. Otherwise, it kinda looks like you’re singling out gay people for discrimination.

All this makes this self-absorbed diva feel, you know, left out.

Main Entry: helicopter parent
Part of Speech: n
Definition: a mother or father that hovers over a child; an overprotective parent; also helicopter mom, helicopter dad
Example: We seem to live in the time of helicopter parents.
Etymology: 1991
Usage: slang

They’re the scourge of college deans and human resource departments everywhere. These are parents who do everything for their kids, cushion them from adversity, and pull strings to get them choice assignments without having to pay their dues. Sometimes these over-involved helicopter parents go so far as to announce their child’s Congressional campaign for them on Fox News. Then they get their friends and associates to jump start Junior’s endeavor with generous contributions. They even show up on the job interview campaign ad with the kid.

Helicopter parenting: It’s unhealthy. It’s neither conducive to the child developing into a resourceful and autonomous adult nor is it good for society as a whole.

“Unmarried women, 70% of unmarried women, voted for Obama, and this is because when you kick your husband out, you’ve got to have big brother government to be your provider,” said Schlafly, president of Eagle Forum and infamous for her opposition to the Equal Rights Amendment.

Because somebody’s gotta take care of those dumb broads, amirite fellas?

…In an interview with TPM this afternoon Schlafly stood by her comments and said Obama is trying to boost welfare rolls to help with his reelection and to help Democrats.

“Yes I said that. It’s true, too. All welfare goes to unmarried moms,” Schlafly told TPM. “They are trying to line up their constituency for Obama and Democrats against Republican candidates.”

All welfare goes to single moms. Therefore all unmarried women are on welfare. Quod erat demonstrandum, res ipsa loquitur,, Subset B of Set A = Set A. Phyllis, you’re not exactly helping to eradicate the stereotype of women that logic isn’t our forte. Just saying. And I guess my welfare check keeps getting lost in the mail, which is why I’ve been foolishly doing that “working for pay to support myself” thing all these years when I could have been living a life of bon-bon eating luxury on Uncle Sugar’s dime.

But I have to give Schlafly a little credit here. She’s rocking it old school style. None of this New Feminist Mama Grizzly^TM gun-toting posturing like we’ve been getting from Sarah Palin and her counterparts. Phyllis takes her reactionary gin straight and follows it with a chaser of the same. Her hairdo is frozen in 1972 and so is her credo: A woman is nothing without a man, so get yourself one and do his laundry and his bidding, pronto! Of course, she is a well educated woman with a high-powered career, who had nannies care for her own children while she traveled the country telling women they should stay home to raise their kids. Whatever, IOKIYAR.

Schlafly’s Eagle Forum PAC (“Leading the Pro-Family Movement Since 1972″) endorsed Rep. Trent Franks and State Senator Sylvia Allen in Arizona. Good choices, Phyllis.

The act was signed into law by President GHW Bush on June 26, 1990. It sought to address discrimination in employment, housing, accommodations, and other areas against physically and mentally disabled people. The reviews on it in practice are mixed but most disability activists I’ve spoken with consider it an important first step toward treating disabled Americans with respect and dignity.

The ADA anniversary puts the recent events of Arizona in mind. Lost in the breathless coverage of first, Prop 100 (which backfills cuts to education), and then, SB1070 (a racist scam and a shiny bauble intended to distract voters) is how drastic budget cuts are making the lives of of thousands of disabled people in Arizona and their families very difficult.

Of all the stupidity of what passes for conservative “ideas” in Arizona (and the rest of the country), cutting services to disabled people is by far the the most shortsighted and self-defeating. Hey, middle class wannabe John Galt, it’s one thing to convince yourself that you’ll never be unemployed or underemployed for an extended period of time. You can tell yourself that you’ll never lose your health insurance or home. You’ve got your 401k, your bank account, your McMansion, your Escalade, your gym membership, and your dogeared copy of Atlas Shrugged. You’ve got bootstraps, by God.

What could go wrong?

What you don’t have is any assurance that you will be able bodied and able minded at any time in the future. You are a fragile human being with near-negligible protection against a host of Earthly onslaughts. You are one fall, car crash, random gunshot, illness, etc. away from being in a wheelchair. Or confined to a bed. Or dependent upon strong psychotropic medication such that your brain can function at the barest level. You might require a home aide to help you with some personal tasks so that you can live and work as independently as possible. If you become disabled and can no longer work at all watch as your material assets go away. Quickly. Same thing if it happens to your spouse or child. And getting a disability check isn’t as easy as the right wing gasbags on the radio make it out to be.

An important concept the disability rights movement impressed upon me is that if you are able-d, you should always think of it as a temporary state. Because even if nothing goes awry in your life the aging process will take its toll on you eventually. No one escapes, whose life isn’t snuffed out early.

You may soon, and probably will eventually, need services as a disabled person. What you’ll find out is that the state has cut them to the bone, as have the cities. You might need a bus, for example. You just might be waiting for that bus a long time, Mr. Bootstraps.

While I’m on the topic, if you haven’t read this poignant and eloquent essay about special-needs children and “socialism”, read it now. What if John Galt had a Special Needs Child?

What is it with them? This past Wednesday the House of Representatives passed a bill that would enable authorities on Indian reservations to better coordinate with the Feds to prosecute non-native rape suspects and provide assistance to rape victims. For some reason, 92 members saw fit to vote against it, all of them Republican. The nay votes included our very own Reps Flake, Franks, and Shadegg.

I’ve been searching the internet and not finding any reason for so many Republicans voting against it. Recall that when Republican Senators (including our own Kyl and McCain) voted against the Franken Amendment (which disallows federal contractors from forcing employees who are raped or assaulted into arbitration clauses and was inspired by the brutal rape of KBR employee Jamie Leigh Jones in 2005) the justification was that it was an unbearable imposition upon the poor, dear corporations to open them up to the risk of expensive lawsuits for failing to protect their workers from rape.

HR 725 doesn’t appear to jeopardize precious corporate profits so I’m going to guess the nay votes are the usual Republican whining about government spending on undeserving little people. Women, even.

I certainly hope the local news media take note of this and ask Flake, Franks, and Shadegg to explain their vote against Native rape victims, especially in light of the large number of tribes in Arizona.

UPDATE: Amnesty International provides some background on the issue.

From the outset I was inclined to give the guy a pass on the blunder. It’s hard to imagine any legitimate politician thinking to him or herself, “You know, I should get myself interviewed on that Nazi station. That’ll be good for my career.” But the first nagging question is one that should be evident to anyone who has ever called in to a radio show. What happens is that the screener or producer puts you on hold, usually for several minutes. While you’re on hold you are listening to the show in progress, waiting for the host to call you by name and tell you you’re on the air. It’s possible that an aide of Babeu was waiting on the phone during that time, not Babeu himself, but still. Someone had to be listening to what was being said in the segment before the Babeu interview.

Yesterday the AZ Democratic Party sent out a press release describing it.

In the first segment of the radio program, before Babeu came on, the hosts and their invited guests:

* Were permissive about people who use, “horror of horrors, the N-word” [2:22]
* Accused Nelson Mandela of masterminding a terrorist bombing. [15:40]
* Said white Southerners were “invaded” by Freedom Riders during the Civil Rights Movement. [16:12]
* Blamed Jewish people for many of the country’s problems. [4:33, 5:26]

As they waited for Babeu to call in, one co-host said his excitement about having Babeu as a guest was on par with his excitement at meeting the well-known KKK leader David Duke.

You have to listen to the broadcast, if you can stomach it, to appreciate how calm and matter-of-fact people can be while expressing shockingly ugly views about their fellow human beings. That’s important because the constant presentation of hateful bigotry as a Mel Gibson scream-fest or JT Ready marching at the border often leads people to think that bigots can’t be articulate or “reasonable” sounding. Au contraire. These dudes chatting it up on the Political Cesspool sound like they could be on NPR, except for the part where they’re nasty hateful bigots.

As I’ve said here before, an association with a particular person or group does not mean that you are joining them or endorse their views. Out-of-context guilt by association should have died a boozy death along with Joe McCarthy. But there’s plenty of context with which to go after Babeu here. At best, it shows that Babeu and his handlers are sloppy and way too eager for any cheap publicity they can get, which means he’s not focused on the job he was elected to do. At worst, it raises suspicions about what Babeu knew and when he knew it and the possibility of collusion with the hosts (who, don’t forget, are claiming Babeu was aware of their ideology). Media Matters has the full interview with Babeu, in two parts.

Notice that the Cesspool hosts are on their best behavior throughout the interview. They mention how President Obama sent Babeu a “gift” in the form of the ACLU coming to Arizona to sue him. Just the plain old ACLU, not the evil Zionist conspiracy ACLU of the earlier segment. No mentions of superiority of the white race either; just several references to the “invasion” of illegals and drug cartels and violence. Not as clinical and NPR-ish as the first segent, it was more run-of-the-mill conservative talk radio bombast. This would lend some credence to Babeu’s claim that he didn’t know the nature of the show. Then again, Babeu claimed in the interview that the U.S. is “sprinting toward socialism” and repeated blatant falsehoods about Arizona’s crime rate. He’s not exactly awash in credibility.

Then there’s that other interview Sheriff Babeu did with conspiracy crackpot Alex Jones. Where Army National Guard Major Babeu accuses the President of being on the borderline of treason. Another innocent mistake, I’m sure.

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