JABbering Stooge

Shorter Bushite Health and Human Services Department:

HHS Moves to Define Contraception as Abortion

• In order to prevent discrimination against lunatic theocrats poor, persecuted Christians, we have to discriminate against innocent women desperately seeking basic reproductive health services!

“Shorter” concept created by Daniel Davies, perfected by Elton Beard and given a beneficial mutation by the fine folks at Sadly, No!
I am aware of all Internet tradtions.™

Yeah, and I’m the heir to the throne of Zanzibar.

Diplomas won’t make jihadis go away, Barack

• Hamas’ favorite candidate, B. Hussein Osama, is too stupid to realize that the only good Muslim is a Muslim who has been stuffed into a human-sized microwave.

Alternate shorter:

Sun Tzu? What a pussy!

“Shorter” concept created by Daniel Davies, perfected by Elton Beard and given a beneficial mutation by the fine folks at Sadly, No!
I am aware of all Internet tradtions.™

Herbert Hoover, December 8, 1931:

The fundamental difficulties which have brought about financial strains in foreign countries do not exist in the United States. No external drain on our resources can threaten our position, because the balance of international payments is in our favor; we owe less to foreign countries than they owe to us; our industries are efficiently organized; our currency and bank deposits are protected by the greatest gold reserve in history.

George H. W. Bush, 1991 SOTU (Jan. 29, 1991):

So, let’s put these times in perspective. Together, since 1981, we’ve created almost 20 million jobs, cut inflation in half, and cut interest rates in half. And yes, the largest peacetime economic expansion in history has been temporarily interrupted. But our economy is still over twice as large as our closest competitor.

We will get this recession behind us and return to growth soon. We will get on our way to a new record of expansion and achieve the competitive strength that will carry us into the next American century. We should focus our efforts today on encouraging economic growth, investing in the future, and giving power and opportunity to the individual.

George W. Bush, July 15, 2008:

Our citizens are rightly concerned about the difficulties in the housing markets and high gasoline prices and the failure of the Democratic Congress to address these and other pressing issues. Yet despite the challenges we face, our economy has demonstrated remarkable resilience. While the unemployment rate has risen, it remains at 5.5 percent, which is still low by historical standards. And the economy continued to grow in the first quarter of this year. The growth is slower than we would have liked, but it was growth nonetheless.

This has been the first edition of Bullheaded Moments in Presidential Speeches™.

John Cole is making sense.

As far as the controversial New Yorker cover is concerned, I tend to think that while it is an attempt at satire, it’s a rather poor attempt, for reasons that have already been spelled out by people who are smarter and much more articulate than me. About the only way the point of the illustration can be made clear even for the rubes is by way of one of the many internet traditions that we should be aware of by now. Here’s how:

Shorter entire wingnutosphere:

And even then, it kind of fails. Oh, well. Try again next time, eh?

Sidebar: The only references to right-wing smears missing from the cover illustration are a copy of “The Communist Manifesto” and Pillz-E singing (if you can call it that) “Barack the Magic Negro.”

* With apologies to Scott Adams.

I know the two readers I have are probably also fans of Amanda Marcotte and the crew at Pandagon, but I think she’s right on about why Bill Donohue gets all up in arms whenever there’s corn in his shit:

It’s obvious that [Donohue] thinks that “religious freedom” means “the right to demand a) the right to completely define an entire religion for yourself and eject anyone who has different views than yours and b) the right never, ever to be mocked, criticized, or looked at funny”.

Indeed. And judging by his reaction to various and sundry perceived insults of his professed faith, the slightest criticism or mere examination of his beliefs is sufficient cause to be executed for heresy. Or, as Lindsay Beyerstein put it:

Somewhere there’s an Inquisition missing its Inquisitor.

There used to be a tradition in this country that said “I may not like what you have to say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” That’s the spirit that I was raised to believe in, and one of the things that made me proud to be an American. It’s why we allow neo-Nazis to publicly display their stupidity and regressive extremism — not because we agree with their views, but because we believe in a marketplace of free ideas where We The People™ can be trusted to determine for ourselves which speech is intellectually and morally acceptable and which is repugnant and deserving of ridicule or protest. But that just won’t do for people who think as Bill Donohue does.

Amanda suggests a possible reason for this:

Without trying to repeat much of what Jesse said, the real discrimination only occurs if someone is punished by job loss for speaking out against religion. In my case, there was a vulgarity aspect that’s kind of undeniable. But PZ didn’t say anything that wasn’t basically polite, if humorous. More tellingly that that is the fact the ire transferred neatly from the kid who innocently took a wafer out of mass in the first place. Since that kid was supposedly the original “criminal”, why is it that PZ has eclipsed him in focus just by issuing supportive statements? (bolding mine, emphasis in original)

Why, indeed. Lindsay makes the point more explicitly in her closing remarks:

The Catholic League claims to be a civil rights organization. Yet it consistently targets high-profile atheists like Amanda Marcotte and PZ Myers and attempts to get them fired. Draw you own conclusions.

And yet, the thinly-veiled attempt to remove atheists from polite public discourse isn’t the worst aspect of this whole debacle. Its the blatant projection. In his latest press release on the incident, Donohue whines that he himself is being persecuted for his stance:

Myers went on Houston radio station KPFT last night saying that Bill Donohue has ‘declared a fatwa’ against him. He should know better—I don’t need others to do the fighting for me. I’m quite good at it myself. But he’d better be careful what he says, because if I get any death threats, it won’t be hard to connect the dots.

Donohue has even gone so far as to hide behind the skirts of an obscure Virginia pol (about 1400 miles from Myers’ stomping grounds in Morris, MN — very brave of him):

As a result of the hysteria that Myers’ ilk have promoted, at least one public official is taking it seriously. Thomas E. Foley is chairman of Virginia’s First Congressional District Republican Committee, a delegate to the Republican National Convention and one of two Republican at large nominees for Virginia’s Electoral College. His concern is for the safety of Catholics attending this year’s Republican National Convention in Minneapolis, Myers’ backyard. Accordingly, Foley has asked the top GOP brass to provide additional security while in the Twin Cities so that Catholics can worship without fear of violence. Given the vitriol we have experienced for simply exercising our First Amendment right to freedom of speech, we support Foley’s request.

In light of the very real death threats that Dr. Myers and Webster Cook, the UCF student in question, have received since “Crackergate” began (two words: “holy hollowpoint“), in addition to the death threats that previous targets of Donohue’s stack-blowing episodes have garnered, Donohue’s pearl-clutching strikes me as absurdist theater at best, and blatant disingenuousness or shameless projection at worst. And to make matters worse for Donohue, it does an incredible insult and disservice to the Christian martyrs throughout history for him to compare blowback to his theocratic impulses to the very real suffering professing Christians endured in many of the places where they’ve been the demographic minority from Roman times to today.

And that, more than anything else, should nullify any credibility he might have.

From the local fishwrap:

Austin district cuts off support for ‘Rent’
Content prompts officials to halt financial backing, but high school production will go on.*

So basically, AISD summer school students get the honor of being the first high school students in Texas to obtain the rights to perform a famous, smash-hit Broadway musical, only to have that honor stolen and the funding slashed to nearly nothing because the musical’s themes don’t sit well with a bunch of howling fanatics.

What kind of theocratic authoritarian prick would pull this shit? Who the hell would be so threatened by the “humanizing of homosexuals” that they would resort to this sort of Mafia-style tactic?

Oh, right.

Wonder if a certain Professional Outrage Maven threatened to behead members of the AISD school board if they continued to support this.

* Cf.

Last Thursday over at America’s Shittiest Website™, where the motto is “The World’s Leading Source of Groupthink Since 1955,” they were actually having *gasp!* a genuine, heated debate! Quelle horreur!! The subject? Whether or not Bill Donohue was right to go apeshit on P.Z. Myers over “Crackergate.”

For the most part, the “debate” featured Andrew Stuttaford worrying that Donohue was replicating the “horrors” of campus speech codes on one side, and larger-than-life Kathryn Jean Lopez writing love letters to Donohue on the other side (when she wasn’t outright threatening violence against Dr. Myers, that is). At a couple of points in the “debate,” the Doughy Pantload scratches his crotch, farts, and then belches tepid support for K-Lo’s “position” (assuming she can be said to have a position other than on her knees in front of Donohue). Sadly, the reparteé only lasts about five hours before the gang goes back to what they do best: declaring that Jesse Jackson’s off-camera comments about wanting to castrate Obama only prove that Obama should be kept as far away from the Big Red Button™ as humanly possible.

Nevertheless, K-Lo manages to get in the last word. And what a doozy it is! Check it out:

There are many words I can think of to describe Bill — victim is not one of them. He’s protecting, and fighting for, that which he loves. And he’s doing it fairly. [He’s not. He’s blatantly lying about Myers to make his point. — Ed.] He’s not abusing our legal system. [Wrong. He’s trying to get the Minnesota legislature to punish Myers by legal fiat — an abuse of the legal system by any standard except, apparently, the standard of NRO. — Ed.] He’s not begging for special treatment from the government or anyone else. [He is. You don’t exactly see him blowing his stack over maltreatment of Muslims at American universities, do you? — Ed.] He’s certainly not rioting in the streets are calling for violence. [Not yet, but given his recent history, it won’t be long now. — Ed.] It’s a refreshing thing to see.

The pathological blindness is just overwhelming. But it’s just par for the course for K-Lo. As a commenter at Snarky Bastards put it:

[E]veryone has behaved almost entirely to form:

• Bill Donahue has whined and bitched and tried to get people fired.

• PZ Myers has acted like a complete asshole.

• Kathryn Lopez has written something embarrassingly stupid.

Seriously, guys. Call me back when man bites dog.

That she has.

Sully on “Crackergate”:

It is one thing to engage in free, if disrespectful, debate. It is another to repeatedly assault and ridicule and abuse something that is deeply sacred to a great many people. Calling the Holy Eucharist a “goddamned cracker” isn’t about free speech; it’s really about some baseline civility. Myers’ rant is the rant of an anti-Catholic bigot. And atheists and agnostics can be bigots too.

So, you’re saying that because PZ worded his criticism of Bill Donohue’s pea-soup spewage fit in a way that offends you, it’s okay for Donohue’s flying monkey brigade to send him death threats? That’s contemptible, and it’s the sort of thinking that fills graveyards.*

Perhaps, Andrew, it’s time you gave yourself a Michelle Malkin Award.

* With apologies to David Eddings.