The Republican Fear Of All Things Womanish

by Noah

No, this isn’t about The Republican Party’s continuing war on women, as recently exemplified in the neo-fascist states of Ohio, Texas, and North Carolina. It’s just something that recent events made me think about on this 4th of July weekend. It’s not about abortion rights per se and it’s not about the hate-filled Herculean pro-death, Republican efforts to stop uterine and breast cancer screening with sneaky late night anti-democratic state legislature maneuvers. No, this is something far more base and basic. It’s about what actually drives the evil of Republicans in both their waking hours and in their dreams, and in their nightmares.

Case in point: Generations Radio’s Pastor Kevin Swanson. Generations Radio serves some sort of propaganda arm for people who call themselves Christians while exhibiting nothing Christian in their attitudes. It’s worth noting that while Pat Robertson may be gone to Hell soon, charbroiling up nicely, right next to Jerry Falwell, on Satan’s big hibachi, the Republicans will always have plenty of would-be replacements. When Pat is gone and his brand of Republican psycho gibberish no longer fills the TV screens of old lady suckers, Swanson will be there vying to take his place.

Here’s Swanson quoting from an old copy of Forbes magazine (courtesy of Daily Kos)-

“Women in the 1980s adopted a male style of dress-- ties, tailored skirt suits, shoulder pads-- in order to gain a foothold in the male dominated world of business. And Carol Moseley Braun, the first African American woman elected to the U.S. Senate, wore a pantsuit on the Senate floor in 1993, ending the Senate’s ban on women wearing slacks there.”

My god! There she was! Slacks! Slacks! Personally, I thought women wearing ties dated back to the mods of the 1960s. I even married one such woman. Does that make me, in republican eyes, some sort of perverted same sex marriage pioneer? Oh rest assured my little republikooks, my wife and I are straight. Obviously, though, the fact that I am writing this at all makes me some sort of Devil’s spawn, right?

A close examination of Pastor Swanson’s pea brain reveals so much about the Republican mind. Notice the choice of words in the Forbes article that so appealed to him. It’s not just about what a woman is, what women are wearing. It’s also about “male dominated” and  “African American woman.”  Damn, right there on the floor of the U.S. Senate; flaunting it! Flaunting her election, her feminism, her ethnicity. It’s too much for a republican to bear! And, he’s quoting about something that happened twenty years ago!

Get over it bozo. Have you even noticed that women Senators now come in the Republican flavor? We have lots of them, right there on the Senate floor, a place that was one of the last bastions on male domination as you would spit it out, Pastor Mr. Christian Love moron. The only thing that’s weird about that, to me, is that any woman, in this day and age, could profess to be a Republican at all, not that they are a Senator representing kooks like you, Pastor Swanson. And, just how did you get to be a pastor anyway? Some back of a matchbook ad while you were lighting up a crackpipe?

It gets weirder. Remember back to 1991: the Clarence Thomas hearings? Thomas was before the Senate, an institution known for its policy of sex harassment (pro); defending himself against charges of sexual harassment and a fascination with the porno movie exploits of a chap named Long Dong Silver (party affiliation unknown). During the proceedings, we had the already senile and still Senator, Orrin Hatch, brandishing a copy of The Exorcist, waving it in the air as if it somehow reflected on Thomas’s accuser, former co-worker named Anita Hill, but, that wasn’t the funniest part. The funniest part was another Senatorial nutjob named Arlen Specter saying to the accuser, “Tell us about the b-b-b-breasts”, like some sort of 13 year old sleepaway camper wanting uber-detailed information from the older kid in the bunk next to him. Sen. Specter could barely say the word. It had so much power over him. He was so worked up.

Here’s Pastor Swanson again:

“Coming back from Australia, I’m stuck in 14 hours of these visual presentations, sitcoms and stuff, on 17 screens in front of me and I’ve never seen so many breasts in all my life. The immodesty going on in our society is far worse than it was back when Cheers, Family Ties, and The Cosby Show was playing. I mean every form of aberrant sexuality and women’s breasts are shown in front of me almost non- stop for 14 hours. It’s such an oppressive, horrible, horrible world and so man of our young girls in our Christian churches are running down to Wal-Mart and buying the same clothes… Why do we have to submit to these sexual sins again and again?”

I’m amazed at so much here; “aberrant sexuality”, “oppressive, horrible, horrible world,” “submit.” Apparently, Wal-Mart is the work of the Devil. Well, to be fair, and I am always fair, Swanson may be right on that point but not for the reason he thinks, unless, he’s worried about how prone to wardrobe malfunctions and inconveniently placed tears Wal-Mart’s cheap clothes may be.

But, wait, there’s more. There’s always more when it comes to Republican kookery. Boys are b-b-b-bad, bad, bad, too!

Lindsey's fairy shoes

“I brought up androgyny and how many young boys are running out and doing the metrosexual thing with the skinny pants and the little fairy shoes. They’re working on the gender blender for themselves and they don’t want to look like a man and God is just so upset. He hates it when men are not manly in their approach. 1 Corinthians 6 speaks about homosexuality and feminine behavior and feminine dress for men. God does not want men to be androgynous and feminine-like in their approach.or that Texas Chainsaw Massacre guy. Our country has suffered your kind before, even when you manage to slow things down. Here’s a tip for you, in the end, you and your sick brethren will inevitably lose and you will take your place in Hell. In the end, you might say that God will shine his grace on thee, and all of us anyway.

He gave them facial hair for a reason.

Hey, Swanson, God gave some women facial hair for a reason, too. What about it? And, is this facial hair obsession some sort of Muslim thou must grow a beard thing?

There it is. Cover up the women in burkas. Men must grow beards; and, this from the party that drums up fears of sharia law taking over the land. It’s a classic example of accusing your “opponent” of being what you, yourself, really are. That’s your Republican Party in 2013 and beyond. It’s one of the older strategies of subterfuge in the history of mankind. By the way, Swanson is beardless. If you were to ask me, I might say that, by his own pronouncements, he just might be in league with ol’ Beelzabubba, hisself.

I had wondered why Swanson had failed to mention Will & Grace, a show which featured a-- dare I say it aloud-- gay character, right out there on the TeeVEE for all to see! Well, now we know. He was just saving the gay stuff, or trying to repress it, or something. Maybe, he just hadn’t caught up to this particular sitcom, which ran from 1998 to 2006. He tries so valiantly to live in the past, longing for a time where everyone was buttoned up and in their place.

“Little fairy shoes”? Most normal people got over this stuff back in the 60s when the Beatles and the Rolling Stones came along in their slightly high-heel boots and longish hair, but not Republicans. I remember being called ‘Miss” because of my very long hair back then. I also have very clear memories of a couple of people who, very most likely, never made that mistake with a long-haired guy again.

The problem is, of course, that Republicans want to go back right past the 1960s to the 19th century, but not the 18th; men wore wigs then, and frilly coats, and stockings, and…  Ya know what, our country grew and progressed just fine, and, no, tragic events like the Civil War, Lincoln’s murder, lynchings, the Depression, and the murders of civil rights workers and leaders, were not caused by a punishing god. Those events were caused by reactionaries and greedmongers who were fighting, so much like you, Pastor Kevin Swanson, to preserve a status quo that had already passed.

Swanson, you whine about “fairy shoes” and have bad little dreams about being attacked by big bad breast monsters. You look at the moon and see giant areola and nipples where normal people see craters. You look at the clouds and see threatening vaginas. Maybe the biggest irony is that you are so much like the very reactionaries who nailed your Jesus to a cross and threw a spear at him in an effort to maintain that status quo. You, Pastor Swanson, and all your kind in the aberrant state legislatures across this great land, and in Congress in Washington, DC, have more in common with Richard Speck or that Texas Chainsaw Massacre guy. Our country has suffered your kind before, even when you manage to slow things down. Here’s a tip for you, in the end, you and your sick brethren will inevitably lose and you will take your place in Hell. In the end, you might say that God will shine his grace on thee, and all of us anyway.

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North Carolina Republicans Ramp Up The GOP War Against Women

Above, Rachel Maddow reports on the anti-Choice sneak attack in North Carolina this week. The Republicans in the legislature don't like seeing Texas and Ohio Republicans getting ahead of them in the right-wing anti-women jihad. Most interesting though (at the 4:55 point in the video) was a clip from an election debate when now-Governor Pat McCrory publicly pledged to sign no new abortion restrictions if he were elected. "None," he responded when Laura Leslie, the WRAL Capitol Bureau Chief, asked him point blank, "If you're elected governor what further restrictions on abortion would you agree to sign?" He didn't hem or haw... he just said "none" and set his jaw in place. I guess we can start parsing words like "further," "restrictions," "agree" and "none." After all, Obamabots are trying to redefine the meaning of the word "coup" now that their military puppets have kicked out the legitimately elected president of Egypt, legally obligating Obama to cut off military aid.

Meanwhile, North Carolina singer-songwriter Kitschy de Coeur explains she "wrote this little song today after sitting in the debates for HB 695, which was slipped in to a bill last minute and will severely limit womens' access to reproductive health clinics." Very eloquent:

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When Did The GOP Become The Party of Unrelenting Misogyny?

Yesterday, crazed woman-hater--and very sick, deranged closet case-- Trent Franks (R-AZ) finally got a bill passed... kind of. Even Republicans found his rape comments so offensive and so dangerous to GOP election prospects that they took him off the case before the vote and put up an anti-Choice woman as the bill's "sponsor," Tennessee crackpot Marsha Blackburn. Franks'/Blackburn's offensive, ugly anti-woman bill would ban abortions after 20 weeks. The exemptions are premised on a Republican ideological psychosis that "women lie" and can't be trusted. It's pure authoritarian, Big Brother-knows-best legislation that targets women in a grotesque and completely un-American way. And it passed. It passed 228-196 in the House, although not before another sick Republican crackpot, Michael Burgess (R-TX), once an Ob/Gyn, went off on a crazy rant about how fetuses start masturbating at 15 weeks and therefore feel pain. (A similar crazy bill, in Arizona, has already been struck down as patently unconstitutional by a federal appeals court.) Women convicted under the Republican law could go to prison for as many as five years.

The DCCC is already rending their garments over the horrible Republicans who voted against women. I would be more likely to believe the depth of their feelings if they moved to cut off the six Democrats who cross the aisle to vote with the Republicans against women, particularly Matheson and McIntyre who will lose their seats without intensive care from the DCCC:

• Henry Cuellar (Blue Dog-TX)
• Dan Lipinksi (IL)
• Jim Matheson (Blue Dog-UT)
• Mike McIntyre (Blue Dog/New Dem-NC)
• Collin Peterson (Blue Dog-MN)
• Nick Rahall (WV)

Six Republicans cross the aisle in the other direction: Charlie Dent (R-PA), Rodney Frelinghuysen (R-NJ), Richard Hanna (R-NY), and John Runyan (R-NJ) because the bill was too extreme and Paul Broun (R-GA) and Rob Woodall (R-GA) because the bill wasn't extreme enough. Closet case Aaron Schock (R-IL) was too frightened to vote and hid in the little boy's room.

The White House has already said that were the bill to ever pass the Senate-- there's zero chance of that happening thanks to the defeat last year of anti-woman crusaders Todd Akin (R-MO), Richard Mourdock (R-IN), Connie Mack IV (R-FL), Josh Mandel (R-OH), Denny Rehberg (R-MT), Tom Smith (R-PA), Tommy Thompson (R-WI), Rick Berg (R-ND), and George Allen (R-VA)-- Obama would veto it. “[It] would unacceptably restrict women’s health and reproductive rights and is an assault on a woman’s right to choose. Women should be able to make their own choices about their bodies and their health care, and Government should not inject itself into decisions best made between a woman and her doctor. This bill is a direct challenge to Roe v. Wade and shows contempt for women’s health and rights, the role doctors play in their patients’ health care decisions, and the Constitution."

Going into the vote yesterday, the National Right to Life Committee threatened to oppose any Members of Congress who opposed the bill. Extremist psychopath, John Bircher and Republican Senate candidate Paul Broun (R-GA) promptly announced he would vote NO... because the bill is too liberal.

U.S. Rep. Paul Broun, R-Athens, on Monday night pulled his support for a measure that would ban a woman’s right to abortion after the 20th week of pregnancy, highlighting a split between the foremost national anti-abortion group and its Georgia counterpart.

Language was recently added to the measure that would make exceptions for cases of rape and incest. National Right to Life recognizes those two exceptions.

But Georgia Right to Life does not. Things are about to get nasty.

"Any lawmaker who votes to allow unlimited abortion in the sixth month or later is voting to encourage a continuation of the horrors associated with the likes of Kermit Gosnell," said NRLC Legislative Director Douglas Johnson in a press release that arrive this morning.

Georgia Right to Life has yet to be heard from officially, but on WSB Radio last night, Erick Erickson of Redstate.com reported that GRTL was in the process of phoning members of Congress, urging them to vote against the bill.

The legislation has no chance of becoming law. (A Georgia version already exists and is under court challenge.) But the open split in a Washington scenario has major implications for Georgia’s race for U.S. Senate. Broun is a major contender. Another is former secretary of state Karen Handel, who has fought with GRTL in the past. The organization has refused to certify her as a “pro-life” candidate because of her endorsement of the rape and incest exceptions to abortion regulation.

Raúl Grijalva (D-AZ) spoke for all Democrats and non-misogynists when he spoke after the vote yesterday:

“Republicans are once again trying to restrict the rights of American women to make medical decisions. It’s obvious they haven’t listened to the American people in pursuing this unconstitutional waste of time. It’s less obvious who they think they’re serving with this.

“Women who seek these services are often in extreme economic straits or have discovered serious health risks in their pregnancy. In defending the bill, the author said the incidence of pregnancies from sexual violence is ‘very low.’ I suggest he tell that to the 30,000 women across the country who give birth as a result of rape each year.

“After receiving heavy public condemnation, Republicans introduced an exception for victims of rape. This is too little, too late. We cannot allow the conversation we have about reproductive health to be driven by men who so easily dismiss victims of rape. The women and men of this country are watching this debate. Last-minute fig leaves aren’t going to cut it.

“Despite their endless promises to the contrary, Republicans won’t focus on job creation. The House has now voted 37 times to repeal Obamacare, which prevents insurance companies from charging women more for the same coverage they offer men. Now we’re voting on a bill to restrict women’s rights to make health care decisions. Where are the jobs?

“It’s time to stop hurting America’s women and put people back to work.”

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When Will The Republican Party End It's Sick Jihad Against American Women?

There may be a gender gap, but there are still millions of women who vote for Republicans. Really. True, Obama won the two-party vote among female voters in the 2012 election by 12 points, 56% to 44%, over Republican challenger Mitt Romney. But that means 44% of women-- and they're not all in the South-- voted for Romney. Obama's 12 point advantage was smaller than his 14 point advantage in 2008, though substantially bigger than the Democratic advantages in 2000 and 2004 when Bush ran. The Democrats have been pretty good at exposing the depth of the Republican War On Women... with a little help from misogynistic, right-wing sociopaths like Todd Akin (R-MO), Phil Gingrey (R-GA), Richard Mourdock (R-IN) and, most recently, Trent Franks (R-AZ). Polling has found, over the last couple of decades that women are breaking for the Democrats for very substantive reasons. Women prefer an increased role of government in protecting average families and the environment; women oppose military intervention and wars of choice; women support healthcare and welfare; women back restrictions of assault weapons; and women support affirmative action to achieve more equality.

Of the 100 women in the House, 62 are Democrats and of the 20 women senators, 16 are Democrats. Many of the House Republican women vote as stridently against women's issues as their male counterparts do. With the exceptions of Jaime Herrera Beutler (R-WA) and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) every Republican woman in the House is a straight-down-the-line opponent of every issue important to most American women. and both Beutler and Ros-Lehtinen are far worse on women's issues than even the most conservative Democratic men. 11 Republican women in the House have 100% anti-women voting records in the current session-- Virginia Foxx (R-NC), Renee Ellmers (R-NC), Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), Candice Miller (R-MI), Diane Black (R-TN), Susan Brooks (R-IN), Ann Wagner (R-MO), Kay Granger (R-TX), Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA), Jackie Walorski (R-IN), and Shelley Capito (R-WV).

Crystal Wright, who owns a p.r. firm in Washington, DC, uses the Twitter handle GOPBlackChick and identifies herself like this: "I'm a black, conservative woman. Wright winger." Last week, in an OpEd for The Guardian she identified her own party as stuck on stupid.

Stupid is as stupid does and, apparently, the Republican party didn't get Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal's "stupid memo" because it looks dumber by the day. After losing the 2012 presidential election the "GOP establishment" from former Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour to former GOP House Speaker Newt Gingrich and every white man in between acknowledged that the party must make "the tent" more welcoming to minorities and women-- where the votes increasingly are. So what does the GOP do? It keeps headlining white men behaving badly.

Americans were treated to a double feature of GOP stupidity this week brought to you by the senator from Arizona on 12 June. Republican Senator Jeff Flake had to apologize for his 15-year-old son's unsavory remarks on Twitter. According to Buzzfeed, Tanner Flake tweeted he would find "the faggot" who stole his bike and "beat the crap out of you." Tanner also posted screenshots of his scores from an online game "Fun Run" where he used the handle "n1ggerkiller."

If this isn't enough to make anyone's eyes roll in disgust, Buzzfeed reported that Tanner's Twitter account, which is now locked, revealed his repeated use of the racial slurs in January and February. Tanner made equally offensive comments on YouTube, including "nigger" and "faggot" along with calling Mexicans "scum of the Earth." Strong words for a 15-year-old, who also gleefully reminded everyone his father was a member of Congress, according Buzzfeed.

Issuing an apology, Senator Flake wrote:

"I'm very disappointed in my teenage son's words, and I sincerely apologize for the insensitivity. This language is unacceptable anywhere. Needless to say, I've already spoken with him about this, he has apologized, and I apologize as well."

The burning question is where did Tanner hear this kind of "unacceptable" language? Typically, children repeat things they've heard their parents say or those close to them. The fact that Tanner Flake used these words with impunity across various social media platforms for months suggests he's quite at ease with bigoted thinking. Whether the senator knew about it or not, it's just another example of why blacks and other ethnic minorities don't trust the GOP's words of inclusion.

On the heels of the son-of-Flake hate rant, the good ole boys of the House Judiciary Committee, chaired by Representative Bob Goodlatte (a Virginia Republican), thought now is the time to pass an abortion ban bill and alienate more women voters. As Washington Post reporter Dana Milbank aptly noted with sarcasm, not one of the 23 Republican members on the House Judiciary Committee is a woman. They are all white males dedicated to legislating women's health issues. Do you see the irony in this?

The bill would ban abortions after 20 weeks and has no exception for pregnancies resulting from rape and incest or when the mother's health is in jeopardy. In all his male wisdom, Representative Trent Franks of Arizona said there was no need to include an exception because "the incidence of rape resulting in pregnancy are very low". Interesting, particularly when studies prove otherwise.

The bill has no chance of passing, "even if it clears the House", Milbank wrote, because the Democrat majority in the Senate would almost certainly vote it down. Introducing the bill makes Republicans look stupid, and I say this as a member of the GOP and someone who's against abortion. Now is not the time to try and open up Roe v Wade.

America has a severe jobs and economic problem. Republicans in Congress should be focusing on those issues "not trying to legislate morality", as a good friend told me. I'm against abortion and the horror of how Kermit Gosnell killed live babies in Philadelphia is a tragic reminder that we as a society need to focus on the inhumanity of abortions through churches, charities and parenting that teaches morals and the value of life to young girls and boys.

After two presidential shellackings in 2008 and 2012, the Republican party seems to be stuck on stupid and doing business as usual. It's been three months since the Republican National Committee issued its 100-page autopsy report about what went wrong in 2012 and promised to reach out to more non-white voters.

The country is still waiting for the RNC to actually do something. What's evident is the GOP has the same white guys in charge doing and saying the same stupid things that lost them two presidential elections. The Republican party is rotting, but boys will be boys and that seems to be the way everyone in the establishment likes it.

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Conservative Men Further Ramp Up Their War Against Women

In the video above, from Tuesday evening, Rachel discusses Republican Party self-interest. She's a smart gal but she can't get her head around how exactly it is self-interest-- considering so many women vote nowadays-- for the Republican Party, as a party, to go so conspicuously out of its way to alienate and further alienate women as a class of people. If you ever had any doubt that the Republicans are waging a war against women-- dictated by their crazy conservative and misogynistic patriarchal base-- just watch the clip. And it's not just in primitive and backward Southern states like Mississippi. Republican governors and legislators in Wisconsin, Iowa and Ohio, for example, are going full bore against women as well. In fact, wherever Republicans control both the governor's mansion and the state legislature, they are passing legislation to control women's lives and force women to give up personal freedoms.

And nationally, despite the absolute certainty it will never become law, Eric Cantor and John Boehner have gone ahead and agreed to allow the House to vote on a bill by deformed and bitter Arizona closet case/woman hater Trent Franks that will criminalize abortion nationally after 20 weeks. But what Rachel didn't have time to get into in her excellent blow-by-blow in he latest developments in the brutal Republican War Against Women is a brand new development that was breaking while she was on the air. This one is primitive, savage and patriarchal... but not Republican. Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat and a longtime shill for the Military Industrial Complex (as well, alas, as the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee) declared he's removing a measure aimed at curbing sexual assault in the military from a defense spending bill.

Senator Kirsten E. Gillibrand, Democrat of New York, offered a measure that would give military prosecutors rather than commanders the power to decide which sexual assault crimes to try, with the goal of increasing the number of people who report crimes without fear of retaliation. Mr. Levin, Democrat of Michigan, said he would replace Ms. Gillibrand’s measure-- which has 27 co-sponsors, including four Republicans-- with one that would require a senior military officer to review decisions by commanders who decline to prosecute sexual assault cases. Although Mr. Levin’s measure would change the current system, it would keep prosecution of sexual assault cases within the chain of command, as the military wants.

Mr. Levin’s decision to support military brass in their resistance to Ms. Gillibrand’s proposal sets up a confrontation between a long-serving chairman of the committee with strong ties to the armed forces and a relatively new female member-- one of a record seven women serving on the committee-- who has made sexual assault in the military a signature issue.

“They basically embrace the status quo here,” said Senator Barbara Boxer, Democrat of California, a co-sponsor of Ms. Gillibrand’s bill. “It’s outrageous.”

A recent Pentagon survey found that an estimated 26,000 assaults took place last year. Senior military officials have repeatedly traipsed to Capitol Hill this spring to lament the problem but have been ridiculed by members of both parties of the Armed Services Committee for failing to make a dent in the problem.

In an odd twist Tuesday, Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont, told Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel that Congress could seek to replace commanders in power with state prosecutors to deal with the military sexual assault cases. “To do things as they’ve always been done is not acceptable,” Mr. Leahy said.

Mr. Leahy made his comments during a spending hearing that included Mr. Hagel and Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. “I’m just throwing that out there,” Mr. Leahy said. “I’m not looking for an answer.”

State courts already have the authority over rape and sexual assault cases should a victim choose to go to civilian law enforcement, but such cases are rare because the military prefers to prosecute its own personnel.

“If word gets out that the military justice system is not properly attentive to these cases, military personnel will vote with their feet,” said Eugene R. Fidell, who teaches military justice at Yale Law School.

The House this week is expected to pass its own defense bill, which contains provisions to punish sexual assault crimes in the military more harshly and make it difficult for commanders to overturn convictions.

The Senate bill is also expected to include measures that would provide victims of sexual assault with a special military lawyer and that would automatically remove convicted sex offenders from the military. Other expected provisions would require a commander to provide written justification for any decision commuting or lessening a sentence after a guilty verdict in a court-martial.

Senator Claire McCaskill, Democrat of Missouri, is in the meantime still holding up the nomination of Lt. Gen. Susan Helms of the Air Force to become vice commander of the United States Space Command because General Helms overturned a jury conviction in a sexual assault case without public explanation.

“I continue to have deep concerns with Lieutenant General Helms’s decision, while a commander and courts-martial convening authority, to overturn the jury verdict of a military court-martial in which the jury found an Air Force officer guilty of sexual assault,” Ms. McCaskill said in remarks submitted to the Congressional Record.

Ms. Gillbrand may have a chance to renew her measure on the Senate floor this summer, something she will almost certainly seek. “Senator Gillibrand has nerves of steel,” Mr. Fidell said. “Whether her bill is what Congress should enact I don’t know, but I commend her for standing her ground.”

Levin, age 78, won't be seeking a 7th term in the Senate. This is another example of old men trying to control the lives of younger women. There's a deep generational and gender divide on these issues and it's tragic that a Democrat rather than some reactionary fossil like Chuck Grassley, Jim Inhofe, Richard Shelby or Pat Roberts would be holding the banner for Bronze Age misogyny-- and rape-- today.

UPDATE: A Message From The Fighters For Equality At The DCCC

Steve Israel and Co. are up in arms over the anti-Choice Republicans. Let's see how many of the top priority Frontline Democrats they fund-- like Matheson, Barrow and McIntyre for exampl-- vote with the Republicans on this.

An all-male group of House Republicans on the Judiciary Committee is expected to pass a bill today that will ban abortions nationally after 20 weeks of pregnancy. The measures makes no exception for cases of rape, incest or when the mother’s health is jeopardized.

Americans consistently rate jobs and the economy as their greatest concern, not re-fighting battles over a woman’s right to choose. The measure, sponsored by anti-woman zealot Trent Franks of Arizona, is expected to be sent to the full House for a vote next week and would effectively overturn Roe vs. Wade.

“Today, another all-male group of House Republicans will interject their ideology between a woman and her doctor, effectively overturn Roe vs. Wade, reverse our rights and open yet another front in the war on women. Yet again, House Republicans are trying to prove that they’re the most extreme, anti-woman legislature in American history,” said Emily Bittner of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. “House Republicans are blindly focusing on the tired ideological battles of the past like a woman’s right to choose, rather than focusing on problem-solving. And the American people know that every day House Republicans waste fighting over ideology is a day they refused to solve our country’s problems.”

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Is Chris Chrsitie Just Another Warrior In The Republican Party's Endless War Against Women?

You know, I always call it "the Republican Party War Against Women" but it would be more accurate to term it a "conservative" war against women, since the fear and hatred of women and the whole sick patriarchal thing is a bedrock of conservatism as we've been seeing in the reports about honor killings and violence against women around the world, always at the hands of conservative males. Joshua Henne at PolitickerNY.com hasn't bought into the media hype that Christie is a "moderate" on any issues, least of all women's issues. "Today," he wrote yesterday, "Chris Christie is keynoting the Governor’s Conference For Women in Trenton. Perhaps he should do more listening and less talking. Because while folks might say that Christie is a fighter, he’s made it painfully clear he’s not fighting for New Jersey’s women. In fact, he’s the one holding them back when it comes to both their health and fiscal well-being." That's another reason DWT has endorsed Barbara Buono for Governor of New Jersey and why we're helping her raise campaign funds. Back to Henne:

There’s nothing moderate about the extreme, right-wing, anti-woman agenda our state has borne witness to these past few years. Christie’s knuckle-dragging decisions and out-of-step ideology are hurting women and their families.

It’s been this way right from the jump. In 2010, Christie eliminated $7.4 million in his very first budget for basic reproductive healthcare services. This money included life-saving cancer screenings, pap tests and breast health services. In 2009, these funds helped over 136,000 patients. Last year, New Jersey’s family planning providers saw at least 33,000 fewer people-– a 24% drop. On Christie’s watch, six such centers have closed due to state cuts. Some patients immediately lost services and didn’t have access to other providers. Others experienced longer wait times or were forced to pay more out-of-pocket. The number of clinical breast exams alone performed at these providers fell from 70,506 in 2009 to 48,441 in 2012-– a 31% plunge.

Christie has since vetoed attempts to restore women’s health funding... four times. He claimed the state was broke. But just don't look too close into the palm of Christie’s hand-- as he protects a tax break for multi-millionaires, doles out over $2 billion in corporate subsidies and proposed $540 million in business tax cuts. It’s clear where his priorities lie, and it’s not with the women and families of New Jersey.

Rather than reflect Jersey values, Christie is firmly in line with the most severe fringe on women’s rights. He’s the state’s first governor to oppose abortion rights since Roe v. Wade, and was the first to ever speak at Trenton’s annual pro-life rally. It’s no surprise Christie defunded Planned Parenthood and hopscotched the country supporting extremist Republican candidates who would outlaw abortion in the cases of rape and incest. In fact, he endorsed a North Dakota Senate candidate who voted to make it a felony to perform an abortion.

It isn’t only health where Christie fails to have women’s best interests at heart. He’s also trying to buttress the glass ceiling with cement. Christie vetoed legislation making it illegal for companies to pay women less for the same work as their male counterparts. He even supported allowing this discrimination at companies hired by the state with New Jerseyans’ hard-earned tax dollars. Apparently, Christie simply doesn’t believe in equal pay for equal work.

Moreover, when Christie vetoed increasing the minimum wage, he prevented hundreds of thousands of women working low-wage jobs from getting a modest raise. And when Christie cut the Earned Income Tax Credit-- a program aimed at low-income workers-- women disproportionately felt the pinch. It’s no surprise there are more women who have fallen into poverty since Christie took office.

While his policies have been harsh, that’s not the sole way Christie has hammered women-- as he’s said some pretty rude things, as well. Let’s not forget when he beseeched reporters to “take the bat out on” State Senator Loretta Weinberg. Or when Christie called Assemblywoman Valerie Huttle “a jerk” for condemning his inappropriate use of the state police helicopter to watch his son’s baseball game and meet with Iowa fundraisers. Christie called Assembly Speaker Sheila Oliver a liar despite evidence backing up her side of the story about trying to set up a meeting on property taxes.

Sadly, Christie’s hasn’t only lashed out at elected officials. At one of his taxpayer-funded town hall meetings-- when a teacher pointed out that Christie demonizes teachers and only talks about how horrible schools are, while New Jersey is actually home to some of America’s best schools-- Christie lambasted that she only wanted to “put on a show and giggle every time I talk.” He then condescendingly said “I have no interest in answering your question.” Then, during a live-call in show, when asked if its fair to defund public education while sending his own kids to private schools, Christie angrily snapped, ”Hey Gail, you know what? It’s none of your business.” And when a protester interrupted his speech at a Mitt Romney rally, Christie contemptuously sneered, “Something may go down tonight, but its not going to be jobs, sweetheart.”

One would think Christie would stop his bull in a china shop routine when it came to caring for the women of New Jersey. But alas, he’s consistently unleashed a double-barreled assault upon them. Through word, deed, partisanship and policy proposals, Christie’s treated the women of New Jersey with both mocking and malice. What Christie says to women is pretty bad. What he’s doing to women is even worse, as he puts both their physical and economic health squarely in the crosshairs.

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Conservatives Can't Keep Up WIth Technological Developments

I wish I could remember his exact quote, but a high school history teacher impressed me by explaining how technological achievements galloped way ahead of society's ability to evolve spiritually, intellectually and morally to deal with those achievements. He said it so elegantly though. In her book, Murder in the Name of Honor, journalist/activist Rana Husseini makes a similar point about backward, morally-primitive conservatives and how they relate to women. Last weekend we looked at how horribly conservatives deal with women... and suddenly the Republican War Against Women was in a more international-- and timeless-- context.

Husseini's book deals with a litany of horrific crimes by conservative barbarians against women, including conservative barbarians who emigrate to more advanced countries, including our own. I noticed an ironic strand in her work about how technology and social media has lent itself to the murders and brutalizations of women, mostly by husbands, fathers and brothers. "A new addition to the list of murder weapons," she wrote, "is the mobile phone. In Kurdistan, where there has been a sudden influx of cheap mobile phones, men are using them to take photos and record audio and video clips of women and girls who are breaking social codes. These are then widely distributed, damaging women's reputations and putting their lives at risk. The first case is believed to have been in 2004, when footage of a seventeen year old girl having sex with a boy circulated in Erbil. Two days after the video was made public, the girl's family killed her... In 2006, 170 cases of mobile phone-related violence were recorded. By 2007, this figure had more than doubled to 350...

"Kurdistan [said an official of a women's rights NGO] is developing, but people still adhere to the old customs and traditions. And women are still the primary victims."

...The nineteen-year old Iraqi was, according to her father, murdered by her own in-laws, who took her to a picnic area and shot her seven times, Her crime: having an unknown number of her mobile phone.

...In another case that was reported in Al Hayat newspaper in 2003, a twenty-year old woman was stabbed to death by her brothers after she started listening to Um Kalthoum (a famous Arab singer known for her love songs). The brothers believed that her musical taste was evidence of an illicit affair, and, acting on their suspicion, killed her and then turned themselves into the police. Investigations later proved that the victim's husband had bought the tapes for his wife to listen to while he was away.



...[I]n August 2007, the Daily Telegraph reported a story about a young Saudi girl in Riyadh who was killed by her father after he walked into her room and found her chatting to a man on Facebook. The father reportedly beat up his daughter and then shot her to death.

The case remained unreported in Saudi Arabia until April 2008 when Saudi preacher Ali al-Maliki strongly criticized Facebook and called on the Saudi government to ban the internet site because it was corrupting Saudi youth.

"Facebook is a door to lust and young women and men are spending more on their mobile phones and the internet than they are spending on food," he said. The story was written up in the local press as an example of the "strife" that Facebook was causing in Saudi Arabia. Ali al-Maliki said women were posting "revealing pictures" and "Behaving badly" on the site, which has become very popular with young Saudis.

...In May 2007, nineteen-year old Shawbo Ali Rauf was taken from her home in Birmingham [England] to Iraqi Kurdistan where she was stoned to death, Her crime was having unknown numbers on her mobile phone-- which proved to her family that she was having an affair.

Conservatives don't "trust" new technology. It should have come as no surprise that Turkish conservative Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan started blaming Twitter and Facebook when people in Istanbul demonstrated against her corruption for selling off the city's most beloved park to wealthy developers for a shopping mall. I don't think he has a Twitter handle but he called social media "a menace." Dictators and authoritarians have always hated media they can't control. "Now we have a menace that is called Twitter," Erdogan said. "The best examples of lies can be found there. To me, social media is the worst menace to society."

Unsurprisingly, news and rumours about the marches quickly spread on Twitter, which appeared to have galvanised support in other parts of Turkey. Police used teargas on demonstrators in Turkey's biggest city Istanbul, and also in Izmir and the capital Ankara, which sparked further outcry.

Protests were then held across the country, and nearly 2,000 people are said to have been arrested in 67 towns and cities.

Erdogan attacked Twitter for spreading misinformation and helping to fuel the unrest in Turkey. Perhaps he was referring to tweets such as these...

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Conservatives-- A Clear And Present Danger To Women The World Over

Conservative immigrants are not adequately screened. I've been reading a fascinating-- and horrifying-- book by Jordanian journalist and activist Rana Husseini, Murder in the Name Of Honor. The book goes beyond Jordan-- and beyond just the patriarchal practice of "Honor" Killing to the whole panoply of violence against women, basically a more extreme version of what Republican Party War On Women stalwarts, Lou Dobbs and Erick Erickson, have been yammering about this week on GOP propaganda outlets. The conservative practice of taking child brides, which at least isn't about murdering women, is one of the many manifestations of how conservative males try to assert their dominance over women... even in "advanced" countries.

Last week, the Atlantic reported on the rise of child marriages among desperate Syrian refugees. It's gigantic in India, where a 14 year old is legally considered marriage material. And in Uganda, "almost two million minors are forced or lured into alleged marriage." 46% of women under 18 are child brides. It's worse in Niger (75%) and Chad (72%).

Child marriage negatively impacts on the girls and their children and can affect generations ahead of them.

“These children have no say in the marriage, are prone to violence and sexually transmitted infections and other ills,” said Dr. V. Chandra-Mouli from the World Health Organisation.

He further explained that the child brides are cut off from their family and social network which creates a huge health effect on them and then because the girl does not have a say, her children also lack education or are married off at an early age.

Early marriages and the resultant pregnancies are the biggest cause of deaths among 15 to 19 year old girls, accounting for 20% of maternal deaths. Those who survive the pregnancies suffer lasting complications like fistula and disability.

Dr. Mouli said that the parents who marry off these children give several justifications which include poverty, lack of education, lack of laws prohibiting it, social-religious considerations and sexual activity of the child, which should not be used as the excuse. He said that parents simply want to get rid of the girl so that they do not have the burden of looking after her.

This week CNN looked into the child bride problem in Saudi Arabia, where young girls are sold to older men. Saudi Arabia's big reform, recently, was to set 16 as the minimum age for these weddings-- unless the girl's mother approves. Then there's no age limit.

We've covered a lot of the violence against women problems in Jordan already, here,here and here, so let's just move on to some other countries. Can you guess which one this is?

It has been argued that it is unfair that men can currently rely on a 'fit of fury' as a partial justification for killing their unfaithful wives, while women who have been physically abused by their husbands and who have killed them out of the fear of further abuse have been denied any such defense, and have no choice but to face the straightforward charge of murder.

Yes, barbaric Afghanistan enlightened Britain. And when reform groups attempted to change the law, conservative shithead, Nicholas Phillips, Baron Phillips of Worth Matravers, Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales, stood up firmly for male ownership rights and the significance of sexual fidelity. OK, England... how about this one, which country? "A rape victim can be prosecuted for adultery if she can't produce four male witnesses to the assault." Iraq-- after the U.S. occupied the place! In Iraq, another war-torn region of the world, women's rights have deteriorated dramatically since the start of the U.S.-led coalition's occupation of the country... There are currently no shelters for women in Baghdad or Basra... When U.S. forces overthrew Saddam Hussein, the Bush administration proclaimed that women's rights would be at the center of its project to make Iraq a democratic model for the rest of the Arab world. But violence against women is rampant, rising every day... Beheadings, rapes, beatings, suicide, genital mutilation, trafficking and child abuse (masquerading as marriage) of girls as young as nine are all on the increase-- and woman who dares to protest will immediately find her life in great peril." That's some model!

In the E.U., there has been a tendency to just consider violence against women in the immigrant community an unpleasant fact of life. It is simply regarded as a "cultural expression, and nothing to get involved in. The specifics of these cases across Europe-- let alone in Kurdistan and Pakistan-- are too horrible and too depressing for me to publish. And there really is only one thing that every single case, across all countries, has in common. The perps are always conservatives. We have enough problems with degenerate conservative American citizens. Remember how almost all of them voted against the Violence Against Women Act earlier this year? Am I urging that immigration officials profile would-be applicants for conservatism and keep them out? Of course I am. Who sane wouldn't?

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Why Are Bobby Jindal And Sam Brownback So Unpopular With Voters In Their Deeply Red States?

Last week there was a minor news buzz about how unpopular Bobby Jindal has become among Louisiana voters, 60% of whom agree he's doing a lousy, unsatisfactory job. His approval rating had plummeted in less than a year from 51% to 38%, coincident with his embrace of the ideologically-driven Austerity agenda for his state-- state cuts to higher education and health care, plans to privatize the charity hospital system and the governor’s proposed state tax overhaul, the last of which is especially hated. 63% oppose the plan to abolish personal and corporate income taxes and raise state sales taxes, while only 27% support it.

There may be an even more hated governor lurking in the fringes-- and he was chosen to give the weekly Republican Party radio address yesterday, Kansas reactionary Sam Brownback, who, like Jindal, has seen his approval rating disappear as he decided to use his state as a laboratory for failed European Austerity agendas. And of course, he actually used the speech to tout his unpopular tax policy as something everyone ought to try. Like Jindal he's trying to eliminate the state income tax and the services it pays for.

A poll just over a month ago shows that Brownback and his Austerity agenda so unpopular among Kansas voters, that he could have troubling winning reelection in 2014. His approval rating, 37%, is even lower than Jindal's.

Brownback has a negative -15 job approval rating, with 37% of Kansas voters approving and 52% disapproving of his performance as governor. 72% of moderates disapprove of his performance as well as 30% of Republicans and 66% of independents.

Brownback’s plan to phase out the state’s income tax is almost as unpopular as he is, with 48% of voters opposed and 37% supportive. 65% of moderates and 56% of independents oppose the plan. Even 34% of somewhat conservative voters and 28% of Republicans are opposed to the proposal to overhaul the income tax.

And then there's the Republican War Against Women, in which Kansas is a major battlefront and in which Brownback in a leading general. Friday night the Republican-dominated state legislature gave final approval to the worst anti-Choice legislation-- clearly unconstitutional-- in the country, declaring that life begins at fertilization. It passed in the House 90-30 and in the Senate 28-10. Brownback will sign it and it takes effect on July 1.

The declaration that life begins at fertilization is embodied in "personhood" measures in other states. Such measures are aimed at revising their constitutions to ban all abortions, and none have been enacted, though North Dakota voters will have one on the ballot in 2014.

But Kansas lawmakers aren't trying to change the state constitution, and the measure notes that any rights suggested by the language are limited by decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court. It declared in its historic Roe v. Wade decision in 1973 that women have a right to obtain abortions in some circumstances, and has upheld that decision while allowing increasing restrictions by states.

Thirteen states, including Missouri, have such language in their laws, according to the National Right to Life Committee.

Sen. David Haley, a Kansas Democrat who opposed the bill, zeroed in on the statement, saying that supporters of the bill were pursuing a "Taliban-esque" course of letting religious views dictate policy limiting women's ability to make decisions about health care and whether they'll have children.

And in the House, Rep. John Wilson, a Lawrence Democrat, complained that the bill was "about politics, not medicine."

"It's the very definition of government intrusion in a woman's personal medical decisions," he said.

Brownback has signed multiple anti-abortion measures into law, and the number of pregnancies terminated in the state has declined 11 percent since he took office in January 2011.

I'm going to just take a guess that many of those poll respondents who have made Brownback one of the least popular governors in America, are women.

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Can the GOP learn that pretending to be inclusive isn't the same thing as being inclusive?

The result of this deception is very strange to tell,
for when I fool the people I fear, I fool myself as well. . . .
Make believe you're brave, and the trick will take you far.
You may be as brave as you make believe you are.

--  "I Whistle a Happy Tune," from The King and I

"The spectacle of the Republicans, like teenagers longing to be invited to the prom, floundering about in search of more popularity with American voters, would be comical if it didn’t present the sad picture of a once great and proud party—the party of Lincoln and Eisenhower—working its way into near irrelevance."

-- Elizabeth Drew, in "Are the Republicans Beyond
Saving?," in the March 21 NYRB

"“Republicans like [Alaska Rep. Don Young] will soon be extinct, and that's a good thing for the GOP. But in the meantime, when they make these remarks, it makes it harder for those of us who are trying to grow the base of our party."

-- GOP consultant John Weaver ("who has worked for moderate Republicans in recent years") in The Fix's "Don Young and the Archie Bunker Problem"

by Ken

Sorry about the performance of "I Whistle a Happy Tune," but after sampling 20 or 25 "real" performances on YouTube, I was kind of relieved to settle for this one. (Do the people who post these clips really not know how wretched they are?)

You see, we're going to be talking tonight about pretending to be things you aren't. It's a strategy being pressed on 2013 Republicans by consultants as well as voices within the party, and I'm getting the weird feeling that they don't see the difference between pretending to be something and being it. And I couldn't help thinking of Anna in The King and I, and the lesson she tries to teach her son Louis at the top of the show. But the point here, surely (she makes it pretty explicitly), is that in the act of pretending to be brave, you may actually wind up being brave.

I'm not as optimistic about the strategy being pressed on depressed R's.

"Bemused" is what I've been, watching from the sidelines as those R's -- coming as close as they're apparently capable of coming to self-reflection -- at least consider the possibility that their 2012 electoral disaster was self-inflicted, that Republicans had come to be viewed by alamring numbers of U.S. voters as a party of exclusion, as a party whose only mission is to defend the interests of the 1%.

I had occasion to wonder the other day about the claim of some of these self-accusing elements in the party that they need to hearken back to the days of their old "big tent." The Republicans had a big tent? When was this? Even when Richard Nixon was fashioning the new Republican Party by adding Southern racists to the seething Silent Majority of Americans sick to death of challenges to orthodoxy and the status quo, it was a gathering of people housed in a number of modest-size tents coexisting on the same campground because they were all so mad at all those damn commies and hippies and assorted other riffraff out there.

The only difference, really, it seems to me, is that the tents have gotten even smaller. But the purpose of the little tents was always to exclude the people who weren't inside them, even if for strategic purposes they voted in multi-tent unison on a lot of issues, especially when manipulated with the finesse of a Nixon or a Ronald Reagan or even a George W. Bush for as long "Chimpy the Prez" could hold his coaltion of excluders together.

A COALITION OF EXCLUDERS ISN'T THE
EASIEST THING TO HOLD TOGETHER

Rather obviously, you have to wonder how long it's going to be before they start excluding one another. Already, for example, there's a deep fissure between right-wing excluders who worry that they've been somehow perceived as too exclusionary and right-wing excluders who believe that 2012 happened because they weren't exclusionary enough.

I'll leave that to them to slug out. And among many considerations of the implications for Republicans if they don't come to grips with their exclusionary tendencies, I can recommend Elizabeth Drew's "Are the Republicans Beyond Saving?" in the March 21 NYRB, whose opening I quote atop this post. I just want to register a modest note of bemusement about this notion that the R's' problem is being perceived as too exclusionary. As too hating of (take your pick) women, immigrants, Hispanic voters, LGBT voters, etc.

What bemuses me is this apparent notion that the problem is perception. I look at it differently. If you get all huffy about being unloved because mean people keep saying you're bigoted, changing the perception may required that you be less bigoted.

Which brings me to the other piece from which I quoted atop this post, the post "Don Young and the Archie Bunker Problem" by Aaron Blake and Juliet Eilperin today on washingtonpost.com's "The Fix." It begins:

Less than two weeks after the Republican National Committee unveiled its 2012 election autopsy an emphasis on broadening the party's tent, Rep. Don Young (R-Alaska) used an ethnic slur for Latinos in a radio interview Thursday. Young's comments served as the latest wake-up call for Republicans in their nascent effort to woo a more diverse cross-section of America.

The message: whatever effort they make toward modernizing their brand, there will always be a few Archie Bunkers out there -- people, like the lead character in the 70's sitcom "All in the Family," who are unconcerned with or unwilling to moderate their tone. And these days more than in the past, their offhand remarks can derail the most carefully orchestrated PR campaign.

Young, 79, set off a fresh round of recriminations and hand-wringing among Republican leaders while talking about the people his father employed on his California ranch years ago.

"We used to hire 50 or 60 wetbacks and -- to pick tomatoes," Young said in the interview with KRBD. "You know, it takes two people to pick the same tomatoes now. It's all done by machine."

Oops!!! Or should I say: Whoops!!!

Now Don Young is an old DWT fave, not so much because he's an excluder and hater as because he's a crook, a man who seems capable of sizing up any situation that comes to his attention from the standpoint "What's in it for me?" (As a result of which, he tends to find himself facing far more than even the normal congressional share of big-league "What's in it for me?" opportunities.)

A constant thread in Aaron Blake and Juliet Eilperin's "Fix" piece is that R's are unjustly associated with louts like Don Young, or singled out for unfair heightened scrutiny, or subjected to a double standard -- the suggestion being that a Democrat could get away with reminiscing about "wetbacks." It seems to me, though, that on the contrary R's get away with far more than they're gotcha-ed for.

Various and sundry Republicans are quoted to the effect that Don Young isn't their guy, and they're all being tarnished by the same brush. And in the particular case of immigration, it's true that some Republicans are less exclusing than "Wetback Don." However, most of the Rs who are "enlightened" on immigration merely have a more "enlightened" view of the importance to the U.S. economy of all that cheap labor, which comes doubly cheap because so many of the immigrant workers -- directly contrary to the myth of being benefits sponges -- don't claim any benefits at all despite all the taxes they pay.

THE OCCASIONAL GOP "INCLUDERS"
ARE APT TO BE SERIAL "EXCLUDERS"

In addition, Republicans who happen to be "includers" with respect to one unfavored group tend to be extra-exclusive with many of the others. So those who may hold arguably inclusive views with regard to, say, immigration, or LGBT equality, are apt to be viral excluders when it comes to, say, the "47%" of so-called "takers not makers." It's a weird world indeed where cynical paper-pushers who produce primarily "deals" that don't produce anything except big profits for themselves and their cronies are considered "makers" while people who do the actual work in our society are dismissed as "takers."

A favorite GOP-apologist theme, for example, is that they're victimized as the perpetrators of a "so-called" War on Women. But again, the best way to answer such objections is to stop waging war on women. During the 2012 campaign, for example, when R's found themselves stuck with the obscenely frothing abortion imbecilities of Senate nominees Todd Akin (Missouri) and Richard Mourdock (Indiana), Howie and I pointed out frequently that there was no difference whatsoever between their beliefs about abortion and the law and those of right-wing darling Paul Ryan. But Ryan, unlike the neanderthal Akin and Mourdock, knows how to put a smiley face on his ignorance and savagery.

If Akin or Mourdock were to try whistling a happy tune, the effect would be creepy. (I think it's important, thought, that we not ignore their pre-2012 electoral successes. They were every bit as creepy before, just not as indiscreet, or perhaps more important, no so brightly spotlit when they were being creepy.) To me, Paul Ryan and the less visibly crackpotty R's are even creepier when they pretend to be wise or just or courageous.

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