RNC Finance Chair Resigns After Accusations of Decades of Sexual Misconduct

Trump and buddy Steve Wynn - two sexual predators?

With the dust not even settled over the Donald Trump/porn star affair - -one rumor even had Melania Trump moving out of the White House - the Republican Party has had yet another reminder that it has become the party of sexual impropriety even as the shrills among the Christofascists lecture others of how to live their lives even as their own and those of their "dear leader" are a train wreck by standards of normal decency.  In the latest example of Republican hypocrisy, involves now former RNC finance chair Steve Wynn who has resigned his post after a lengthy Wall Street Journal piece that details decades of sexual misconduct that rivals that of Harvey Weinstein.  While Republicans called upon Democrats to return contributions they received from Weinstein, the revelations about Wynn - a "friend" of Der Trumpenführer who seems to have emulated Trump's misconduct - , have been met with utter silence.   A piece in New York Magazine looks at the all to common GOP hypocrisy.  Here are excerpts:

When Harvey Weinstein was accused of decades of sexual misconduct in October, Republicans gleefully went on the attack. Weinstein was a prominent Democratic donor. How, they wondered, in high moral dudgeon, could liberal lawmakers live with themselves knowing that they’d profited from such ill-gotten gains?

Considering Weinstein’s limited role in Democratic politics — plus the inconvenient fact that a confessed sexual harasser of the Republican persuasion currently sits in the Oval Office — this was a transparently bad-faith argument from the beginning. But the GOP, as is its wont, pushed it vigorously enough to entice the usual doltish members of the mainstream media to take notice. And Democrats eventually did, too; many returned their donations from Weinstein.

Flash forward to Friday. In a long and thorough investigative piece, The Wall Street Journal reported that Las Vegas casino magnate and finance chair of the Republican National Committee, Steve Wynn, has been accused of sexual misconduct by many employees over the course of decades. The allegations are Weinstein-esque: They include Wynn forcing a manicurist to have sex with him, requesting sexual contact during massage sessions, and more.

The Republican response so far: almost total radio silence. Wynn did step down from his finance-chair position on Saturday afternoon, but under unclear circumstances.

Wynn, unlike Weinstein, is a serious power player on the political stage. . . . he has exerted considerable influence over Republican state-level races and national politics alike. . . . He has donated more than $2.5 million to the Republican Governors Association since 2012 and more than $200,000 to Republicans in 2017 alone. Just last week, as Democrats are happy to point out, Wynn and RNC chair Ronna Romney McDaniel hosted a fundraiser at Mar-a-Lago to celebrate the one-year anniversary of President Trump’s inauguration.

Will Republicans who demanded Democrats give back all of Harvey Weinstein’s money follow their own advice when it comes to actual insider Steve Wynn? The party’s silence on the story a full day after it broke is an indication that nobody should be holding their breath.

The entire story illustrates, once again, that warfare between the parties is asymmetric. Because the Democratic Party positions itself as an entity trying, however haltingly, to do the right thing, it is held to reasonably high standards by both its voters and society at large. Republicans, meanwhile, have waltzed so far down the path of moral degradation in recent years that they are no longer expected to maintain the appearance of propriety. Democrats (rightly) feel pressure to clean their house of sullied lawmakers from John Conyers to Al Franken; Republicans can grudgingly come to terms with the idea of an accused child molester in the Senate.

Because the GOP has adopted a mantra of shamelessness, it can continue to claim the virtuous high ground while simultaneously contradicting its own words at every turn.

[A]s Steve Wynn and his millions of dollars show, the [Democrat] party should reform itself on its own terms, not because Republicans pressure them to. The GOP forfeited that privilege a long time ago.

The Flagrant Sexual Hypocrisy of Conservative Republican Males

I make a point in many of my posts of highlighting the hypocrisy of Republicans who find themselves embroiled in sex related scandals for several reasons.  First, to point out that with the exception of Anthony Weiner, the scandals almost always involve Republicans, not Democrats.  Second, to underscore the hypocrisy of both those caught in the scandals, but also of those who vote for them.  These voters feign piety yet display a level of hypocrisy that would make the biblical Pharisees blush (e.g., the highest. use of Internet porn is in the Bible Belt; evangelical Christians have the highest divorce rate, etc.).  In the wake of "family values", "pro-life" Republican Tim Murphy's decision to resign his seat in Congress after being caught in an abortion scandal, a column in the New York Times offers a welcomed compilation of a number of Republican hypocrites.  Here are excerpts:

The most recent culprit in the category of anti-abortion double-think is Tim Murphy, a Pennsylvania Republican who on Thursday announced he would resign from his House seat this month. Two days before, Mr. Murphy had voted for a bill that would ban abortion after 20 weeks on the medically dubious grounds that, at that age, a fetus can experience pain. 

Then The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette published texts revealing that when Mr. Murphy’s mistress thought she was pregnant, he urged her to consider an abortion.

Sound familiar? Perhaps Mr. Murphy’s story calls to mind the Tennessee congressman Scott DesJarlais, who is similarly pro-life in the streets, pro-choice in the sheets.

In 2015, Mr. DesJarlais voted in favor of a 20-week ban, and boasted of a “100 percent pro-life voting record” while in Congress. Meanwhile, The Chattanooga Times Free Press reported that he supported his ex-wife’s decision to have two abortions (no word on how far along she was) and encouraged a patient with whom he was having an affair to terminate her pregnancy as well. Like Mr. Murphy, he is a co-sponsor of the abortion bill that passed on Tuesday. It’s a child, not a choice, abortion opponents tell us. Unless the pregnancy is embarrassing and super-inconvenient and an impediment to your political future, in which case it’s merely a clump of cells.
 The double standards employed by some members of the “do as I say, not as I do” Christian right are nothing new. Show me a senator who votes against gay marriage, and, at least in one infamous case, I’ll show you a guy who’s soliciting same-sex encounters in the airport men’s room. (Hello there, Larry Craig!)

Show me another Republican senator who made his name as a “pro-family advocate” and I’ll show you a guy whose phone number showed up in a Washington madam’s little black book. (Howdy, David Vitter!)

Show me the far-right speaker of the House, a man with perfect scores from the National Right to Life Committee and the Christian Coalition, and I’ll show you a guy who, as a high-school wrestling coach, set up a chair in front of the boys’ shower the better to ogle his protégés, and who was eventually jailed as a serial child molester. (Dennis Hastert, come on down!)

We’ve been down this road of duplicity before. The televangelist who prayed, alongside his wife, for the return of traditional morals, admitted to having sex with — and was accused of rape by — a 21-year-old church secretary, and found to have paid her $279,000. The congressman who voted for the Defense of Marriage Act was sexting with his underage male pages.

Scandals roll by so frequently that there is, by now, an expected script: the shocking revelation, the tearful confession, the up-from-the-ashes reinstatement plea or re-election campaign, garlanded with declarations of “God/my wife/Willie Robertson, star of ‘Duck Dynasty’ has forgiven me, why can’t you?” Perhaps the most shocking part of Mr. Murphy’s story is that he elected to quit, rather than scream “Fake news!” or sit back and wait for a new story to eclipse his hypocrisy, as Mr. DesJarlais did.

But what Mr. Murphy’s moral flexibility ultimately reveals is that, for these particular hard-line anti-abortion politicians, it’s not about fetal pain or the sanctity of life. It’s all about control — whether you’re telling a woman she can’t have an abortion, or forcing a woman to get one.

To this list we need to add former Virginia 2nd District Congressman Ed Schrock who voted anti-gay in Congress and meanwhile was seeking gay sex trysts.    Of course, there are even more than could be added to the list besides Schrock.

Hypocrisy on Parade: Craigslist M4M Ads Surge During CPAC

UPDATED: Apparently the Human Rights Campaign ran this ad on Grindr in the Washington, DC, area during the CPAC convention:

As noted earlier, the hypocrisy of these "conservatives" and evangelical Christians is breathtaking.

There's been lots of media coverage of the Conservative Political Action Conference ("CPAC") this past week where alt-right types, Christofascist extremists, and lots of closeted gays gathered in Washington, DC, to push their extremist agenda and prostitute themselves to Trump's new neo-fascist regime.  Except you didn't see or hear anything about the closeted gays unless you were to check out the Craigslist ads for male on male sex.  On those pages one found one of the hallmarks of Republican and conservative gatherings: lots of closeted men out of town and on the make for a taste of forbidden fruit.  (Something similar happens at every GOP convention.  On a somewhat related note, here in Hampton each year when Hampton University hosts a gathering of conservative and supposedly non-alcohol drinking pastors, the nearby liquor stores sell out).  Queerty checked out the Craigslist ads and offers a sampling of the hypocrisy of the Bible thumpers at CPAC.  Here are excerpts:

Milo may have had his invitation rescinded, but let’s not fool ourselves thinking he was the only gay in the village.

The Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), Washington D.C.’s annual gathering of regressive thinkers from all walks of life, actually has a cruisey gay underbelly.

Last year we heard from some of these exotic birds when a journalist roamed the halls and arranged interviews via Grindr.

This year we have a few deeper glimpses into their mating rituals through Craigslist personals. Yep, those things are still around.

Here’s what’s going on around the convention that Mike Pence probably isn’t going to mention during his key note address:

“Any other CPAC guys here?” begins one innocent-sounding ad.

Then he gets to the meat of it:

“I’m looking for one or more guys who want to have some fun. Will be here til Sunday. Maybe we could meet at the reception tonight, or over a drink at the bar…or f*ck it, we could just go back to my room and dive right in. Got room to myself the rest of the week/end (girlfriend had to leave), so I’m ready to let a little loose.”

Charming, his girlfriend is one lucky lady.

Another ad from a man who signs off as just “Dad” is searching for different kind of Red State Special:

“If you are a real hot boy, who is clean and discreet and thinks straight, like I do and you have a certain ‘itch’ that need scratching, please contact this ‘DILF’, next door type who is a great lover and a really nice man and the possessor of just what you need!
You should do this. It will be good for you and make you a happier boy. HMU.”

Then there’s the guy looking for a “cornfed Republican,” and preferably someone like “those Romney boys.”

They’re all yours, we’ll pass.

And let’s not leave out the “CPAC Aryan mil jock ISO dom owner,” because he just sounds like a real catch.

Will these guys find what they’re looking for? Will Ben Carson fall asleep on stage? Will Ricky Perry answer one or more of these ads?

Is Rush Limbaugh in Trouble?

One of the most partisan and hypocrisy filled mouth pieces of today's hate and bigotry filled Republican Party is Rush Limbaugh.  Together with Christofascist professional Christians, Limbaugh has exerted undue influence over the GOP and has  provided legitimacy to some of the ugliest elements and most insane conspiracy therapists of the lunatic far right.  Now, thankfully, it appears that Limbaugh may be in trouble in terms of radio stations broadcasting his nut job propaganda  and that his oce successful business model if you will is crumbling.  A piece in Politico looks at Limbaugh's potential fall.  Here are highlights:

Earlier this year, as that unmistakable bass line of the Pretenders’ My City Was Gone faded into the background, Rush Limbaugh opened his daily three-hour broadcast with characteristic bombast. “[According to the] latest research data,” he intoned, “the audience is expanding at near geometric proportions, as people seek guidance, answers, explanations, information, and an answer to the basic question, ‘What the hell is happening out there?’"

Whether “what the hell is happening out there”—in particular, the remarkable political rise of Donald Trump—has been good or bad for the Republican Party, or the country at large, there’s no denying one thing: It’s been great for talk radio. Ratings are finally ticking up, after a moribund four years. And conservative radio gabbers are driving the political conversation in a way that they didn’t when allegedly mushy moderates like John McCain and Mitt Romney were the standard-bearers of the country’s conservative party.

This has been particularly true for Limbaugh . . . . And yet, there are signs that all is not well in the Limbaugh radio empire. Because even as his influence is sky high and his dominance at the top of talk radio remains unchallenged, as a business proposition, Limbaugh’s show is on shaky ground. In recent years, Limbaugh has been dropped by several of his long-time affiliates, including some very powerful ones: He’s gone from WABC in New York, WRKO in Boston and KFI in Los Angeles, for example, and has in many cases been moved onto smaller stations with much weaker signals that cover smaller areas.

Why? Because four years after Limbaugh called Georgetown law student Sandra Fluke a “slut” on air, spurring a major boycott movement, reams of advertisers still won’t touch him. He suffers from what talk radio consultant Holland Cooke calls a “scarlet letter among national brand advertisers.” And for someone who has said that “confiscatory ad rates” are a key pillar of his business, that spells trouble. (Limbaugh ignored multiple interview requests.)

Limbaugh’s extremely lucrative eight-year contract—estimated to be worth roughly $38 million a year—is up this summer. What will happen to “America’s Anchorman,” as Limbaugh quasi-ironically refers to himself, once the contract is up, is anybody’s guess. Because as he is learning, political power does not necessarily a stellar business make.

But for all his business acumen, Limbaugh’s show has been a harder sell since 2012—even if he does still impishly refer to commercial time-outs as “obscene profit timeouts.” If you had to pinpoint a moment when Limbaugh’s business model began to turn, you’d have to look to the Sandra Fluke incident, when he referred to the Georgetown law student who spoke in front of Congress in favor of the Obamacare contraception mandate as a “slut” and a “prostitute.” It was a self-inflicted error that Limbaugh has never recovered from.
[B]y attacking Fluke in such grotesque terms, Limbaugh broke a cardinal rule of radio—not to mention polite society, says Darryl Parks, a radio industry veteran and former Clear Channel news-talk format chief based in Cincinnati: “Don’t beat up on a woman, and don’t beat up on a [young person].” In one fell swoop, he had done both. The backlash was swift and unforgiving—including from Fluke herself, who rejected Limbaugh’s multiple on-air apologies. (It didn’t help matters that Limbaugh said he was sorry for “acting like … leftists” by attacking her in such personal terms.) Politicians, including not a few Republicans, scorched Limbaugh.

The anti-Limbaugh faction came up with the social media-friendly slogan “Flush Rush.” The group’s efforts met considerable success in the months that followed. Dozens of companies, including Netflix, JCPenney and Sears, announced they would boycott Limbaugh’s show. Most have yet to return. And the increasing popularity of platforms like Twitter, which can be used to stoke outrage and promote boycotts, makes it highly unlikely they ever will.
 The Sandra Fluke incident “did a lot of harm to talk radio,” Darryl Parks says. “Thirty-eight percent of revenue disappeared overnight.” . . . . after the Fluke incident, entire stations—or indeed, the entire format of talk radio—were deemed no-go zones by blue chip brands.

JCPenney PR executive Kate Coultas explains this via email. “We [now] have a general ‘no run’ policy in place to not advertise on any kind of political program,”

In the end, the collateral damage was significant. The Wall Street Journal Radio Network, for example, which broadcast news updates on stations across the country, could not withstand the loss of ad revenue from brands like Penney. It shuttered completely in 2014—a decision directly attributable to the Fluke fallout, says one talk radio consultant. . . . . Even when they could sell ads, radio stations found that they had to move them at fire-sale prices. The Wall Street Journal reported in 2015 that talk radio ad revenue was falling and that “advertising on talk stations now costs about half what it does on music stations, given comparable audience metrics.”

[T]he biggest brands still stay away from Limbaugh. In 2015, the top five national radio advertisers were T-Mobile, Comcast, Home Depot, GEICO and Sprint. But you won’t hear ads from those giants on the Rush Limbaugh Show. Instead, most of Limbaugh’s spots are so-called “direct-response ads” (“enter the promo code Rush”) from the likes of home security companies, gold and silver purveyors and flower delivery outfits.

The move to smaller stations in big markets has apparently hammered Limbaugh’s syndicator. In the old days, Premiere Networks “could make a lot of money through fees—a million [dollars] a year or more from single stations,” says John Mainelli, a long-time radio executive who was WABC’s program director when Limbaugh made the move from Sacramento to New York. 

Now, because Limbaugh has been moved to so many smaller stations that pay much smaller fees, Premiere is “not collecting anywhere near what they used to collect in fees,” says Mainelli. And Mainelli points out that with the decline in ad revenue since 2012, the fees have become even more important: Their reduction has only added insult to Premere’s injury. . . . On top of that, it stands to reason that if Limbaugh is moved to enough lower-watt stations, his ratings will eventually suffer. None of his show’s woes have hurt Limbaugh personally, of course. He has a guaranteed contract dating back to 2008 that runs into July. But with his deal coming to an end in a few months, it’s an open question what the future will hold for the “Doctor of Democracy.”
 Most of the people I spoke with for this story speculate that Limbaugh will probably stay with Premiere. . . . . the big question is what that “right price” will be. It almost certainly won’t be as nice as his current arrangement, a contract so lucrative it allowed Limbaugh to buy a Gulfstream G550 he dubbed “EIB 1.” . . . A big question is whether Limbaugh would be willing to countenance a significant pay cut, particularly were it to become public. Like Donald Trump, a big part of Limbaugh’s brand is “winning,” after all. 

Limbaugh has been a toxic influence on America's politics and political discourse.  Candidly, the collapse of his "empire" and the demise of his toxic influence would be an extremely welcome development. 

Virginia GOP House of Representatives Candidate Shares His Love For “Amateur Anal” Porn

click image to enlarge

While Republicans and their Christofascists supporters continue their hysteria over transgender restroom use and anti-LGBT agenda and anti-sex agenda, Mike Webb, a Republican candidate in Virginia’s 8th District has underscored the hypocrisy of the GOP by posted a photo on Twitter that accidentally includes a glimpse of his pornography tastes.  Once again we are reminded that it is almost always those most concerned about what happens in other peoples lives and bedrooms who are the ones that you most need to worry about and/or who are flocking to online porn sites.  The Daily Caller looks at this case of another "family values" Republican.  Here are excerpts:

Mike Webb initially ran as a Republican for the 8th District seat, which covers Arlington and Alexandria and is considered safely Democratic. He lost the nomination, though, and is now running as an independent, though he is, to say the least, unlikely to win.

Webb published a post on his campaign page Monday that included a screenshot of his computer desktop. And as it happened, Webb hadn’t bothered to close his pornography tabs when he took his screen grab.

“IVONE SEXY AMATEUR” may have a completely innocent meaning, but a quick Google search indicates the video is featured on RedTube and other very X-rated websites. Similarly, Layla Rivera is a porn star. Something about her is apparently tight, and it probably isn’t her relationship with her father.

Interestingly, even though Webb’s pornography gaffe was spotted within a few minutes of the picture going up, as of press time the post remains active an unedited.

One truly cannot make up stuff this good!

Republican Legislators Larger Bathroom Threat than Transgender Individuals

One of the scare tactics used by Republican legislators in Georgia and North Carolina (as well as here in Virginia) to push for passage of anti-gay and anti-transgender laws is to depict transgender women as a threat in restrooms - seemingly, no thought was given to the consequences of forcing transgender men to use women's rooms.  The irony, however, is that there are ZERO cases of transgender individuals engaging in misconduct in restrooms.  The same cannot be said for Republican legislators themselves.  A piece in Gay Star News looks at this reality that it is Republicans legislators who are the most serious threat in restrooms.  Here are highlights (check out the link to a list of Republicans involved in sexual misconduct):

[S]tatistics show no trans person arrested for sexual misconduct in a public bathroom, BUT surprise, surprise (or not?), three Republicans lawmakers had been arrested for doing very naughty things in there. Who are they?

Well the guys at Newnownext didn’t have to dig too far into recent history to find these bathroom-seeking politicians:

Back in 1981, Mississippi congressman Jon Hinson was arrested for engaging in oral sex with a male staffer in the House of Representatives bathroom.

In 2007, Idaho Republican Larry Craig was arrested in the restroom of Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport for soliciting sex from an undercover police officer.

Also in 2007, Florida state Representative Bob Allen was arrested after he agreed to give an undercover police officer $20 for oral sex in the men’s room of a public park.

Evidently, some U.S. legislators have a whole lot of homework to do before they can make better decisions with regards to what rights should be given to the people, and what rights should be controlled.

Well, since we are on the topic of hypocrisy, here’s an extensive list of the biggest sex offenders coming from the U.S. Republican Party.

Oh, and one more person to add to the list: Alabama Governor Robert Bentley.

Mike Rogers Outs "Family Values" Senator John Barasso (R-WY)

Once again we are witnessing the hypocrisy of closeted Republicans who have virulently anti-gay voting records while having gay affairs themselves.   The latest hypocrite to be exposed is Wyoming Senator John Barasso (pictured above) who true to form markets himself as a "family values" politician and votes anti-gay.  Some argue against "outing" anti-gay politicians, but I support it 100%.  If these individuals don't want their private lives to be fair game for media exposes, then they need to stay out of the private lives of others.  Back2Stonewall looks at Mike Rogers' outing of Barasso.  Obviously, it will be delicious watching the details come out now that Barasso failed to come out himself.  Here are story highlights:

Washington, D.C.’s Mike Rogers who is best known for his activity in outing closeted gay republican  politicians who actively oppose equality for LGBT Americans and was lead subject of Kirby Dick’s documentary Outrage took to Twitter this morning to point out GOP traditional values Senator John Barasso who appeared on Fox News Sunday should have taken the opportunity to come out of the closet.

Barrasso was quoted as saying, “I believe in limited government, lower taxes, less spending, traditional family values, local control and a strong national defense,” and said he has “voted for prayer in schools, against gay marriage and [has] sponsored legislation to protect the “sanctity of life”

When reached for comment, Rogers who has had a 100% record on outing closeted GOP politicians replied: ”My tweets stand on their own”.

 I first collaborated with Mike Rogers in 2004 when we outed former Virginia 2nd District Congressman Ed Schrock who, like Barasso voted anti-gay all the time, but sought gay trysts on the sly.   Great job Mike!!

The G.O.P. Fact Vacuum

As a former Republican from a family of Republicans (all have pretty much left the GOP at this point) I often bemoan what has happened to the party in which I was a city committee member for 8 years.  One of the worse changes - putting aside the fact that the GOP is now a religious party in most senses - is the utter disregard for the truth that permeates all levels of the party, particularly in the form of the top of the ticket: Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan.  The irony is that both men (and the party as a whole) say they are devoutly religious yet they lie with an impunity that is nothing less than shocking. If nothing else, the hypocrisy of it all is stunning.  They apparently learned much from the Christofascist party base that ignores most of the Gospel message on a daily basis.  At least towards those who are poor, non-white, non-heterosexual, non-Christian and non-native born.  A column in the New York Times looks at the death of truth and honesty in the Republican party.  Here are highlights:

Honesty is a lost art. Facts are for losers. The truth is dead.Pick one. Whatever the term of art, they all signal a dark turn, and, this week, the Republican Party took that turn with reckless abandon. 

Lying is certainly nothing new in politics. One could even argue that it’s fundamental to politics. Saying incredible things in a credible way is the art; using math of vapors to sell dreams of smoke is the craft.

But Paul Ryan’s acceptance speech on Wednesday took things up a notch. 

Sally Kohn, a contributor to Fox News, said:

“Ryan’s speech was an apparent attempt to set the world record for the greatest number of blatant lies and misrepresentations slipped into a single political speech. On this measure, while it was Romney who ran the Olympics, Ryan earned the gold.”

So much was written about this and other Republican attempts to distort and deny the truth this week. But I’m beginning to worry that many Americans are growing weary of isolating the lies, coming as they did in torrents. 

The Romney campaign seems to be banking on this fatigue and counting on The Fourth Estate being reduced to little more than a fifth wheel in the political zeitgeist. One of its pollsters said this week that the campaign would not be dictated by fact-checkers.

Mediaite’s Tommy Christopher looked at the fact-checking site PolitiFact’s tallies on Aug. 10 and found that: 

“Mitt Romney’s statements have been judged Mostly False, False or Pants on Fire 46 percent of the time, versus only 29 percent for President Obama. In the Pants on Fire category alone, Romney is more than four times as likely to suffer trouser immolation than the president. Nearly 1 in 10 statements by Romney earned flaming slacks, versus 1 out of every 50 for Obama.” 

On Friday, PolitiFact still had Romney’s statements as Mostly False, False or Pants on Fire 42 percent of the time, compared with 27 percent of the time for Obama. 

[T]he extent to which Republicans have embraced ignobility in this campaign is astounding. They have used their convention podium to unleash a whole lot of half-truths, so many that fact-checkers have been working overtime. But trying to chase down every lie is like trying to catch every bug in a log. It’s almost impossible. 

Yet the candidates are virtually tied in most polls. What does this portend for the republic? I worry deeply about this, not simply because I work at a newspaper, but because I am an American. 

And how can a party that incessantly repeats the mantra that our rights were granted by God repeatedly violate a basic tenet of almost every religion: truth-telling? What does it mean when a party that trafficks in American greatness trades in human horridness? 

Romney long ago demonstrated that he was willing to do anything and take any position — even if they contradicted previous ones — to make it to the White House. And while that may be fine for him, it shouldn’t be fine with us.  We deserve better and should demand better.

Conservative Wants to Disenfranchise Yonger Voters

Demonstrating that conservative professions of a love for democracy is lip service at best, the National Review’s Jonah Goldberg has admitted that he wants the voting age increased to disenfranchise younger voters.  While he won't say what age he wants the minimum voting age increased to, he confesses that in his view it should be "much higher."   In short he wants to be able to send young soldiers to their needless deaths in fool's errand wars like the Iraq War, but these individuals who represent cannon fodder for old white men should have no vote concerning the nation's course.  One could argue that given the current state of the country, one might better argue that its the elderly who ought to be disenfranchised. Think Progress looks at this latest far right batshitery.  Here are highlights:

The National Review’s Jonah Goldberg is claiming that 18-year-olds should be denied the right to vote because they are “so frickin’ stupid about so many things.” In a video first posted by the Daily Caller, Goldberg laments the culture’s obsession with youth and argues that conservatives should “beat out” young people’s belief that “socialism is better than capitalism.” Goldberg is the third National Review writer in two months to face controversy:

GOLDBERG: Personally, I think the voting age should be much, higher, not lower. I think it was a mistake to lower it to 18, to be brutally honest….[I]t is a simple fact of science that nothing correlates more with ignorance and stupidity than youth. We’re all born idiots, and we only get over that condition as we get less young. And yet there’s this thing in this culture where, ‘Oh, young people are for it so it must be special.’ No, the reason young people are for it because they don’t know better. That’s why we call them young people. [...]
The fact that young people think socialism is better than capitalism. That’s proof of what social scientists call their stupidity and their ignorance. And that’s something that conservatives have to beat out of them. Either literally or figuratively as far as I’m concerned.

Conservatives Cruising for Gay Sex at CPAC

The Catholic bishops and cardinals don't have a lock on hypocrisy it seems based on some investigations done by HyperVocal concerning the coven of haters and extremists in Washington, D.C., for the CPAC gathering. While gays and everything about us are under attack in numerous speeches and no doubt all kinds of hate-filled propaganda leaflets at CPAC, some of the attendees - obviously self-loathing closet cases - are out trolling for gay sex. I frankly cannot understand how anyone LGBT could be involved with CPAC. It's the equivalent of a Jew belonging to the Nazi party or a black seeking membership in the KKK. I just don't understand the twisted mindset. Here are highlights (go to Hypervocal) for all of the craigslist ads:

The Conservative Political Action Conference, the annual Republican Woodstock, kicked off in our nation’s capital on Thursday. The weekend-long event draws about 10,000 center-right to far-right politically motivated activists and elected officials from around the country to set up camp in DC.

For most conference attendees, CPAC offers them the chance to not only attend workshops, vote in the famous straw poll and take in high-profile speeches, but to meet like-minded folks who share similar worldviews. And for some of them, it offers up the chance to meet really like-minded folks who share a particular secretive predilection. Since Grindr wouldn’t be able to tell us who’s in town for CPAC and who’s just on the prowl, we called up Craigslist on our Netscape Navigator browser and looked around for who’s cruising for good times away from the prying eyes of friends and family back home.

These were all posted within the last day or two. We did not plant any of them or alter them in any way.

NYT and Boston Herald Op-Ed's Slam Santorum

It's comforting to see that it's not just gays who loath Rick Santorm. Maureen Dowd has a great take down of Santorum in the New York Times and Margery Eagan goes after his false piety in a column in the Boston Herald, Boston's conservative newspaper when compared to its rival the Boston Globe. Both writers find Santorum's desire to inflict a pernicious form of Catholicism on everyone offensive (not to mention it flouts the U. S. Constitution) and also bring up examples of his lies and willingness to fleece taxpayers. First these highlights from the New York Times column:.

The man who fondly recalls nuns rapping his knuckles with rulers did some verbal knuckle-rapping of his own on Thursday with students at a forum in Concord hosted by New England College.

Not satisfied with mentioning homosexuality in the same breath as bestiality and pedophilia, as he did in 2003, Santorum tried to win over the kids by equating homosexuality with polygamy. Even for Santorum, it was a masterpiece of antediluvian abrasiveness — slapping gays and Mormons at the same time. . . . The grating Santorum was their worst nightmare of a bad teacher. He merely got booed; he’s lucky the kids didn’t TP his car or soap the windows.

In a campaign where W. is an unmentionable, Santorum is an unexpected revival of Bushian uncompassionate conservatism.

He got more scattered boos on Friday at a library in Keene and a private high school in Dublin. In Keene, he was asked if he would protect gay rights, since gays are “children of God” too. “Serving in the military is not an unalienable right, it’s a privilege, you’re selected,” replied the candidate, who wants to restore “don’t ask, don’t tell.” He also called marriage “a privilege, not a right,” for the purpose is procreation.

Rick Perry baits gays because it’s good politics; Santorum sincerely means it. His political philosophy is infused with his über-Catholicism but lacks humanity.

New Hampshire’s feisty voters don’t seem as enraptured with Santorum’s rigid conservatism and sweater vests as evangelical voters in Iowa were. . . . . He bashes President Obama as a European-style socialist and preaches fiscal conservatism. Yet in the Senate, he made sure dollars from the socialistic Medicare program went to Puerto Rico on behalf of a hometown firm — United Health Services — that later gave him nearly $400,000 in director’s fees and stock options.

While Karen Santorum was home-schooling their seven children in Virginia, Santorum soaked the Pennsylvania taxpayers to the tune of $100,000 by enrolling the children in a Pennsylvania cyber charter school.

Santorum’s hot politics of aggrievement have competed with Mitt Romney’s cold politics of convenience. But soon Santorum will be gone and Mittens will reign as the calculating consultant type, unpersuasive in premium denim mom jeans, his hair slicked and gray, a lead in a ’50s B movie.

Santorum thinks he’s a bold color and Romney’s a pastel. But the whole Republican field seems ensconced in a black-and-white ’50s diorama. It’s like they’re running for president of Leave It to Beaverland.

Egan's column in the Boston Herald isn't any kinder and also brings in Santorum attempt to blame the Catholic Church sexual abuse scandal which first exploded in Boston on that city's "cultural liberalism." Santorum conveniently ignores the fact that the sexual abuse in the Church happened EVERYWHERE all around the world, including backward conservative nations in Africa. But why would Frothy Mix want to worry about inconvenient facts. Here are some highlights from Egan's column:

Yesterday morning, while Rick “Faith, Family, and Freedom” Santorum was preparing for another I’m-holier-than-you-are day in New Hampshire, I was sitting in a Cambridge Street Holiday Inn conference room. It was packed with survivors and advocates celebrating the 10th anniversary of the uncovering of Boston’s horrific Catholic Church sex abuse crisis. Two times in a half hour the name Rick Santorum, the self-proclaimed uber Catholic, was mentioned. Two times he was politely and genteelly booed. I loved it.

This was a mostly Catholic gathering. There were nuns, ex-nuns, ex-altar boys, and middle-aged and elderly people. And many in the crowd couldn’t stomach Santorum for one big reason. Just as the depths of this sex abuse deprivation were revealed, Rick Santorum, in 2002, went on the record to blame the rape of children in and around Boston on “cultural liberalism.” He’s never said he was wrong.

Think about that obnoxiousness before you vote, New Hampshire. Let me add. The website BishopAccountability.org lists bishops and priests credibly accused of abuse, which means priests with multiple accusers or with cases settled by the church. More than 60 such priests were accused by hundreds and hundreds in New Hampshire.

Perhaps Rick Santorum blames New Hampshire’s “cultural liberalism” for those assaults, too, though liberal is hardly a word I’d use to describe the Granite State. It is not clear what he blames for priestly attacks on teenagers and children in Ireland, throughout Europe, parts of Africa, South America and most recently Haiti.

Unfortunately for Santorum, however, the corrupt church hierarchy that knew of and then covered up these many crimes was not made up of cultural liberals but cultural conservatives. Like Santorum, the pope, most bishops, Bernard Cardinal Law and John B. McCormack (Law’s accessory and until September the bishop of Manchester, N.H.) oppose premarital sex, sex between married couples using birth control, any kind of gay sex, of course, and abortion.

Santorum, despite his uber Catholic posturing, is a cafeteria Catholic in reverse. Or maybe I should call him an “all about sex” Catholic because he only agrees with the church’s doctrines on matters sexual.

Look at his record. He’s for the death penalty and a foreign policy macho hawk (both against Catholic teaching). He’s opposed to illegal immigration and social justice for the poor (both big time against Catholic teaching from the Vatican and the American church).

Yet what really got me this weekend, hearing retold the brutal stories of small Catholic children molested, is how Rick Santorum both belittled and politicized their suffering. I wished they booed him louder at the Holiday Inn yesterday. I hope New Hampshire sends this creepy guy packing.

Ladies, very well said. Like so many of the Christianists and members of the Catholic Church hierarchy, Santorum makes a mockery of Christ's Gospel message of love and compassion. For a great run down on how Santorum goes against true Catholic and Christian teaching, check out a great piece at Huffington Post that rips Santorum a new one in terms of his hypocrisy. Here's the lead in to the list:

[I]t's a political delusion to think Rick Santorum is a standard-bearer of authentic Catholic values in politics. In fact, on several issues central to Catholic social teaching -- torture, war, immigration, climate change, the widening gap between rich and poor and workers' rights - Santorum is radically out of step with his faith's teachings as articulated by Catholic bishops and several popes over the centuries.

Religious Leaders: GOP Budget Gies Against Christ's Teachings

I have frequently noted how members of the GOP at all levels - and their professional Christian allies - wear religion on their sleeves, claim to worship Christ and his message, and then act in manners 100% against the social ministry teachings of Christ. It's hypocrisy raised to an art form. If one wants to see modern day examples of the Pharisees so consistently slammed in the Gospels, look no further than the leaders of the GOP and self-satisfied, hate filled bigots of the Christian Right (Tony Perkins, Maggie Gallagher, Bryan Fischer and others of that ilk immediately spring to mind). They are beyond disgusting in their hate and hypocrisy, but rarely are they called out by the media. As Think Progress is reporting, some religious leaders finally got the balls to condemn these hypocrites and the GOP's Ryan budget for the monstrosity that it is - indeed, how it violates the teaching of Christ. Would that more people - especially news anchors - would call these liars and hypocrites out. Here are some highlights:
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While religious conservatives and Republican political leaders gathered at the Faith and Freedom Conference in Washington this weekend, another group of religious leaders held a small gathering across the street to warn against the perils of the Republican Party’s fiscal priorities.
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Four members affiliated with the religious group Faith In Public Life held a brief press conference during FFC’s afternoon intermission to denounce the GOP’s adherence to the philosophies of anti-government, anti-religion author Ayn Rand. The leaders — Rev. Jennifer Butler, Jim Wallis, Rev. Derrick Harkins, and Father Clete Kiley — asserted that the GOP efforts to cut funding from many anti-poverty programs while balancing the budget on the backs of the poorest Americans were not in line with Christian values:
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What we’re saying in the faith community, across the spectrum, is that a nation is judged — our Bible says — by how we treat the poorest and most vulnerable. Period. That’s what God says to us. That’s God’s instruction to us. To be faithful to God, we have to protect poor people.
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Religious leaders have recently spoken out to House Budget Committee Chair Paul Ryan (R-WI) and House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) — both of whom are practicing Catholics — telling them that the cuts in their budget disproportionately target poor Americans and are thus out of line with Christian and Catholic teaching.
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As I have noted before, I don't want to be called a Christian if being Christian means engaging in the conduct of the GOP leadership and the Christian Taliban. Their true gods are hate, greed, callousness, and hypocrisy. If they are Christians, then count me out.

GOP Budget Plan: Ridiculous and Cruel

As many long time readers will recall, there once was a time I was an active member of the GOP. That was in the days before (1) the GOP became a sectarian party controlled by far right Christianist extremists and (2) when fiscal conservatism meant more than smoke and mirrors and targeting the most needy in society for heartless financial brutalization. It was also back before the myth that tax cuts pay for themselves was a matter of sacred creed within the GOP. Paul Krugman has a column in the New York Times that calls out the GOP plan that will likely continue to be pressed after a week's reprieve of a government shutdown for what it really is. Of course the other aspect of the push for fiscal austerity is the fact that if the GOP gets the massive spending cuts it wants, it could kill the fragile and mediocre economic recovery - something that seems to be occurring in the UK. Here are highlights from Krugman's column:
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[T]he G.O.P. plan turns out not to be serious at all. Instead, it’s simultaneously ridiculous and heartless. How ridiculous is it? Let me count the ways — or rather a few of the ways, because there are more howlers in the plan than I can cover in one column.
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First, Republicans have once again gone all in for voodoo economics — the claim, refuted by experience, that tax cuts pay for themselves.
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A more sober assessment from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office tells a different story. It finds that a large part of the supposed savings from spending cuts would go, not to reduce the deficit, but to pay for tax cuts. In fact, the budget office finds that over the next decade the plan would lead to bigger deficits and more debt than current law.
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It turns out that Mr. Ryan and his colleagues are assuming drastic cuts in nonhealth spending without explaining how that is supposed to happen. How drastic? . . . . less than we currently spend on defense alone; it’s not much bigger than federal spending when Calvin Coolidge was president, and the United States, among other things, had only a tiny military establishment. How could such a drastic shrinking of government take place without crippling essential public functions? The plan doesn’t say.
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And then there’s the much-ballyhooed proposal to abolish Medicare and replace it with vouchers that can be used to buy private health insurance. The point here is that privatizing Medicare does nothing, in itself, to limit health-care costs. In fact, it almost surely raises them by adding a layer of middlemen. Yet the House plan assumes that we can cut health-care spending as a percentage of G.D.P. despite an aging population and rising health care costs. . . . the plan would deprive many and probably most seniors of adequate health care.
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And that neither should nor will happen. Mr. Ryan and his colleagues can write down whatever numbers they like, but seniors vote. And when they find that their health-care vouchers are grossly inadequate, they’ll demand and get bigger vouchers — wiping out the plan’s supposed savings.
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In short, this plan isn’t remotely serious; on the contrary, it’s ludicrous. And it’s also cruel.
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In the past, Mr. Ryan has talked a good game about taking care of those in need. But as the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities points out, of the $4 trillion in spending cuts he proposes over the next decade, two-thirds involve cutting programs that mainly serve low-income Americans. And by repealing last year’s health reform, without any replacement, the plan would also deprive an estimated 34 million nonelderly Americans of health insurance.
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The G.O.P. budget plan isn’t a good-faith effort to put America’s fiscal house in order; it’s voodoo economics, with an extra dose of fantasy, and a large helping of mean-spiritedness. 
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As always the party of supposed family values and which claims to honor Christian values utterly disregards the Gospel message of caring for the poor and the unfortunate. Instead, it's a case of lavishing tax cuts on the wealthy and allowing the poor to go hungry and without health care. What would Jesus think of this? Nothing positive I suspect. GOP = hypocrisy.

Is a Possible John Boehner Adultry Scandal Brewing?

I generally do not take much notice of what the National Inquirer reports given the rag's tendency to fabricate truly bat shit crazy stories. On the other hand, the Inquirer was 100% on target with the John Edwards sex scandal, so the publication cannot be safely ignored either. Now the Inquirer is reportedly about to release a story exposing the teary eyed, Uber-Catholic current Speaker of the House John Boehner as having had an adulterous affair with a lobbyist. If indeed the story pans out, Boehner would be yet another Republican hypocrite who preaches "family values" and denigrates LGBT Americans while blatantly not practicing what he preaches. I wish no one ill, but if the Inquirer is on the mark, it will be sweet watching the Christianists and self-congratulatory members of the GOP eating crow. I guess we will have to see what proof the Inquirer offers tomorrow. Here are highlights from the Stark Report:

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The New York Times passed on the story (if there ever was one; Page 6 of the New York Post isn’t known as the beginning and end of truth), but evidently Boehner hasn’t been successful in making the story go away. I was recently contacted by a reporter from the National Enquirer, and now I have confirmation that their story will hit the newsstands on Thursday.

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Wonder how well Boehner’s zero-tolerance pledge regarding corruption will hold up when it comes out that several hundred paper-making jobs were lost in his district and he refused to do anything about it at the same time he was sleeping with a lobbyist for the printing industry that was very happy to get their cheap paper from China.

Kapos at GOProud Support Willow Palin's "Faggot" Slur

I was a GOP activist, precinct captain and city committee member for the better part of a decade - until the Christian Taliban effectively took over the party and the worship of ignorance, religious extremism, racism and down right insanity became the hallmarks of the GOP. There was a time when the GOP actually had some principles that weren't an embarrassment. Back then, one did not need to be a candidate for membership in a white supremacist group or a religious fanatic to be a member/supporter of the GOP. But those days are, in my opinion, gone and other than people who - in my view - selfishly worry only about paying preferably no taxes, I really don't know many thinking, rational members of the GOP.

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From my perspective, conservative Christians are among the biggest GOP hypocrites as they push for lower taxes via slashing of government programs that aid children, the poor and the homeless. WWJD other than be appalled? But one group takes the absolute first prize for lunacy and hypocrisy: gay Republicans. I continue to view gay Republicans to be the modern day equivalent of Jews joining the Nazi Party. In its latest batshitery, GOProud is attacking those who found Willow Palin's use of an anti-gay slur to be offensive:
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“Willow Palin is a 16 year old girl who, like all 16 year olds is going to make mistakes and say things she shouldn’t have. This, however, has nothing to do with Willow Palin or the substance of what she said on Facebook. The ‘slur’ used here is one you could hear on the streets of West Hollywood or Chelsea every day of the week. Apparently, it’s only a ‘homophobic slur’ when it comes from the daughter of a conservative female leader. Make no mistake; this is all about destroying Sarah Palin by any means necessary.

“The angry misogynistic left and their accomplices in the main stream media have been unable to take down Governor Palin – no matter how hard they have tried. Unable to take her down directly they now have decided to try to hurt her by attacking the most important thing in her life – her family.

“Any person, gay or straight, who participates in this cheap political smear should be ashamed of themselves.”

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Excuse me, but if anyone needs to be ashamed of themselves, it's the members of GOProud and their leadership. These folks obviously are self-loathing and in need of a good shrink and some serious meds.