Marco Rubio: Gay Rights 'A Real And Present Danger' To Freedom

Like Bobby Jindal, GOP presidential candidate Marco Rubio is desperately prostituting himself to the deranged Christofacsist of the Republican Party base.  Yesterday, Rubio appeared on gay hater Pat Robertson's "700 Club" and described gay rights as a "clear and present danger" to America.  Of course, if anyone is a clear and present danger to the country, it is the Christofascists and hate merchants like Pat Robertson (who has stated that he wasn't sure if the recent Texas floods were the fault of gays or not).  Right Wing Watch looks at Rubio's disgusting self-prostitution.  Here are excerpts:

Marco Rubio was the subject of a fawning profile on today’s edition of “The 700 Club,” in which host Pat Robertson hailed the GOP presidential candidate as “the Democrats’ worst nightmare.”

In an interview with the Christian Broadcasting Network’s David Brody, Rubio warned that gay marriage represents “a real and present danger” to America because gay rights advocates are bent on labeling any anti-gay messages, including those from churches, as “hate speech.”

“We are at the water’s edge of the argument that mainstream Christian teaching is hate speech because today we’ve reached the point in our society where if you do not support same-sex marriage, you are labeled a homophobe and a hater,” Rubio said. “So what’s the next step after that? After they’re done going after individuals, the next step is to argue that the teachings of mainstream Christianity, the catechism of the Catholic Church, is hate speech. That’s a real and present danger.”

During a previous CBN interview, Rubio criticized gay marriage supporters for trying to sway the Supreme Court with “a ridiculous and absurd reading of the U.S. Constitution.

It's beyond frightening that Rubio views the concept of equality under the civil laws as a "ridiculous and absurd reading" of the U.S. Constitution. 

Anti-Gay Johnny Joannou Faces Primary Challenge

Challenger, Steve Heretick

Some would argue that Del. Johnny Joannou has been a Democrat in name only.   On important issues, he has repeatedly sided with far right Republicans in contrast to fellow Democrats.  On gay rights issues, Joannou has been most disappointing.  When Tracy-Thorne-Beglund was up for appointment to the bench in Richmond, Joannou failed to support him and took the coward's approach of not voting at all.  When Attorney General Mark Herring made the determination not to defend Virginia' foul Marshall-Newman Amendment, Joannou joined the Republican chorus of critics.  The political blog Blue Virginia has called Joannou outright homophobic.  And on an issue important to hundreds of thousands of Virginians - i.e., Medicaid expansion - Joannou again sided with the forces of backwardness in the Virginia GOP.  It is far past time that Joannou be pushed into retirement.  Thankfully, as the Virginian Pilot reports, Steve Heretick, a Portsmouth attorney and former Portsmouth city councilman, is challenging Joannou in the June 9th primary.  It is crucial that people turn out and vote for Heretick.  Here are highlights from the Pilot:

Voters might be more focused on beaches than ballots, but the June primary contest for this House of Delegates seat is high stakes.

That's because the Democrat who wins will likely have an easy road come November in the heavily Democratic 79th district, which covers parts of Portsmouth and Norfolk.

Del. Johnny Joannou, 75, a Portsmouth attorney and fixture in the statehouse for decades, is facing a rare challenge.

Steve Heretick, 54, a Portsmouth attorney and former Portsmouth city councilman, is looking to unseat him in the June 9 election.

Heretick is going after Joannou on two main issues: Medicaid expansion and tolls.

He criticized Joannou for being the only Democrat in the 2014 General Assembly session to vote against expanding Medicaid - as allowed under the president's Affordable Care Act - to insure as many as 400,000 low-income Virginians. The measure failed in the General Assembly.

"We have the best health care technology and close to half a million working people in this state who have already paid for it who can't access it because of people like Johnny Joannou," he said.

Heretick also accused Joannou of not doing enough to stop the tolls that started last year on the Downtown and Midtown tunnels. The tolls were the result of a deal brokered by former Gov. Bob McDonnell and the Virginia Department of Transportation with a private company to build a new Midtown Tunnel and other road projects.

Specifically, Heretick said Joannou could have used his status as a member of a powerful House budget committee to try to block the deal. Joannou is one of six budget "conferees" in the House.  "You get one of these issues in a generation - and he didn't do a thing," Heretick said.

 Again, if you live in the  79th district, which covers parts of Portsmouth and Norfolk, get out an vote for Steve Heretick.

As Candidate Josh Duggar's Dad Said Incest Should Be Punishable By Death

Just as Bobby Jindal is displaying the latest incarnation of the proclivity of GOP candidates to say and do anything to win over lunatic party primary voters, so to did serial molester Josh Duggar's father when he ran for a U.S. Senate from Arkansas, but lost in the Republican primary.  Now Duggar senior's words are coming back to haunt him now that his son Josh has admitted to the serial molestation of under age girls, including some of his sisters.  One has to wonder if Duggar senior still stands by his pronouncements that incest should carry the death penalty.  These people are beyond despicable and one can only hope that TLC flat out cancels their freak show reality show.  The New Civil Rights Movement looks at how past statements are coming back to bite the Duggars in the pharisee like asses.  Here are excerpts:

James Robert Duggar, better known as Jim Bob Duggar, the patriarch of the "19 Kids and Counting" clan, was an Arkansas State Rep. from 1999 to 2002. He then ran for the U.S. Senate, but lost in the Republican primary.

An archive of Duggar's 2002 campaign website, which Gawker just dug up, included rather powerful statements against issues like incest and rape, made probably just before the time Josh Duggar, according to police reports published by In Touch, sexually molested five girls, reportedly including family members.

"Jim Bob lost the Republican nomination for Senate to Arkansas’ incumbent Senator Tim Hutchinson," Gawker notes. "His son Josh remained very much alive and went on to molest several underage girls including some of his sisters from 2002-2003."

Like many politicians, Duggar posted his position statements to his 2002 campaign website, in a Q&A format.

"What is your abortion position, and specifically, where do you stand on rape, incest, and threat to the mother’s health?," the website asks.

"If a woman is raped, the rapist should be executed instead of the innocent unborn baby. Adoption is an option. Many couples would love to adopt and are waiting for a baby. Abortion has been and always will be the destruction of an innocent child," Jim Bob Duggar said.

"Rape and incest represent heinous crimes and as such should be treated as capital crimes.

A capital crime is one that can result in the death penalty.

When faced with his own son's acts, Jim Bob Duggar consulted church elders, sent Josh to live with a family friend who remodeled houses, and reportedly enrolled him in a short stint of Christian counseling that had its own dubious issues, before notifying the authorities.

Have you noticed  how time and time again it is the professional Christians that seek to tell everyone else how to live who in reality have the most screwed up, dysfunctional families?  They are the last people on earth to be telling anyone else how to live their lives.  And, yes, I am loving this cycle of Karma biting the Duggars in their hypocritical asses.   Now all we need is something similar to be uncovered involving the queen of hate, Victoria Cobb of The Family Foundation. :)

P.S. Those of us in Virginia need to make sure that no one forgets that the Duggars active campaigned for Ken Cuccinelli and Mark Obenshain.  Let's hope that bites Obenshain in the ass in 2017.

More Tuesday Male Beauty

Koch Brothers Seek to Rein in the GOP Presidential Clown Car

Image via Shakesville  - http://www.shakesville.com

You know that things are truly out of control when even the vile Koch brothers feel the need to rein in the insanity gripping the GOP 2016 presidential candidate clown car.  Especially when the Koch brothers have financed some of the groups that have given rise to the clinically insane candidates and/or given them some level of legitimacy withing certain utterly stupid elements of the Christofascists/Tea Party.  An article in the Washington Post looks at the Koch brothers' concern over the lunacy that them selves helped to unleash.  Here are article highlights:

By my count, there are currently 10 candidates who are declared or all but certain to run, and another four who will probably run. But while the voters might find this an embarrassment of riches, for the party’s leaders and financiers, it looks like a recipe for trouble. Which is how I interpret this news:

In a Saturday interview on the Larry Kudlow Show,  a nationally syndicated radio broadcast, David Koch let it slip that the roughly $900 million that he and his brother, Charles, plan to lavish on the 2016 presidential race could find its way into the hands of more than one GOP contender.

“We are thinking of supporting several Republicans,” David Koch said, adding, “If we’re happy with the policies that these individuals are supporting, we’ll finance their campaigns.”

By saying they’re going to support several candidates in the primaries, the Kochs are pledging to accelerate the winnowing process, by which the race’s chaff can be sloughed off and the focus can stay on the serious contenders.

Don’t be fooled by the line about them supporting all the ones whose policies they’re happy with. That’s because there’s almost no disagreement among the candidates, at least on the issues the Kochs care about. All of them would like to see low taxes on the wealthy (most have even advocated a flat tax, a boon to people like the Kochs), a dramatic reduction in regulations that affect corporations and a rollback of the social safety net. Where the Kochs personally disagree with the candidates (as they may on some social issues or on immigration), they disagree with all the candidates, because the candidates’ positions are so similar.

If the Kochs pick out a few candidates to support, it will be the ones they think would be the strongest in a general election and those they think put the best face on the GOP.

And the Kochs aren’t the only ones trying to do this winnowing. Fox News, which always keeps the long-term interests of the Republican Party in mind, recently announced that in the first debate of the season, it will be refusing admittance to all but 10 candidates. 

But their power is limited. One result of the newly freewheeling nature of presidential elections is that a rich donor or two can prop up the candidacy of someone with little chance to win the party’s nomination, enabling him or her to stick around and cause trouble months after he or she ought to have departed the race. This year, multiple candidates could have billionaires feeding them the money they need to keep their campaigns active deep into the primary season. If you’re a thoughtful Republican, a primary with this many candidates is a cacophonous mess, full of extremist cranks squabbling with each other and taking progressively nastier potshots at the leaders, one of whom will end up as the nominee. The longer it goes, the more that nominee has to pander to the base and the less time he or she will have to focus on Hillary Clinton.

If the Kochs are ready to put some of their ample resources into the primary campaign, it’s a sign that the enormous size of the primary field is generating some serious concern at the top of the GOP. The question is whether, even with their money, there’s much they can do about it.

The so-called GOP establishment helped enable the Christofascists, white supremacists and anti-extremists to gain a foot hold in the GOP and now they are looking for ways to kill the Frankenstein monsters they created.  I hop the monsters turn on them and take the party down.  It would almost be divine justice.

Bobby Jindal: A Case Study of a Political Prostitute

Jindal prostituting himself at Liberty University

Bobby Jindal seemingly still sees himself as a would be presidential candidate.  His main problem?  He's of Indian/Hindu descent, something that doesn't play well with the white supremacists and Christofascists of today's GOP base.  In an apparent attempt to win over these voters who are highly unlikely to ever vote for a non-white candidate, Jindal has given new meaning to the term political whore.  There seems to be no limit to how low Jindal will stoop or what level of insane batshitery he will embrace in order to sell his soul to the ugliest elements of the GOP base.  A piece in Salon looks at Jindal's shameless self-prostitution and his descent into crazy land.  Here are highlights:

Bobby Jindal was the great hope of the Republican Party. He was a fresh voice, the man most able to save the GOP from the dolts destroying it. But then something happened: Jindal decided that intellectual integrity was a political liability. He abandoned any pretense of serious governance, and began appealing to the basest elements of his party. He has since become a caricature of himself, a pandering hack with no moral compass and even less political intuition. So what happened? How did the man who decried his party for being too stupid become the dumbest of them all?

Jindal’s descent began in 2008. A young and promising governor, he attracted national attention, and for good reason. He was smart, competent and full of earnest ambition. Despite his bumbling response to Obama’s State of the Union speech, he became a rising star in the Republican Party.  And that’s when things began to change.

From 2009 on, Jindal has steadily debased himself for right-wing votes. He’s run Louisiana into the ground and spent most of his time fellating conservatives across the country with gaseous stump speeches and childish Op-Ed pieces. Since becoming the GOP’s golden boy, he has thought of nothing beyond his national conservative brand. Instead of reforming the stupid party, he’s encouraged it.

As governor of Louisiana, Jindal has attached himself to every regressive, anti-intellectual cause imaginable, and for purely political reasons. The man is an Ivy-educated biology major. He was even accepted into Harvard Medical School at one point. And yet he signed and supported the Louisiana Science Education Act, which allows science teachers to teach creationism in public schools. Jindal knows creationism is a farce, and he knows it’s a tremendous stain on Louisiana’s reputation to allow it to be taught in science classes. But he doesn’t give a damn. He wasn’t concerned with Louisiana’s future; he was signaling his conservative credentials to voters in Iowa and New Hampshire; appearing smart to stupid people was a strategic decision on his part.

Jindal reached peak stupid in January 2015, when he staged a massive prayerapooloza in Louisiana. Modeled after Rick Perry’s 2011 prayer rally, it was a pathetic attempt to gin up support for his presidential campaign. The event itself was an orgy of bigotry and religious demagoguery. Here’s a passage drawn directly from the rally materials:

“We have watched sin escalate to a proportion the nation has never seen before. We live in the first generation in which…homosexuality has been embraced…While the United States still claims to be a nation ‘under God’ it is obvious that we have greatly strayed from our foundations in Christianity. This year we have seen a dramatic increase in tornadoes that have taken the lives of many…and let us not forget that we are only six years from the tragic events of Hurricane Katrina…”

You read that correctly: Gay people are responsible for a “dramatic increase in tornadoes” and other naturally occurring phenomena. That’s how low Jindal sunk; that’s how far he was willing to go. He embraced hate speech in order to appease bigoted fundamentalists, and he refused to distance himself from the fatuous assertion that gay people are the cause of bad weather.

Jindal’s desperation was on full display last week, when he announced his plan to issue an executive order to enforce the “religious freedom” bill. The legislation is nakedly discriminatory against gay people, and has very little support in Louisiana. Jindal backed this bill and threatened to unilaterally impose it on the state after the Legislature rejected it – a perfectly ironic thing to do for a small government conservative.

There was no sensible reason for Jindal to take this position, apart from his monomaniacal desire to impress religious conservatives in primary states. He even penned a puerile Op-Ed for the New York Times in order to take a courageous stand against civil rights for gay Americans. This is not the kind of leadership you’d expect from a guy hoping to distinguish himself from stupid people.

It’s worth asking what Jindal’s decline says about him personally and about the GOP more generally. As for Jindal, it’s fairly obvious: His ambition eclipsed his sense of duty. He exchanged his integrity for votes, and he did it in the most cynical fashion possible; Louisianans have suffered immensely because of it.

Jindal’s strategy also says something about the electoral base of the Republican Party. It’s increasingly evident that the most extreme elements of the right have become too influential.

Jindal’s asininity is a manifestation of this problem; he knows he’s appealing to a significant subset of Republican voters. He won’t win their votes, but someone else will, and they’ll have to pretend to be stupid in order to do it. This powerful minority within the GOP is the real problem; if the Republicans don’t do something about it, they will remain what they’ve become: the stupid party.

I have a great many Indian clients who, unlike Jindal, have remained Hindu.  Given Jindal's self-prostitution to the Christofascists - who hate non-Christians almost as much as gays - I find it hard to believe that Jindal will get any support from this demographic which has increasingly voted as the GOP has become the party of Christian dominionists.

 

Tuesday Morning Male Beauty

Gay Marriage: The New Liberal Wedge Issue?

In 2004, George W. Bush and his slimy adviser, Karl Rove, used gay marriage as a wedge issue to turn out the knuckle dragging elements of the GOP base and the Christian Right.  Fast forward 12 years and some believe that gay marriage can again be a wedge issue, but this time for liberals and progressives.   If this is true, the Republican candidate for the White House - and various other offices - may find himself trapped between the demands of the spittle flecked Christofascists in the GOP and the rest of the electorate that has done a 180 degree turn on the issue.  A piece in The Daily Beast looks at this premise, which, if true, would be sweet indeed.  Here are excerpts:

Gallup has just found that on social issues, the country is now equally split between liberals and conservatives. The question was: “Thinking about social issues, would you say your views are” very conservative, conservative, liberal, or very liberal? . . . Just five years ago, the conservative edge on social issues was 39 to 22 percent. Now it’s totally wiped out. The implications for our electoral politics are obvious and enormous, and I mean good-enormous.

Gay marriage was a great wedge issue for Dubya and Rove in 2004, as you’ll recall. They got anti-gay marriage initiatives on the ballot in 11 states, many of them key swing states; studies have tended to find that in Ohio, which Bush carried and which was the difference between victory and defeat in the Electoral College, the initiative did goose evangelical turnout a bit . . . 

Well, in 2016, same-sex marriage can be a wedge issue again, but this time, for our team. The numbers are now so decisive that surely in the key swing states with the bushels of electoral votes, the likely Democratic candidate can cast shame upon the head of her opponent. In Florida, support for gay marriage was 57 percent a year ago, and it’s probably a little higher now. In Ohio, support-to-opposition was 52-37 in 2012, and that’s surely higher now. In Virginia in 2013, support registered at 56 percent. The issue isn’t a loser in any important swing state, with the possible exception of North Carolina, which of course is just icing for the Democrats anyway.

How could Hillary Clinton and her party use this, exactly? That gets a little harder to say. The thing that makes a wedge issue a wedge issue is that, historically anyway, it’s been about fear. The blacks are coming. The gays are coming. The anti-gun nuts are going to be pounding on your door, warrant in hand. As has often been said, it’s the best motivator in politics.

So, what are people (not just liberals, but average, quasi-informed people) thinking about conservatives right now? I’d suggest it’s that they’re just out of it. Out of touch with the times. Holding us back.

Certainly this is so with respect to same-sex marriage, although the problem is hardly limited to that by a long shot. One issue I’d really love to see Clinton and the Democrats plop down smack in the middle of the table this election is the way conservatism today just strangles opportunity for middle-class people, and for young people in particular, in the name of their messianic tax-cutting.

TPM ran a great piece Friday on how the Republican governors who are running for president are destroying their higher education systems in the name of cutting state income taxes and never, ever raising another tax of any kind. Bobby Jindal has cut taxes six times in Louisiana, which has produced a $1.6 billion shortfall. To plug the gap, he’s cutting higher ed funding by as much as $600 million, which is 82 percent of state higher-ed aid. Scott Walker’s half-a-billion dollars in tax cuts in Wisconsin have led to a $2 billion shortfall, so he’s slashing higher ed by $300 million.

These, too, are wedge issues, if you ask me. Republicans send their kids to college too. Yes, they like their tax cuts. But I would assume that they don’t like whopping tuition hikes, or their kids having to drop out of college altogether, any more than Democrats or independents do.

If the Democrats can connect these dots in the right way—on this and a whole range of Warrenesque “household economics” issues—they can peel off a decent chunk of voters who have been traditionally Republican. 

Republicans will still roll out their wedge issues, but it seems that the pickings are pretty slim. Fear just isn’t selling.  . . . fear just doesn’t travel well anymore outside the right-wing base. Muslim-bashing may be the exception to that, but even that won’t work without a triggering event of some kind. Republicans might actually have to talk about issues. Which of course is even worse for them.

The Future of the Catholic Church After Ireland's Vote

Ireland's vote to approve same sex marriage is reverberating far from Ireland's shores and already there is a renewed energy in Italy to pass civil union legislation if not outright gay marriage.  The forces that transformed Ireland from a nation controlled by the theocratic power of the Catholic Church to a secular nation where the young in particular reject main Church teachings are taking place in modern nations across the globe.  Whether or not the Church faces this new reality will likely determine whether the Church is reduced to a church of the elderly in the western world with new growth only in backward, uneducated areas such as Africa.  A piece in the New York Times looks at Ireland and what the Church must come to terms with.  Modern society is washing its hands of what the Church is peddling, especially on matters of sexuality.  Given the bitter old men in dresses in Roman who live in a Fox News like bubble, I don't see the Church reforming itself anytime soon.  Here are article highlights:

After the votes were counted, the carefully planned and executed campaign by activist groups seemed as much about putting behind a past entrenched in theocracy and tradition as it was about marriage for gays and lesbians. And it underscored how different Ireland is today for the young, who turned out in droves to vote. In a little more than a generation, Ireland has both distanced itself from the church and sharpened its secular identity.

“The church needs to take a reality check,” Archbishop Martin said after the Mass, repeating a comment he had made Saturday. “It’s very clear there’s a growing gap between Irish young people and the church, and there’s a growing gap between the culture of Ireland that’s developing and the church.”

The country’s cultural evolution reflects a blend of disaffection with the church, and Ireland’s willingness to embrace a wider vision of itself in the world. As the church lost many people in its scandals and its unwillingness to yield to sexual freedoms, the European Union found itself with a willing and eager member.

Tony Flannery, a priest who was suspended in 2012 because of his criticism of the church’s views on women and homosexuality, said contraception was a seminal issue for a generation that became the parents of today’s youngest voters.

And it “was the first time that Irish Catholics first questioned church teaching,” Mr. Flannery said. “That opened the door, and after that they increasingly began to question a whole raft of Catholic sexual teaching, and then the child sexual abuse scandal came along which destroyed church credibility in the whole area of sexuality.”

“The people have changed their relationship with the Catholic Church because they’ve been disappointed and let down,” said Christina Breen, 54, who visited Dublin Castle on Saturday to see the results of the vote, a show of support because one of her sons is gay.

Or, as Mr. Flannery put it, “The day when the church had the power to influence social debate in Ireland, or to swing it, is gone.”

“The biggest change I see is the young people,” said Annie Dillon, 58, who works for a community-based health organization.

“I’m thinking of my 20-year-old nephew; it was like a no-brainer for him,” she said. “He was like, ‘Of course, why wouldn’t we want to be including everybody?’ That seems to be the prevailing attitude.”

“For many, and I’ve said this before, inside the church becomes almost alien territory to them in today’s society,” he [Diarmuid Martin, the archbishop of Dublin] said. “If the leadership of the Irish Catholic church don’t recognize that, then they’re in severe denial. Have I got a magic formula? Certainly not.”

With over a third of America's Millennials having walked away from organized religion, the Catholic Church and other anti-gay, fundamentalist denominations  are moving quickly to the sort of rejection that just happened in Ireland.  Preaching hate and division and psychological obsession with all things sexual simply isn't selling anymore. 

Ex-Reagan Official: Fox News is Brainwashing Republicans into a Fringe Group

Fox News - or Faux News as I call it on this blog - is first and foremost a propaganda machine that seemingly thrives in a universe detached from objective reality and which is moving the GOP towards becoming a lunatic fringe group.  Or so says economist Bruce Bartlett, a former adviser to both Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush.  Candidly, I agree with his assessment and continue to believe that the GOP is headed toward long term oblivion unless and until it throws off control of the Christofascists and their Tea Party first cousins.  A piece in The Raw Story looks at Bartlett's assessment.  Here are highlights:

Economist Bruce Bartlett, a former adviser to both Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, warned over the weekend that Fox News had damaged the Republican Party by creating a bubble for conservatives to brainwash themselves.

In his paper “How Fox News Changed American Media and Political Dynamics” published earlier this month, Bartlett theorized that watching the network was essentially “self-brainwashing” for viewers, making them believe that the United States was a more conservative nation than it actually was. And so the Republican Party had responded by running radical conservatives that representative Fox News viewers, but not the true state of the electorate.

“Many conservatives live in a bubble where they watch only Fox News on television, they listen only to conservative talk radio — Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, many of the same people,” Bartlett told CNN’s Brian Stelter on Sunday. “When they go onto the Internet, they look at conservative websites like National Review, Newsmax, World Net Daily.”

“And so, they are completely in a universe in which they are hearing the same exact ideas, the same arguments, the same limited amount of data repeated over and over and over again. And that’s brainwashing.” 

Bartlett asserted that it was a bigger problem for conservatives than liberals because they did not have their own network for a long time, and then they “drank very heavily from the Fox waters.”

Sadly, some of my once upon a time Republican colleagues fit within Bartlett's description and have become so brainwashed that it is impossible to have an intelligent conversation with them.  Ironically, they claim that I am the one who has been brainwashed when, in fact, they need to look in the mirror at themselves.  Yes Karen, I am talking about you!!