Jackson recently did an interview with Ebony Magazine where he stated

“I voted for Barack because he was black. ’Cuz that’s why other folks vote for other people — because they look like them…that’s American politics, pure and simple. [Obama’s] message didn’t mean sh-t to me. In the end, he’s a politician. I just hoped he would do some of what he said he was gonna do.”

Well, that was red meat for the conservative hyenas because, if one black man voted for Obama because of the color of his skin, well then surely that’s why they all voted for him.

The Daily Caller’s headline read:

Samuel L. Jackson Admits To Voting For Race Rather Than Politics

Renew America’s headline:

Samuel L. Jackson Drops the Act: Admits He Only Voted for Obama Because of Race

“Drops the act” -  now Conservatives feel vindicated I guess.

Here is a sampling of some of the reader comments from these articles:

“Rapidly everyone is beginning to wake up to this proverbial elephant in the room — the ‘black community’ is largely racist.”
“…when people on this site, and other sites say the black voted for Obama, because he was black, we are called racist…when we are simply stating a fact.”

“You see, Jackson thought that if he made a whole bunch of money and dressed nice and had nice houses and cars that he would not be looked at like he was a fricking bleeper. But, even with all of that, when he walks down the street he is STILL considered to be nothing but another fricking bleeper. That is why he is so angry. He is still what what he was born.”

“I have found that blacks are the most racists people I know.
No way to justify it with all the AA advantages and “gibs me dats” they are afforded.”

I wonder if these bottom feeders would voice their real opinions around Allen West or Herman Cain – probably not.

It’s a safe bet that while some people voted for Obama because he’s black, they were far outweighed by the number who didn’t vote for him for the very same reason.

And as for Jackson, he just reminds us that no matter how much money you have, you can’t buy brains.

(image from Alphaville)

A few weeks ago, I heard what has become the talking point on birth control when referencing the fact that even in a lack of coverage of birth control for women, Viagra for men is still covered. Brian Thomas on Cincinnati’s 55KRC stated “Viagra fixes a medical condition; birth control is NOT healthcare.”

Hold the staff high! Let’s take a look at both the Catholic and medical purposes for these healthcare items and why the argument is misogynist at best.

Catholics on Birth Control

Bad, bad, and BAD! Preventing conception is against doctrine. Condoms? Bad! Birth control pills? Bad! If you use something that prevents the sacred seed from penetrating the sacred egg – even if the method of fertilization is forced rape or sinfully unmarried consensual sex between consenting adults – you will burn in Hell.

Non-pro-creative sex is banned in the horribly anachronistic Catholic Church. Live with it. (And please ignore the 98% of Catholic women who have used birth control at some point.)

Catholics on Viagra

Boners are good. Nevermind that most people who use Viagra are not planning to conceive, that most usage is NOT to remedy a real problem and is for procreation, if there’s a chance for procreation, then I guess we’re okay with it – even though we’re TOTALLY against sex for the sake of pleasure.

Medical Need for Birth Control

You don’t have to look far to see the medical need for birth control: Painful, irregular periods, decreasing chances of ovarian cysts, etc.

Medical Need for Viagra

None.

Okay, there’s probably 100 guys or so EVAR who have needed ED medication to procreate, but just because that’s a medical condition, that doesn’t mean it is a NEED. Diabetics NEED insulin. Heart patients NEED a cavalcade of pills to stay alive.

Men, droopy, don’t NEED to procreate.

Women, in order to live in some cases, NEED birth control medication.

Looks to me like the phallocentric Catholic Church still has some issues defining exactly what women are and focusing on anything but making more Christian Babies. The fact that they’re endorsing pleasure-only sex for men is case in point.

As Florynce Kennedy once said, “If men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament.”

As a man, raised Catholic, I cannot understand why this is even an argument as it is Exhibit A in the uselessness of some modern religions. Please tend your flock and keep your hands off the parts of our bodies you find so foul.

Arizona Sheriff Paul Babeu, who appeared in the campaign ad with Senator John McCain in 2008, came out as a gay man this week on CNN because he is involved in a “he-said, he-said” sex scandal with his former Mexican lover.

So why is this newsworthy? First of all, because of typical, conservative hypocrisy. Sheriff Babeu, who spent years bashing Mexican immigrants to maintain his tough on illegal immigration image, was caught having a sexual relationship with an illegal immigrant. The former lover, going by the name “Jose”, claims they had a sexual relationship since 2006 when they met on gay.com and that he worked on Babeu’s campaign website and social media accounts. Jose also claims that Babeu threatened to deport him. So Sheriff Babeu could be facing charges of harboring an illegal immigrant, a federal crime which resulted in a conviction against a Border Patrol agent last December.

But the primary reason this is newsworthy is that the conservative wing of the Republican party is putting their support behind Rick Santorum, a presidential candidate who is absolutely disgusted by the idea of two gay men in a sexual relationship (“man on dog”). Santorum will have to deal with LGBT issues within the Republican party, and thanks to this scandal, he’ll have to do it much sooner than the Santorum campaign expected.

Rick Santorum is a 1950′s-era, narrow-minded, homophobe. And I love the thought of Santorum having to answer uncomfortable questions about this scandal and, if he’s the nominee, having to address LGBT issues with groups like the Log Cabin Republicans and other gay Republicans in the general election. I’m calling it the Santorum Squirm.

The Democrats intend to make birth control a major theme of the 2012 election, especially if Rick Santorum is the Republican Party’s presidential nominee. They no doubt believe Santorum’s views on birth control will crush his chances with female voters.”

Yeah Gary, it’s all about birth control; it couldn’t possibly be the other stuff, like:

“Santorum told the students at Ave Maria how lucky they were to be living in a time when God’s Army is more needed than ever because all of the major institutions in society were under attack by Satan.”

Speaking about pre-school programs:

“They want your children from the womb so they can indoctrinate your children as to what they want them to be.”

I don’t even know where ideas like this this comes from:

“The American Left hates Christendom. They hate Western civilization.”

And, in disputing evolution:

“If Darwin is right, I have organized my life around an illusion, … We have no moral demands if we are evolved.”

See Gary, birth control is one issue; but it’s the fact that Rick Santorum is borderline nuts that people are concerned about the most.

President Obama and congressional Democrats have been fighting (and embarrasing) Republicans for over a year to extend these benefits.    Bachmann’s victory dance was based upon Republicans giving up everything Democrats have been fighting for.  In exchange benefit recipients are not allowed to use their government issued ATM cards at establishments of ill repute, such as casinos, liquor stores and strip clubs.  

Bachmann raves (something she’s mastered through years of practice)  ”the big thing that we get is no longer can a welfare recipient walk into a strip club and get money out of an ATM machine to pay for a lap dance” 

“That’s the big thing that we get out of this bill.”

“Welfare recipients across the country, Mark, have been using their welfare cards — they look like credit cards, it’s a debit card. They get these debit cards, they can walk into a casino, they can walk into a liquor store, they can walk into a strip club and if there’s an ATM machine in there, they can use their welfare card, draw down the money and use it to pay for gambling, lap dances.”

As an aside, consider this your opportunity to define “gambling, lap dance” in the comments.  My definition would be when the recipient of said dance hits the right combination causing the dancer to issue whatever prize is warranted.  BUT I digress.

This “victory” for conservatives is completely superficial.  What is to stop the local ‘welfare queen’ from taking their ATM card to the nearest machine just around the corner from the strip club/casino/liquor store?   Further, if these establishments really find themselves struggling to stay afloat after losing out on the huge influx of welfare cash this law chokes off, (seriously folks, no pun intended) why not just put an ATM on the sidewalk next to their establishment?

Since the far right is willing to declare victory over such a symbolic gesture I’ve speculated on other major victories Democrats could possibly win in like manner.  For example, maybe we can pass single payer by calling it the Reagan Health Care Initiative.  It certainly would be an irksome title, but the benefits of finally really fixing the American health care system would far outweigh the irritation.   For example the costs for all the medication liberals would use to treat the high blood pressure caused by seeing Reagans name on the health care initiative  would be paid by the single payer system. 

I’m certain there are many other victories which could be purchased at a very cheap cost but I don’t want to turn this post into a book.

At one of his recent campaign stops in Georgia, it was all about pandering to the Good Ol’ Boys. From the New York Times:

“Let’s be clear what this election is all about,” he told supporters. “We believe in the right to bear arms, and we like to bear the arms in our trucks.”

His audience burst into laughter and applause.”

And here Americans have been whining for months about jobs and the economy when the issue is guns, don’t we look stupid.

Actually, I would have pictured Newt holding a gun with his thumb and forefinger as far away from his body as possible  but evidently, in between flying in private jets, staying in luxury hotels, and shopping at Tiffany’s, the Gingrichs are as gun totin’ folksy as the Clampetts.

Gingrich went on to claim he’d miraculously bring gas prices down to $2.50 a gallon. The things that southern redneck base will believe.

As for U.S. drilling being a quick fix, Robert Kaufman, an expert on world oil markets and director of Boston University’s Center for Energy and Environmental Studies, dismisses as “nonsense” any promises that offshore drilling could make the U.S. “oil independent”, telling Scientific American:

“Even if it could somehow insulate itself from the ups and downs of the global oil market, he notes, the U.S. would have to make a huge leap in domestic oil production to replace what it buys from overseas.”

But Gingrich still insists on blaming Obama for gas prices. He told the New York Times

“This is all a matter of cultural warfare,  these are people who believe if you’re a tenured faculty member who rides your bicycle” to work, you object to others driving a pickup truck. This is an administration that is deeply opposed to Americans having the right to choose the kind of car they want to drive.”

A liberal’s ideal car, Mr. Gingrich maintained, was a Chevy Volt. “Here’s my point: you can’t put a gun rack in a Volt.”

That’s what they have hand guns for you condescending mope.

CBS News “Face the Nation” host Bob Schieffer asked the former Pennsylvania Senator to respond to comments Santorum made in Ohio Saturday where he said President Obama required free prenatal testing in the health care law “because it ends up in more abortions” which “cull[s] the ranks of the disabled in our society.”

Santorum told Schieffer that the policy is the “continuation” of the president’s support of aborting disabled fetuses.

“The president has a very bad record on the issue of abortion and children who are disabled who are in the womb,” Santorum said. “I think this simply is a continuation of that idea.”

There is no justification for a statement like this other than Santorum being a severely warped individual. To be honest, I really have to wonder, if Santorum’s mother had known how her son would turn out……anyway-

“Santorum said he is talking specifically about amniocentesis, an invasive test where amniotic fluid is taken from the womb. He said the procedure “actually creates a risk of having a miscarriage when you have it, and is done for the purposes of identifying maladies of a child in the womb. In many cases and in fact most cases, physicians recommend, particularly if there’s a problem, recommend abortion. . . .

“Yes, prenatal testing, amniocentesis does in fact result more often than not in abortion. That is a fact,” Santorum said.”

“I know what I’m talking about here,” Santorum said.

Yes, yes, we know you lost a child at birth. Well you know what, my mother lost a child more than once while attempting to have her family, but she didn’t hang a shingle and become an obstetrician.

According to the Mayo Clinic, amniocentesis is used for several reasons:

• Abnormal results from a prenatal screening test
• A chromosomal abnormality or a neural tube defect in a previous pregnancy
• A pregnant woman is age 35 or older
• There’s a family history of a specific genetic disorder, or one of the partners is a known carrier of a genetic disorder.
• Evaluate a baby for infection or other illness
• Diagnose a uterine infection
• Evaluate the severity of anemia in babies who have Rh disease

The depth of disgust in what this fool says, and even scarier, what he probably actually believes, would normally be call for a psyche evaluation, but since this current campaign is strictly for Conservatives, his warped thinking blends right in. Wait until he steps into the real world.

“Who controls the past controls the future…” —George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-four

Before dawn on June 26, 2011, a group of white teenagers pulled off the highway into a predominantly black neighborhood in Jackson, Mississippi.  They allegedly began harassing the first black man they found alone in a parking lot, 49-year-old James Craig Anderson.  They allegedly hurled racial epithets at him while beating him.  As Anderson tried to stagger away, one of the teens allegedly got back in his truck and ran him over, killing him.  The alleged killer then called his friends to brag,

“I ran that n***** over.”

The Tennessee Tea Party “demands” that discussions of slavery be removed from history textbooks.  While the above tragedy may be rare nowadays, it does indicate that unreconstructed racism and the horrific legacy of slavery remain with us to this day.  Any attempt to whitewash that history would be a profound disservice to each individual student and to society at large.

The Tennessee activists declared

“We seek to compel the teaching of students in Tennessee the truth regarding the history of our nation and the nature of its government.”

No discussion of the “truth” of American history could possibly be complete without a thorough exploration of slavery.  In generation after generation, slavery and race relations have been the defining issues of the times.  In 1619, the first African slaves were sold in America at Jamestown, VA.  Some early colonies in the Americas failed specifically because of slave revolts.  Over 350 years, roughly 12 million West Africans were abducted and shipped to the New World in chains.

Many of the debates that formed the Constitution focused on slavery, including the infamous Three Fifths Compromise.  Manifest Destiny was a geographical race between slavers and abolitionists to add more states to their cause.  Those tensions exploded into the Civil War.  At a time when the population of the United States was 30 million (one-tenth of today’s population) at least 600,000 people died in the war.  The US suffered more casualties during the Civil War than in every other war combined.  The passions surrounding fundamental questions of freedom and who we are as a people led Americans to massacre each other for four years.

After the Civil War, race relations continued to be a defining issue.  From 1882-1968, nearly 5,000 people were lynched.  The vast majority of lynchings were inflicted on black people, often for ‘crimes’ such as sleeping with a white woman or ‘stealing jobs.’  Often, local authorities either tacitly or actively supported lynch mobs.  It was such an accepted practice that large crowds of white lynchers would pose for a photograph with the charred, mutilated body of a lynched black person and then send the photo as a postcard.  Despite photographic evidence of the responsible parties, lynchers were not usually charged.

Even after widespread lynching subsided around World War II, segregation was the principal social structure of the United States.  Black people were not granted the rights of full-fledged American citizens until 1964, not even half a century ago.  The Civil Rights movement was heartily resisted.  Many activists were murdered, and Civil Rights legislation spawned the longest filibusters in Senate history.

Today, black people are more likely to go to jail and serve longer terms than white people

“holding arrest offense as well as age and location constant.”

Upon release from jail, they are more likely than whites to be unable to find housing and employment.  As a result, they are more likely to go back to jail.

Without this essential history, American students cannot understand their country.  Nonetheless, the Tennessee Tea Party has decreed that

“No portrayal of minority experience in the history which actually occurred shall obscure the experience or contributions of the Founding Fathers, or the majority of citizens, including those who reached positions of leadership.”

In short, the glories of white history are too important for us to focus on the tragedies of the black experience in America.

In his brilliant book Lies My Teacher Told Me, James W. Loewen explains that the very conservative Texas Board of Education holds a virtual monopoly over US history textbooks.  They pursue an agenda of indoctrinating students with pro-America and pro-white heritage messages.  They do this by scrubbing all controversy from textbooks, making them intentionally dull, elevating historical figures to mythical heroes and insisting the US is never wrong.  Now, Tennessee is trying to take this one step further by removing even the mention that there may have been a problem regarding race at one time.

This is an insidious attempt by the Tennessee Tea Party to re-fight the Civil War.  Pickett’s Charge may have been repelled at Gettysburg, but the Confederates can overrun Devil’s Den in the textbooks.  They can brainwash their children into believing that white is the superior race and slavery wasn’t such a big deal.

The real story of America is that it was built on a flawed design.  Each successive generation has struggled to improve on that design.  Each generation has faced resistance and violence but has also achieved important goals.  The “truth” is that progress in America is often two steps forward and one step back.  Conflict is the engine of history.  The outcomes of the major debates of the day set the stage for the following day.  We are flat-out lying to our children if we tell them anything different.

Progressives need to fight fire with fire.  As the great abolitionist philosopher Henry David Thoreau said,

“Cast your whole vote, not a strip of paper merely, but your whole influence.”

We need to teach our children however we can that there is great injustice built into the American system.  But there is also a great potential for justice.  The aspiration towards justice codified in our founding documents is not a static condition.  It is a sword ready to wield for those bold enough to yank it from its stone.  And we must wield it, because there will always be those who wish to take it away.  Our children must know this.

Tennessee’s new textbooks will be written with a supreme irony.  As students flip sleepily through its pages, they won’t be able to read much about America’s real past.  But they will be holding in their hands a primary document of true American history.  They will lug around in their backpacks a manifesto that falls squarely into the annals of America’s struggles with race.  The textbook will be a history lesson about the people who wrote it.  That is the American history Tennessee’s children need to study.

…Am I the only one who sees it as Romney trying to shoot Santorum with a frothy mix of lube and fecal matter?

There are a couple of ways this inflammatory rhetoric may help Santorum win the nomination.  The evangelical base of the Republican party has always had a hard time accepting that Obama is a real Christian.  Supporters of the President know all about the right wing attacks on his religous belief so we don’t have to spend much time on that. 

The Santorum biblical jujitsu here is what the red meat evangelical base thinks of the religious belief of one Willard Mitt Romney. 

Evanglical Republicans who think that Obama is not following biblical precept and would base their votes on that criteria are likely to consider that Mormonism does not comport with their take of the Bible either.  Christianists consider that the Bible is the complete word of God, ending with the book of Revelation.  To add one jot or tittle to the Bible claiming divine inspiration is essentially an attack on that understanding.   Mormonism is based upon a sort of expansion pack to the Bible called the Book of Mormon.  Exacerbating this is the fact that the person who established Mormonism actually had the temerity to reinterpret the Bible itself.   Both actions are antithetical to the modern right wing evangelical and Santorum knows just how to speak their language. 

On the basic issue of setting policy based upon biblical interpretation, is it not odd that Santorum, who so often claims to rely upon constitutional principles, is so blatantly calling on the nation to judge the president with a religious test?  To wit:  no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States. 

If anything, Santorum has disqualified himself from the office by seeming to endorse the use of biblical precepts (as he interprets them) as a guide for his administration.   We can look forward to President Santorum pushing a law to force a widow to marry her late husband’s brother, if they lived on the same property.   Just wait until American farmers learn that with a president Santorum they can not sow their fields with mixed seeds.    Ranchers will no longer be able to breed cattle of two different kinds of cattle. 

Just how many jobs will it cost America if a President Santorum really decided to base his agenda on biblical teachings?  Of course he wouldn’t actually practice what he preaches but what should we expect from one of the loudest right wing biblical blowhards on the scene today?