The Nature of Things

Courtesy of Slate.com , here is some of the merchandise that was on sale outside the Republican national convention this week. Reportedly, the vendors were doing a brisk business. (Click on the photo to enlarge it for easier reading.)

Hillary the Riveter. Hat tip to Daily Kos   for the image.

The implementation of the Affordable Care Act this week along with the government shutdown orchestrated by the tea party Republicans has surely brought out some of the most world class stupid reactions recently seen on our political stage. When you consider all the vast stupidity that has occurred in the political arena in recent years, you begin to get a true idea of just how insane this week's actors on the stage have shown themselves to be. I think the one who tops my own personal list - and, admittedly, he has lots of competition - is Rep. Randy Neugebauer (R. - Texas, of course!) berating a park ranger at the World War II Memorial and telling her that she should be ashamed of herself because the memorial was closed. As if she personally had made the decision to close the memorial when, in fact, it was Neugebauer and his fellow tea party posse members who locked those gates. Neugebauer and other tea partiers, like Michele Bachmann, who showed up to have their pictures taken wi...

Most revealing tweet of the day:  Bills regulating women's bodies in 2013 alone: 624.   Bills regulating men's bodies since the dawn of time: 0 —  @AuthorKimberley A Republican party dominated by middle-aged and elderly white men continues its attacks on women and women's rights . This week alone  Alabama, Indiana, Kansas, Mississippi, South Dakota, and Ohio all passed and/or implemented new restrictions on abortions. All of these laws were passed by Republican legislatures (again mostly white men) and signed by Republican governors (ALL white men).  And all of the laws were based on false premises and unscientific "facts" such as that an abortion puts women at high risk for breast cancer or makes them infertile and unable to bear a child later in life. Most, if not all, of these laws require doctors and abortion providers to lie to their patients about the effects of abortion on the fetus and on the woman. The laws require medically unnecessary ultrasounds, in ...

The trifecta of so-called scandals currently being hyped by the inside the beltway press corps in Washington seem to have had the perverse effect of elevating President Obama's popularity with the great mass of Americans who live outside the beltway, outside the bubble. The results of the first polls  since the stories broke show that his approval ratings have actually increased. His approval now stands at 53 percent. I'm sure this has left Republicans scratching their heads, trying to understand why the American people are not responding to their faux outrage over Benghazi, the IRS, and the AP. The public, at first glance, seem to have sussed out just what that "outrage" is: A political attempt to damage and weaken a popular president. We've all been down this road before, not so many years ago. We remember the Clinton era and Gingrich et al's attempt at impeachment. Now Republicans are tossing around the word impeachment once again. It seems almost certain t...

The Republican National Committee is in its "spring meeting" the avowed purpose of which is to further the party's efforts at rebranding itself and reaching out to Asian-Americans, African-Americans, Hispanic-Americans, women, and young people. So, what was the first thing they did ? The Republican National Committee voted unanimously Friday to reaffirm the party’s commitment to upholding the definition of marriage as between one man and one woman, upending party efforts to grow support among younger voters.   A resolution introduced Wednesday by Michigan committeeman Dave Agema, who came under fire last month for posting an article describing gays as “filthy” on his Facebook page, passed the full RNC by a voice vote and without debate. A second resolution reaffirming “core values” of the party — including opposition to same-sex marriage — was also passed. This just reaffirms the party's wildly successful platform from last year's presidential campaign. In coming ...

With mounting anger, I read the report of Republican senator Rob Portman's "coming out" in favor of allowing same-sex marriage because he learned that his son was gay. While he was receiving plaudits and pats on the back from many liberals for his willingness to change his views when it became convenient for him and his family, I just couldn't join in the praise.  He was fine with discriminating against homosexuals as long as he thought it didn't affect him, but when he learned that it actually did affect him, he about-faced and announced he would support the rights of two gays to marry because his son was gay. My first thought was, "What about all those other people's children, Rob? Don't they count? What about their rights?" I mean, after all, Rob is an elected representative of the state of Ohio, where, I feel reasonably sure there are a few gay sons and daughters of his constituents, but he wasn't concerned about representing or protecti...

Remember ACORN? The late and lamented (by some of us) organization known as the  Alliance of Community Organizations for Reform Now was a strong advocate for the poor and disenfranchised. It worked to organize those people and to get them out to vote in elections so that they would make their voices heard.  But there are powers that be that do not want such voices heard and after years of constantly fighting the organization, in 2009, they set out to utterly destroy it. And they succeeded. In 2010, the organization disbanded. It had been accused by conservatives of various crimes and misdemeanors and the final straw was a set of highly selectively edited videos by  conservative provocateur James O'Keefe  appearing to show employees of the organization offering advice on tax avoidance related to prostitution and child smuggling. It was all blatantly untrue, but that didn't matter to ACORN's attackers who smelled blood in the water. All the charges against the organiza...

After the recent election, there were many reports in the media about how the Republican Party was completely gobsmacked, blind-sided by the election results. They really believed they were going to win and win big and couldn't understand how they didn't. So, there began a period of "soul searching." They were going to analyze why they lost and fix the problem. They lost because they were only able to appeal to one demographic - old white people. ( Full disclosure: I am one, but I'm an exception - and there are plenty of us old liberals. They didn't appeal to us .) They lost every other demographic in the country. Their base is angry old white men and there are fewer and fewer of them. If the Republicans cannot expand their appeal, their party will die along with its base, not unlike the Whigs before them. Some Republicans have sort of acknowledged this and have made half-hearted statements about how their party needs to embrace immigration reform and soft-pet...

So the Republicans' and Democrats' quadrennial celebrations of themselves are over, and now it's time to get serious about the election. Less than two months left until that fateful date. Did I hear you say, "Thank God!"? I didn't watch any of the Republican convention in real time. I only read and watched some of the news reports afterward and I did look at the platform which they adopted. From such a perspective, one could only be struck by what a hate-filled, angry, pessimistic, narrow-minded, misogynistic, and downright unpatriotic congregation it appeared to be. The theme seemed to be, "I've got mine, Jack, and f**k you!" A perusal of the faces of the delegates, mostly white and white-haired, seemed to confirm that impression. I truly don't mean to be unkind or unfair to them, but that is just the way they seemed to me. Perhaps if I had watched more of the actual convention, I might have had a somewhat more sympathetic view of the group...

I haven't watched or listened to any of the Republican (Tea Party) National Convention this week. Frankly, you couldn't pay me to - it would just be too painful. But I have followed the convention, faithfully reading the reports in the news outlets that I follow daily and listening to summaries on The Daily Show and The Colbert Report. My overall impression of the event is that I cannot remember any convention in my lifetime or any presidential campaign in my lifetime that has been so clearly and profoundly built on lies. The candidates themselves seem unable to open their mouths without uttering bald-faced lies. As for the speakers at the convention, they have been, to put it as kindly as I can, a bit irony-challenged. *~*~*~* Let's consider Ann Romney, for example. She spoke on "Women's Night," which is a totally ironic concept in itself for this anti-woman party. Her challenge was to make her listeners love Mitt Romney and to convince women that the Republ...

But for crying out loud, what the hell is happening to our country? We now have a party with elected leaders who  think child labor laws are unconstitutional   (Republican Sen. Mike Lee of Utah), who  would repeal the Civil Rights Act  (Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky), who  think climate change  is “the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people” (Republican Sen. James Inhofe).    - Sally Kohn, writing in Salon.com today  Some wag once said that a political gaffe is when a politician says what he really thinks. By that definition, Todd Akin's statement about the female reproductive system having some kind of magical barrier that keeps it from getting pregnant when it is "legitimately raped" certainly qualifies as a gaffe, because there is not a single iota of doubt that this is what the man really thinks. Moreover, it is not just Akin that thinks this way. He's right in line with the base of his party, probably the majorit...

Last week, Reince Priebus, the Republican National Campaign Committee Chairman, was interviewed on Bloomberg Television by Al Hunt and was asked about all the anti-women initiatives that his party has sponsored right across the country over the past fifteen months. Priebus rejected the idea that Republicans are waging a war on women and then he made the following jaw-dropping statement: “If the Democrats said we had a war on caterpillars and every mainstream media outlet talked about the fact that Republicans have a war on caterpillars, then we’d have problems with caterpillars.   It’s a fiction. ”    So, let me get this straight. It's all the Democrats' and the mainstream media's fault that Republicans are being accused of a war on women. It has nothing to do with mandating unnecessary transvaginal ultrasounds, limiting access to birth control, rescinding equal pay laws, writing bills that would charge women who have miscarriages with murder, forcing women to produce wri...

Yesterday was the primary day in Illinois and Mitt Romney won the Republican presidential primary going away. Last night I listened to his victory speech and Rick Santorum's non-victory speech after the race was called. My reaction to both speeches can be summed up in two words: How lame. Admittedly, this is the first time I have really listened to a speech from either of the candidates all the way through from beginning to end, so I don't know if this is typical of their message to voters, but from what I gather from previous snippets that I've heard and from reading about the campaigns, I suspect the speeches were typical. They seemed to carry all of the themes that I have heard about in past coverage. Their watchword, of course, is "freedom." Yes, this generation of Republicans really, really believes in freedom. - Freedom of corporations to rape the land and sea and pollute the atmosphere and continue to heat up the earth until it is unlivable. - Freedom of t...

"To say that people of faith have no role in the public square?  You bet that makes you throw up.  What kind of country do we live that says only people of non-faith can come into the public square and make their case? That makes me throw up and it should make every American…Now we’re going to turn around and say we’re going to impose our values from the government on people of faith, which of course is the next logical step when people of faith, at least according to John Kennedy, have no role in the public square. "  - Rick Santorum to George Stephanopoulus on Sunday television show This Week     "I'm for separation of church and state.  The state has no business telling the church what to do." - Rick Santorum in Michigan today Taking these two quotes from Rick Santorum together, one can see that he doesn't believe that the state should have any control over religion. On the other hand, he obviously does believe that the church should be able to tell the...

After weeks of seemingly taking for granted that he would win in Michigan, Mitt Romney is now playing down the state , trying to lower expectations. I guess he's been reading the polls which have shown Rick Santorum leading him by a substantial margin. Actually, in polls released today, there seems to be a swing back toward Romney , but Santorum still leads. Significantly, though Romney likes to claim Michigan as one of his "home states," the people there don't buy it. Two-thirds of those who participated in the poll did not consider him a Michigander. In fact, Republican voters across the country don't seem to be buying much of what Romney is selling these days. Even if he manages to eke out a win in Michigan now, voters really, really don't seem to like him and are not ready to get behind him in a big way. But do they like Santorum any better? Well, women don't, and for good reason since he seems intent on denying them basic rights to health care. Not t...

Poor, poor Mitt Romney. He just can't get any respect from his own party. And if he can't get them to fall in line, how will he ever win a general election? By now, it was supposed to be all over but the shouting . He was supposed to be able to show his strength in these February primaries and caucuses and put to rest any doubts about his ability to appeal to the base. Instead, he has lost a majority of the contests to Rick Santorum (!) and barely scraped by on others. True, he did win Florida by a good margin, but that's looking less and less impressive. I think the problem with Mitt is that no one really knows who he is. He's afraid to show them who he is for fear they will turn against him. In fact, if he could just once take a real authentic stand on...anything, really, it might actually turn things around for him. But he doesn't trust himself to do that. Maybe he's switched sides so many times and tied himself into so many knots trying to make himself attra...

It has been fascinating on many levels to watch the progress of the Republican presidential nominating process. For awhile, it was fun to speculate about who would be the new front runner of the week as they struggled to find someone - anyone - who was not Romney and who might have a possibility of destroying the hated Obama in the fall election. Now that the field has been winnowed down to, essentially, two more or less viable candidates, the whole thing has become a little less exciting and more predictable. Still, one thing continues to fascinate and amaze and that is the  level of support which Newt Gingrich has garnered among the righteously evangelical voters . This was, of course, particularly on display in South Carolina, where those who said that "family values" and social conservatism were the determining factors in their votes actually voted for a womanizing serial philanderer who has betrayed the marriage vows he made to at least two women. As for that third marri...

The Republicans really, really don't like Mitt Romney. The tea party Republicans positively despise him. If the tea partiers had a single candidate, they could swamp Romney and chase him out of the race, but they don't. They are fragmented, squabbling among themselves over which candidate offers them a chance to win. So far they have tried out Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry, Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich, and Rick Santorum, but they haven't fallen in love with any of them - at least not for more than a few weeks. Meantime, the inevitable Mitt Romney rolls on and looks to be unstoppable. Will they finally, grudgingly, get behind Mitt? Well, if there is one man they despise more than Mitt, it is Barack Obama. For these people, he will always be the illegitimate, Kenyan, socialist, Muslim, privileged, elite, black man who usurped the White House. The fact that the truth is that he is none of those things - except a half African-American, half white man which makes him black in the...

The Republicans running for president this year are really, really obsessed with sex . Not only their own sex lives but everybody else's. They want to proscribe what you can do and with whom you can do it and they especially want to control women's bodies and their ability to make decisions about their bodies. As I noted yesterday , they would like to take us back to a time when women had no rights, when they were chattel at the mercy of their lords and masters. In Republican thought, this is the way the world was intended to operate. Intended by God, of course. The surging Rick Santorum, the latest not-Romney, is particularly pernicious and strait-laced in the way he views sex. First of all, in Rick's world, there would be no contraceptives of any kind allowed. Sex would only happen within marriage and only for the purposes of procreation. I can see a few problems with that idea. For example, what about post-menopausal women? Are they just supposed to give up sex once the...