The RNC's back-up plan for abstinence

More here and here.

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Columbus go home?

This speaker at the St. Paul anti-Mexican rally is a little confused about our Teabagger values.



More here.

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GOP Boys' Club: Blaming Women For All Ills

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Patriarchal and misogynistic attitudes have been expressed in an unusually concentrated, open, and unapologetic manner in recent weeks. I don't think it's entirely coincidental that racism and neo-Nazism have also become far more public and unapologetic recently: the separation between "reasonable" conservatism and far-right lunacy is disappearing, with the consequence that the lunacy of the far right is getting more traction, more attention, and more legitimacy.

In the past, the far right could be dismissed politically even as we kept a wary, watchful eye on them. Today, however, the far right has become a more significant political force that has to be dealt with directly. In the long run, we should expect more assaults on basic principles of liberty and equality becoming more mainstream — proposals that were once just found on the fringes will increasingly be treated as "serious" proposals from "serious" conservatives. In the name of bipartisanship, liberals will be expected to find common ground with this extremism for the sake of compromise.



Women Should Be Seen, Not Heard

The idea that women shouldn't have an equal voice in the public sphere should be treated as fringe at best, but it's moving more and more into the conservative mainstream. This may have been expressed most dramatically when conservative Republicans in Congress shouted over female Democrats who tried to use the microphone to give a brief statement. With every woman who tried to have a voice, Republicans led by Tom Price (R-GA) shouted "I object" over and over.

It's not plausible that the attitude driving this behavior is not related to the statement from the National Republican Congressional Committee that Nancy Pelosi needs to be put "in her place." Apparently, leading the House of Representatives is not an appropriate place for a woman, just as the microphone before the House is also not a woman's place.

Come to think of it, women are also sometimes treated as if they shouldn't be seen, either. Every so often another conservative comes out to defend the idea that perhaps women should never have been given the right to vote in the first place — a position that is every bit as "moral" and "reasonable" as suggesting that blacks shouldn't be allowed to vote or that only white men should enjoy basic civil liberties. You can't get much more fringe than this, but it's a view that's been moving into what now counts as the conservative "mainstream."



Barefoot and Pregnant

So once women have been restricted to the home, there isn't much left for them to do than pop out babies and care for them, right? Conservatives are getting better and better at moving the goalposts for what qualifies as the "status quo." In a nation where abortion is increasingly difficult for women to obtain, conservatives want to tighten the noose even more by making it harder for even private insurance companies to offer basic abortion coverage.

Class plays an important role here as well because these problems don't impact wealthy and even middle-class women nearly as much. These women can more easily take off the time for multiple visits required by law, travel the distances required just to reach the nearest abortion provider, and if necessary either pay for a private insurance plan that covers abortion or even just pay for the procedure out of their own pockets.

The working poor, however, are given more and more hurdles to jump in order to obtain a legal medical procedure. Obstacles are directed at these women first because they are easy targets — they can't easily fight back because they lack so many basic resources, also partly due to the efforts of conservatives to concentrate economic, social, and political power in their own hands.

It's worth noting that coverage for medications like Viagra will not be restricted. The cost of Viagra has skyrocketed in recent years and each pill costs far more now than when Viagra was first introduced. A man's desire to get an erection and have sex will continue to be funded by health insurance reform, but the ability of a woman to make decisions about what happens to her own body would be further restricted by the same reform if "reasonable" conservatives get their way.



Inferior Treatment for Inferiors

There's no reason to expect this disparate treatment to end here. If the increased restrictions on abortion become law, why not have increased restrictions on birth control as well? We already know that the anti-choice movement is just as opposed to contraception as it is to abortion, both as a matter of theology and as a matter of policy, so why wouldn't they move to demand that next? The exact same arguments could be used and they would have the exact same degree of validity.

That women should be treated as inferiors, undeserving of equality alongside men, has already been expressed rather openly and directly by Pete Sessions (R-TX). According to Sessions, "we're all different" and smokers pay more for health insurance, so why shouldn't a woman pay more for the same coverage a man gets? Smokers pay more because they have an addiction that damages their health; apparently, being a woman is analogous to a dangerous, debilitating addiction.

It's certainly close enough to justify forcing women to pay more for the same products — and remember, women earn quite a bit less money than men, even when performing the same jobs, so in the end they have even less money for basics like food and rent. Why stop at health insurance, though? Why not charge women more for any basic service? Why not charge women more for housing, food, transportation, and everything else?

Maybe we aren't all that far from conservatives openly suggesting that only white men be allowed to vote and enjoy basic civil liberties. Does anyone want to take bets on how long before this appears, and who steps forward to be the first to say what many are probably thinking?


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Department of Book Reports: The Posthuman Dada Guide, Tzara & Lenin Play Chess

The Posthuman Dada Guide, Tzara & Lenin Play Chess by Andrei Codrescu (Princeton Press $16.95) This delightful volume uses the historical figures of Tristan Tzara, the Romanian poet and V.I. Lenin to look at the split between radical art and ideological revolution in 1916. Zurich had become a haven for artists and other refugees. Hugo Ball rented the Meirei restauraunt to host a Kuntstlerkneipe (cabaret) named Voltaire. Decorated with paintings by Arthur Segal, Pablo Picasso, Wassily Kadinsky, Henri Matisse, Paul Klee, Arturo Giametti, and Otto van Rees. The entertainment included Tristan Tzara reciting and shouting poetry, the chanteuse Emmy Hemmings, and a Russian balalaika band. As the evening wore on, the skits and improvisations became more raucus egged on by the drunken audience, to culminate in Tzara reciting nonsense French and un-rolling a roll of toilet paper with the word "merde" printed on it.

The Swiss cafe culture was a vibrant microcosm of the Bohemian life during these years with Einstein, Joyce, Hans Arp, Carl Jung and Freud.

Codrescu's use of posthuman shows they we have become so integrated with our technologies, we no longer are able to survive the natural world without them. This slim volume is your guide to this new world.

"This is a guide for instructing posthumans in living a Dada life. It is not advisible, nor was it ever, to lead a Dada life. It is and it was always foolish and self-destructive to live a Dada life because a Dada life will include by definition pranks, buffoonery, masking, deranged senses, intoxication, sabotage, taboo breaking, playing childish and/or dangerous games, waking up dead gods, and not taking education seriously. On the other hand, the accidental production of novel objects results occasionally from the practice of Dada."

I love listening to Mr. Codrescu on NPR, and here's an interview this past spring discussing The Posthuman Dada Guide. You can order the book from us and begin your Dada life.

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This and that

My Amazon review is finally up. It's currently the "Most Helpful Favorable Review." Help me keep it that way by giving it your vote.

More proof that furriners are undermining American morals.



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The Opinuary Column

The Opinion "And for what he has done, we know that the killer will be met with justice –- in this world, and the next." has died as a result of a self-inflicted impossibility, for there is no way "to know" about a "next life" for which there is no evidence. Not to put too fine a point on it, but there is ZERO evidence of some other realm in the intimated after-world. None. Zilch. Nada. To state "we know" and to follow that with "the killer will be met with justice--in this world, and the next one" is a gargantuan pile of oratorical horse puckey. True, it may be helpful to remember that this particular intonation of unprovable hogwash has been delivered by our President at a time when our nation needs to be reassured that the facilities where our soldiers are trained to kill brown people are doing just fine, thank you. And if the hanging judge doesn't get you in this life, you still might have your neck snapped in the next! Hip hip hooray!

The Opinion is joined in death by the thousands of veterans and active duty soldiers who kill themselves every year for a variety of reasons--following the President's logic, one reason why our troops are killing themselves with such alacrity could be to gain the opportunity to kill themselves in the next life, you know, to get to the head of the line. Also joining the Opinion in death are the thousands of veterans who perish every year as a result of having no medical insurance. It is widely believed that these veterans will be denied medical care in the next life as well. Just ask Joe Lieberman.

The Opinion is also joined by over a million Iraqis who will be given the chance to greet our newly dead as liberators in the next life, but have been cautioned to drive slowly up to the St. Peter White Zone Check Points and to follow all instructions very, very closely, after which they will be fired upon anyway. It is hoped they will receive justice in the 3rd Incarnation (the next, next life) but only the very religious can say (and you know they will!).

In lieu of flowers, in this life or the next or any other life to follow, friends and family of the late Opinion ask that you wear proudly the chains of spiritual bondage, that you nod your head with great sobriety whenever a national leader invokes Bronze Age dogma, and that you do the hokey pokey and you shake it all about. That, in this life and the next, is what it's all about.

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The Opinuary Column appears (in multiple incarnations) Friday afternoons at Jesus' General.

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The Billionaire's Lament

H. Ross Perot Jr is living the American dream. He made billions through government subsidized real estate deals. Special tax breaks and Bush era tax cuts provided him with enough disposable income that he thinks nothing of spending a million dollars on a rhino hunt and a couple more million to buy his own personal military jet.

But friends, H. Ross Perot Jr is in a bind now, and I think we should support him with the same zeal we've expended for his peers at the head of our nation's health insurance pharmaceutical companies.

The nation of South Africa denied him a rhino head, and it rightly has him seething with O'Reillian anger. He deserves that head. His shot grazed the rhino's skin in a hunt last July, but the cowardly beast ran off before he could take another shot. Now, the South Africans are refusing to give him--or more precisely, his hired hunter--another chance at bagging that rhino.

What kind of world is it that would deny a billionaire the right to prove his manhood by dispatching a hunter to bring him back a rhinoceros head? It most certainly isn't the kind of place where I want to live.

This isn't the first time a government's thwarted one of Mr. Perot's quests to prove his manhood. A few years back, he illegally bought a military jet, only to have the federal government take it from him.

I don't think it's possible for most of us to comprehend the pain Perot Jr must feel. Here's a man who's stood in his famous father's shadow his entire life, but every time he tries to do something that would announce to the world that he's every bit the man his father is, a government takes it away. And surely, it doesn't help that he was diminished further when his own son, Hill Perot, brought back a rhino head from the same hunt.

Maybe he should follow George W. Bush's example and prove his manhood by bombing the shit out of someone.

That's why I'm asking you to contact your congressman and demand that legislation be passed to allow H. Ross Perot Jr to obtain a private military jet and use it to bomb a village of his choice in South Africa. Surely he deserves it. It's a matter of class privilege.

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Amazon Review: Still Standing by Carrie Prejean

Update: It's now the most helpful favorable review. Let's run the score up.

My Amazon review of Carrie Prejean's Still Standing is up. You can find it here. If you like it, please cast a vote recommending it, so it becomes the "top favorable review."

A Little More Leviticus, Please, November 11, 2009

By	Gen. JC Christian, patriot (Tremonton, UT United States) - See all my reviews

As a paean to love segregation, "Still Standing" serves its purpose. Readers will come away understanding why it is so important to deny basic human rights to their fellow Americans. But it could have been so much more than that. Take a look at the chapter on pornography. Think about how much better it would have been if Miss Prejean had discussed her own video, the one in which she pleasures herself in front of a camera. It would have offered her an opportunity to discuss the Book of Leviticus and God's commandment to use kosher hot dogs. Christian study groups would be scrambling to buy it.

Although the writing in Miss Prejean's book caused me to throw up a little in my mouth, the spirit moves me to give it five stars. I know some might find that a little strange, but a book is more than simply words, sentences, and chapters; it's also cover art, spine glue, and the little blurbs the publisher commands its other authors to write. In sum, all these pieces must come together to make a book. If I love the smell of the book's spine glue, shouldn't I be allowed to reward the publisher with a few extra stars? I certainly think so.

One might also consider the writing to be like Miss Prejean before the Miss California Pageant and the cover art like the silicon implants officials gave her after she won. The original writing is common and fairly unexciting but the cover art makes the book a little more enticing. I like the way she's looking up and to the side. It's the same look she gives in that famous photo of her standing on a beach in the wind, her open shirt flowing back to expose her surgeon's magnificent works of art. That alone is reason enough to put it on your list the next time you go to the library.

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First they came for our boners

Digby commits heresy:

I have a moral objection to paying for any kind of erectile dysfunction medicine in the new health reform bill and I think men who want to use it should just pay for it out of pocket. After all, I won't ever need such a pill. And anyway, it's no biggie. Just because most of them can get it under their insurance today doesn't mean they shouldn't have it stripped from their coverage in the future because of my moral objections. (I don't think there's even been a Supreme Court ruling making wood a constitutional right. I might be wrong about that.)

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Honoring our Deferment Veterans

A veteran disrespects someone who chose to fight the Vietcong by getting a deferment so he could give pro-war speeches to Young Republicans.



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A Republican National Committeeman with Spunk Enough To Share

Joette Lookabaugh
Fremont County (ID) Prosecutor

Dear Mrs. Lookabaugh,

Thank you for retaining GOP National Committeeman Blake Hall as your county civil attorney. You could have taken the easy route, like Bonneville County did, and fired him after he was convicted of throwing used condoms onto his ex-girlfriend's lawn on ten different days.

But you didn't. You understood that his conviction and subsequent resignation from the Republican National Committee was punishment enough. But even more importantly, I suspect you saw his used condom deposits as the heroic acts of love they were.

I can imagine how it all came about. He was in a funk after losing the woman he loved. It wasn't his fault. She just began to hate him more and more as she got to know him better. It's the kind of thing that happens to true American men like him and me. It's the patriot's curse.

My guess is he began devising schemes to get her back, eventually landing on the idea that they might grow close again if they shared the responsibility of caring for another being. Maybe he picked up a dog and waited in his car outside her house to give it to her. Perhaps, he was playing his radio and a Charlie Daniels song came on. As a not-man, you might not be familiar with how a Charlie Daniels song like "Stroker's Theme" affects a man. It gives us a hankering, a mighty hankering, to liberate our seed.

Not wanting to murder defenseless Spermatazoan-Americans, he'd have used a condom to temporarily house the little squirters until he could take them home to his cellar full of Mason jars. He'd put it on and then start yanking furiously in time to Daniel's fiddling until he filled its reservoir tip to the bursting point with his teams of huddled gametes yearning to swim free . Once finished, he'd carefully remove it and place it on the seat next to him as he zipped up his pants.

Of course, the dog would immediately eat it. That's the nature of dogs. They hate America, but they love the taste of our tiniest citizens (or so I'm told--don't believe a god damned word Cletus tells you, and, anyway, what a man does with his own damned peanut butter is his own damned business).

Witnessing that kind of wanton murder is bound to make a man think, and I suspect that's what Blake did. I figure he decided to modify his plan and give his ex his seed rather than some cryptocomunistofascist Spermatazoan-American-eating dog. They could raise the little buggers in Mason jars together, as a couple.

It was a good plan, and one that might have worked had he kept at it for longer than ten days. I don't think there's anything more romantic than when a suitor lovingly lobs his seed onto his true love's lawn. She'd have given in eventually. What woman wouldn't?

Heterosexually yours in a chaste, biblical, and non-seed-based-wooing kind of way,

Gen. JC Christian, patriot

A helmet tip to Geov Parrish.

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Infiltrating the Separationists

Photo courtesy of the amazing Dr. Zaius.

As many of you know, I spent the weekend, infiltrating Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, a group so nefarious, they fight against allowing our children the opportunity to praise the Lord by handling serpents and drinking strychnine at school. It was a tough couple of days. The wickedly kind BAC forced us to accept hugs and gifts and the fruit of the vine. And Barry Lynn, tieless and therefore virtually naked, regaled us with tales of church state separation. They worked us over for hours, pelting us with reason and logic, until finally OfJoshua broke and decided to start a local chapter, here in Bugtussel.

An orangutan from the future has more.

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Miss Poppy is back

Praise Jesus she's returned. We missed her.

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The Family at C Street and Other Adventures

I'm finally finally home after four days in DCistan. It's 1:09 AM and I have to work in the morning, so I'll put up a few photos, tell a few short tales, and fill you in on the rest when my sanity finally catches its connection at O'Hare.

On Saturday, OfJoshusa and I dragged a hippy chick to a gathering of Teabagger-Americans. As you can see by looking at this photo, there must have been at least 17.3 million very passionate protesters in attendence.



As is often the case, OfJoshua was wearing her peace earrings in an effort to subvert my god-given masculine authority. Fortunately, the nice Christian lady holding the "tar & feather" sign gave her a shove when she spied her ear-treason. (I was also in a scuffle. Police were summoned to arrest your general, but the cop let me go after whispering that the gathering was a "group of assholes.")



Here, Rep. Jean "I'll get you my pretty" Schmidt gives me that "come hither" look as at least two Congressmen behind her achieve climax.



This one always makes me smile.



On Sunday, we payed our respects to The Family's house on C Street.

Dave_in_SA discovered the secret of the Family's porch pumpkin: "Think that means 'when the pumpkins rockin' don't come knockin.'"

Dave may be onto something. Wanting to pray with Sen. Ensign, I pressed the intercom button, but no one answered.



I peeked into one of the side windows and found the urn where they keep Jesus' foreskin.



Here's the back. Looks like there's plenty of room to unload a truckload of goats.



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Monday Prayer

mjs is guest blogging until the General returns from his Weekend Intensive with that nice man from Seattle. It must be pretty intense indeed because the General's nurse never usually calls on a Sunday, but that is not our concern. Here follows our prayer for the coming week:



Lord, who is God of all that is oilesque
And tar-like, and greasy, and flammable
Dear Lord, may it please you to know
Our wimpy concerns about the environment have abated
Our vision to Vietnamize Afghanistan is proceeding
Our commitment to burn the Black Gold is solid
We burn it in your name, Dear God Man Guy Lord

Oh Yahweh, who doesn't like to be called That
We sing your praises, for You seek our praise
Which is your thing, don't get us wrong, but...
Perhaps you wouldn't kill so many of us if you, well, you know
Took some responsibility...
Forgive us, Lord, for we are made in your likeness
And are therefore full of thine Piss & Vinegar



Forgive us, dear Lord, for just about everything that ticks you off
For the crime of not finding your Cloud Cave
For the crime of not tweaking your Beard
For the crime of not singing popular songs outside your bedroom window
Forgive us, dear Lord
But we don't get around much anymore
Amen-ish



Please excuse our retardification, dear Lord
We know your Math is Supreme
And that which profits our corporations profits Thee
At least that's what we're counting on
For somebody is making money Hand over Proverbial Fist
Surely, Thou dost know this
Truly, You would have done something about this by now
Verily, your silence indicates your interest
For by Your silence You make a Great Noise which none can hear
(pause)
Forgive us our intemperance, but why not just come out and say
Whatever the fuck it is that you want?
Amen



Dear Lord, the Middle Eastern One
The Monotheistic Construct
Not that other one
With all the heads and that massive boner
Just want to be very clear which Lord we're talking to here
Dear Lord
We thank Thee for our cars and our trucks
Our trains and our skateboards
And for sex--without sex Life would suck even harder
Than it does, which is kind of ironic--the sucking part
Well, you get the gist of that

Dear Lord, thank you for our metal and our plastic
Our monofilaments and various and sundry textiles
That take longer to break down than it did for You
To create this vast Amusement Park we call Earth

Just one question: dinosaurs became birds?
Really? WTF dear Lord?

Please give us the strength to get through another week
Of hype and misinformation and managed histrionics
Please embolden us to not just lay down and eat
All of the corporate shit that is routinely fed us
Amen

Dear God:
We hope you don't catch the H1N1 virus
And if you have gonads, please keep them away from a vise
Seriously, we're not joking here
Keep your gonads far, far away from a vise
It would hurt you so much, to have your balls
Crushed in a vise--so much, it is not even funny
Amen

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images taken by mjs near Long Beach, Washington.

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