How Republicans Fit The Classic Profile Of An Abuser

Author: Julie Driscoll October 16, 2013 9:01 pm

 

A domestic violence survivor and crisis hotline counselor explains how today’s Republican party matches the classic profile of an abuser. The Republican party fits the classic personality profile of an abuser. Photo montage by Elisabeth Parker for Addicting Info.

As a former victim of domestic violence, in another lifetime, I learned a lot about the abusive personality. When it was over, and I was out, I became a domestic violence hotline counselor. The classes I took to train me for this job taught me two things:  One, abusers aren’t psychotic, but instead have character disorders; and two, abusive behavior isn’t uncontrollable – it’s a learned social behavior.
Enter stage left, Republicans and what used to be their “fringe” faction, the tea baggers.  The “fringe” faction, though, has of late become “non-fringe” enough to take over the House, lead John Boehner around by the nose, shut down the federal government and gleefully high-five each other as our country teeters on the edge of default – all, ostensibly, to wage war against Obamacare, a law that was passed by the House and Senate, signed by the President, upheld by the Supreme Court and that has withstood 42 Republican-driven repeal attempts.

Like abusers, Republicans always make things someone else’s fault.

The behavior of Republicans – most recently around their government shutdown, and as they dig in their heels and rationalize – by making it someone else’s fault – driving the country into default, it reminds me vividly of the abusive personality that I engaged with daily, for years, until my divorce. No compromise was ever allowed, it was his way or his other way. He never talked about the many ways in which he was wrong, it was “look what you made me do.” In his mind, the only one whose behavior needed changing was mine. Any abusive behavior of his was justified because, in his warped thinking, I provoked him. He used bullying, fear tactics, threats and intimidation to get his way. In the end, although never abusive to them directly, he used my kids as pawns in his abusive game. He refused to share responsibility in any part of our relationship breakdown. I owned it, lock, stock and barrel.

Like abusers, Republicans do not negotiate in good faith.

If you break it down, how different is the behavior of a classic abuser than the behavior we are now seeing within the Republican Party, most notably, and startlingly, the tea baggers, beginning with the mastermind of the Republican government shutdown, Ted Cruz, and moving on through the ranks of Mike Lee and Michele Bachmann and Paul Ryan and Louie Gohmert, and about 30 others? As a domestic violence survivor, I know that the President and Harry Reid are utterly correct to hold the line at negotiation.  Abusers – such as the House tea baggers, along with John Boehner, their puppet – do not negotiate in good faith.  Regardless of what “deals” they offer up today, they will renege when it comes time to uphold their end of the bargain.  When Republicans say they want a short-term “deal” to re-open the government and avoid a default, I know what that means: Just as abusive personalities are generally incapable of rehabilitation, neither are Republicans. Rehabilitation implies that there is a point of normalcy in the past to which one can return. I have yet to see that point for Republicans; they’re beyond redemption. A year ago, Paul Krugman aptly pointed out that the debt ceiling debacle demonstrates that “raw extortion works and carries no political cost,” and that “irresponsible brinksmanship” is now “a proven effective negotiating tactic.”  Mr. Krugman, meet your classic abuser.

Like abusers, Republicans must win at all costs.

An abusive personality really doesn’t care who is caught in the crossfire. His desire for control, his low self-esteem and irrational, desperate need to be the winner at any cost trumps any scrap of humanity. Despite the fact that Republicans raised the debt ceiling more than 25 times under Republican presidents (and five times, without batting an eye, under Bush), their classically abusive personalities have risen to the fore under this President. At any cost, regardless of any harm to others, they will win. So what if the U.S. defaults?  According to some Republicans, for the President to allow a default would be an “impeachable offense;” on the other hand, if the President were to invoke the 14th Amendment and direct the Treasury to pay its bills regardless of the House’s inactivity, that, too, in the minds of Republicans, would no doubt rise to the level of an impeachable offense.  As in all abusive relationships, it’s a Catch 22. Listening to the screaming rage of Republicans, it’s clear that no cost is too great to make President Obama look bad.  If the measures Republicans implement increase the chance that this President’s success story will be on pause, they’ll make a pact with any devil.  So what if their newly-discovered “fiscal conservatism” trashes a still fragile economy, tanking the markets, and driving unemployment numbers up?  If that’s what’s required to be the victors in the game of chicken they’ve been playing with our lives, that’s what they’ll do. Their lack of humanity, and lack of a moral center, is truly breathtaking.

Like abusers, Republicans will invalidate you.

I remember, during the days when I was on the receiving end of such bullying tactics, how my heart would pound and adrenaline would flow, how my stomach would knot up. I’ve felt that way any number of times during these past terrible weeks as progressives have fought for a toehold in the battle of integrity against a foe who has none. My gut has kept score.  A classic abusive personality generally uses sexually derogatory slurs against his victim, but in this case, Republicans continue to press the case that this President is not legitimate.  Their use of coded and un-coded racial slurs against our President are not dissimilar to the derogatory terms like “slut” and “whore” that classic abusers use to refer to their women; it’s how they engage. And it is, sadly, how the Republicans have engaged politically ever since President Obama was elected, and continue to engage.

Like abusers, Republicans will grind you down.

When you deal with an abusive personality, day after day, it grinds you down. Exhaustion takes over, mental fatigue weakens your facilities, hopelessness, fear and despair reduce your ability to fight. Sometimes, giving in to ridiculous demands is a relief. It stops the emotional, mental, and physical pain, even if only briefly. You think of leaving, but resist because on some level you know that your very life could be in danger if you do. Of course such fear is not misplaced; most women are killed at the point they are attempting to leave their abuser. And so, as goes domestic violence, so goes the Republican tactics. For every sane, rational plan put forward by Democrats the Republicans up the insane, irrational ante by demanding such things as the repeal or defunding of Obamacare, a “conscience clause” for the dispensing of birth control, the repeal of taxes that fund Obamacare, and even more stringent and austere financial cuts to an already stripped-to-the-bone federal budget.
Republicans – astoundingly, even Republicans who were exultant about the power they were able to wield by shutting down the government in the first place – now refuse to take responsibility for the current crisis, and instead claim that President Obama is responsible because he’s refused to negotiate with a gun to his head.  And although Democrats, like every victim of bullying and abuse, know on some level that a refusal to comply will mean pain and suffering for many, if not all, Americans, they, finally, refused to comply.   In the face of an abusive entity standing with a threatening stance in the doorway, walking through it is perilous.  As we’ve seen, when abusers are thwarted, the danger is great; we hear, see and feel their howls of rage.

Like an abuser, Republicans don’t care who they hurt.

I understand that emotion; I lived it for far too long. The Republicans have bullied, threatened and extorted for a very long time. And they get away with it because they have something the Democrats will never have: A callous disregard for anyone standing between them and a win. An abuser will knock a child out of the way in a rage, to reach the object of his obsessive fury. Republicans will knock this country out of the way in that same towering rage, carelessly tossing aside Americans, blaming others for their behavior, refusing to take responsibility for the current state, and never, ever compromising. Just as an abused woman puts her life in danger when she tries to leave, the Democrats know that they’ll put this country at great risk if they set their own requirements and firmly stand their ground.  But abused women do find the courage to leave, and the Democrats have found the courage to lead.
The thing about being an abuse victim, though – if you’re basically strong – is that the day comes when you fight back. The day comes when you pick up a Louisville Slugger and look him in the eye and dare him to take one more step in your direction. It’s an empowering moment when you realize that bullies can feel fear, that abusers can be dissuaded, that you don’t have to fear walking through that doorway. You realize that you have little to lose by asserting yourself. I’m confident that this day has, finally, come for our country, for Democrats, for all progressives. This is the day when we look the Republicans in the eye, brandish our symbolic Louisville Sluggers and say, “No more.” Domestic violence organizations have engaged the services of big, burly private detectives or cops to accompany women to court to face their abusers. It’s interesting, but the one thing abusers seem to respond to is the prospect of being harmed themselves. When faced with a threat, they back down.

Now, it’s time to call their bluff.

Our threat, the greatest weapon we have at our disposal, is stripping Republicans of the one thing they value most: Power and control. In the next election, the tea baggers must be voted out. In 2014, we must re-gain the House.  In 2014, we must send a clear message that abuse will not be tolerated, thuggery will not be accepted, and that we will call their every bluff. Our power is in the strength of our integrity and our ability to scream bloody murder when we’re threatened by forces that we know have no interest in our well-being. Abusers say they love us, just as Republicans say they love this country. Republicans say that their behavior is justified to save America from the evil scourge of liberals and the devil that is Obamacare, just as abusive men claim their behavior is justified to save themselves from a conniving bitch. The cycle of violence is clear: Whatever it takes to drive her away, followed by everything it takes to win her back. We as progressives are required, even obligated, to stop the cycle of Republican violence against Americans. We will stop it with the power in our numbers, with with the power of our votes, with the power of our loud voices.
In the movie, “The Burning Bed,” the female protagonist played by Farah Fawcett poured gasoline on the bed and lit it on fire; killing her abusive husband. When it comes to Republican policies, Republican hypocrisy, and their carelessness with our lives, I’m prepared to light the match.

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"Birther" Busted For Threatening To Kill Obama Wisconsin man, 81, refused to recant claim he'd shoot president

"Birther" Busted For Threatening To Kill Obama

Wisconsin man, 81, refused to recant claim he'd shoot president

NOVEMBER 22--An 81-year-old "birther" was arrested today and charged with threatening President Barack Obama’s life, according to federal court records.
Prosecutors allege that Elwyn Nels Fossedal was in a post office near his Wisconsin home last month when he announced, “If President Obama was here I would shoot him right there and kill him right now.”
When Secret Service agents confronted Fossedal about the threat--which was relayed to law enforcement by witnesses--he would not recant the statement and “repeated the threat using different words. He also made a number of additional threats towards the President,” according to a felony complaint.
A Secret Service investigation determined that Fossedal’s wife Margaret Ann--to whom he had been married nearly 57 years--died in early-October and that “he is displacing his grief on her loss with anger towards” Obama and other public officials being protected by the Secret Service.
An investigator noted that Fossedal “is proficient in the use of various firearms.”
Pictured above, Fossedal this morning made an initial appearance in U.S. District Court in Madison, where a magistrate judge ordered him detained. If convicted of the threat, he faces a maximum of five years in prison.
Fossedal, a retired Pfizer employee, appears to be a “birther” based on comments he has posted online. A Rush Limbaugh fan, Fossedal has also called for Obama’s impeachment over the Affordable Care Act and declared that, “We need to throw the Muslim in the White House, OUT.”
In a funeral home obituary for his wife, Fossedal is reported as having resigned from the Lions Club International because the community service organization purportedly “would not allow the worship of Jesus Christ” so that it could “be accepted by Islamic Nations.” (4 pages)

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25 Ridiculous Conservative Ideas In Their Own Words

February 8, 2013

Posted by: Samuel Wynn

1. Armed rebellion is a viable alternative to elections: ”Our nation was founded on violence. The option is on the table. I don’t think that we should ever remove anything from the table as it relates to our liberties and our freedoms.” —Tea Party-backed Texas GOP congressional candidate Stephen Broden, suggesting the violent overthrow of the U.S. government if Republicans don’t win at the ballot box, interview with Dallas’s WFAA-TV, Oct. 21, 2010
2. Banning abortions for high-risk pregnancies can be a positive experience for women: “I have been in the situation of counseling young girls… who have had very at risk, difficult pregnancies. And my counsel was to look for some alternatives, which they did. And they found that they had made WHAT WAS REALLY A LEMON SITUATION INTO LEMONADE.” — Sharron Angle on abortion
3. Bringing your gun to crowded public events is normal: “It’s not unusual in political rallies, it’s not unusual in parades, to see that type of thing.” — Joe Miller on guns at his rallies
4. Carbon Dioxide is safe: ”Carbon dioxide is portrayed as harmful. But there isn’t even one study that can be produced that shows that carbon dioxide is a harmful gas.” —Rep. Michelle Bachmann
5. Climate change is a myth: “I absolutely do not believe in the science of man-caused climate change. It’s not proven by any stretch of the imagination…It’s far more likely that it’s just sunspot activity or just something in the geologic eons of time. Excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere ‘gets sucked down by trees and helps the trees grow.”’ – Ron Johnson
6. Corporations are people: ”Corporations are people, my friend… of course they are. Everything corporations earn ultimately goes to the people. Where do you think it goes? Whose pockets? Whose pockets? People’s pockets. Human beings, my friend.” —GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney
7. Discrimination on the basis of race is desirable: “I don’t want to be associated with those people, but I also don’t want to limit their speech in any way in the sense that we tolerate boorish and uncivilized behavior because that’s one of the things freedom requires is that we allow people to be boorish and uncivilized, but that doesn’t mean we approve of it.” —Rand Paul, taking issue with the Civil Rights Act of 1964 while arguing that government should not prevent private businesses from discriminating on the basis of race
8. Evolution is a myth: “You know what, evolution is a myth….Why aren’t monkeys still evolving into humans?” —Christine O’Donnell
9. Geography is not important: ”I’m ready for the ‘gotcha’ questions and they’re already starting to come. And when they ask me who is the president of Ubeki-beki-beki-beki-stan-stan I’m going to say, you know, I don’t know. Do you know?” —Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain
10. Government has no role in job creation: “People ask me, ‘What are you going to do to develop jobs in your state?’ Well, that’s not my job as a U.S. senator.” —Sharron Angle
11. Higher education is elitist: “President Obama wants everybody in America to go to college. What a snob … Oh, I understand why he wants you to go to college. He wants to remake you in his image.” –Rick Santorum
12. Hitler coined the phrase “separation of church and state”: “The exact phrase ‘separation of Church and State’ came out of Adolph HItler’s mouth, that’s where it comes from. So the next time your liberal friends talk about the separation of Church and State, ASK THEM WHY THEY’RE NAZIS.” — Glen Urquhart
13. Inciting violence is acceptable: “I hope that’s not where we’re going, but you know if this Congress keeps going the way it is, people are really looking toward those Second Amendment remedies and saying my goodness what can we do to turn this country around? I’ll tell you the first thing we need to do is take Harry Reid out.” —Nevada GOP Senate candidate Sharron Angle, floating the possibility of armed insurrection in a radio interview
14. Intelligent Design is a viable scientific theory: “There are hundreds and hundreds of scientists, many of them holding Nobel Prizes, who believe in intelligent design.” – Michele Bachmann
15. Lawyers are Un-American: “the ABA is about as far left as the Communist Party, so those who usually get those awards are lawyers committed to socialism, not freedom.” – Tea Party Nation Founder Judson Phillips
16. Marriage is related to national security: ”Isn’t that the ultimate homeland security, standing up and defending marriage?” —Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA), on congressional efforts to pass a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage (July 2004)
17. The media is a threat to national security: “The greatest threat to America is not necessarily a recession or even another terrorist attack. The greatest threat to America is a LIBERAL MEDIA BIAS.” — Lamar Smith
18. Minimum Wage created unemployment: “If we took away the minimum wage-if conceivably it was gone-we could potentially virtually wipe out unemployment completely because we would be able to offer jobs at whatever level.” —Michele Bachmann
19. Most Americans cannot accept gay marriage: “Gay marriage is probably the biggest issue that will impact our state and our nation in the next, at least, thirty years. I AM NOT UNDERSTATING THAT.” — Michelle Bachmann
20. Obama is the enemy: “He has no place in any station of government and we need to realize that he is an ENEMY OF HUMANITY.” — Trent Franks on Obama
21. The rise of the Soviet Union is cause for concern among Americans: ”What people recognize is that there’s a fear that the United States is in an unstoppable decline. They see the rise of China, the rise of India, the rise of the Soviet Union and our loss militarily going forward.” —Michele Bachmann (R-MN), unaware that the Soviet Union collapsed more than two decades ago (August 2011)
22. Sexual Revolution created AIDS: “We had the 60s sexual revolution, and now people are dying of AIDS.” —Christine O’Donnell, Politically Incorrect. August 1998
23. Trees have a proper height: ”I love this state. The trees are the right height.” —Mitt Romney, campaigning in Michigan (February 2012)
24. We should use prisons for low-income housing: “THESE ARE BEAUTIFUL PROPERTIES with basketball courts, bathroom facilities, toilet facilities. Many young people would love to get the hell out of cities” — Carl Paladino on housing poor people in prisons
25. Women are disposable: ”She’s not young enough or pretty enough to be the wife of a President. And besides, she has cancer.”’ —future House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-GA), reportedly speaking to a friend in 1980 about why he was divorcing his first wife

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Vatican Unveils Frescoes In Catacombs of Priscilla With Images Some Say Show Early Women Priests

By NICOLE WINFIELD 11/19/13 05:37 PM ET EST






ROME (AP) — The Vatican on Tuesday unveiled newly restored frescoes in the Catacombs of Priscilla, known for housing the earliest known image of the Madonna with Child — and frescoes said by some to show women priests in the early Christian church.
Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, the Vatican's culture minister, presided over the opening of the "Cubicle of Lazzaro," a tiny burial chamber featuring 4th century images of biblical scenes, the Apostles Peter and Paul, and one of the early Romans buried there in bunk-bed-like stacks as was common in antiquity.
The labyrinthine cemetery complex stretching for kilometers (miles) underneath northern Rome is known as the "Queen of the catacombs" because it features burial chambers of popes and a tiny, delicate fresco of the Madonna nursing Jesus dating from around 230-240 A.D., the earliest known image of the Madonna and Child.
More controversially, the catacomb tour features two scenes said by proponents of the women's ordination movement to show women priests: One in the ochre-hued Greek Chapel features a group of women celebrating a banquet, said to be the banquet of the Eucharist. Another fresco in a richly decorated burial chamber features a woman, dressed in a dalmatic — a cassock-like robe — with her hands up in the position used by priests for public worship.
The Association of Roman Catholic Women Priests, which includes women who have been excommunicated by the Vatican for participating in purported ordination ceremonies, holds the images up as evidence that there were women priests in the early Christian church — and that therefore there should be women priests today.
But Fabrizio Bisconti, the superintendent of the Vatican's sacred archaeology commission, said such a reading of the frescoes was pure "fable, a legend." Even though the catacombs' official guide says there is "a clear reference to the banquet of the Holy Eucharist" in the fresco, Bisconti said the scene of the banquet wasn't a Eucharistic banquet but a funeral banquet. He said that even though women were present they weren't celebrating Mass.
Bisconti said the other fresco of the woman with her hands up in prayer was just that — a woman praying.
"These are readings of the past that are a bit sensationalistic but aren't trustworthy," he said.
Asked about the scenes, Ravasi professed ignorance and referred comment to Bisconti.
The Vatican has restricted the priesthood for men, arguing that Jesus chose only men as his apostles.
The Priscilla catacombs are being featured in a novel blending of antiquity and modern-technology: For the first time, Google Maps has gone into the Roman catacombs, providing a virtual tour of the Priscilla complex available to anyone who can't visit the real thing.
___

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Conservative Catholic Group Ties Illinois Tornadoes To Gay Marriage

Conservative Catholic Group Ties Illinois Tornadoes To Gay Marriage

Submitted by Brian Tashman on Tuesday, 11/19/2013 4:40 pm

America Needs Fatima, a project of the right-wing American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family, and Property, is linking the tornadoes that hit Illinois this weekend to the state’s recent approval of a marriage equality bill. Robert Ritchie, the group’s executive director, is just asking the question:

    Do you think the massive Illinois tornadoes are linked to the passing of the same sex “marriage” bill?

    The massive tornadoes that hit Illinois after the passing of the same sex “marriage” bill, has stimulated many people to reflection.

    In it, some see God’s chastisement; others see it as yet one more merciful warning from Providence; others yet deny both options and give various reasons.

    What do you think?

Ritchie also offers a link to an America Needs Fatima article, “Is the Voice of God Resounding in the Recent Catastrophes,” which blames homosexuality for several natural disasters.

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Nine Crazy Tea Party Incidents: Special Texas Edition

Nine Crazy Tea Party Incidents: Special Texas Edition

By Maeby Gever on November 15, 2013


Veteran’s Day week has seen a flurry of over the top Teabully happenings down in the Lone Star State of Texas. If you are a Teabully fan who loves guns and Gods but not the Gays, Texas just might be the place for you.  So here we go with our special edition of crazy Teabully stuff, Texas style.
1) LiberalAmerica.org covered the incident in Texas when a group of armed men descended upon a Dallas restaurant to use the threat of their weapons to quell the First Amendment rights of four women in the group “Moms Demand Action,” who were meeting over lunch. Texans can “open carry” their legally registered long guns. The Texas Legislature has determined that these include semi automatic rifles, the same kind of weapon used by Adam Lanza to kill little children in Newtown, CT, last year, and also used by the Aurora, CO, movie theater maniac, James Holmes. These are the kind of weapons that the “good guys with the guns” are free to take with them wherever they go in Texas.
And if you do travel to Texas, you can take comfort in the great work being performed by OpenCarryTexas.org, there to extend the freedom of gun lovers who believe that the Second Amendment trumps all others. This group is working hard to help gun enthusiasts repress the First Amendment rights of moms to assemble in a public restaurant, while making sure that lunatics everywhere can obtain guns legally then use those guns to shoot school children and moviegoers in the face. OpenCarryTexas.org can even direct you to Texas restaurants allowing customers to come on in with their guns.  They even have a warm an fuzzy Facebook page.
2) Now we all know how much many Texans love their guns and how many Texans also don’t care much for President Obama. Threats against the President rose 400% beginning the day this particular President was inaugurated in 2009. The Daily Kos has reported that President Obama is the most threatened President ever.
We will soon be commemorating the 50th anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy that took place in Dallas, Texas on November 22, 1963. It was announced in early November that President Obama would travel to Dallas to promote the ACA. Perhaps, in memory of the Kennedy assassination, the Facebook page of Gun Rights Across America Texas, had comments posted on it giving the exact address for the appearance by President Obama and suggesting that the President would get the Same Texas welcome as JFK.”

3) Republican Gregg Abbott is the current Texas Attorney General and he is running for Governor to replace the ever entertaining, Rick “Oops” Perry. Democratic Texas State Senator, Wendy Davis, is running against General Abbott.
You just never know what you might find on the Abbott for Governor Facebook Page. General Abbott must be a Teabully because he obviously loves that “Don’t Tread On Me” flag which has been incorporated into his campaign bumper sticker available to anyone for a mere $20.14 donation.
General Abbott has had issues with his followers on Facebook and Twitter. Some of his followers have posted death threats against Senator Wendy Davis .  And it is reported that General Abbott thanked a supporter on Tweeter who had referred to Senator Davis as “Retard Barbie.”
But that seems to be typical of the kind of behavior coming from many in the Teabully base of followers who use threats of violence, name calling, and intimidation as substitutes for more civilized methods of persuasion.
4) LiberalAmerica.org has been front and center bringing the public the latest in crazy that comes from the mind of Evangelical Pastor Rafael Cruz, the father of Teabully favorite, Republican Senator Ted Cruz of Texas. Never at a loss for words, Pastor Cruz misstates his credentials as a mathematician conflating that with a Scientist making him able to conclude that there is no scientific evidence for the theory of evolution.  Pastor Cruz rewrites his own history of having fought on the side of Fidel Castro and the Communists as a younger man in Cuba, allowing him to hypocritically and wrongfully attack the President as a Communist or Socialist, as if those term are interchangeable.
Perhaps Pastor Cruz needs the refresher course on “Ism’s” that is available as a free download here on LiberalAmerica.org.
5) A list of crazy Texas Tea Party stuff could easily be limited to Rafael Cruz.  So let’s just go through just a sampling of some more of the good Pastor’s recent off the reservation pronouncements:
Did you know that it is made clear to all through the Bible in Genesis that God is pro death penalty? So saith the Cruz.

Rafael Cruz also says that Black people are uninformed and deceived. Way to convince African Americans to come join the Republican Party dude.
6) This Rafael Cruz pronouncement deserves to be out on it’s own. Earlier this month Pastor Cruz addressed a gun rights advocacy group in neighboring Oklahoma where he explained how Atheism:
“Leads us to sexual immorality, leads us to sexual abuse, leads us to perversion.”
I wonder how Pastor Cruz feels about some very well known self described devout Christians such the Reverend Ted Haggard, the Reverend Jimmy Swaggart, Republican Senator David Vitter from Louisiana, and former Republican Senator Larry Craig of Idaho?  What is that saying about throwing stones when you live in a glass house?
7) Speaking of sex and Texas, here is something from the Canyon Independent School District in Canyon, Texas.
Starting in middle school, and with the permission of parents, teachers will be giving students sex education instruction that will include telling the children that virginity means ”not having participated in any sexual activity of any kind,” and comparing remaining a virgin to a new toothbrush or stick of gum, which should stay Wrapped up and unused.”

Of course Texas schools also teach abstinence only and Texas has one of the highest rates of teen pregnancies. When it comes to repressing the sexual desires of their kids, to paraphrase Charlie Sheen, Texas is winning!
8) Justice Antonin Scalia, probably the most Conservative and Teabully like Justice on the current Conservative dominated Supreme Court of the United States, says that if he weren’t a Virginian, he’d probably be a Texan.”
And Republican Governor Rick “Oops” Perry told an adoring audience that Justice Scalia would “fit right in.”
Now Justice Scalia has rarely been known to take a position that didn’t rile up Liberals and Progressives while at the same time bringing a smile as big as Texas to a Teabully face.  But perhaps Justice Scalia is tipping his hand that he might soon be leaving the bench and retiring in Texas where he can join a posse or speak openly at a Koch brothers conference, without having to worry about pesky rules of ethical judicial conduct?  Let’s all agree to chip in for his bus ticket out of town.
9) President George W. Bush has mystified many by his attendance at a Messianic Jewish Bible Institute fundraiser in Irving, Texas. Now I am not bashing anyone’s religion and I firmly believe that people have the right to practice or not practice any religion they like, so long as they follow the Constitution and keep it out of Government and public law.  But this move by President Bush gets him the final shout out on this special,Texas style list, of Teabully crazy.
Just because the word “Jewish” is in the name, that does not mean that the organization  is Jewish. This particular “Jews For Jesus” group, is not promoted by any real Jews.  These “Jews for Jesus” groups are actually in the business of promoting the end of Judaism, the coming of the Rapture, and the end of earthly existence as we know it.  Dedicated to saving the Jewish people by converting them or letting them suffer eternal damnation once Jesus returns to take the true believers to an etherial plane of existence, these faith based groups proliferate in Texas.
The Messianic Jewish Bible Institute has a vision statement on the website which is to:

Bring Jewish people into a personal relationship of faith with Yeshua the Messiah, knowing their acceptance will eventually mean life from the dead.”

The Jews For Jesus website says that:

Direct Jewish Evangelism is our priority.

These groups are in the business of convincing Jews that the Messiah, in the form of Jesus Christ, has already come. And that is contrary to the Jewish belief that the Messiah has not yet come. Further, when the Messiah does come, there will not be the end of days, just eternal peace on earth.
The problem with President Bush’s appearance at this fundraiser is that this group is in the business of fostering public support against making peace with Iran while encouraging an attack by Israel, with or without the United States, which might then bring on the end of the world war.  The problem is also that many in the American Jewish community, which for years had been duped into believing that President George Bush was a friend of the Jewish People, just might support the end of the Jewish People and the world as we know it.
President George W. Bush is no longer in office and he is no longer in a position to do further harm to the United Sates or to the world.  But the questions remain, did President Bush and the advisors around him believe in the end of days when in office, and were their actions in taking us to war in Iraq on false pretenses in part based on the desire accelerate the coming of the end of days?

The founding fathers were smart for insisting that there be a separation of Church and State. We, the voting public, need to be as smart as those people were so long ago and make sure that we keep theology out of our Government and in the private sector where it belongs.

Edited/Published by: SB


About the Author:
Maeby Gever (34 Articles)I am the voice of my human parents. Dad, 58, mom 56, both retired lawyers. Dad worked privately as a personal injury lawyer in the Philadelphia, PA area before retirement. He has a BA in Political Science, a Masters in Secondary Social Studies Education and he did some public school teaching before retiring again. Mom also has a BA in Political Science and she spent her entire 33 year career working as an attorney for a US Defense Department Agency located in Philadelphia, PA. She spent the last four years of her career as the Chief Counsel. She retired in April of this year. I have two human brothers, both Graduates of the George Washington University. My older human brother is working his way up in Airport Management at the Philadelphia International Airport. My younger human brother is a Peace Corps veteran.

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See How These Texas High School Students Slam A Sexist Christian Speaker

See How These Texas High School Students Slam A Sexist Christian Speaker (VIDEO)

Author: Stephen D. Foster Jr. November 16, 2013 3:36 am 

Christian ‘motivational’ speaker Justin Lookadoo got way more than he bargained for when he agreed to speak at Richardson High School in Texas on Wednesday. Does THIS guy look “dateable?” Photo from Justin Lookadoo’s facebook page.

A Christian “motivational” speaker got way more than he bargained for when he agreed to speak at Richardson High School in Texas on Wednesday.

Christian speaker Justin Lookadoo was rejected by students at Richardson High School for being a sexist

As he spoke to an assembly full of students, Justin Lookadoo had no idea that he was being totally rejected and humiliated on Twitter by the very students he was talking to. But that’s exactly what happened.
Most of the students didn’t even want Lookadoo to speak, but the school and the PTA hired him to do so anyway. Their decision came back to bite them in the ass. Lookadoo’s website is called RUDateable.com. The contents of the site were made available to the student population. Unfortunately for Lookadoo, the young men and women didn’t appreciate it. As part of the site, Lookadoo and his co-author Hayley DiMarco created a list of incredibly sexist that harken back to a by-gone era in American history and encourage rape culture.

For instance here’s a few of the so-called “rules” that Lookadoo would like boys and girls to adhere to.

1. “Dateable girls know that guys need to be needed. A Dateable girl isn’t Miss Independent.”
2. “God made guys as leaders. Dateable girls get that and let him do guy things, get a door, open a ketchup bottle. They relax and let guys be guys. Which means they don’t ask him out!!!”
3. “Men of God are wild, not domesticated. Dateable guys aren’t tamed.”
4. “Being a guy is good. Dateable guys know they aren’t as sensitive as girls and that’s okay. They know they are stronger, more dangerous, and more adventurous and that’s okay. Dateable guys are real men who aren’t afraid to be guys.”
5. “Keep it covered up. Dateable guys know that porn is bad for the spirit and the mind. They keep women covered up.”
6. “Dateable girls know how to shut up.”

Sounds like the kind of list one would find tacked to the wall of an Iranian government building, or in Rick Santorum’s bathroom.

Students rejected Lookadoo’s sexism and humiliated him via Twitter.

But as noted earlier, the students didn’t appreciate Lookadoo’s “rules” and promptly gave him hell throughout his presentation. How did they do this? Through Twitter of course.
Lookadoo had no idea that while he was speaking, students were live-tweeting the assembly. Students criticized Lookadoo’s sexism and created a hashtag that will follow him to any school he goes to in the future. And that tag is #lookadouche. It’s got a nice ring to it, doesn’t it?
Here are some images of the student’s tweets via Huffington Post:

Richardson students also bravely confronted Lookadoo and his sexism after he spoke.

Wait, there’s more! After the assembly, students confronted Lookadouche, er, Lookadoo about his sexism and asked him why he tells girls “to get out of abusive relationships instead of telling guys not to be abusive in the first place?” The question surprised Lookadoo. It’s allegedly the first time he’s been challenged by students.
Here’s the video report from KDAF Dallas:

Parents are outraged that Lookadoo was allowed to speak.

According to the Dallas Observer, parents weren’t given all of the details about the assembly or the speaker. One parent, Dr. Jaime Clark-Soles, expressed outrage after learning more after the event had already taken place.
“I am extremely troubled by the fact that Richardson High School would bring in an ‘expert’ speaker who holds the dangerous, misogynistic views that advance a rape culture such as those expressed on his website,” Clark-Soles stated. “I was given no information about an unnamed speaker on an unnamed subject.”
The assembly had actually been postponed, but then school officials had the bright idea to simply make it optional and let the show go on. Hence, the backlash that Richardson High School administrators are currently facing.

Richardson students were smarter than the adults who hired Lookadoo but these kinds of assemblies happen all too often.

Principal Charles Bruner has since apologized to parents, but it’s simply amazing that school officials would allow such a speaker to interact with the students in their care. Clearly, the students at Richardson High School know more about right and wrong than the supposed “adults” who run it. Religious-based sexism is running rampant in this country, especially within conservative circles. It’s the belief that men can do whatever the hell they want while women have to be pregnant and chained to an oven. Such views may have been acceptable in the 1800′s, but they are not in today’s world.
Yet, Christian fundamentalists show up in schools around the country in an effort to push their agenda upon the young minds who are subjected to such events.
In April 2013, students at a high school in Mississippi were forced to listen to what amounted to a Christian sermon led by local church officials. Teachers blocked the exists as the presenters attempted to indoctrinate students into the Christian right-wing agenda. This blatant violation of liberty resulted in outrage and a lawsuit has been filed.
A year earlier, a Christian rock band spoke at an Iowa high school. The band separated the girls and boys into different rooms. The boys learned about drug overdose. The girls, however, were told to not have sex until marriage and to be submissive to their husbands. The band also bashed homosexuality. Parents and students were both equally outraged.

These students rejected slut-shaming in favor of sexist-shaming.

So the question is, why do schools hire such people to speak to their students? Even though these wonderful Richardson High students did their research and had the courage to stand up against the Christian speaker at their school, there are other students out there that are vulnerable to this kind of teaching. It destroys the confidence of young women and enables men to be assholes toward them. Such sexist attitudes are responsible for the culture of rape that has plagued this country for decades. Rather than hiring sexists like Lookadoo, schools should be hiring rape counselors and women’s rights advocates to speak to students. If we want sexism and rape culture to end, we have to strip people like Lookadoo of their speaking platform. In other words, don’t hire them. Thankfully, the students at Richardson High didn’t buy in to his bullshit. Instead, students turned the tables. They rejected slut-shaming in favor of sexist-shaming, and the world is better for it.

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GOP Conspiracy to Commit Rape

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Bill to Ban Certain Tattoos, Body Piercings Passes Senate

Posted by PBSpot Admin      20 August 2013 



The Arkansas Senate passed a bill to ban tattoos, piercings and other similar body modifications which it characterizes as “non-traditional,” recently.
Senator Missy Irvin of Mountain View, Arkansas sponsored the bill entitled ”An Act To Limit Body Art Procedures”. She says that body modifications should be limited to “traditional” tattoos and piercings. Her proposal was to essentially ban scarification procedures and dermal implants, as well as certain tattoos which remain yet to be defined as by the vague language of the bill she sponsored.

Almost unbelievably, this bill passed by a 26-4 vote. Following this, the bill was sent to the House, where it took on even more vague language. See the link above for the bill as it was eventually “compromised” on in the House. The scarification ban from the Senate version was removed, while considerable ambiguous language remained. The House “compromise” bans dermal implants unless performed by a doctor. This essentially, and in practice, outlaws the body modification. As well, the bill’s vague, undefined language – even in the edited, House version – while editing out some of the original language on tattoos, fails to define a number of important issues raised by the Senate version, including what they mean by “cosmetic” tattoos as opposed to “non-cosmetic” tattoos.
If the government dictating what you can and can’t do with your body bothers you, SPREAD THE WORD!
(Article by Micah Naziri, image Sandy TrueBodyArt)

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10 Things Traditional Christians Got Terribly Wrong

10 Things Traditional Christians Got Terribly Wrong

Although progressive Christians have been at the forefront of social justice, conservative Christians are often on the wrong side of history. When Christians get political, they often do so because they believe that they have God on their side. This is true whether they are progressive or conservative, and throughout most of American history there have been both. (You’d think that the conflicting claims about what God wants would lead to more doubting, but here we are.) Looking over the long history of people claiming to be speaking for God’s wishes, it quickly becomes evident that Christians are frequently on the wrong side of history. Here are 10 things that American Christians of the conservative stripe got completely wrong when they were so sure they were speaking on God’s behalf.

1) Slavery. Both sides of the American slavery debate claimed to be speaking from profound Christian conviction. The Bible clearly has a positive view of slavery, something pro-slavery Christians routinely pointed out. Abolitionists took a broader, less literal view of the Bible. Unsurprising that this divide led to the South being, to this day, home of the most people who take a literalist, fundamentalist view of Christianity.
Of course, nowadays you can’t find even the most literalist fan of the Bible who is willing to agree with their predecessors in the 19th century who believed the Bible endorsed slavery. Of the many things conservative Christians have gotten wrong over the years, the pro-slavery argument is probably the one that is least likely to be revived by modern fundamentalists.

2) Women’s suffrage. Unsurprisingly, conservative Christianity was hostile to women’s suffrage, just as it’s been hostile to women’s progress every step of the way. Women’s “God-given” roles were routinely referenced in arguments against giving women the right to vote, such as when Susan Fenimore Cooper—daughter of James Fenimore Cooper–wrote in Harper’s that “Christianity confirms the subordinate position of woman, by allotting to man the headship in plain language and by positive precept.”
While the argument is clearly wrong in retrospect and disavowed by most modern conservatives, there are still some Christian conservatives who continue to believe that the issue isn’t resolved and should still be up for debate.

3) Evolution. From the second it became evident that the Biblical story of creation was wrong and life on earth evolved over millions of years of random mutation, many Christians were aghast and resisted the truth getting out as hard as they could. Because of this, there have been multiple times throughout history where Christians embarrassed themselves by being wrong in a dramatic courtroom setting. The Scopes monkey trial is the most famous, but the Dover trial of 2005 over the teaching of intelligent design in schools is up there in terms of sheer humor. The Republican-appointed judge even went so far as to describe the Christian conservative defenders of creationism as liars pushing a theory of “breathtaking inanity.”

4) Pain relief for childbirth. The Bible explicitly lays out pain in childbirth as Eve’s punishment for sin, so unsurprisingly, that’s what many Christians in the 19th century believed had to be so. Once reliable pain relief in childbirth began to be developed, therefore, there was a lot of resistance to it from Christians who feared it defied God to let women have some relief. The truth is that pain in childbirth is not a punishment from God, but the product of evolution, which is a far from perfect process. Eventually, the argument that women owed it to God to suffer through childbirth faded to the fringes of right-wing Christianity. “Natural” childbirth has seen a resurgence in popularity in the secular world since the 1960s, but that was more of a reaction to some medical overreach than a belief that women are sinful and deserve to suffer.

5) Catholics. Modern American conservative Protestants embrace Catholics and have even started to borrow some Catholic arguments against things like abortion and contraception. But in the early 19th and 20th centuries, there was widespread anti-Catholic sentiment, much of it tied up in hostility to Catholic immigrants. There was even an anti-Catholic political party in the early 19th century. Catholics were viewed as idolaters and drunkards by many Protestants, but by far the most bizarre relic of anti-Catholic paranoia is the fear that evil shenanigans were going on in nunneries. A woman writing under the pseudonym “Maria Monk” penned a best-selling book where she claimed to have escaped a convent where she was forced to be a sex slave and pressed into the act of killing babies and hiding their corpses. Needless to say, none of her accusations should be taken as anything approaching true. Anti-Catholic paranoia also led to another Christian-led folly…

6) Prohibition. Hostility to Catholic immigrants was a large part of the reason temperance mania took over many Protestant communities in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Despite the fact that Jesus was a wine drinker, abstinence from alcohol—and forcing abstinence on others by force of law—became a major Christian cause during this period, leading up to Prohibition. This was true, even though many in the temperance movement were also aligned with the suffragist cause, making Prohibition one of the few Christian follies that weighs as heavily on the progressive Christian tradition as it does the conservative one. Luckily, it took little more than a decade for the bigtime error that was banning alcohol to be fixed.

7) Segregation. Religious leaders like Martin Luther King Jr. led the desegregation movement, but it’s also important to note that the pro-segregation movement was also conceived as a Christian one. Arguments against “race mixing” were largely framed in religious terms. The judge who initially ruled against the interracial couple in Loving v. Virginia argued that the “Almighty God” put people on separate continents and “did not intend for the races to mix.” Christian right leader Jerry Falwell got his start fighting to uphold segregation, giving sermons about how integration was offensive to God. As Max Blumenthal noted in the Nation, the modern religious right as we know it started off as a movement to defend segregation.

8) Contraception. From the beginning of the “birth control movement,” Christian conservatives fought to keep women from being able to have sex without getting pregnant. Devout Christian Anthony Comstock successfully convinced Congress in 1872 that contraception was ungodly, leading to a federal ban on sharing birth control information across state lines. This was finally repealed in 1936. In 1963, the Supreme Court ended anti-contraception laws for married women. Finally, in 1971, the Supreme Court also eliminated the last of the god-bothering anti-contraception laws banning birth control for single people. Nowadays, 99 percent of sexually active women have used contraception at some point in their lives.

9) School prayer. Along with supporting segregation and opposing feminism, the third issue that created the modern religious right is the issue of prayer in public schools. In 1961, the Supreme Court ruled against school-led prayers, even if they were supposedly voluntary. Instead of giving up a chance to use schools as a way to foist their beliefs on the unwilling, the religious right spent and continues to spend the next 50-plus years trying to find some way to sneak religious indoctrination/bullying of non-believers into public schools. They’ve attempted to sneak it in by having students lead it, as if that makes it less coercive. Recently, in Rhode Island, they tried to sneak it in by having it written on a wall instead of recited. Most attempts fail in court. Even though there’s no evidence that these bullying tactics have ever converted anyone to their faith, they keep trying.

10) Marriage equality. The religious right is still fighting like it’s not obvious that they’re wrong on this one. The tide is shifting so fast it’s quickly becoming apparent that this issue, like segregation, is going to be one where they’ll be pretending they didn’t fight so hard for the side of wrong in a few decades. The majority of Americans now support same-sex marriage. Illinois is becoming the 15th state to authorize it. The momentum is in the direction of justice, and as gay rights proponents said from the beginning, Christian conservatives are, as with most things, on the wrong side of history.

Amanda Marcotte co-writes the blog Pandagon. She is the author of It's a Jungle Out There: The Feminist Survival Guide to Politically Inhospitable Environments.

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Glenn Beck Has Had Enough: ‘I, Personally, Am Calling To Impeach The President’

By Brian Carey on September 18, 2013 Subscribe to Brian Carey's Feed@brianmcarey

Go big or go home, huh?

Glenn Beck is fed up with this President, and he wants him out of office. In fact, he wants President Obama out of office well before January of 2017, when he is scheduled to leave office.
Just yesterday on his own television network, BlazeTV, Beck personally called for the impeachment of President Obama. This is the first time that he has done that.
“I called today for the very first time in my career,” Beck said, “on this President. I, personally, I have said before, ‘That’s impeachable.’ I, personally, am calling to impeach the President of the United States. This is impeachable.”
And what, exactly, does Beck mean by “this”? What is it that President Obama is doing that rises to the constitutionally defined level of “high crimes” and/or “misdemeanors”?
Beck believes that the President should be impeached because he is willing to arm the Syrian rebels. “He is arming known terrorists,” Beck said, “and people like John McCain should be impeached as well.”
John McCain should be impeached? We didn’t see that one coming.
“If you don’t want your vote back,” Beck continued, “what will it take? If you in Arizona said, ‘I voted for John McCain because I thought John McCain was strong on defense and better than the other guy.’ Whatever the deal is, if them saying, ‘We’re going to arm al-Qaeda’ and yes, we know that some of the arms are going to fall into the hands of al-Qaeda… if that’s not an impeachable offense for Lindsey Graham, for John McCain, for John Boehner, for the President of the United States, I don’t know what an impeachable offense is.”
Have a look at the video below.

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Payback Is a Bitch for Abortion Clinic Protestors, Thanks to a Brilliant Landlord

Payback Is a Bitch for Abortion Clinic Protestors, Thanks to a Brilliant Landlord

Cassie Murdoch Roe v. world 3/30/12 1:00pm

Todd Stave has the unenviable position of being the landlord of a building in Germantown, Maryland, which he leases to an abortion provider called Reproductive Health Services Clinic. So he knows a little something about dealing patiently with anti-abortion protesters. But when they started calling him at home at all hours and harassing his family, he got fed up and came up with a very clever solution: Do unto others as they have been doing unto you.

Problems really began for Stave at the end of 2010, when he leased his building to LeRoy Carhart, one of the only doctors in the U.S. who openly acknowledges that he performs late-term abortions. As you can imagine, he's a controversial man, and protesters come from far and wide. There is a constant group of them parked outside, praying and holding up signs, many of which have pictures of mangled fetuses. That's pretty much a landlord's nightmare, and yet Stave has a very calm attitude about it. He told Petula Dvorak of the Washington Post this week,

    It's their right. They are protected by the First Amendment. And outside the clinic is probably the most appropriate place for them to express their views.

If you're wondering how Stave can remain so relaxed about the situation, he explains, "I've been a member of this fight since Roe v. Wade. Since I was 5 years old." You see, the clinic used to belong to his father, and then his sister ran it. When he was younger, the office was firebombed, and protesters were often gathered outside his dad's house. So he's used to a certain level of harassment and he'll tolerate it — but only up to a point. And recently, the usually calm, cool, and collected Stave was pushed to his limit.

It's common practice for anti-abortion protesters to disseminate doctors' personal information and urge people to harass them—and it can clearly go far beyond that, as with the 2009 murder of Dr. George Tiller in Kansas. LeRoy Carhart, who's now in Stave's clinic, had his Nebraska farm burned to the ground back in 1991. But protesters in Maryland figured out they could start targeting Stave for owning the clinic's property. He was largely unfazed by this campaign, until last fall when they took it too far. On his daughter's first day in middle school, a large group of people protested outside her school, and then they showed up again for back-to-school night. They were naturally carrying signs with his name and contact info and those nasty pictures of fetuses.

Stave was furious, and then it got even worse. Dozens of the protestors began calling him at home, around the clock. His friends wanted to help him fight back; that's when Stave had the brilliant idea of turning the tables on his tormentors. He began recording the names and numbers of the assholes who called, and then he gave the list of info to his friends and asked them to call these people back on his behalf. Shazam! And the really smart part was that when someone from Team Stave called, they always took the high road. He explains,

    In a very calm, very respectful voice, they said that the Stave family thanks you for your prayers. They cannot terminate the lease, and they do not want to. They support women's rights.

Genius. While it was initially only a few friends doing the calling, the group quickly expanded. Soon, he was up to having 1,000 callers at his disposal. And they got crafty too. They'd look up information on the people who'd placed unwanted calls to Stave, and then when they called, they'd drop the names of the person's children or their school into the conversation. They'd also, said Stave, "tell them that we bless their home on such and such street," and then name their address. Are you getting shivers up you're spine yet? Stave's calling force became so powerful that sometimes he was able to hammer an unwanted caller with up to 5,000 calls in return. Looks like two can play at this game, stalkers.

Stave's approach was so appealing that he was flooded with people from all over wanting to help. So he organized Voice of Choice, which now has about 3,000 volunteers. They don't just fight back for Stave anymore. They'll make calls on behalf of whoever is being bullied by anti-abortion protesters, whether it's a doctor or a landlord or their family.

When asked if he thought this method of payback was harsh, Stave said no: "We gave them back what they gave us." Actually, not even. You gave back a mild, family-friendly version of what they gave to you. You proved to them that you know where they live and who their children are, but you didn't show up at their homes and schools and threaten them. You didn't come onto their lawn with posters detailing terrible imaginary things that they've done. You're serving up Revenge Lite™: Tastes great, less killing.

What's more, Stave is strict about who Voice of Choice will make calls for. If it's just run-of-the-mill protests outside clinics, he won't help them because he believes in people's First Amendment right to be out there saying what's on their mind. Protestors must be personally harassing doctors or landlords in order for Stave to step in. If only abortion opponents had the same respect for people doing what they were allowed by law to do. Ahem.

So this is the part where the evil bullies who've plagued him (and others) at all hours of the day or night learn their lesson after having a taste of their own medicine, right? Yep, yep. They all realized they were being horrible, and now every anti-abortion protester is treating their pro-choice opponents with the utmost respect. HA. No. Actually this is the part in the story where it gets much worse. Ready?

Since Voice of Choice has been such a success, Stave was honored by NARAL in California last week. Knowing that he was going to be out of town receiving the award, his personal band of haters chose that moment to canvass his neighborhood with fliers that had a photo of Stave in a Nazi uniform, photos of Holocaust victims, and bloody fetuses. [Pause for a brief rage-stroke intermission.] Of course, the fliers had Stave's contact information—and all of the phone numbers and addresses for other members of his family.

This goes without saying but, nevertheless: This is so incredibly fucked up. First of all, the guy owns a building, not a concentration camp. Second of all, what kind of person picks up a flier like that and thinks, "I need to get in touch with this Nazi!" God help us all.

Obviously Stave's daughter and all of his neighbors saw the fliers, but the contact information for Stave's family members must have been spread around. Because on Monday an abortion protestor showed up at the dental office owned by Stave's brother-in-law and began doing his abortion-protestor routine outside. That's such a great idea — I'm sure the random patient walking in for a cleaning is totally going to make the connection that the dentist's brother-in-law owns a building where there's an abortion clinic, and therefore abortion is wrong. At this point, Stave was back in town, so he went over to confront the protestor. And when he got there, the creep said, "How was your trip to San Francisco?" Deep inhale, slow exhale.

It is amazing that people like Stave have fortitude to stand up to psychos like this coming at them from every direction, but thank heavens they do, because, honestly, the thought that these protesters get away with so much is sickening. It's hard to know where these nutcases will end when it comes to making Stave's life a living hell—but it's probably not going to get any better now that he's getting more and more national media attention.

At least we know he's got plenty of backup from Voice of Choice. The worse these people get, the longer VoC can keep them on the phone, telling them all about the many "blessings and prayers" they're sending to their home addresses and to the locations of their children's daycare centers. Then everyone will be so busy making and receiving calls that they'll have less time to spend protesting outside clinics. And maybe in the future, we'll get to a magical place where both sides are talking to each other 100 percent of the time, and a woman will be able to walk right up to the front door of an abortion clinic without being harassed—because everyone will be so busy talking on the phone to their enemies to notice or care what she's choosing to do with her body.

A clinic's landlord turns the tables on anti-abortion protesters [Washington Post]

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A Christian Nation?

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Lunatic Potential Senator From Texas Believes Global Warming is Caused by Abortion (Video)

Posted by Progressive Populist  |  on November 5, 2013

In January of this year, the state of Texas unleashed Tea Party looney bird Ted Cruz to wreak havoc on the nation, and believe it or not, there may be someone worse than he is who could end up as the other senator from Texas a year from now.
David Barton is an evangelical Christian minister who believes that separation of state and church is a “myth”, evolution should not be taught in school, the government should regulate gay sex, schools turn kids gay, the bible opposes the minimum wage, and that people should legally be able to own bazookas, tanks and fighter planes. He has been urged to challenge incumbent senator John Cornyn by Glenn Beck and is, of course, a Tea Party darling.
If that isn’t enough to scare the living hell out of you, maybe the video below will.
Barton, in a discussion with
snake oil salesmantelevangelist Kenneth Copeland, comes to the conclusion that abortion is behind global warming and the accompanying crazy weather patterns. They come up with this brilliant explanation by this head-scratching sequence of events…
First, God got mad at us for voting in pro-choice politicians.
Then, with God pissed off and wanting to unleash his anger on us, He “opened the door to the curse,” which led to a barrage of floods, tornadoes, murder and pedophilia.
And unlike in the old days when our ancestors would get together and pray for repentance when bad weather struck them, now we just call it global warming and don’t kneel down and pray every time a strong wind gust or blast of thunder is unleashed on us.
In conclusion, God is so mad at us that He is letting global warming and the crazy weather that comes with it happen to us.
No, this is not a sample article from someone seeking employment with the Onion. There really is a David Barton out there who really does think this way.
Let’s do our best to talk some sense into Texans and keep this guy out of the Senate. You think Ted Cruz is bad, which he absolutely is? This guy might be Ted Cruz on steroids. Barton’s only political experience to date is being the former vice chair of the Republican Party of Texas.
Watch the video below, from RightWingWatch.

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Why Conservatives Are More Terrified of Sex Than Violence

The Guardian / By Sarah Jane Stratford

6 COMMENTS

There's been plenty of outcry in the US over lesbian sex in Blue is the Warmest Colour. Brutality onscreen, however, is fine.

Léa Seydoux and Adèle
Exarchopoulos in
Blue is the Warmest Colour.

November 5, 2013  |  

If you bothered to listen to the Parents Television Council, you would think that New York's tiny IFC Center was evil incarnate when the theatre decided not to enforce the NC-17 rating for the film Blue Is the Warmest Color. The Parents Television Council called the move "shocking" and fretted that this meant "minor children" would be allowed to view graphic sex scenes (because they'll no doubt be camping on the street to see a three-hour French drama). Though its "stern warning" was not widely reported, it may very well have contributed to the film's strong box office results thus far.
Everyone is entitled to their beliefs, but here's where the fury of the Parents Television Council breaks down: these conservatives are so obsessed with sex, but seemingly care far less about violence.
While the Council was wailing about the possibility of a teenager seeing a lesbian film, agunman opened fire at Los Angeles airport, resulting in one death and a number of injuries. That might have been a moment for the PTC, which ranks violence after sex in its list of evils it seeks to regulate on the airwaves, to deplore the shooting and, perhaps, note that there is some credence to the calls for stricter gun control laws (or, at least, less violence on screen and in video games). Real-world violence, however, tends to have little resonance with cultural scolds. It is certainly not worth mentioning when there is cinematic sex to condemn.
The fact that Blue Is the Warmest Color is even rated NC-17 in the first place makes it yet another entry in the discussion, most recently illuminated by Kirby Dick in his documentary This Film Is Not Yet Rated, about the hypocrisy and arbitrariness of film ratings, particularly where sex is concerned.
Sex, female nudity, female enjoyment of sex, and especially female enjoyment of lesbian sex, tend to draw the strictest ratings. Violence, however, is given much more of a pass. Even gory violence will be rated R, whereas a women's sexual pleasure is NC-17.
What's so scary about sex and the female body? And why is it so much scarier than violence – including violence committed upon the female body?
Concerns regarding sex over violence are nothing new in western society. Sex was, of course, right up there with forbidden fruit. Perceived as instigated by a woman, it then cast women in later religious thought as particularly carnal, a danger that could invite the devil into society. In the Speculum Maius, an encyclopedia used during the Middle Ages, friar Vincent de Beauvais wrote of women's frivolity, with their "monstrous headdresses" and particularly of the "lascivious and carnal provocation" of their clothing. Women were the "devil's decoy", capable of preventing men from achieving holiness.

One of the most famous sexual women in the Middle Ages is Chaucer's Wife of Bath, who laments "Alas, alas, that ever love was sin". While she is considered an example of healthy sexuality, her tale begins with a violent rape and ends with the rapist escaping punishment to instead enjoy a sexually fulfilling marriage. We never hear what happens to the rape victim, who likely ends up cast out of society.

Violence was, in fact, justified when aimed at women if they were said to be disobedient. That is, if they asserted some form of independence. While the bulk of victims of the early modern witch burnings were likely women past child-bearing age and thus no longer considered sexual, they were also living alone, ungoverned by male dominance. The witch hunts hinted that women who lived outside the social order deserved violent treatment.

Women's sexuality has been the target of male study, suspicion, and regulation throughout millennia. Aristotelian philosophy classed women more as property, not individuals, and the idea of their having agency was anathema to a healthy society.
Violence, on the other hand, is a male purview. Men conducted war, carried weapons, meted out punishment. Duels were sanctioned as a means of effecting justice. It's a historical "boys will be boys" mentality, justified for its ends. Through violence, one can create empires. Sex just replaces those who were lost along the way.
Bad enough that women's lustfulness could lean men astray. Far worse when that lustfulness is shared with another woman.
The first TV show to depict a serious and erotic lesbian relationship, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, used the specter of witchcraft as a conduit of their romantic connection. The censors cracked down on their relationship – whereas Buffy featured frightening, intense violence, and a fair bit of heterosexual sex, the network was quick to tell creator Joss Whedon that it didn't want to see any kissing between the lesbians. Terrifying violence was solid entertainment, an expression of romantic love between two young women might damage the children.
If conservative American adults would stop focusing on sex for a moment, they might see that what is really damaging children in the US is an excess of gun violence. The obsession with depictions of cinematic sexuality is a smokescreen for a real discussion of how to protect the most innocent among us.

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Stone Her!!!

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For the Last Time, the Constitution is Not Based on the Bible

For the Last Time, the Constitution is Not Based on the Bible

By: Hrafnkell Haraldsson more from Hrafnkell Haraldsson

Thursday, October, 31st, 2013, 7:39 am

Like a bad penny, Tom DeLay is back. And because nobody loves a story of false redemption more than the Religious Right, you know he will be doing his best to make his presence felt.

John Hagee, who said recently that “we are a Pagan nation without shame” has been thundering on about divine wrath of course, forecasting doom and gloom for the godless, by which he apparently means people too smart to fall for his shtick:

The Bible says that all nations that forget God are turned into Hell. I assure you that if America continues to reject the way of God, God will lift the hedge of protection from this nation and we’re going to experience a hellish nightmare unlike anything we’ve ever known before. Wake up, America! Let us return to the God of our fathers; the God of Abraham, Issac, and Jacob.

How do these two intersect? Hagee interviewed Tom DeLay last weekend. Hagee introduced DeLay as “A brother in Christ who has been tried by fire,” who has triumphed over “the world, the flesh, and the devil.”


DeLay told Hagee he had a “conference call with the Lord” and the Divine Dispense of Wealth told him to cash in on his experiences by writing a book. God even gave him a name for it: “Shut it Down” and a topic: a revival of Constitutional principles.
Why Constitutional and not biblical? Silly question, infidel defilers:
“Jesus died for our freedom. And Jesus destroyed Satan so we could be free and that is manifested in what is called the Constitution of the United States. God created the nation and God created the Constitution; it is written on biblical principles.”

For the last time, the Constitution is not based on biblical principles. The two have nothing in common. Ancient Israel and Judah were kingdoms, ruled by kings. When the kings were gone, the Jews were ruled by corrupt high priests. Monarchy or theocracy. Some choice.
I’m pretty sure that is not the fate the Founding Fathers had in mind for America when they penned the United States Constitution.
No Religious Right figure, Hagee and DeLay included, has ever explained how the Constitution can be based on biblical principles without so much as mentioning God, Jesus, the Bible, or the Ten Commandments. They have not explained how the Constitution can be based on biblical principles when it in fact enshrines English Common Law, which owes more to Pagan Roman civil law than the Bible. And let’s not forget the Iroquois influence on the Constitution. Iroquois who were – oops – not Christians either.
Some, like Bryan Fischer make a big deal of the document being dated “in the year of our Lord” but that is just how they dated documents then, an artifact of a millennium-and-a-half of forced conversion. It is how we still date documents simply by writing down a number dated from the supposed year of Jesus’ birth, like “2013.”
Here is Fischer ranting on the subject (it sounds as though he is trying to convince himself):

You go to the end of the Constitution, what do you find? It’s dated from when? It’s dated from the first Christmas! From the birth of Jesus Christ, ‘the year of our Lord.’ So we dated our Constitution, we dated the Declaration of Independence. We dated them from the very first Christmas! In other words, Christmas is IN the Constitution. Christmas is IN the Declaration of Independence. Because those documents are dated from the birth of what the Founding Fathers referred to as ‘our Lord.’ In the year of OUR Lord. All of them said, ‘Jesus Christ is OUR Lord.’ Our history began with the first Christmas. People say, ‘Hey, the Constitution’s a godless Constitution, God’s not in there. There is no mention of Christ.’ Absolutely wrong. It is an explicitly Christian document.

Bryan Fischer is explicitly dishonest. But you knew that.
Fischer also claims because “Muslim students at Trinity University in Texas are complaining about the phrase ‘In the year of our Lord’ on their diplomas,” they are “inadvertently proving that this is a Christian nation in the process.”
To which I can only say Bryan Fischer needs to take a college level course in logic. And in history. And not from David Barton.
All this fuss is, as Shakespeare would say, much ado about nothing. We are locked into this dating system whether we like it or not. We can change B.C. to B.C.E. (Before Common Era) and A.D. (Anno Domini/Year of our Lord) to C.E. (Common Era) but we are still dating from Jesus’ presumed birth. By Fischer’s logic, Portugal, which did not adopt Anno Domini until 1422, was not a Christian nation until that date, which is an absurdity. By Fischer’s logic, every atheist and every Pagan like myself who writes the year 2013 is a Christian. Another absurdity.
While we’re on the subject of things that are not true being true, God told DeLay, “My awakening is beginning.” Better yet, he told DeLay that the former House Majority Leader would play a role in that awakening. Probably in fleecing the flock.
And speaking of wealth transference, I wonder if God told DeLay about his plans for Ted Cruz, already anointed as Money Messiah by his sinister minions on the right, or revealed any plans for former messiahs like Michele Bachmann, who might have a hard time managing her messiah duties from federal prison. Rest assured, if Bachmann escapes prison, she’ll be on stage with Hagee telling us all about her conference call with God (maybe he will break the news to her that her husband is gay).

For the Last Time, the Constitution is Not Based on the Bible was written by Hrafnkell Haraldsson for PoliticusUSA.

© PoliticusUSA, Thu, Oct 31st, 2013 — All Rights Reserved

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