Malala Yousafzai

She stood up at home to speak her mind. She said girls should have the same rights as boys - to go to school; to learn whatever they need to know to become who and what they want to be; to make their own decisions and to be left alone to guide their own destinies.  So last year, when she was 15 years old, the AfPak-equvalent of Ted Nugent & George Zimmerman shot her in the head because her ideas threatened their sense of 9th-century entitlement.

Yesterday, on her 16th birthday - which made it a classic go-blow-yourself gesture - Ms Yousafzai stood up at the UN and said in a clear strong voice (tho' not in these specific words), "Fuck you, Ted Nugent."

And fuck all ya'll if you think you have enough guns and ammo to silence everybody who wishes to speak openly about aspiring to make the world just a bit less hostile to people who only want to live their lives as they choose.  (And isn't that what the Nugents are always pretending to be saying anyway?)

Better men and bigger assholes than puny dicks like Nugent & Zimmerman have been trying to conquer the world for a coupla thousand centuries.  And guess what - the world remains undefeated.  Wanna know why?  Cuz good ideas are bulletproof, ya fuckin' doofus.

What's Wrong - Explained

In a 2-party system, we kinda need both parties functioning well - especially when we have some pretty big problems to deal with.  Unfortunately, right now, there's something really really wrong with one of 'em.



Coupla points:  First, the GOP used to be my guys.  But then along came Iran/Contra, and Willy Horton and then Pat Buchanan's speech in Houston in '92. And holy fuck, Batman - that's pretty fucked up right there; so I just couldn't get with it any more, and besides, I had Clinton, and he was a pretty good Republican, so yeah.  Anyway...

...Second: In politics there's a rationale (rationalization is more like it) that gets used a lot whenever somebody in office is being pressured by the party bosses to vote in a way that "goes against his principles" - or defies outright the simple common sense god gave a fuckin' gopher.  They may not like what's happening (hell, they may not be all that crazy about what they're doin' their own bad self), but the psycho-trap they fall into is that if they're not in office, there's no way they can do anything about anything - so they gotta stay in office no matter what.

The most recent example is the vote against cloture in the senate when Background Check was up for debate.  Every one of those people was aware of the broad and deep public support for the thing, but "party discipline" required 45 GOP senators to go against the public interest (not to mention their own instincts) just so McConnell's Rat Crap Radicals could keep Obama from winning anything.  And the way it works is exactly what Ornstein and Mann (and a jillion others) have been trying to tell us.  "If you don't vote the way the party bosses tell you to vote, you'll have a very strong primary opponent in your next election blah blah blah".  No more power, no more honoraria, no more after-the-fund-raiser blowjobs in a hot tub, no more perks at all - Political Death.  It scares 'em, and it keeps 'em in line.

OK, so nobody doesn't know that, but isn't it really just a slight variation on ChickenHawkery?  Aren't they saying something very much like, "Yeah wow, the country's in a tight spot, and it looks pretty bad, and somebody'll have to take some pretty huge risks, but c'mon - you don't really expect me to go fight, do ya?  Shit, a guy could get seriously killed doin' that".

I've said it a thousand times - there's no soul and no honor in it any more - and now we get another reminder of why - because too many of these pricks have no real courage.

(hat tip = facebook buddy Doug R)

Today's Quote

Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL) on Monday mocked the 67 House Republicans who voted against disaster relief funds for the victims of Hurricane Sanday. “It’s the same 67 over and over again,” he noted on The Stephanie Miller Show. “It’s the bath salts caucus, the people that would rather eat your face than raise taxes on the rich.”

Is That You, Geraldo?

WTF is up with Geraldo Rivera?  "He's been off script for days" (Addicting Info), this time taking down the ever-execrable Eric Bolling on the Benghazi lie.



Eventually you have to realize you've been avoiding eye contact with the guy in the mirror(?)  Dunno - feels encouraging tho'; and not just to think that maybe Geraldo's career at DumFux News is about to be scuttled.

On Being A Hero-In-Waiting

Philip Zimbardo:

Who Are Those Guys?

The Washington Post has gone from a truly great example of Gutsy and Righteous Journalism in the mid-70s to its current smarmy incarnation as a Bullshit Centrist Rag.  And seeing as how this piece is co-authored by Thomas Mann and Norm Ornstein, on the surface, it's just more of the same "both sides do it" malarkey.  But it doesn't just feel different - it says it straight out: "the Republican Party is the problem".

Today, thanks to the GOP, compromise has gone out the window in Washington. In the first two years of the Obama administration, nearly every presidential initiative met with vehement, rancorous and unanimous Republican opposition in the House and the Senate, followed by efforts to delegitimize the results and repeal the policies. The filibuster, once relegated to a handful of major national issues in a given Congress, became a routine weapon of obstruction, applied even to widely supported bills or presidential nominations. And Republicans in the Senate have abused the confirmation process to block any and every nominee to posts such as the head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, solely to keep laws that were legitimately enacted from being implemented.

Then scan through some of the (>5000) comments - which (by my quick and totally unsubstantiated estimation) appear to be running 10-1 in support of the basic premise that the GOP is the problem.  Tho' I think a more accurate characterization would be that the extremists in the GOP who are masquerading as conservatives are the problem.

So like driftglass and BlueGal have been saying, conservatives are lying to us and those dirty liberals were right all along.

Which brings me to my newest bumper sticker idea:

Fire With Fire

From Dayton Daily News:

Before getting a prescription for Viagra or other erectile dysfunction drugs, men would have to see a sex therapist, receive a cardiac stress test and get a notarized affidavit signed by a sexual partner affirming impotency, if state Sen. Nina Turner has her way.

I've lost count of the times some good smart Dems have stepped up and put themselves on the line over these issues, and I hope we can look forward to a lot more.

(hat tip = Democratic Underground)

My Kinda Republican

It's certainly a rarity in politics now, and maybe it always was a rare thing, but once in a while somebody steps up and shows us a little something about honor and leadership and soul.

Via Wikipedia, the story of Fred Tuttle:

In 1998 Tuttle was persuaded to run in the Republican US Senate primary. His opponent was Jack McMullen, a multi-millionaire who had lived in Massachusetts for most of his life. McMullen faced opposition from some Vermont Republicans who felt that he was a carpetbagger who apparently moved to Vermont for the sole purpose of establishing residency for a Senate run. The Vermont primary structure allows Democrats and Independents to vote in the Republican primary, and many people foresaw the possibility that Tuttle would beat McMullen by drawing votes across party lines. In addition, some may have hoped that a Tuttle campaign would help to publicize the film Man with a Plan.

Fuck John Galt - Where is Fred Tuttle?

New From Pew

Let's put this in front of Congress and see where the real power is.