Monday Reads: Lots of Outrage to Pass Around
Posted: February 13, 2012 Filed under: morning reads | Tags: New Hampshire removes labor laws, pedophila priesthood, racist Fox comments, Santorum and voodoo economics, Scott Walk steals mortgage settlement money 56 Comments
Good Morning!
I had thought about writing about all the incredibly outrageous things happening at the CPAC hatefest this weekend but figured it would take me more time than I wanted to spend in crazy land. No matter what they say, they do not want to conserve anything and they really seem to hate the constitution. Maybe I will work on something later this week. Besides, searching the usual news sources brought me enough outrage to fill the morning reads. Take a sip of coffee and prepare to be drop your jaw a few times.
Just when you think the Red Beanie set can’t ignore our laws and constitution any more than they already have, you find this one. A rapist priest told his victim that sexual assault is basically how god’s love feels. Watch the story from an NBC affiliate in Los Angeles and feel heartsick and mad simultaneously. Yes folks, these are the zygote zealots who are so concerned about the sanctity of sperm and egg as to hope the US government will outlaw birth control. It seems that little boys are just priestly love receptacles the way women are sperm storage units.
According to NBC affiliate in Los Angeles, attorney Ray Boucher has mapped out at least sixty locations of where suspected priests reside in California.
“Many if not all these priests have admitted to sexual abuse,” Boucher told NBC Los Angeles. “They live within a mile of 1,500 playgrounds, schools and daycare centers.”
One of the alleged victims, Dan Smith, graphically detailed his incident with a local priest when he was a child.
“He would rape me and then say this is what God’s love feels like,” Smith told Los Angeles NBC.
Boucher represents over 500 suspected victims suing the Los Angeles Archdiocese for sexual molestation. The LA Archdiocese reached a $660 million settlement with most of the victims in 2007.
But the archdiocese is being accused of a cover up by letting priests leave the country or hide in rehab until the legal deadline for prosecution runs out.
Evidently the KKK and white supremacists freely blog on Fox News. You would think that the death of pop singer Whitney Houston would give us a chance to think about drug abuse and the pressures of fame, but not loyal Fox Watchers. LGF has documented some of the most insidiously racist remarks I’ve ever seen. Fox obviously doesn’t screen for threats to the President or Haters. I won’t reprint them here but let me tell you, they are JAW Dropping.
There are almost 5000 comments posted in the thread — these are from the first few pages. Notice that the racist bastards deliberately misspell their slurs or insert random spaces, so they aren’t caught by word filters. And many of the worst comments have numerous “likes” from other commenters.
We’ve learned that hatred of women and racial and religious minorities seems to be rampant in this country. What on earth is wrong with people?
If you live in New Hampshire, I hope you don’t work and need to eat. Think all those labor laws giving you time to eat and go to the bathroom are reasonable and unlikely to disappear? Think again. Just hold it in and starve if these Republicans get their law passed.
New Hampshire’s GOP legislature has come up with all manner of absurd bills recently, including a proposal making public school curriculum optional, another to prevent police from protecting domestic abuse victims, and even a measure mandating that new laws be based on the Magna Carta. Some of the Granite State’s GOP lawmakers have even proposed doing away withthe law that requires employers to give their workers time off for lunch, under the rationale that all employers will simply grant lunch breaks out of the goodness of their hearts:
“This is an unneeded law,” [Republican state Representative Kyle Jones] said. “If I was to deny one of my employees a break, I would be in a very bad position with the company’s human resources representative. If you consider that this is a very easy law to follow in that everyone already does it, then why do we need it? Our constituents have already proven that they have enough common sense to do this on their own.”
The bill’s sponsor, state representative J.R. Hoell, argued that companies failing to provide lunch breaks would be shamed over social media, thus rendering the law unnecessary. “If they are not letting people have lunch, they could put it out though the news media, though social media. I don’t think that abusive behavior would continue, the way communications are today,” he said.
Yes, job creators should only give you the right to lunch and potty breaks if they want to. And, if you happen to get taken by the bank in mortgage fraud, Scott Walker wants your part of the settlement to help those hapless, persecuted job creators. So, you think the dribs and drabs of that big mortgage settlement are supposed to go to give homeowners some justice right? Not in Wisconsin where Scott Walker intends to put the settlement to other uses. Have they recalled him yet? Yes, it’s from Charles Pierce, so all you New Hampshire folks will just have to cross your legs harder.
But I can’t stay too man for too long because that POS act of absolution has now given us yet another reason to hate Scott Walker, the goggle-eyed homunculus now managing the Midwest subsidiary of Koch Industries that once was known as the state of Wisconsin. To hell with your folks now currently underwater in Pewaukee and Frederic and Fond du Lac and the Dells, we’re taking the mortgage-settlement money and using it for our own purposes. Funny, I heard a lot at CPAC about the economic miracle wrought in America’s dairyland by the bold leadership of the goggle-eyed homunculus, and now it turns out there’s a $25.6 million hole in the budget that he has to fill with money earmarked for the people in his state who got swindled? ‘Ees certainly a puzzlement. The Republican AG up there says, of course, that repositioning the money will “create jobs” because that’s what Republicans say these days when they’re up to serious mischief.
Think Progress has the less glib explanation.
However, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) — whose high profile assault on workers’ rights has prompted a recall effort against him — isn’t planning to use the money to help homeowners. Under the terms of the settlement, Wisconsin is set to receive $140 million, $31.6 million of which comes directly to the state government. And Walker is planning to use $25.6 million of that money to help balance his state’s budget:
Of a $31.6 million payment coming directly to the state government, most of that money – $25.6 million – will go to help close a budget shortfall revealed in newly released state projections. [Wisconsin Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen], whose office said he has the legal authority over the money, made the decision in consultation with Walker.
“Just like communities and individuals have been affected, the foreclosure crisis has had an effect on the state of Wisconsin, in terms of unemployment. … This will offset that damage done to the state of Wisconsin,” Walker said.
A memo from Wisconsin’s Legislative Fiscal Bureau released yesterday notes “it is anticipated that Wisconsin will receive $31.6 million. Based on discussions between the Attorney General and the administration, of the amounts received by the state, $25.6 million will be deposited to the general fund as GPR-Earned in 2011-12, and the remaining $6 million will be retained by the Department of Justice to be allocated at a later date.”
A post by your friendly economist just wouldn’t be complete with the la la land, voodoo explanation of what caused the last recession by your favorite idiot Rick Santorum. Rick Santorum thinks the recession was caused by Gas Prices. A mind is a terrible thing to waste unless you never had one to begin with …
On the campaign trail in Colorado this week, however, Santorum offered an even further out there explanation for the crisis. According to the Colorado Independent, Santorum told one crowd that gasoline and oil prices rose so sharply in the build-up to the collapse that they caused Americans to default on their mortgages in droves, thereby triggering the housing crisis that is still acting as a drag on the nation’s economy:
Stressing the importance for the country to provide cheap energy to its citizens, Santorum blamed the recession not on sub-prime mortgages or the derivatives market but on spiking fuel prices.
“We went into a recession in 2008. People forget why. They thought it was a housing bubble. The housing bubble was caused because of a dramatic spike in energy prices that caused the housing bubble to burst,” Santorum told the audience. “People had to pay so much money to air condition and heat their homes or pay for gasoline that they couldn’t pay their mortgage.”
The theory that rising oil prices blew up the housing market exists only in Santorum’s mind. “All The Devils Are Here,” an inside account of the crisis written by Fortune editor and columnist Bethany McLean and New York Times columnist Joe Nocera, doesn’t mention oil or gas prices a single time. New York Times financial reporter Aaron Sorkin’s “Too Big To Fail,” another inside account, never points to oil prices as a factor in the crisis. And the official government report about the crisis, the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission Report, mentions oil prices multiple times as a symptom of the declining economy but never blames rising prices for the collapse of the housing market.
I would say that the man just says what ever dribbles from the top of his mind if I thought he had one. So enough of serious economic issues. What exactly does Rick Santorum think of masturbation? Does he make certain that every sacred sperm winds up in the Santorum approved location?
Given the emphasis being placed by former senator Santorum and others on the importance of limiting the possibility for contraception, one wonders what his position is on this proposed amendment. Perhaps he believes that it represents too great an incursion on personal liberty, perhaps because detection of the criminal offense would be so difficult. Perhaps he adopts the argument of St. Thomas, well explicated in Robert George’ss excellent book Making Men Moral, that an element of pragmatism is necessary with regard to the pace of that enterprise, that one can’t move too much faster than the (sinning) population is ready for at any given time. But, obviously, this is an argument of tactics rather than of high principle, since presumably “grave moral disorders” ought to be limited as quickly as is reasonably possible, taking into account pragmatic considerations about the receptivity of the population to moral education (and potential coercion). (For what it is worth, I presume that most political liberals, in the loose rather than strict Millian sense, are willing to use state power on occasion to limit at least some “grave moral disorders” like racism or sexism even when one can’t point to an immediate victim of such conduct).
It will, no doubt, be a bit awkward for one of the debate moderators to raise the issue of masturbation after Newt so eloquently denounced all mainstream journalists for expressing any interest in his views of adultery and “open marriage.” But enquiring minds surely want to know more about former senator Santorum and masturbation, especially if one of the two “great” political parties is seriously thinking of foisting him on the nation as its candidate for the oval office and the power to veto legislation and issue administrative rules–not to mention nominating people to the federal judiciary–that comes with it. No one really cares what former governor Romney says because nobody believes that he is trustworthy with regard to anything other than the desire to limit his own taxes (and, of course, satisfy, and beat out, his father by becoming President). But Santorum is different. He actually believes things and seems to read theology.
My question of the day is how far back in time do these guys want to travel? What on earth is next? As far as I can see, all these things wouldn’t stand up in court. Something tells me however, that’s exactly what these guys want because rather than see their obvious problems passing constitutional muster, they can scream “Judicial OVERRREAAACHHHH”. What a bunch of maroons …. too bad we can’t ship them up there to the moon colony with Newt and Calista. Meanwhile, as they say in the Star War Series, May diVorce be with you!!!
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
peej
Carissa
bostonboomer
ecocatwoman
mablue2
peggysue22
quixote
skydancingguestblogger
Mona (aka Wonk the Vote)
Sky Dancing 
Great post, as always dak.
Just one note for now: the Too Big to Fail book was written by Andrew Ross Sorkin, not Aaron Sorkin (of West Wing, Sports Night, A Few Good Men and others fame) Guess the editor on that piece missed that.
Glad you caught that!!!
At one time Rick Santorum was blaming the economic crisis on abortion because the slowdown of producing babies led to less monies in the Treasury. Blaming the rise on gas prizes may just be a step up for him.
If you think the Fox blog was bad, I watched snippets of th CPAC gathering and if one was looking for several days of racist, sexist, hate filled rhetoric from its speakers, you would have been right at home.
This event was less Tea Party nuttery than it was a taste of what fascism would look like if any more of these fools seek and succeed at gaining power.
As their policies seek to be enacted across the nation by challenging collective bargaining, voter repression, and further assaults on women’s rights, they then wrap the whole enchillada up in a series of “god bless” which brings them to their feet.
It is a dark time in America when a White Supremicist is invited to speak before an assembly of people who applaud his remarks.
The GOP on steroids.
They have the base they so richly deserve. I hope it eats the GOP alive,
I’m hearing rumors they’re expecting him to do really well in both Arizona and Michigan. I bet the Obama campaign is pleased with that. Can you image Santorum in a debate with Obama? I think that would probably set the Republican Party in the wilderness forever and probably spawn a third party.
Jim Messina has been spending a little time in Arizona. Apparently, Obama is going to make a contest of it there. I’d love to see their polling.
Sound as if Santorum is making deals with the Bushs to keep Jeb Bush out, by claiming the deficit was caused by gas prices, not the ten year never ending wars. My one conclusion is that Santorum spends to much time on thinking where sperm go and sex in general.
Especially gay male sex.
Thought about that, and the he sure complains about it.
Facebook Exec: Woman Have Less Ambition
I want to know if this Facebook executive woman supported Hillary or Obama in 2008. Inquiring minds want to know!
Remember Jorge Ramos was the Spanish language anchor that SNL made fun of because during the debate he seemed to favor Obama over Hillary and SNL made him out to be a bit of a fan/stalker. Machismo, me thinks now!
I watch these two every night on The Young Turks.
Ana Kasparian is definitely an “up and comer” thanks to Cenk who brought her to the public attention a few years back when she was a young intern.
Ana is spot on: women are definitely ambitious and it has more to do with the opportunities open to them now then ever before.
From my view as a woman, the problems remain with the men who had developed manufacturing plants, including the educational ones, etc. Who would have thought, that yes women are equal, yes woman have the ability……………only to realized that the vatican and other reglious and political institutions will NOT allow woman ACESS. Nothing unique here, this fight has been going on for hundreds of years, and we are still here with more complicated bullshitt than I have ever seen in my life.
It’s still an uphill battle when you’re in a male dominated field. I’m in the grandaddy of all of them. Most men spend their days doing things women just don’t get … thinking and talking about sex and sports continually, playing political games and gossiping to take out other men, and then, finally doing some work. Women just like to work and move on to other things.
Greece: they must not pass
On the ground, things aren’t going well in Greece.
I fear for a social explosion: Greeks can’t take any more punishment
From The Guardian, martial law may need to be imposed.
I think Ireland is watching this carefully too.
Oh fine. Impose martial law rather than saner economic policy.
I read the military is talking about a take over, as they don’t see that the politicos as doing the right thing for the country and see it as some foreign ownership. Anyone have any more news?
Maybe Ireland will take a look at their future and not take their country and people down the tubes to save the Euro or Goldman Sachs,
It’s not so much the EURO as it is the big Banks; especially the French and German ones
Greece is a disaster and austerity is killing the country and its people. Unemployment is ‘officially’ 21%, tens of thousands businesses have gone belly-up, wages have been slashed, taxes skyrocketing and electricity has been shutdown in northern provinces because of unpaid bills. Let the debtors freeze! Or let them die from the lack of antibiotics. The entire country is being turned into a debtor’s prison for the sake of the banking cartel.
It’s disgraceful.
I read one tweet from a person on the ground in Athens saying there were a million people in the streets. The austerity package will force another 150,000 out of government employment.
This is going to get worse. A lot worse.
Meanwhile the ‘markets’ are up, buoyed by the news of the Iron Fist. I have to take a break from the news. The headlines are making me positively sick.
It’s disgusting. Angela Merkel should step down.
I wish Merkel could be locked in a room with George W. Bush for a week. That might snap her out of it.
Boomer, all he’d have to do was to give her another massage. I’m sure that would do it.
I’d prefer sending her on a short cruise with Dick Cheney. Survival of the fittest, you know.
Kind’ve makes you wonder who won world war 2, doesn’t it?
It’s them or us. The Greeks on the streets for Europe
NJ Senate approves same sex marriage bill. I am sure that our bombastic governor will veto it.
http://thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/new-jersey-senate-passes-same-sex-marriage-bill-24-16/politics/2012/02/13/34618
http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/main/2012/02/santorum-moves-ahead-in-michigan.html
The establishment can’t control the angry, hateful, crazy base any more
I hate to root for the lunatic fringe but wth 🙂
If Santorum takes center stage in a Republican Presidential debate, it’s all over for that party.
It really looks like Romney bought that cpac straw poll win by busing in students from all over the eastern seaboard. In Maine, the GOP postponed caucuses in Ron Paul’s strongholds because of snow so they didn’t get to vote. Hilarious.
That’s so sad. Romney’s birthplace and the state where his father was a three-term governor. That’s what you get when you turn “severely conservative” and sell your soul to Grover Norquist.
Romney the mormon learns the meaning of karma.
A third party MUST emerge from this travesty of leadership. On one hand, you have a president that cares only about himself. On the other hand, you have a party that doesn’t care about anything but their interpretation of God and keeping rich people rich. The GOP puts Eric Cartmann (Newt), two people who could arguably be put on medication for their views (Paul and Santorum), and a cardboard cutout with GREAT hair. In a gimme election, the GOP puts up these guys????? I don’t know whether to be depressed or angry at the direction this country is moving (circa Greece in terms of economic policy, circa Saudi Arabia in terms of social edicts).
We are SOOOOOOOOOOOO f%^*d.
Hillary 2012
BTW – Those commenter posts from the Fox blog are the examples of racism that SHOULD be on the news everyday, not the watered down ‘if you disagree with Obama, you must be a racist’ version. That was too much for me. I don’t know how you can go through all that stuff AND put out a post about it Dak. You are a greater soul than I am….
Those people are fueled by nothing but hate. Right now being a “conservative” is a disease.
On McConnell’s statements yesterday on face the nation and more:
I think there’s an actual case from 2007 of Muslim cabdrivers who didn’t want to transport passengers who were carrying liquor. Wonder if McConnell will be asked about their religious freedom?
Yup. That was in Minneapolis/St Paul.
Krugman echos what we’ve been saying here for several years.
Guess that makes it official now.
NH is going full out in their war against women. Laws against Domestic Violence that are proactive — save lives and money. In NH is seems that women & children are last.
The conservatives are crazy nitwits. The haters have been given permission and now we are seeing what is going on in the minds of the KKK wantobe & reincarnated Puritans.
Amazing collection of links documenting the decline of civilized behavior.
Here’s House Bill Number 1 in Virginia, another personhood bill.
“A BILL to construe the word “person” under Virginia law, including but not limited to § 8.01-50 of the Code of Virginia, to include unborn children.”
http://lis.virginia.gov/cgi-bin/legp604.exe?121+ful+HB1
Ownership of another human being is slavery — right?
Here’s a quote from Libertarians in regards to birth control — old opinions written during Margaret Sangers time — but probably where Ron Paul gets his ideas. One thing is clear in these old geezers rants about birth control — they state women are considered slaves and the “output” or children are owned by the husband/father.
Check out dueling Mises quotes and interpretation in the comment section from Gene Callahan – ”With the spread and progress of capitalism, birth control becomes a universal practice” – and Corey Robin (whose recent book on conservatives looks even stronger in light of these arguments by Mises) who points out that Mises isn’t talking in terms of woman’s autonomy but the husband as family owner: “In the market economy every individual is spontaneously intent upon not begetting children whom he could not rear without considerably lowering his family’s standard of life.”
Pasted from http://rortybomb.wordpress.com/2012/02/13/von-mises-makes-the-libertarian-case-against-free-love-and-implicitly-against-birth-control/
Time traveling indeed.
Did you see my response to them? LOL. I couldn’t believe they thought Mises didn’t like birth control. He’s written about it and they didn’t need to speculate and make shit up at all, idiots. They didn’t do any research at all. They just made up what they wanted to.
http://www.thefreemanonline.org/columns/sex/
“Rationalization of sexual intercourse involves the rationalization of proliferation. Methods of rationalizing the increase of progeny were adopted which were independent of abstention from copulation. People resorted to the egregious and repulsive practices of exposing or killing infants and of abortion. Finally they learned to perform the sexual act in such a way that no pregnancy results.
Social cooperation is impossible if people give rein to the natural impulse of proliferation. In restricting procreation man adjusts himself to the natural conditions of his existence. The rationalization of the sexual passions is an indispensable condition of civilization and societal bonds. Its abandonment would in the long run not increase but decrease the numbers of those surviving, and would render life for everyone as poor and miserable as it was many thousands of years ago for our ancestors.
It is not the practice of birth control that is new, but merely the fact that it is more frequently resorted to. Especially new is the fact that the practice is no longer limited to the upper strata of the population, but is common to the whole population. For it is one of the most important social effects of capitalism that it deproletarianizes all strata of society. It raises the standard of living of the masses of manual workers to such a height that they too turn into “bourgeois” and think and act like well-to-do burghers. Eager to preserve their standard of living for themselves and their children, they embark upon birth control. With the spread and progress of capitalism, birth control becomes a universal practice. The transition to capitalism is thus accompanied by two phenomena: a decline both in fertility rates and in mortality rates. The average duration of life is prolonged.”
That’s written by Mises in his book Human Action.
Wasn’t Ayn Rand in favor of free love?
Someone else used that quote in the comments, and here is Corey Robin’s response.
He’s the author of The Reactionary MInd. I was thinking of reading it.
That discussion was great — it is good to know one’s enemy (Ron Paul) and Libertarian seems to be just another religion.
What struck me was the husband as being the owner. Way back then the head of the family — the husband/father more or less did own his family. There was no such thing as domestic violence. In Boston — the Boston commons park — livestock was grazed and misbehaving wives were taken there for public beating. It was the owners right to beat his animals or his wife.
But your are correct I didn’t see evidence of free love = birth control in the quotes from the old geezers in the blog article.
My understanding of the family unit in English and German genealogy had more to do with property ownership. Marriages were registered long before births were registered in the westward migration of North America/USA. Things like dowager rights and laws of inheritance were enacted because of property — real and movable. Registering marriages and births in the Old World was largely the responsibility of the church.
Northwestern: There’s a big difference between the German/English Common Law and French/Spanish Colonial law that has a lot to do with the property not being recognized as being out of the reach of the church. I’m sure that extends to women and children too. It’s a big contributor to strong or slow economic growth. Countries based on German/Scandinavian/English common law always have better economies because individual property rights are much more secure as are individual liberties.
We owe a lot to the Magna Carta.
Ownership of property in marriage differed among states settled by the British or the Spaniards. Spanish influence resulted in community property ownership. This meant that during a marriage, income received by either the husband or wife was owned jointly by the couple, and in case of a divorce, the wife was entitled to 50% of it all. British law was much less favorable to wives.
Charles Pierce again:
I’m not Catholic, most of my friends are or were and I have no problem with that, but sheesh, why do they have to lobby our government to make our laws enforce their beliefs when they can’t seem to get the faithful to even follow them? Just do NOT get it.
Wonder what makes all those Beltway Irish Catholics fall in line and follow the Bishops. Maybe Charlie is right and “Inside the Beltway” they all lose contact with the outside world. It’s still hard to accept that they would believe the entire world mimics their Georgetown cocktail party set. That’s just completely fucking sad!
Great post, as always dak.also some wonderful comments. 🙂
Thanks! The commenters at Sky Dancing are the BEST!!! Great discussions with disagreements but incredible mutual respect and intelligence. It makes me so happy!
Dak, nice roundup. Yes it is all either crazy or horrible.
Some good news:
I’ve got to send an email to friends and tell them they can’t get married until I get back to Washington.
This is such good news amid all the raging disgusting junk coming from the GOP.