Monday Reads: Lots of Outrage to Pass Around

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?