What If Mother Mary Had Decent, Affordable Health Coverage?

Chuck Norris–yes, that Chuck Norris–has written what might be the greatest op-ed in the history of Wingnut Christmas Op-Eds. It’s glorious. With a title like What If Mother Mary Had Obamacare?, how could this piece not be an instant classic? Let’s read it, together.

Blah blah blah mainstream media blah blah blah secret socialist takeover of health care that Lindsey won’t bother to block quote, blah blah blah the Democrats want to make everyone have abortions, always.

But the big question and bottom line, as [Orrin] Hatch asked, is: “Why should people of conscience be forced to participate in any aspect of abortion?”

Great question, Chuck Norris-by-way-of-Orrin Hatch! Why should any American be forced to participate, in even the smallest way, in any enterprise that goes against their conscience? I look forward to Chuck Norris (and Orrin Hatch) defending my right to not have a penny of my tax dollars go towards the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan or whatever faith-based charities the federal government decides deserves to go on the federal payroll.

Is [Congress] intentionally trying to spark the next Boston Tea Party?

Yes. Yes, they are.

It seems that Chuck Norris is confused about the Boston Tea Party. The colonists weren’t being “forced” to pay for tea they didn’t want and couldn’t drink because it “went against their conscience”. The colonists liked tea, and drank plenty of it. They just didn’t want to pay extra taxes on it because said taxes were unfair, or something. It’s been a while since I’ve seen that School House Rock episode. So this situation? Not like the Boston Tea Party! In fact, the only way this would be like the Boston Tea Party is if all Americans enjoyed abortions, but didn’t want to pay more for them than their London-dwelling counterparts, so they tossed infants into the sea. And somehow, I don’t think that’s what Chuck Norris has in mind.

A shameless plug is coming up!

(Washington’s wild spending and abandonment of traditional values and our Founders’ vision is what prompted me to add a 64-page expansion to the new paperback version of my New York Times best-seller Black Belt Patriotism, being released in January through Fidelis Books. See the new Web site at http://www.BlackBeltPatriotism.com.)

End shameless plug.

Obama and Congress’ pro-abortion steps are being taken despite a recent nationwide survey that revealed that 4 in 5 U.S. adults would limit abortion’s legality. One in 3 would limit abortion to rape, incest or the saving of a mother’s life. One in 3 also would limit abortion to either the first three or first six months. Only 9 percent said abortion should be legal for any reason at any time during pregnancy.

And yet 1 in 3 American women will have an abortion. You see, Americans are a funny people. We’re more than willing to oppose abortion, until we need one. After we have one, we continue opposing abortion. Oh, Americans. You and your uncanny ability to compartmentalize your values.

Okay, y’all. This is where it gets really good.

Lastly, as we near the eve of another Christmas, I wonder: What would have happened if Mother Mary had been covered by Obamacare? What if that young, poor and uninsured teenage woman had been provided the federal funds (via Obamacare) and facilities (via Planned Parenthood, etc.) to avoid the ridicule, ostracizing, persecution and possible stoning because of her out-of-wedlock pregnancy?

So…I don’t really get what Chuck Norris is insinuating here. Now, I’m not a Christian, and I never have been. But I have read the Bible (and seen the Peanuts Christmas special many, many times). And I’m pretty sure that a major point of the Christmas story is that the Virgin Mary, after being approached by the angel Gabriel, consented to bear the son of God. There’s even a verse in the gospel of Luke dedicated to this very thing!

So, Chuck Norris? Are you insinuating that the mother of (your!) deity would have been perfectly happy to abort said deity if she had had the options that modern woman have? You’re writing this about the Virgin Mary, at Christmastime? Really?

(What gets me about anti-choicers is their apparent ignorance of the fact that abortion is not a modern phenomenon. News flash, Chuck Norris: abortion has been around for a long time. If an unmarried Jewish girl did not want to be pregnant two thousand years ago, she could have had an abortion. She also would have risked death doing so, which is what we pro-choicers are trying to prevent. The more you know, and all that.)

Imagine all the great souls who could have been erased from history and the influence of mankind if their parents had been as progressive as Washington’s wise men and women! Will Obamacare morph into Herodcare for the unborn?

Ugh. Behold, my biggest pet peeve in the world of anti-choice rhetoric: you could be aborting the next Jesus! (Pretty unbiblical, by the way. If your going by the Bible, Jesus only needed one human incarnation and he isn’t coming back as a baby. Not that I believe any of that.)

Do anti-choicers really not get that this line of argument–imagine all of the destined-to-be-great individuals who are being aborted!–can be so easily turned around? If the next Jesus, Mother Theresa, and Einstein are being aborted as we speak, isn’t it just as possible that the next Hitler, Pol Pot and Mussolini are being aborted, too? Aren’t potential bad people being “erased from history”, too? And so, by this anti-choice logic, isn’t abortion good? It boggles the mind.

America doesn’t need to turn the page on culture wars, such as the one on abortion. It needs to reopen the pages of its history to our Founders’ elevated views of and rights for all human beings (including those in the womb), as documented in the Declaration of Independence and our Constitution.

You know what isn’t in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution? Anything about abortion or fetuses or the rights on the unborn or the idea that life begins at conception or any kind of anti-choice rhetoric. And do you know what happened in the colonial era? Abortions. If any Founding Father ever committed to paper a thought on abortion, I’d like to see it.

And most of all, Washington needs to run our government as Thomas Jefferson outlined in an 1809 letter: “The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only legitimate object of good government.”

(Don’t miss my Christmas column next week, titled “Away With the Manger,” about how the feds are whitewashing America’s Judeo-Christian heritage via a progressive, politically correct and pro-Muslim platform.)

Of all the presidents to be name checked by a teabagger in this context, Thomas Jefferson is the funniest. Do you know what Thomas Jefferson did, Chuck Norris…I mean, when he wasn’t busy liking the French and banging ladies? He wrote his own damn Bible. Yes, Thomas Jefferson whitewashed America’s Judeo-Christian heritage via a progressive, politically correct (though not, unfortch, pro-Muslim) Bible that he removed all mention of divinity and miracles from.

By the way, that next column? It sounds amazing.

Ugh of the Day

It’s 50-some degrees outside, and I’m a Floridian, so today is “winter”. I’m currently huddled underneath my brand-new cheetah print Snuggie (an early Christmas present from my great-aunt) and wearing fingerless gloves and drinking coffee. This day, obviously, calls for Christmas music. But! I finally downloaded the latest version of iTunes and, because technology hates me, I now can’t actually open iTunes to listen to my meticulously curated Christmas music play list. And there’s no CD player in the living room, where I’m currently sitting. So, as a last resort, I have the radio on, tuned to the adult contemporary radio station that plays all Christmas music during December.

Unfortunately, John Tesh comes with Christmas music on this station. I get twenty minutes of Christmas music, followed by five minutes of John Tesh. They’re a package deal.

For the past hour, I’ve been pretty successful at ignoring John Tesh. But John Tesh has just informed me, in breathless tones, that he is getting ready to share information that is VERY IMPORTANT to the ladies. In fact, he wants me to TELL ALL OF MY LADY FRIENDS IMMEDIATELY. John Tesh knows that we ladies are ALWAYS LOOKING FOR NEW WAYS TO AVOID BEING ASSAULTED. John Tesh knows that we ladies have previously been told to take different routes home every day so rapists don’t know our schedules*, BUT! STOP RIGHT THERE! John Tesh is about to give us some new information about why TAKING DIFFERENT ROUTES HOME EVERY DAY IS ACTUALLY GOING TO GET US RAPED. And we have to stay tuned for twenty more minutes of Christmas music for John Tesh to tell us why this is, and CRUCIAL INTELLIGENCE THAT WILL SAVE OUR LIVES.

I thought I could escape rape culture for just a few hours with some fucking Christmas music. But I guess I can’t. Thanks, John Tesh! Thanks for your helpful hints on how not to be raped! (None of which, by the way, include “hey dudes, maybe don’t rape women?”)

*Seriously? Is this real advice? How is taking a different route home (or to work, for that matter), supposed to confuse a potential rapist? Doesn’t every route still end at your work or home? And couldn’t said potential rapist just, I don’t know, wait for you patiently in your yard?

Sarah Palin Has Some Thoughts On Climate Change, You Guys!

Sometimes, Republican Jesus smiles on me. I woke up this morning to note one but two nuanced, deeply persuasive missives from Sarah Palin. On Twitter, of course.

Sarah Palin is not impressed by the Copenhagen summit, folks.

Of course, to Sarah, “being good stewards of God’s earth” means “shooting wolves out of helicopters for fun”. But she wasn’t done!

Never has pseudo-science been summed up so brilliantly in less than 140 characters.

There are many hilarious things about Our Sarah (as my mother and I call her), but her Twitter feed is probably the best, and not because of the way she alternates plugs for her book signings with random wingnut ramblings. Her Twitter username–@SarahPalinUSA–is funny enough; the fact that she put “USA” behind her name is just too Sarah. The most hilarious thing, though, is this: her official, verified Twitter feed is almost identical to the feed of a genius, satirical “ghost tweeter” by the name of @Tweeting4Palin (who I suggest y’all follow now):

Well played, sir.

So Much For All That Change Stuff

Ian Walsh has a really amazing piece up at Crooks and Liars regarding Barack Obama’s apparent contentment with serving Dubya’s third term for him:

In a healthy, non-degraded society, saving American lives by making sure they have health care would be a priority. Especially since the US pays twice as much per person as many countries which get far better results. This would be considered much more important than a war in a far away country, because it would be understood that even if you believe that turning brown people into a fine red mist saves American lives, health care would save more lives. And, done right (a.k.a. single payer) it would even save money. But that was never on the table, and even the limp-wristed compromise of a weak public option was too much for the rich and powerful to tolerate. Americans exist to be looted systematically by their elites, and if they die young and live sick, who cares? They are just sacks of money and the goal of government is to make dipping your hand into that sack as easy as possible for industries which can afford to buy government.

And, last but not least, in a healthy, non-degraded society, the government is not allowed to lock up people indefinitely without trial. If you don’t understand why this is, I can’t explain it to you, any more than it is apparently possible to explain to a plurality of Americans why torturing people is evil, and beyond the pale. The fact that it can’t be explained any more to many Americans, of course, is exactly why it is fair to call this degradation.

Yeah, just go and spend five minutes and read the whole thing. It’s worth it.

For my part, I’ll never understand how so many of the same people that railed against George W. Bush are apologetic when it comes to President Obama. My issues with Bush were not that I didn’t like him, personally; my issues with Bush had to do with pesky facts, like starting a war based on lies and putting religious institutions on the public payroll and gleefully trampling on the Constitution in the name of “security” and being all to eager to transfer money from taxpayers to the pockets of his corporate overlords. I didn’t like any of those things. And, guess what? I don’t like them when they’re being done by the guy I voted for, either.

I, and many other Americans, didn’t vote for a different doctor–we voted for a different diagnosis. Barack Obama, and the rest of the Democratic party (with the exception of this guy) campaigned on a different diagnosis. And, you know, I realize that things take time in a republic, and that change doesn’t happen overnight. I get that. But what we’re seeing now, especially with this farce of health care “reform”, isn’t the messy business of slow change. What we’re seeing now is Democratic elected officials making things worse for Americans and better for insurance companies. The fact that it’s Barack Obama screwing me over instead of George W. Bush does not make it any more bearable.

I was talking to my dad about this yesterday, about how the two-party system was already corrupt and, hey, we don’t even HAVE two parties anymore, but one party (with slight rhetorical disagreements) beholden to corporations. My dad can be pretty infuriating when it comes to politics–he voted for Barack Obama, is an atheist and a social liberal, yet he is also one of those otherwise intelligent, informed people who will still defend George W. Bush. But yesterday, he spoke sense: “I think you’re generation will be the one that finally kills the two-party system. You people don’t trust anyone because you’ve seen, in your short lives, how both parties have lied and lied to you. You’re all much more cynical than my generation was at your age, and we were young during Vietnam, so that’s saying something. I think that you guys will be the first ones to say, ‘You’re all full of shit.’”

I hope that’s true. Reading the thousands of comments that people–mostly people by age–left on Barack Obama’s Facebook page in the past few days, I really think that it might be.

By the way, Democratic Party: this is liberalism:

This country is in the midst of a horrendous health care crisis. We all know that. We can tinker with the system. We can come up with a 2,000-page bill which does this, that, and the other thing. But at the end of the day, if we are going to do what virtually every other country on Earth does–provide comprehensive, universal health care in a cost-effective way, one that does not bankrupt our government or bankrupt individuals–if we are going to do that, we are going to have to take on the private insurance companies and tell them very clearly that they are no longer needed. Thanks for your service. We don’t need you anymore.

Take note.

Don’t Make Me Unfriend You, Barack Obama.

You know what, Barack? No. I’m not going to spend one minute of the precious time that I could be spend watching Jersey Shore calling my senator to shill for your gift to insurance companies. You can’t even stand up to Joe Lieberman. So no, I’m not calling my senator. I’m not picking up the phone to help you pass a worthless piece of legislation that, rather than help me and my fellow Americans, will force us to pay more money to private insurance companies for less coverage than I have now. Thanks for that!

This isn’t about “differences in the individual elements” of your lobbyist-hijacked “reform” bill. Please. This is about the people who voted for you watching as you’ve happily given away every aspect of the bill that would lead to actual, you know, reform in return for…what, exactly? It isn’t bargaining when you give away everything you want and your opponent gives away nothing. That’s asinine. And after breaking every promise to your constituents, you actually expect us to shrug and continue on our merry way, repeating your talking points? Do you think we’re morons? Do you, Barack, believe what the GOP says about your supporters? Because it seems to me like you do.

(And stop being such a condescending jackass. I have enough of those on my friend feed already.)

The Weekly “Sluts Can’t Be Raped” Story

It comes via the Orlando Sentinel, as most terrible things do.

Long story short: it’s unclear whether or not an attempted rape that a female deputy reported actually happened. There are several inconsistencies with the deputy’s account of the attempted rape, and she apparently has a history of making things up. Pretty clear-cut, no?

Well, no. Because the Sentinel has found out some very pertinent information about the deputy, which must be shared with the reading public:

A forensic examination of her laptop computer made during the attempted-rape investigation showed she had sent nude photos of herself to an advertisement for a “personal assistant” on the Craigslist classifieds Web site. A similar search on her cell phone turned up nude photos of her with men.

Case closed, I guess. If a woman sends nude pictures of herself to someone (or, heaven forbid, deigns to be nude in the presence of a dude), she clearly is a sex fiend who is incapable of being sexually assaulted. Good to know, Orlando Sentinel!

I really don’t know how the Orlando Sentinel finds the resources to practice great investigative journalism like this, what with all the time and money they spend on making lists of the un-sexiest celebrities and digging up pictures from Casey Anthony’s Photobucket account. Ah, good old-fashioned journalism.

This Week In Chachbaggery: Meh…

I don’t really understand what’s wrong with Scott Baio these days. He hasn’t said anything particularly douchey or offensive in weeks! I can only hope that he’s currently devouring Goin’ Rogue and will return to us soon as his normal wingnut self, because this new Scott Baio isn’t really working for me.

Anyway. Here’s the only somewhat-chachbaggy thing he’s tweeted lately:

The twitpic is here, as I don’t have the patience or desire to re-size it. It’s just a picture of Baio’s daughter, wearing some Coach shoes, a diaper, and a Cafe Press shirt that reads Pro-Life, Anti-Obama*.

I think I speak for all of us when I say, “meh….?” Come on, Scott Baio. I know that you have it in you to be far more offensive than this. It’s like you’re not even trying anymore.

*What I don’t get about the wingnuts is this: Barack Obama is, like, one of the worst pro-choicers currently in Washington. He sucks at being pro-choice. So really, wingnuts, y’all should approve of Obama’s stance on issues of reproductive freedom. He’s trying really hard to get your votes by selling out pro-choicers like me.

Sarah Chooses Her Choices

There’s not really too much to say about Palin’s appearance on Oprah, is there? In the end, she did her shtick: she dropped her “g”s, told her I’m-just-a-normal-average-everyday-mom-like-all-you-ordinary-everyday-moms-out-there story for the upteenth time, and seemed to work under the delusion that people don’t remember last fall (i.e. the Bristol pregnancy: the McCain campaign didn’t decide to announce it, but had to make a statement about it after the open secret was leaked from Wasilla). And Oprah was Oprah, allowing her guest to ramble on and avoid any tough question. (And don’t for a minute think I’m hating on Oprah; it is, after all, the M.O. of her show to allow celebrities to answer fluffy questions in vague ways. That’s why Sarah went on Oprah and not, say, the only moderately tougher Today Show.)

I had to laugh, though, watching Sarah on Oprah’s stage, spouting touchy-feely “feminist” talking points. John McCain was about “empowering women”? Sure, I guess, as long they don’t expect to be paid as much as men or want access to birth control. Women “can do it all”, having a career, a strong marriage and children? Right on, sister. Women should have the right to “make choices”? Yes, exactly! But not if that choice is abortion.

A lot of conservatives–you know, the people who declare any non-Palin female who dares to speak her mind a “feminazi” and express nostalgia for the good old days when (middle class) women stayed home and baked shit all day–continue to express their puzzlement over why “feminists” hate Sarah. How can women not automatically want to vote for someone else with a vagina? they wonder, and why are they so mean to this nice, pretty lady? (And no, Laura Ingraham, it isn’t because we’re ugly spinsters who are jealous that Sarah has five kids and an allegedly “hot” husband.)

The Rude Pundit hit the nail on the head. Here, folks, is why we feminists can’t stand Sarah Palin:

…her elevation to the status of someone any women should look up to and admire for anything is pure cynical anti-feminism. The very things that Palin is celebrated for by conservative bags of fuck are what feminists have been condemned for: being outspoken, combining work and family lives (although, you know, Palin decided she couldn’t have it all), standing up to even the men who have supported her. But she is a sex traitor. She uses her femininity to support policies that enslave other women. And she derides the accomplishments that allowed her to become governor in the first fucking place.

She is worse than a joke. She is a disgrace. If she is the end result of the work of Gloria Steinem and Bella Abzug and Betty Friedan and so many other women, who were attacked with the language of violence and rape by politicians and the mainstream media (not from some asshole bloggers) that makes Palin’s little buffeting about gentle, then that work needs to kick back into high gear. And now she’s out there as if she’s standing up for women’s rights to…speak, one supposes, as long as the lines are the in a general framework of what the right wants her to say.

Sarah Palin uses the language of feminism when it suits her purposes. The concept of “choice” litters her speeches, but she doesn’t believe in choice. (And I’ll go there: you cannot be an anti-choice feminist. You can be a feminist who would not PERSONALLY have an abortion. You can be a feminist who works towards creating a more pro-child, pro-mother environment in this country, which would perhaps encourage less abortions. But you cannot–I repeat, CANNOT–be a feminist and not be pro-choice. Period. Once you say that you are not pro-choice, you are saying that you believe that a woman should not have autonomy over her own body. You are not a feminist.)

Feminists hate Sarah Palin because she dilutes feminism. Feminism isn’t some New Age psuedo-spirituality, all things to all people. It isn’t the fact that she has a big family that makes her anti-feminist; plenty of feminists have big families. Plenty of feminists are pretty, live in rural areas, drive Ford F150s, like being stay-at-home-moms, and/or have hot husbands that they love.

It isn’t Sarah Palin’s lifestyle that is anti-feminist; in fact, her home situation, where she was/is the main breadwinner and her husband does/did the majority of the child rearing, is remarkably egalitarian (and if he wasn’t Sarah Palin’s husband, I’m sure that the conservatives would be calling Todd Palin a hen-pecked pussy). It’s Sarah Palin’s politics. And feminists–along with women who wouldn’t describe themselves as feminists–can see through her bullshit for what she really is: a woman who has reaped the benefits of the feminist movement but feels no compunction to recognize the women that came before her. A woman who is eager to lick the hands of the boys in charge (Rush, Beck, the ghost of Ronald Reagan), and is content to get a pat on the head when she says what they want to hear. Women know this woman. She’s the woman in the office who the boss loves because she never challenges him, focusing her ire instead on her female coworkers. She’s the one who is quite happy to sabotage every other woman in order to get ahead. And that’s why her fan club is middle-aged, white men.

The Final Nail In The Coffin Of My Childhood

I know the Chipettes, Fox studio execs…

…and these, sirs, are NOT the Chipettes.

Sarah Palin Makes Me Doubt Evolution, Too

The hour is near, you guys! Our Sarah is going to be on Oprah so, so soon. I truly cannot wait. So to kill time, read this delicious review of Our Sarah’s book by Michiko Kakutani (who I will forever associate with Sex and the City).

Unfortunately, my corner of Central Florida is filled with teabaggers–so filled with them, in fact, that dear Sarah has chosen it as one of the safe places where she can have a book signing without interference from the evil East Coast elitists who actually purchase books on a regular basis. It’s going to be awhile until I can actually get my hands on Going Rogue (from the library, as I won’t be giving Our Sarah any money). So let’s read funny things from this book, courtesy of Kakutani’s review!

She pretends no particular familiarity with the Middle East, the Iraq war or Islamic politics — “I knew the history of the conflict,” she writes, “to the extent that most Americans did.” And she argues that “there’s no better training ground for politics than motherhood.”

It’s so comforting to know that the GOP was comfortable with this lady, this lady who is unashamed of her ignorance of our country’s two wars, a heartbeat from the presidency. To most Americans, knowledge of the Middle East, the Iraq war, and Islamic politics can be summed up thus: “Saddam Hussein bombed the World Trade Center, and then we brought freedom and democracy to Iraq, and Pakistan is a Middle Eastern country. And terrorism is bad.” I do not want THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATED to have no more knowledge than “most Americans” have on these issues. Who are the people who think that this is okay?

Elsewhere in this volume she talks about creationism, saying she “didn’t believe in the theory that human beings — thinking, loving beings — originated from fish that sprouted legs and crawled out of the sea” or from “monkeys who eventually swung down from the trees.”

Read that again, with this in mind: this person wants to be president. First, Sarah obviously doesn’t understand evolution is she thinks that humans originated from fish with legs and monkeys in trees. But that’s not really the point. Let’s call a spade a shovel, folks: if you don’t accept evolution, you are a moron. Period. If you believe that a myth about two naked people and a snake is inherently logical, but human beings gradually evolving from primate ancestors is gobbledygook, YOU ARE UNFIT TO BE PRESIDENT. You’re unfit for most things, actually.

In everything that happens to her, from meeting Todd to her selection by Mr. McCain for the Republican ticket, she sees the hand of God: “My life is in His hands. I encourage readers to do what I did many years ago, invite Him in to take over.”

This is what I don’t understand about the Sarah strain of evangelicals: to them, everything is God’s will, except when it isn’t. Okay, so Sarah prayed to Republican Jesus, and put her life in his hands. And Jesus took over. And Sarah Palin is not vice president. So, by Sarah-logic, shouldn’t that mean that Jesus DOESN’T want her in politics? Am I missing a step?

She suggests that the $150,000-plus designer clothes were the campaign’s idea, that she and her family are actually frugal coupon clippers who shop at Costco.

Yeah. Sarah Palin thinks that you will actually believe that she packs Trig, Piper, Willow, and Princess Sparklepony into a minivan for a Saturday shopping trip to Costco.

Okay, I have to go watch Oprah now.