Huckabee at the Values Voter Nadir

Mike Huckabee Sums it all up:

"It sounds so good, and it's such a warm message to say we're not gonna deny anyone from a preexisting condition," Huckabee explained at the Value Voters Summit today. "Look, I think that sounds terrific, but I want to ask you something from a common sense perspective. Suppose we applied that principle [to] our property insurance. And you can call your insurance agent and say, "I'd like to buy some insurance for my house." He'd say, "Tell me about your house." "Well sir, it burned down yesterday, but I'd like to insure it today." And he'll say "I'm sorry, but we can't insure it after it's already burned." Well, no preexisting conditions."

I find it hard to summon up an intelligent counter-argument. It's so utterly morally bankrupt, particularly from a man of such conspiciously public "faith" that the most cogent thing I can say is "drink bleach and die in a fire."

Because, well, that's what he just said to you and yours!  So while it may be rude on the face of it, well, sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.

Let us speak once more of our Family Values.

"Tell The Truth and Shame the Devil."

Having to conceal his relationship, Choi explained, contradicted his values, as well as the military values of integrity and honesty. He created a fake female name for his boyfriend in order to talk with other soldiers about his relationship, and he began to struggle to make up excuses about why the people he worked with couldn't meet his significant other. The delicate balancing act proved too much for Choi.

"It was really when I had to force my boyfriend into the closet -- that was when it got to be too much," Choi said. "That's when I saw it as lying and as absolutely immoral.

"I promised to live under an honor code at West Point that says, 'You will not lie, and you will not tolerate lying,' " Choi said. "It's simple. It doesn't say, 'Straight people cannot lie, but gay people are allowed to lie about their loved ones, so we'll make exceptions for gay people.' I found that to be antithetical to the values that our military was founded on."

Attack the idea, not the person

This week, Elliott Abrams, the former Bush official and noted neoconservative, wrote an essay in the Weekly Standard attacking the Obama administration for not more forcefully defending Israel during the flotilla crisis. Abrams said the White House had joined an anti-Israeli “lynch mob.” Over the course of the article, he used the metaphor six times.

It’s remarkable when you think about it. To Americans with even the slightest degree of racial awareness, “lynch mob” conjures something quite particular: African American men hanging from trees in the post-civil war South. To deploy the metaphor to describe a United Nations resolution that obliquely criticizes Israel is audacious. To deploy it to describe the support for that resolution by America’s first African-American president is downright astonishing. It’s a bit like calling Joe Lieberman’s opposition health-care reform a “pogrom.

Never let your morality ideology sponsorship get in the way of doing the right thing.

Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX), the ranking member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, went out on a limb today to do something maybe no other American would think to do: Heapologized to BP for having to put $20 billion into a fund for Gulf spill damages. Only Barton called it a "slush fund" and a "shakedown."

Barton's apology to BP led at first to a delicate dance, as some Republicans tried to move awayfrom the so obviously toxic statements without outright condemning Barton, and later a full court press as Republican leaders publicly calledBarton's comments "wrong."

The leaders reportedly gave him an ultimatum: "Apologize, immediately. Or you will lose your position, immediately."

Eventually, Barton, who would become the energy committee's chairman should the Republicans take the House this fall, said he was sorry. He first apologized if anyone had "misconstrued" his statement, and shortly after apologized for using the word "shakedown" and retracted his original apology (to BP, that is).

I try never to assume the motives of an individual - particularly a political individual - but here I'm forced to wonder aloud, which apology was sincere, and which was extracted under pressure? Having found that the question must be asked, the fact that it IS a good question is really all the answer I need.


A footnote to the above: The 7 Dumbest Things BP Has Said About The Spill -- So Far

If you don't like your faith being ridiculed - don't support ridiculous arguments that presume upon your faith.

H/t Pam Spaulding, whom I adore for her delightfully tactical irreverence.

Andy at Eleventh Avenue South reports that the local anti-gay organization rounded up a group of religious zealots who fear catastrophic end times will result if gay and lesbian couples are able to marry in Minnesota.

The Minnesota Family Council says it will introduce an amendment banning same-sex marriage, civil unions and domestic partnerships in Minnesota in the next few days. The group announced the new amendment push at a press conference with fundamentalist religious leaders on Tuesday.

Those leaders put forward a multi-faith diatribe against gay and lesbian relationships stating that should gays marry, the world would end.

"If everyone is a gay, this world will cease to exist in 10 years," said Ikram ul-Huq, the imam and religious director of the Muslim Community Center of Bloomington.

"Homosexual unions are forbidden and cannot be licensed with the term marriage," said Rabbi Moshe Feller, Shliach of the Rebbe to the Upper Midwest, a Chabad-Lubavitch sect of Hasidic Judaism.

"We see this as a pivotal issue to life, not just for our nation but the life we have known for 3,000 years," said Tom Parrish, administrative pastor of Hope Lutheran Church. Parrish represents Hope Lutheran Church, whose senior pastor, Tom Brock, raised some eyebrows in 2003 when he insisted the 9/11 attacks were God's wake up call.

"That's a lifestyle that God says is sinful," Brock said of homosexuality in 2003.

The reason their collective panties are in a bunch is that there a bill has been introduced (by Sen. John Marty and Rep. Phyllis Kahn, DFL-Minneapolis), in both the Senate and House that if passed would make Minnesota's marriage laws gender neutral. According to the AP, it's unlikely the legislation will make it out of committee.

Digg Link for Pam's Post

The ridiculous part here is that a religion, properly speaking, teaches you how to live a better life. If, in order to achieve that, it must force other people to conform so that adherents can be unaware of workable counter-examples, it's not a religion - it's a sort of boutique government, a theocracy with neither sufficient power to produce good outcomes or the moral advantage needed to be genuinely persuasive.

That objection comes even before we address the merit of the proposition to be imposed from any more abstract angle, ethical, moral or scriptural.

Oh, and since all these fine religious leaders are using arguments from authority right out of the gate - you have every reason to be quite skeptical as to the merit of all moral and scriptural arguments. The utilitarian ones, I believe, are well disposed of already.

I'm perfectly capable of saying this while being a person with a strong preference against having sex with men. I'll go a step further - I'm an androphobe. I don't even want male friends. It takes me bad places in my head, places that I cannot help going when men are around, having to do with social dominance issues.

But, you see, this is MY issue. It colors MY relationships. It defines what sort of relationships will work for me and what ones cannot work, regardless of the quality of people involved. And it really doesn't matter whether I "should" be able to have this relationship or "shouldn't" be able to have that one. It makes far, FAR more sense to concentrate on the positive - a solid relationship built on the things that make me feel good and happy and make it possible to make someone else feel good about being in a relationship with me.

Having done that, and having that relationship prove it's mutual value every day in the face of being nothing like what people would assume, based as it is on mutual social needs and unfortunate experiences that to understand would require explanations of the TMI variety, it's perhaps somewhat simpler for me to see the unstated and deliberately unaccounted costs of forcing all human relationships into a few approved molds. It also tends to reveal to me the degree to which arguments against homosexual relationships are driven by outright phobic irrationality.

Now, phobic overreactions do not make those natural variations in affinity disappear. The irrational reaction forces them underground, where their manifestations will become unconscious or perverted to various degrees, which are then taken to be proof of inherent, rather than circumstantial depravity. To the degree homosexual unions are "sinful," (a mistake, in the Hebrew), it would be in large part due to the social and psychological costs imposed from outside and the difficulty, for most people, of living outside of cultural sanctions that guide and advantage most of us in our daily lives.

I could easily argue that the common, scriptural arguments against homosexuality and legal recognition of homosexual couples are at best tenuous, but that is to miss the more important point. Many religions do impose arbitrary restrictions upon the behavior of their adherents, and there is, arguable merit to making such voluntary sacrifices, if one can.

But whatever merit such voluntary sacrifice may have vanishes if they are imposed by fiat upon all, when an argued moral good becomes mere conformity imposed by law. Such moralisms inevitably and predictably lead to immoral actions in their imposition and outcomes, and inevitably also lead to a numbing of the moral and ethical sensibility of their advocates, for in order to argue the benefits of imposing them, they have to dissociate themselves from any responsibility for negative outcomes caused by their willful and unjust desire to interfere in the moral agency of others.

Violence is done - and not merely to those the religion decides to attack. Not even most significantly in this particular case, for regardless of the precise arrangement of laws, the recognition of committed homosexual marriage is a fact. That is to say, anyone who cares to investigate knows that it's as possible for homosexual couples to maintain a committed and stable relationship as it is for heterosexual couples - even in the significant absence of religious sanction and support.

A religion that finds itself in argument with both reality and the obvious human rights issues of deserves to be questioned in regards to it's actual substantive support OF human rights. It seems to me to be exceptionally questionable that one can support human rights in general while advocating particular exemptions.

And indeed, these moral absurdities long ago led me to question the reason and rationale of their justification, which in turn led me to study the foundations of the arguments for myself. And, as I've stated, I found the arguments to be, at best, questionable. When I raised that question - well, you may well imagine the answers I got.

Dismissive and disrespectful responses to questions of significant and personal moral uncertainty are not proper for any person claiming moral authority. Their authority must be founded in a clear mastery of the moral and ethical universe. They must be conversant with the full range of human nature, nor should their council tend toward the violent and abusive, for one can get that for free, simply by posing the same question to any randomly selected, culturally isolated ignoramus.

In other words - the arguments given by the "moral authorities" cited above are persuasive that they do not have any genuine, authoritative understanding of the moral and ethical dimensions of the foundation of their principles or the unsanitary and unsavory outcomes of their imposition over the last few hundred years.

You'd be better advised to read what text scriptures you like for your own benefit and come to your own conclusions than rely upon the advice of such fools as these. (allow me to commend unto your study the writings of St. Julian of Norwich.)

However, it's fair to state that these are exceptional fools, speaking to an issue that seems to provoke exceptional foolishness. There are fools in every profession. It's wise to cultivate the skills that make discernment between wisdom and foolishness possible, for all wise men are fools in spots.

Values Clarification and Update: The American Family Association has come out against a UN declaration condemning countries that put homosexuals to death, on the grounds that such a condemnation might cause a slippery slope toward tolerance.

Robert Wood, Acting Spokesman for the UN issued the following statement today:

The United States supports the UN Statement on “Human Rights, Sexual Orientation, and Gender Identity,” and is pleased to join the other 66 UN member states who have declared their support of this Statement that condemns human rights violations based on sexual orientation and gender identity wherever they occur.

The United States is an outspoken defender of human rights and critic of human rights abuses around the world. As such, we join with the other supporters of this Statement and we will continue to remind countries of the importance of respecting the human rights of all people in all appropriate international fora.

And the anti-gay religious organization AFA responded with the following:

The Obama administration and other proponents of a United Nations statement that calls for the decriminalization of homosexuality claim it merely targets the seven countries that put homosexuals to death. But one pro-family activist [that would be the AFA] warns the document elevates homosexual behavior to skin color and religious belief.

Yes, it's so very offensive to Christianity that one equate killing someone for their skin color or religion be compared to, say, beating a gay to death and claiming the right to celebrate it.

"Christians" like this bode fair to putting Hell into receivership, due to unfair competition.

A Graphictruth via Crooks and Liars

Fully credited to "Original Col Kilgore" who comments in response to Yet Another Republican Pedophelia Scandal:

"I have always said that Republicans talking about honor and fiscal responsibility is like Ted Bundy talking about foreplay."

Oddly, Ted Bundy WAS a Republican.

Here's the Zazzle page -I drew the illustration to the right from it. Click to read the fine print.

This is my response to the people already flooding the comments thread at C&L to minimize it with the usual "few bad apples" meme.

Haven't we seen this before, in another hierarchical, moralistic, doctrinaire and now nearly irrelevant organization called Catholicism? Hell, I've gotten OLD watching that slow-motion train-wreck!

Crooks, liars, perps and confidence men ALWAYS gravitate to organizations that stress the appearance of propriety - because when appearance becomes confused with performance, they have free rein to do as they wish. And in doing so, they undermine, drive out and sabotage those who would actually live up to the ideals of that organization - those who do not simply leave in disgust.

There are many people who would be quite happy being called a Republican if there was any real connection between semblance and substance but clearly, that's not true, and it's not true on every level from raw personal perpishness to grand political strategy.

People who do things like this perp did do them because they are confident they can get away with it. Why are they so confident? Because they have gotten away with many other things for a very long time as an integral part of the process of getting to where they are. They have helped other crooks and perps cover up messes and feel they are owed. One hand washes the other. Men of the world understand how these things work, don't you know.

Yes, they work by means of obstruction of justice, in furtherance of a conspiracy. Sad to say, not only has the Republican Party prospered by means of obstruction of justice and conspiracy, it doesn't even seem to have collectively enough brains to realize that a conspiracy has to remain covert to succeed. When a story about the obvious political interference in a pedophilia problem by the US Atty. General hits World Net Daily, Raw Story AND Prison Planet and then VANISHES from mainstream news, not only is there an obviously rotting elephant in the room, it's become liquid in it purification.

Of course, we must ask why. The answer must, of course, be somewhat speculative, but some reactions are very revealing. I point to the front page of "Armchair Subversive" - a site that takes great glee in listing the perps figuring in significant Republican Scandals.

And what is a typical, Middle-American reaction? It's to be found at the bottom of that page.

"HATE MAIL:"Maybe you have no control over where they post your political bullshit but I wish they wouldn't post it on google when my 11 year old daughter is just trying to find ideas for her 12th birthday party. I am sure there are plenty of liberal fucks out there molesting children also!!!!!!! Post it where it matters in the trash!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Thank you, a concerned mother"

Of all the logical failings of social conservatives, "shooting the messenger" seems to be the most widespread.

Now, one could argue that it's unattributed and might even be fabricated. One could and should consider the source. But the counter argument would be; does this response sound at all unusual? Sadly, it's a rather common sort of response, examples of it are already flooding into this thread and infest any attempt on any significant site to raise awareness of systemic abuses. As an exemplar, it speaks directly to the problem in exactly the way most others do - which is an attempt to preserve the appearance of morality and propriety at the expense of justice for those victimized by those hiding behind it's tattered facade.

If Social Conservatives who seem to be all that remain of public republicanism spent a tenth of the effort they invest in denial into due diligence and self policing, the Republican party and social conservatism might deserve a shred of respect, might have a trace of credibility.

But, to cite the name of yet another famous blog: Sadly, No.

Well, when corruption becomes something that can be assumed, taken for granted, when law enforcement is conspicuously conditional upon party affiliation, no matter how utterly repugnant the crime might be - how can anyone expect respect for the law? How do we raise the next generation to respect laws and lawmakers if it's laughable to point to the ones in power and the laws they pass and selectively enforce as proofs of concept?

That's one of them rhetorical questions.

Mormons may have violated Election law and IRS Standards.

Whether or not a case may be proven without access to Mormon financial records is actually immaterial from the viewpoint of individuals such as myself. It's fairly clear that steps were taken to evade IRS and election oversight measures. In other words - words being echoed by various activist groups - the Mormon push on Prop 8 was clearly and deliberately intended to subvert the political process - which governs every citizen of a nation - in order to impose religious rules that apply only to a tiny minority of ... well, let's call it for what it is; religious bigots.

You see, not doing something or forgoing something for religous reasons, for yourself and to a limited extent, on behalf of family is one thing. Imposing conditions on other people in order to make it easier for you to adhere to your faith is quite another. One might seriously question the "faith" of persons who see social control as a tool of faith.

H8TRED, LOVE, which are the red letters? by webcarve

In any case, whatever is proven, this direct interference in the lives and moral choices of other people should be persuasive to persons of genuine faith and conscience. Homosexuality is not mentioned in the ten commandments - but adultery is. Adultery, in the Hebrew, speaks to "splitting apart" a relationship. It's speaking of any human relationship. It's considered to be as serious a matter as murder or giving false testimony in order to harm another.

This would seem to disqualify anyone in a leadership position from leadership if they could see this as a proper course of action for a church.

Shake the dust from your feet. Faith is about upholding and living up to standards to the best of YOUR ability - not imposing standards upon others and punishing people in the civil world for not setting examples you approve of. That's indistinguishable from pure bigotry, and you can find that sort of "faith" in any corner bar.

So, why not get a beer for your five bucks, if you are willing to settle for that sort of uplifting companionship?

Teaching kids that Uncle Fred might be a pedophile is "unprincipled?"

High Ideals and No Principles by Thomas Sowell on National Review Online: "What is called “sex education,” whether for kindergartners or older children, is not education about biology but indoctrination in values that go against the traditional values that children learn in their families and in their communities."

Were that true, it would be a damning allegation. It's a shame that the once respectable NRO seems to have abandoned the principle of basing opinions upon facts presented honestly in the light of respectable and honorable Conservative perspective.

Here's what Obama was actually suggesting:

When Obama's campaign was asked by ABC News to explain what kind of sex education Obama considers "age appropriate" for kindergartners, the Obama campaign pointed to an Oct. 6, 2004 story from the Daily Herald in which Obama had "moved to clarify" in his Senate campaign that he "does not support teaching explicit sex education to children in kindergarten. . . The legislation in question was a state Senate measure last year that aimed to update Illinois' sex education standards with 'medically accurate' information . . . 'Nobody's suggesting that kindergartners are going to be getting information about sex in the way that we think about it,' Obama said. 'If they ask a teacher 'where do babies come from,' that providing information that the fact is that it's not a stork is probably not an unhealthy thing. Although again, that's going to be determined on a case by case basis by local communities and local school boards.'"

In addition to local schools informing kindergartners that babies do not come from the stork, the state legislation Obama supported in Illinois, which contained an "opt out" provision for parents, also envisioned teaching kindergarteners about "inappropriate touching," according to Obama's presidential campaign. Despite Obama's support, the legislation was not enacted.

So, I'm forced to wonder aloud - as I have, all to often when these memes come up - as to how such harmless and frankly needful information could be considered destructive and harmful to families?

Could it be the "inappropriate touching" part?

Look - I know how utterly snide and insulting that sounds. But I'm not saying it in order to score political points or shoot across the bow of anyone's "Culture War" gunboat. This observation comes out of almost two decades of involvement in abuse and survivor's issues. Bluntly, I'm the product of something that (though my specific memories are unreliable) would, both by the patterns of cracks in my psyche, point toward something for which the term "inappropriate touching" would be an understatement of truly mythic proportions.

And of the people I know who's shatter patterns resemble mine, it's almost a cliche' to observe that the shattering occurs within a family context that justifies it's abuse via authoritarian belief structures, generally with some religious trappings.

I can count on the fingers of one thumb the number of polyfragmented, traumatized, dissociated and disordered multiple personalities that did not have such a background, absent something like autism or a particularly hidious scholastic enviroment. Lucky me, I hit the trifecta and despite my inherent conservative biases, it's real hard to ignore such compelling evidence without engaging in levels of denial that are truely and literally insane.

Further, my wife was a special educator for twenty years and has a parallel observation - that in her suburban schools, it would be common for two to three children to disclose (out of classes of 25 to 30) some form of abuse whenever the issue was brought up - often through a reading assignment. Oddly enough, such books are very high on the list of books conservative and religious groups would like to see banned.

As a person who's dedicated much of his adult life to figuring out how things can go so badly wrong within the confines of family and church; institutions that both claim the right, duty and ability to shape children so that they "do right," I have come to the conclusion that our national fetish for preserving "innocence" of children is, sadly, just that.

A fetish.

And whether or not that fetish is personally sexual in any particular person, all persons that buy into and support it add to the cover it grants to Republican Pedophiles.

It seems that the authoritarian conservatives - and far too often, the religous authoritarian conservatives - are easily seduced by the idea of proving their power to themselves and to others by sexually exploiting those with less power, while sexually disenfranchising all those who are not in power. In the most brutal and literal sense, the Authoritarian sees power and sexual abuse - rape, to not put too fine a point on it - as being both the expression, the reward and the natural right of the alpha male.

Now, this understanding is cloaked in culture and shrouded in denial, to the point where conservatives may think that they are being completely honest in making what they think as principled objections to what they see as interference in family matters, and the right to determine what sort of information regarding sexuality is appropriate to their children.

But I see nothing in what Sen. Obama was advocating that would actually be a threat to that - assuming the matters were handled appropriately. And meanwhile, the "abstanance only" movement is more than willing to trade in misinformation and outright lies about the consequences of premarital sex, contraception and abortion.

So if this is a principled position, it's a principle that admits that it's ok to decieve "for the greater good," to bear false witness, to install toxic fear and shame as an acceptable price for the prevention of "sinful behavior."

Having spent far too many years hip deep in the consequences of such stupitdity, both personally and in support of the weeping consequences of being forced to face the price and consequences of surviving their childhoods in abusive and almost universally religous conservataive families, I call bullshit.

And Thomas Sowell is either bullshitting himself or trying to bullshit you. Either way, it's another reason to vote for someone with a realistic view toward the costs and benefits of early information and age-approprate education about maintaining appropriate sexual boundries, both in and out of one's own family.

"I'm Voting Republican Because..."

If chickens made an ad for KFC, it would be like this.

When you lie down with dogs...

...sometimes the pooch screws you!

NRCC Says Ex-Treasurer Diverted Up to $1 Million - washingtonpost.com

For at least four years, Christopher J. Ward, who is under investigation by the FBI, allegedly used wire transfers to funnel money out of NRCC coffers and into other political committee accounts he controlled as treasurer, NRCC leaders and lawyers said in their first public statement since they turned the matter over to the FBI six weeks ago.

"The evidence we have today indicated we have been deceived and betrayed for a number of years by a highly respected and trusted individual," said Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), the NRCC chairman.

Well of course. The ethics of a war on false pretenses didn't bother anyone much at the NRCC. They have never had an issue with "signing statements," or validating torture, or gerrymandering Texas, or blowing out a whole CIA intelligence network for partisan reasons, rigging national and local elections, well, I could go on. But this, THIS is dishonest!

Gee whiz, when you solicit people whom you know to be unethical enough to participate knowingly and willingly in acts that are variously illegal, immoral, indecent and unethical, doesn't it seem just possible that they might be less than totally trustworthy?

Has NO-one in the Republican Party learned from that simple morality tale called "The Sting?" EG, you can't cheat an honest man?

That, of course, makes the Republican Party (and any registered Republican) target one for every grifter, confidence artist and multi-level marketing scammer out there. Aside from the outright thieves such as this, of course.