This is a post-election thread; feel free to discuss any of the recent election news, future election trends, etc., here.

Virginia and New Jersey: No surprises here. I don’t think these races indicate national trends, but I can’t blame Conservatives for grabbing on to any hope they can.

In the end, I think the single best thing the Democrats can do for 2010 is to get aggressive and desperate about improving the economic situation; for instance, with a big temporary cut in payroll taxes. But I doubt they’ll do it, since “gutsy” has never in my lifetime been something Democrats do well.

New York: Frankly, the Republican who was pushed out of the race — who was pro-choice and pro-marriage equality — really does seem out of step with the Republican base. For that reason, I think the Republican base in NY did the principled thing by rebelling, just as the Democratic base in Connecticut was right to rebel against being represented by Joe Lieberman.

Will this be really good for the Democrats in the end, as many Democrats are currently crowing? I don’t know.

Washington state: Huzzah for a victory on civil unions. Dammit that it was so close.

Maine

Maine should be the death of the claim that people don’t hate gays, they just hate being told what to do by the Courts. The folks who oppose equality have never cared about that, except as a pretext, so they could oppose equality while pretending not to be bigots.

The folks in Maine did everything the way they’re “supposed” to. They were polite, they were organized. They spent years building up support with face-to-face contacts. They went through the legislature, not the courts.

None of that makes any difference to the people who oppose equality. None of it ever did.

Quoting Andrew Sullivan:

The hard truth is: people are still afraid of this, and our opponents knew how to target their fears very precisely. They have honed it to an art - their prime argument now is that although adults can handle gay equality, children cannot. And so they play straight to heterosexuals whose personal comfort with gay people is fine but who sure don’t want their kids to turn out that way. One way to prevent kids turning out that way, the equality opponents argue, is to ensure that they never hear of gay people, except in a marginalized, scary, alien fashion. And this referendum was clearly a vote in which the desire to keep gay people invisible trumped the urge to treat them equally.[...]

But civil rights victories, the final and enduring ones, are always built on the foundations of defeats. Sometimes, the defeat of a minority’s sincere aspiration to equality helps reveal the injustice of the discrimination and the cruelty of the marginalization. Sometimes, it helps show just how poorly treated we are, and galvanizes a community to fight back more fiercely as we saw in that amazing march on DC last month. That has certainly been true of previous civil rights movements. It is just as true of ours.

So congrats, Maine Equality. You did a fine job. Congrats, HRC. You helped. No congrats to Obama who is treating this civil rights movement the way Kennedy first treated his. But we don’t need Obama.

We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. And we will win in due course, with a good spirit and keen arguments, and with passion and conviction in our hearts. We will win.

On July 1, over at Minnesota righty superblog True North (”Pointing Minnesota in the Right Direction”), Kevin Ecker decided to use his time to highlight an anti-immigration rally in Austin, Minnesota:

Political activism at it’s [sic] best is honest grassroots efforts by people finally fed up with lying politicians who decide to do something about an issue rather than just complain. We have a great example of that coming up here in Minnesota on the immigration issue.

On Saturday, July 11th at 2 PM, there will be a rally held at the Mower County Courthouse. It’s located at 201 First Street NE, Austin, MN. This will be the second rally in a month at that location.

Basically Austin is a town that the residents feel has been devastated by illegal immigration, and a lone resident, Sam Johnson, finally got fed up. He organized the first rally despite being up against professionally organized counter protests by the likes of La Raza, Centro Campesino and various Marxist organizations bussed in from the cities.

Sam Johnson, honest American, just doing the best he can to make our country free of “illegal immigration.” Or, you know, any immigration. Because this is Sam Johnson:

In case you’re wondering — and I doubt you are, but some people might not be able to view the picture — yes, that’s a guy wearing a neo-Nazi uniform. Because Sam Johnson isn’t just a hard-working white American who’s fed-up with illegal immigration. He’s a neo-Nazi, the head of the National Socialist Movement Southeast Minnesota. He is one of the most vile individuals in my state, and he’s a guy who the world will be better off without.

Sally Jo Sorensen of the outstanding Bluestem Prairie blog actually interviewed Johnson (one hopes she took a long, hot shower afterward); you should really read all of part one and bookmark the site for the next two installments, but here’s a brief excerpt:

“Minorities should not be citizens,” Johnson said, “only 100 percent true white Americans.” He outlined his vision of a nation in which all people of color would be stripped of their citizenship, no matter how long their families had lived in the United States, and moved to communities that would be strictly delineated according to race.

People of African descent would live with other people of African descent, Latinos with Latinos, Asians with Asians, American Indians with American Indians, and “real Americans” with other “real Americans. “Real American” and non-citizen status would be determined be having had family living in the country for five generations or 50-70 years.

Only if non-whites broke the law would they be sent back to the country of their ancestors’ origins, regardless of how long their families had lived in the United States. Of course, Johnson emphasized, this would dictate deporting all immigrants living here illegally.

“Minorities could have jobs, own homes, and enjoy their own culture,” he said. They simply wouldn’t be citizens of the United States, nor could they become citizens. They would have to keep separate.

Why separate?

“If you look back in history to every country that’s allowed different races to mingle,” he said, “you’ll see that nation has fallen.”

“Look at what happened to Rome,” he said, when I example him for an example of what he meant. “Jews and Africans came into Rome, there were uprisings, and Rome fell.”

This is the guy that True North — a blog that has included Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn.; PowerLine’s Scott Johnson; and David Strom, the head of the Minnesota Taxpayers League as contributors — decided to back. A neo-Nazi. But that shouldn’t be surprising — the Republican party has deliberately chosen to throw its lot in with the most extreme elements of the hard-core, fascist-and-no-that’s-not-hyperbole, racist right. It is disgusting. It is despicable.

This is why those of us on the left don’t buy it when the right claims that they’re not racist — because they are so very willing to embrace racists when it helps them. If Republicans want to stop being seen as the party of hate, they need to stop the hatred. Otherwise, they need to own the fact that a sitting Republican congresswoman is a contributor to a website that promoted a neo-Nazi hate rally, promotion that included sharing Sam Johnson’s email address with those looking to get involved. Only a party that found racism acceptable could be comfortable with that.

UPDATE: Just because these things have a way of finding their way down the memory hole:

Let’s thank the Ceiling Cat tonight for four brave Republican U.S. Reps — John Shadegg of Arizona, Paul Broun of Georgia, Trent Franks of Arizona, and Sue Myrick of North Carolina. You see, they have uncovered the most terrormorfyingest Muslamofascist plot in the history of history. It seems that the Council on American Islamic Relations has engaged in a sinister plot to take over America by…well, it’s all too shocking:

Four Republican lawmakers have accused the most prominent Islamic advocacy group in Washington of trying to plant “spies” as interns on Capitol Hill.

[...]

In an unusual announcement this morning, four conservative Republicans — Reps. John Shadegg (Ariz.), Paul Broun (Ga.), Trent Franks (Ariz.) and Sue Myrick (N.C.) — formally asked the House Sergeant at Arms to launch an investigation of the Center for American-Islamic Relations. They accused CAIR, a non profit group, of trying to infiltrate Capitol Hill with interns and staffers.

Shadegg said Wednesday that CAIR is an organization that “members of Congress should be aware of and that should be investigated by the Justice Department and Internal Revenue Service.”

[...]

The proclamation from the four Republicans came in advance of a book, entitled “Muslim Mafia: Inside the Secret Underworld that’s Conspiring to Islamize America,” which includes a forward by Myrick. The author of the book, Dave Gaubatz, an anti-Islam activist who wrote last year that “a vote for Hussein Obama is a vote for Sharia Law.”

The lawmakers also released a one page “strategy” document they said they obtained from CAIR.

Not just a strategy document. An evil strategy document! Why, just look at the terrifying things CAIR wanted to do! Things like, er, building a grass-roots lobbying network! And raising money! And studying the media! And blogging! And building a database! A database!

Yes, it turns out that CAIR plans to destroy America by working within the American political system to influence policy to favor the interests of their group’s members, interests like (I assume) not being denied access to flights simply because of one’s religion, or possibly the implementation of Shari’a Law. You never know.

Shockingly, as part of their plan, CAIR has encouraged young American Muslims to become Congressional staffers, doing so surreptitiously, utilizing secret Muslim communications methods such as press releases and Facebook pages.

It is a terrifying thought, but at least we’re only talking about staffers. It’s not like the International Monolithic Muslim Conspiracy has placed its dastardly saboteurs in Congress itself. Jeebus help us if that ever happens.

For the love of the Ceiling Cat, Michael Steele, really?

The long-in-the-planning beta launch of the new RNC website is being greeted with some predictable snark from liberal blogs — a lot of it directed at Chairman Michael Steele’s blog, “What Up?”

“What Up?” Really? Really‽ That’s like a 93-year-old white guy’s idea of how them colored kids speak.

I think it’s about time to dust this off.

Like most Americans, I don’t have much time for Bill Ayers. Yes, I know he’s central to the vast left-wing conspiracy to elect Muslim Black Socialist Black Communist Black Muslim Blackity Black Black Black President Barack Hussein Super-Allah Obama, but he’s also a former terrorist — and no mincing words, that’s what he was. If you use violence against civilian targets to further political aims, you’re a terrorist, and while Ayers was ultimately not convicted of any crime, that doesn’t make him innocent. I have little time for the man.

That said, because Ayers and Obama — both professors at the University of Chicago — crossed paths a few times, Bill Ayers has become a Svengali figure in the right-wing mythology of Barack Obama, secret Kenyan. For bizarre, half-assed reasons, conservatives have convinced themselves that Ayers secretly wrote Barack Obama’s first book, Dreams from My Father, because everyone knows African-Americans can’t write — I mean, Barack Obama just isn’t that good a writer. No, really.

This is, of course, incandescently offensive, but pretty much par for the course from the right, so one tends to ignore it, because the alternative is caring whether Bill Ayers lives or dies, and I don’t.

That said, my disdain for Ayers does not inculcate me from the ability to be amused by massive conservative fail, and that’s when one has to note that something wonderful has happened:

Anne Leary creates traffic and attention to her previously obscure blog with a picture of Bill Ayers and a “conversation” that sounds like suspiciously like a letter to WorldNetDaily’s forum:

Dear WND - I am a blogger from the midwest and  I never thought this would happen to me…

Leary (and you should be) claims that she said “Hey you’re Bill Ayers…” and a guilt-ridden Ayers immediately broke down and admitted that he wrote Barack Obama’s book.

Yep. A conservative blogger sits down next to Bill Ayers, and tell him that she’s a conservative blogger, and Ayers immediately tells her that he wrote Dreams from My Father, and she reported that as fact. Was Ayers serious? Of course not. Criminy, even Jonah Frickin’ Goldberg can see through this. But that didn’t stop much of the wingnutosphere from jumping on this as proof — proof! — that Bill Ayers is actually president.

You don’t have to like Bill Ayers to find that highly amusing.

As you’ve probably heard, the folks who brought you Conservapedia are currently hard at work on the Conservative Bible, because that Jesus guy was a crazy dope-smoking hippie who had all these goofy ideas about healing the sick and helping the poor and turning the other cheek and crap like that. Now, I haven’t read it yet, but I’m really looking forward to this scene:

Yes, that’s “One Nation Under God,” a new painting by artist Jon McNaughton, and it’s one of those great moments in conservative kitsch, like Rifle Jesus, that just warms the cockles of your heart.

Now, the servers on the guy’s site are currently melted, what with the HuffPo and Wonkette links, but I’m hoping he gets them back up soon, because for the full effect, you really have to see the mouseover information explaining the symbolism of the picture (because, as all artists know, the best way to make your symbolism apparent to the viewer is to tell them exactly what your symbolism is supposed to mean).

Yes, there’s the “liberal woman reporter!” And the “Mother!” With her “handicapped child!” (Said child does not appear to be in any way disabled, which mayhaps is why McNaughton felt the need to identify him thus. Then again, we’re all probably glad he didn’t try to depict a disabled child “sensitively.”) There’s the Supreme Court Justice weeping over Roe v. Wade, and the Evolution-Teachin’ Professor, and Mister Hollywood, all hanging out by Satan Himself. Okay, after the Polanski stuff, I guess I’ll give McNaughton Mister Hollywood, but still, that’s a mite over-the-top. And my favorite of the onlookers, the “Typical Immigrant,” who is depicted as possibly Asian-American, and who is shocked that Jesus is actually the founder of our country! I guess that’s because he read those silly citizen’s guides with their noting the founding fathers favored church-state separation.

And of course, in the pantheon with Jesus are swell folks like Aryan Youth! (That’s my term for the kid, not his.) And Black Soldier Whose Name is King So I Don’t Have to Paint Martin Luther King, Jr.! And way, waaaaaay off in the distance, it’s Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman and Sequoyah! And also Susan B. Anthony! So there!

But of course, front and center in the picture is Jesus, seen here writing the Constitution which includes provisions for freedom of religion. Silly Jesus! Always with the jokes, that guy! Still, I’m glad someone is finally giving us a look at the real story of the American Revolution, which is not the story of a bunch of rich white guys finding ways to make America somewhat more classically liberal than it was under British rule, but the story of Jesus. Oh, and also, Glenn Beck’s favorite book. That too.

UPDATE: This is some weapons-grade snark right here.

I have conservative friends who argue that it’s unfair of the left to paint them all as a bunch of tea-party-attending, Glen-Beck-listening yahoos. They argue that conservatism has a rich intellectual foundation, and that by cherry picking their worst-sounding supporters, we willfully ignore the writers today who uphold that intellectual foundation.

Writers like the folks at The National Review.

Writers like John Derbyshire¹.

Why do I bring this up? Well, its just that as Faiz Shakir points out over at Think Progress, John Derbyshire went on Alan Colmes’ radio show yesterday and took a stand against female suffrage.

DERBYSHIRE: Among the hopes that I do not realistically nurse is the hope that female suffrage will be repealed. But I’ll say this – if it were to be, I wouldn’t lose a minute’s sleep.

COLMES: We’d be a better country if women didn’t vote?

DERBYSHIRE: Probably. Don’t you think so?

COLMES: No, I do not think so whatsoever.

DERBYSHIRE: Come on Alan. Come clean here [laughing].

COLMES: We would be a better country? John Derbyshire making the statement, we would be a better country if women did not vote.

DERBYSHIRE: Yeah, probably.

Okay, so that’s bad enough, but Alan Colmes, rightly gobsmacked by this, next asked

COLMES: What’s next, you want to bring back slavery?

DERBYSHIRE: No. No, I’m in favor of freedom, personally.

COLMES: But women shouldn’t have the freedom to vote?

DERBYSHIRE: Well, they didn’t and we got on along ok.

He goes on to argue against The Civil Rights Act of 1964. Of course.

Anyhow, all this illustrates two things for me.

First, it really perfectly encapsulates the strange sort of doublethink you see in conservative political philosophy all the time.

“We believe in individualism! (Just so long as you don’t have sex in ways we disapprove of.)”

“We believe in freedom! (As long as people who disagree with us are not allowed to vote.)”

“We believe in free speech! (But people who criticize the (Republican) president should watch their goddamn mouths.)”

You see this a lot in discussions about economics, where the argument is that government intervention and collective solutions are illegitimate (not just wrong, mind you), no matter how much of the electorate is in favor of them. You see it in the faux-troversies about President Obama’s legitimacy. You see it in Glenn Beck’s rhetoric about how ‘real Americans’ are opposed to President Obama, despite him having won the presidency by an overwhelming majority ². You see it in the analysis we hear every election about how “if it weren’t for the African-American vote, Democrats would be a permanent minority party³ ”

The central idea is this: If you disagree with them, you ought not be allowed to participate in the democratic process in the first place. I contrast this with the way the liberal ACLU operates, fighting for the free speech rights of white supremacists and the religious rights of fundamentalists, both groups who are not (to put it mildly) their ‘core constituency’.

‘Rights for all,’ versus ‘rights for the people who agree with me.’ That’s the difference.

Hell, John Derbyshire makes no bones about it! He says outright, “The conservative case against [female suffrage] is that women lean hard to the left.” That’s not an argument. That’s thuggery.

Anyhow, that’s the first thing I took from it.

The second thing I took away is that when people talk about the rich intellectual tradition of Conservatism, it’s guys like John Derbyshire they’re talking about, so … jeez … maybe they mean something different by ‘intellectual?’

Please do not comment unless you accept the basic dignity, equality, and inherent worth of all people

1. Who, as Andrew Sullivan ably documents, continues to believe that gay people are all child molesters. Or at least enough where we shouldn’t let them around our children, best to be safe, etc, etc, etc. (back)
2. And the Democrats having won both houses! (back)
3. Hey look, here’s an example or two from a while back. (back)

Glenn Beck doesn’t really seem to know, despite saying Barack Obama has a “deep-seated hatred” of it:

(Via Andrew Sullivan)

So Rep. Michele Bachman, R-Shame, was down in St. Louis today, where she ignored Lincoln’s axiom on being thought a fool as per usual. But what is really impressive is this little sequence from her departure, as reported by the Washington Independent’s Dave Weigel:

After the speech, Bachmann had only a few minutes to sign autographs and collect a stack of CDs and books from fans who’d followed her into the lobby. I caught up to her as she headed outside and asked if she had any response to the murder of a Kentucky census worker, having noticed that the Census, a constant target for Bachmann, did not figure into her speech. Bachmann recoiled a little at the question and turned to enter her limo.

“Thank you so much!” she said.

That’s…well, it’s pathetic, that’s what it is. It wouldn’t have taken Bachmann but a second to say, “Well obviously, I condemn violence, yadda yadda.”

Of course, someone who didn’t condemn this sort of violence would simply get into a limo and duck the question.

As for the murder of Bill Sparkman, the evidence coming out makes it quite apparent that he was, indeed, targeted for being a census worker:

One of the witnesses who found a part-time census worker’s body hanging in a Kentucky cemetery says the man was naked and his hands and feet were bound with duct tape.

Jerry Weaver of Fairfield, Ohio, told The Associated Press on Friday that he was among a group of relatives who discovered the body of Bill Sparkman on Sept. 12.

Sparkman was a substitute teacher who worked part-time for the census. Law enforcement officials have released very few details on his death, only saying he died from asphyxiation.

Weaver says the man also was gagged and had duct tape over his eyes and neck. He says something that looked like an identification tag was taped to the side of his neck.

Some on the right have suggested this might be a suicide, or possibly the work of drug dealers. Well, drug dealers generally don’t target census workers, and don’t ritualistically display those they kill. As for suicide, the details of Sparkman’s death pretty much eliminate any chance of that.

If they wanted to redeem their mortal souls, people like Bachmann and Glenn Beck, people who have been slagging on the census for months, could at the very least condemn this act of violence. I might even be willing to believe them. It’s possible they didn’t think their words had the power to motivate people. (They certainly fail to motivate me.) It’s possible they didn’t think through the consequences of what they were saying. It’s possible that they actually feel terrible about all this.

It’s possible. But the longer the silence goes on, the more clear it is that it’s pretty unlikely. I suspect Bachmann sleeps quite well at night. I suspect she isn’t bothered by this murder one bit. And I suspect that she’ll come out as a pro-choice, atheist, lesbian Democrat before she takes even the basic human step of saying that this sort of violence is wrong.

I’d love to be surprised, Rep. Bachmann. I’d love for you to prove me wrong. But I don’t think you’re going to.

You may recall that back in June, Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-You Serious?, declared that the census was part of the vast left-wing conspiracy to install Barack Hussein Super-Allah Muslim Muslim Muslim Obama as dictator-for-life of the American Soviet. At the time, she said of the census, If we look at American history, between 1942 and 1947, the data that was collected by the Census Bureau was handed over to the FBI and other organizations at the request of President Roosevelt, and that’s how the Japanese were rounded up and put into the internment camps.”

One can draw a bright, straight line between rhetoric like that and this horrific crime:

The FBI is investigating the hanging death of a U.S. Census worker near a Kentucky cemetery. A law enforcement official says the word “fed” was scrawled on his chest.

The body of Bill Sparkman, a 51-year-old Census field worker and occasional teacher, was found Sept. 12 in the Daniel Boone National Forest in rural southeast Kentucky.

Investigators have said little about the case. A law enforcement official, who was not authorized to discuss the case and requested anonymity, tells The Associated Press the word “fed” was written on the dead man’s chest.

Let’s not kid ourselves. Let’s not muse that this might have been a “lone nut” somewhere. This was a calculated act of political violence, one that was encouraged and supported by Michele Marie Bachmann. By raising the specter of internment, of government-sanctioned attacks on the American people, Bachmann gave those “nuts” a real reason to fear the government.

If the government was seriously thinking about interning Americans simply for their political views — even if those views are directly opposite mine — I’d be first on the line to prevent it. And yes, I’d prefer to resist it though peaceful resistance if possible, but I would view violence as acceptable in defense of liberty.

Of course, the government isn’t thinking about interning Americans, for any reason whatsoever. There is no evidence, credible or otherwise, that even hints that they could be. The most oppressive thing Barack Obama is planning to do is provide health care to people who don’t have it. As for the census, it’s going to happen in 2010, just like it’s happened every ten years since the founding of the Republic, because the Constitution says so, not because Barack Obama has suddenly and capriciously demanded that all people come to Bethlehem to be taxed.

By taking a legitimate and non-controversial function of government — having some idea of how many people we have in the country — and by turning it into a secret neo-Marxist plot, Bachmann has posited a world in which even census workers are stormtroopers of destruction. Were she a private citizen, we might ignore her. But she isn’t. She’s a member of Congress, an elected official. If she’s saying that this is true, is it any wonder that someone out there would believe it?

Bachmann has a responsibility to her constituents and her country to conduct herself in a responsible manner. That she has chosen not to is to her everlasting shame. This death is, at least in part, on her head. And she owes her constituents, her country, and most important, the family of Bill Sparkman an apology. But I won’t hold my breath.

One of the interesting things on the teevee tonight has been the shock and surprise from some on the left that Minnesota’s own Republican Gov. Tim Pawlenty doesn’t really seem to be a moderate after all.

For those of you normal people who don’t track the comings and goings of Minnesota’s 39th governor, Tim Pawlenty visited the Value Voters Summit this past weekend, where he got to speak to the hardest of the hard-line wingers, the people who actually nodded when the chief of staff for Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., explained that heterosexual pornography causes teens to become homosexual because it “turns your sexual drive inwards,” a ludicrous statement which, if true, would mean that Tucker Max is the most homosexual human being in the history of history.

Gov. Pawlenty went to the summit, and those who’ve only gotten to know him through sound bites and a few interviews on MSNBC probably expected he’d give a bland, lukewarm speech, heavy on economics, light on red meat.

Those of us from Minnesota knew better. We remembered his acceptance speech from the 2006 GOP state convention, where he declared, “I can tell you what your worst nightmare is. It’s one of the big-spendin’, tax-raisin’, abortion-promotin’, gay marriage-embracin’, more welfare-without-accountability lovin’, school reform-resistin’, illegal immigration-supportin’ Democrats for governor who think Hillary Clinton should be president of the United States.” We are well aware that Pawlenty fits nicely into the anti-gay, anti-choice, anti-education Republican Party of 2010. And we knew that Pawlenty would be only to happy to tell his fellow true believers exactly what they wanted to hear.

He did not disappoint. After his usual cringe-worthy joke (something about Brett Favre not being a “clunker”), Pawlenty told everyone exactly what he believed.

On Separation of Church and State:

Now, as you know, you’re gathered here because you share a belief in those values. Those values are under attack. These are not just conservative values. Our values our American values. (Applause.) They are not rooted in pop psychology, they’re not rooted in feelings, they’re not rooted in emotion. They are rooted in the wisdom and experience of our founding fathers and the faith and the wisdom that they brought forward in the defining moments of this nation. And so we need to remind each other – (audio break).

(Applause.)

Our Judeo-Christian values are important, they are traditional, and they are the basis for so much of our country. Now, we have some folks who are skeptics about that. I’m reminded of the story – the true story of Tony Blair, the former prime minister, who came to our prayer breakfast here in Washington, D.C., about a year or so ago. He recalled a story that as a young schoolboy his father had suffered a terrible stroke. It was life-threatening and quite severe. And he remembers being in school and having a teacher pull alongside him and bend down on his knee and whisper to him, “Tony, I’m going to pray for your dad.” And Tony reminded the teacher and remembered the teacher and said, “But teacher, my dad doesn’t believe in God.” And the teacher said, “That’s okay, Tony. God believes in your dad. God believes in your Dad.”

On Abortion rights:

In Minnesota we’ve done a number of things – I won’t go through them all – but one that I’m most particularly proud of and it’s been very impactful is I’ve proposed and signed into law the so-called women’s right to know bill, which provides women important information who are considering abortion, and it also provides a waiting period for them to consider their decision. That combined with many other measures and efforts of good-hearted people all across Minnesota has significantly decreased the number of abortions performed in my state, and it’s a very effective piece of legislation.

(The Women’s Right to Know Act, of course, forced women to read anti-choice propaganda before having an abortion. Part of the information given out by the Minnesota Department of Health initially included the debunked breast cancer-abortion link.)

On GLBT Rights and Marriage Equality:

A really important example of this is defending and protecting traditional marriage. All domestic relationships are not the same, and traditional marriage needs to remain elevated in our society and in our culture. Marriage should be defined as between a man and a woman, and I sponsored that legislation when I was in the Minnesota Legislature, and we should make sure that the people are heard on this, that the Constitution is heard on this, not courts who are making up the law in the backroom.

Now, this is not some radical notion or some extreme notion. My goodness, when it’s been put to the vote of the people even in left-of center places like Oregon and – California voted twice for traditional marriage. If they can support traditional marriage in California we should do it all over this country.

(According to the Washington Independent, at this point Pawlenty ad-libbed, “This is not politically incorrect! This is not politically offensive! This is what our founding fathers believed.”)

On Health Care:

President Obama addressed a joint session of Congress not long ago regarding this topic, and he said he’s going to start calling people out on this debate by name. I guess I was the first one up this morning. The DNC put up a video or some sort of thing attacking me on this debate for various things I’ve said in recent weeks and months, and I accept the challenge. And I’ll just respond by calling out the president back tonight. And I would say – (applause) – and what I’d like to say to him is, DNC and he calls me out, I’ll call you out, call you back, and here’s my message: Stop spending the country into bankruptcy. Stop taxing us into oblivion. And the next time you address a group of young people maybe you should apologize for the crushing debt you’re putting on their shoulders.

(Applause.)

And one additional challenge. If, as he and the Democratic Congress, or some of the Democratic Congress say, “Oh, no, we’re not for public funding for abortions,” then don’t duck, don’t bob, don’t weave, put the language of the Hyde amendment in the health care bill.

Tim Pawlenty is not a moderate. He has never been a moderate. He is a stalwart conservative, quite at ease among the furthest part of the party’s right wing. Democrats and independents need to realize this going into 2012. After all, Minnesota has paid a high price for the reckless budgetary games of Pawlenty. It would be a pity if the rest of America failed to learn from our lesson.

Remarks in debate (which may include references to the Senate or its Members) shall be confined to the question under debate, avoiding personality.

–Rules of the House of Representatives, One Hundred Eleventh Congress
Rule XVII, Section b

If you want to see the decline of American political civility, it exists in the person of Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S.C. Wilson, unwilling to deal with the President of the United States stating the fact that the current health care proposals will not aid undocumented aliens,¹² Wilson shouted out, “You lie!” on the floor of the House of Representatives, interrupting the speech in the fashion of a Code Pink protester or teabagger.

This is, to be blunt, completely outrageous, and unbecoming of a U.S. Representatives. And I would have said the exact same thing if a Democrat had done this to George W. Bush, even as Bush did lie, repeatedly. The simple fact is that there are rules of decorum, ways you are supposed to comport yourself on the floor of the United States Congress. These rules are in place to smooth out the partisan rancor, to force representatives to disagree without being disagreeable. You can think someone’s an ass; that’s fine. But you don’t say it on the floor, because that’s not the way you conduct yourself.

I doubt Wilson will face a penalty for this, but he should. Indeed, the Rules of the House allow him to be censured for making a personal remark in debate; calling someone a liar would certainly rise to that level. Calling someone a liar when they’re telling the truth, however, remains standard operating procedure for the GOP.

UPDATE: This is the least he should do, but at least he did it:

“This evening I let my emotions get the best of me when listening to the President’s remarks regarding the coverage of illegal immigrants in the health care bill. While I disagree with the President’s statement, my comments were inappropriate and regrettable. I extend sincere apologies [sic] to the President for this lack of civility.”

1. As for me, I’d be fine if it did. I don’t see how being in America illegally should earn you the death penalty. But what do I know? I’m just a crazy liberal. (back)
2. Fixed. (back)

You know, California Assemb. Mike Duvall, R-Yorba Linda, shouldn’t be mocked and ridiculed for carrying on an affair with two different lobbyists. He should be ridiculed for talking about it with all the savoir-faire of a 14-year-old relating something he’d once heard about girls from his brother’s friend’s cousin. Warning, the language could be NSFW, and all of is is not safe for your lunch:

For those of you not able to watch the video — or those of you who don’t want to hear a crusty assemblyman telling his buddy how he totally nailed these two hot chix — and he’s telling the total truth, swear — here’s the key part:

“She wears little eye-patch underwear,” said Duvall, who is married with two 
children. “So, the other day she came here with her underwear, Thursday. And
 so, we had made love Wednesday–a lot! And so she’ll, she’s all, ‘I am going 
up and down the stairs, and you’re dripping out of me!’ So messy!”

Duvall has, of course, gone into seclusion, where he’ll presumably pray away his horrible indescretions. Of course, aside from the propriety of cheating on both your wife and your mistress, there’s also the fact that at least one of the women is a lobbyist for a major utility, and Duvall just happens to serve as Vice Chair of the Utilities and Commerce Committee. I’m sure he’s able to keep those things totally separate, of course.

Incidentally — and this will shock you — Duvall was a strong proponent of Proposition 8. He signed an amicus brief to the California Supreme Court defending the vote. And in his most recent constituent newsletter, Duvall says, “Roughly 11,000 gay couples have been ‘married’ in California since the State Supreme Court overturned Prop 22. [...] As a supporter of Prop 8, I will be among the state legislators committed to defending California voters’ definition of marriage.” According to the Orange County Weekly, the conservative Capitol Resource Institute said of Duvall, “For the last two years, he has voted time and time again to protect and preserve family values in California.”

Of course, protecting family values in his own family is more difficult.

Now, I know, it’s easy to note the rank hypocrisy of an official trying to keep loving, committed people from marrying while he’s carrying on multiple affairs. But I think we should feel sorry for Mike Duvall. I mean, it’s clear his marriage was wrecked by gay marriage. I’m sure he never would have cheated on his wife and then cheated on his mistress if gay people couldn’t get married.

Whisper whisper

What’s that? Really? Okay. Sorry, folks, but I’ve just been told that Duvall was carrying these affairs on after Proposition 8 passed. Hmm. Maybe outlawing gay marriage won’t make straight marriage better.

Who’d'a thunk it?

UPDATE: As Micah noted in comments, you can now call him former Assemb. Michael D. Duvall.

Generally speaking, I try to avoid using the word crazy to mean “bizarrely wrong.” It wasn’t always so, but after years of online discussions with people smarter than I am, I’ve come to the conclusion that that usage of the word reinforces negative stereotypes about people suffering from mental health issues. As a person who suffers from my own share of mental health issues (depression and ADHD, plus a grab-bag assortment of behavioral issues related to those two), I should be the last person perpetuating the myth that being mentally ill is a moral failing. Being mentally ill is like having cancer — it’s probably not your fault, and it’s nothing to be ashamed of. Unlike, say, hoping God smites Barack Obama with brain cancer and sends him to Hell. In earlier years, I might have called Pastor Steven Anderson crazy. But he isn’t crazy. Just evil.

But while I have decided that I’m not going to use crazy to mean evil, I still intend to use crazy when I mean to describe someone as, well, crazy. After all, some people are crazy.

Take Michele Bachmann. Please. Because Rep. Bachmann, R-We There Yet, is crazy.

I don’t mean she holds a lot of bizarre right-wing views, though she most certainly does. But holding bizarre right-wing views doesn’t make one crazy. That falls more into the “evil” category, and I’m only too happy to talk about them as such.

No, I mean Michele Bachmann is crazy. She has serious, deap-seated, untreated mental health issues that are deeply affecting her ability to carry out her job.

Last night’s speech in Colorado is a fine example. Bachmann, as could be expected, spoke out against health care, using rather typical Republican rhetoric:

“Something is way crazy out there,” Bachmann said in her remarks, billed as a “personal legislative briefing” by the Golden-based Independence Institute, which bills itself as a “free market think tank.”

“This is slavery,” Bachmann said after claiming many Americans pay half their income to taxes. “It’s nothing more than slavery.”

In a speech filled with urgent and violent rhetoric, Bachmann — who proudly acknowledges she is the country’s “second-most hated Republican woman,” behind only former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin – drew a clear line on health care reform.

“You’re either for us or against us on this issue,” she said after deriding U.S. Rep. Betsy Markey, a Fort Collins Democrat, for “[sitting] on the fence” about health care proposals at recent town halls.

Okay, well, that’s overheated and over-the-top. But it isn’t crazy. Sadly, it’s only slightly to the right of mainstream, right-wing discourse on health care these days.

No, crazy is this:

“This cannot pass,” the Minnesota Republican told a crowd at a Denver gathering sponsored by the Independence Institute. “What we have to do today is make a covenant, to slit our wrists, be blood brothers on this thing. This will not pass. We will do whatever it takes to make sure this doesn’t pass.”

That’s crazy. As in completely disconnected from reality crazy.

Now, I don’t know if Michele Bachmann meant to call for mass suicide to stop health care reform; I frankly don’t know what exactly she was trying to say. I do know that, from calling on Americans to rise up against tyrrany to declaring that health care reform will be defeated “on our knees in prayer and fasting,” Bachmann is reaching new, messianic heights in her rhetoric, and slipping the surly bonds of sanity in the process.

I mean this sincerely: I believe Michele Bachmann is mentally ill. She’s certainly demonstrated a strong paranoid streak, including this charming anecdote from her time as a state senator:

Bachmann said both women stood in front of the bathroom door and then one woman put her hand on top of the door and her other hand on the door handle and leaned her body weight toward the door to hold it shut. The other woman put her hand on the door as well. … [Bachmann said she] was absolutely terrified and has never been that terrorized before as she had no idea what those two women were going to do to her.

These were not just women, of course, but lesbian women. (The complaint was dropped, as there was no evidence anybody had done anything but talk to Bachmann.)

And of course, who could forget this classic:

Michele Bachmann has a mean streak.

On May 6, 2006, the day she was endorsed by the Sixth District Republican Party for the nomination to become a U.S. Representative, she threatened to retaliate against a woman who had opposed her nomination.

“You will pay, you will pay,” Bachmann said to the woman in front of a dozen or more witnesses. The woman grew increasingly upset at the non-specific threat and demanded to know how Bachmann was going to make her pay. She didn’t get an answer. But Bachmann, continued to repeat “you will pay” until the woman was led away from the incident, in tears, by her husband.

I witnessed the confrontation myself. It was in the lobby of Monticello High School, just outside the auditorium where the delegates were in the process of endorsing Bachmann.

Quite simply, Michele Bachmann is not sane. She’s able to function in society because her insanity has been channeled into service to conservative politics, but that doesn’t mean that she’s well.

Unfortunately, rather than living in a society where this sort of behavior would lead to one’s loved ones suggesting counseling, and perhaps a psychopharmacological agent, Bachmann lives in a society where Republican politicians claim with a straight face that a provision in a health care plan to give people control over end-of-life decisions will lead inexorably to death panels. Yes, most of the Republicans know they’re lying. But Bachmann doesn’t. She believes it, with the white-hot fervor of a true believer.

I am concerned about where Bachmann is heading. She has come awfully close to calling directly for violence against Democrats, and I have a feeling that at some point, she will. Not out of malice, exactly — but because she doesn’t really seem to understand that her words have consequences. I’d pity her, except she’s got a say in how the country runs.

Ultimately, I don’t wish ill on Michele Bachmann. I’d like to see her get help, and get stable, and heck, maybe even become an effective legislator. But until she does, her behavior and her words will get more and more bizarre. And there will be at least one politician in America who I can say, without judgment or anger, is crazy. Oh, she’s evil, too. But that’s something separate entirely.

We have a whole bunch of rights in this country, and by and large, that’s a good thing. But just because you have a right, that doesn’t mean you should always choose to exercise it. You shouldn’t go up to random passersby on the street and insult them, for example, even though you have the right to free speech. With rights come the responsibility to use those rights in a sane and sensible manner.

One of those things that we used to agree on was that you shouldn’t bring a loaded gun to a political debate. Oh, perhaps you have the legal right to — you may have all the proper permits to carry a concealed weapon, or you may have the right under your state’s law to openly carry a weapon. But like standing outside a funeral and telling people their loved ones are burning in Hell, it’s an irresponsible use of your rights.

Or, if you’re Rep. Phil Gingrey, R-Ga., it’s a perfectly cromulent thing to do.

Now, just as we can’t arrest Fred Phelps and the Pips for preaching anti-gay, anti-military, anti-human hatred, nor can we arrest those people who are blinkered enough to think it’s a good idea to carry a gun to an anti-government protest. But that doesn’t mean we should embrace it. That doesn’t mean we should encourage it. That doesn’t mean we should say that rights are rights, and any exercise of those rights is a good thing. Because sometimes exercising those rights is the wrong thing to do.

Look, I’m a radical civil libertarian, and even with regards to guns, I’m mostly agnostic. But carrying a gun to a town hall meeting or an anti-government protest is, if not illegal, then deeply immoral. And it’s not anti-liberty to say so, any more than it’s anti-liberty to condemn Fred Phelps. Indeed, there was a time when conservatives could be counted on to defend social order and the responsible use of rights. But of course, modern conservatives are radicals in all but name; they bear as much relationship to the party of Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt as they do to the Socialist Workers Party.

You know, I’m a free speech absolutist, and a staunch civil libertarian. But quite honestly, if you’re going to bring a gun to a town hall meeting held by the President of the United States, you probably should, at the very least, get a visit from the Secret Service:

A man carried a handgun strapped to his leg to a town hall meeting being held by President Obama in Portsmouth, New Hampshire on Tuesday.

It’s legal for him to have the gun as long as it is unconcealed, the police told MSNBC. The man was on private property — church ground on the roadway leading to the high school where Obama would speak. The church gave the man permission to be there. However, according to police officers, he is under constant surveillance and is not anywhere near where the president will speak.

You know what? I don’t care if it’s legal for you to carry a gun in New Hampshire — you don’t carry a gun to a protest against the President of the United States. You especially don’t carry a gun while holding a sign that says “It is Time To Water the Tree of Liberty!” For those of you who’ve forgotten your Revolutionary War-era Thomas Jefferson quotes beloved by libertarian types, the full quote is, “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”

Quite simply, carrying a firearm to a protest against the president, while holding a sign threatening violence against tyrants, is, if not illegal, than deeply immoral to the point of pure anti-Americanism. Had our country never lost a leader to gun violence, one might feel differently, but we’ve lost four; when one out of every eleven presidents has been shot and killed, and more than twenty percent of presidents have had shots fired at them, it’s impossible to view this as anything other than a direct threat on the president’s life.

Of course, the man carrying the gun, William Kostric, is unrepentant. He sees nothing wrong with implied threats on a president’s life, nothing wrong with the direct implication that our government leaders should be killed. He just wants, in his words, “an informed society, an armed society, a polite society.” Which is why he was carrying a sign calling for the death of tyrants.

We are steering down a dangerous course. While the health care proposal is modest by world standards, people are decrying this as some kind of Trojan horse for communism, Nazism, the theft of our nation’s vital bodily fluids, and the end of life on Earth. With the stakes raised so ludicrously high, and with the anger being fed at such a fever pitch, I fear that threats of violence will not be where this ends. After all, if Barack Obama was planning on herding our parents into death camps, seizing everyone’s bank account, and creating a panel that would decide who lives and who dies, I would be the first one on the line in the ensuing revolution. He isn’t, of course, doing any of those things. But a huge subset of the right, fed by people who should know better, thinks he may be. This does not end well, I fear. I hope I’m wrong.

I find it just wonderful that conservatives are still pulling out the “A government bureaucrat between you and your doctor” canard in their fight against health care reform. I guess I can see that argument working during the Clinton years, when things weren’t quite as bleak as they are now (although, being a teenage dependent with two well-off parents, I never had to worry about health insurance during the Clinton years, so what do I know?). But relying on it again now? Balls, folks: that takes some.

For a little under twenty years, I’ve been dealing with chronic pain. (No, not my back problems. I’m going to refrain from discussing my specific condition itself in order to keep the focus on the politics.) Because this condition is hard to diagnose and often misunderstood, I’ve gone without treatment for most of my life. In fact, the only two times I’ve had regular treatment for it were in college and grad school, when I had the twin luxuries of student health insurance and autonomy from my parents. In college, the doctor I found was well-meaning, but ineffective. In grad school I had a great doctor, and together we started to make progress. But then I finished grad school.

For about a year, I went untreated again until a flare-up made me realize that I needed to find a doctor despite the cost. My husband and I did some budgeting - I currently subscribe to Blue Shield’s cheapest plan, which only covers basic exams and major disasters - and found a doctor who charged a sliding scale. She was awful. For a few months, I went untreated again, and had another flare-up. It turned out that a friend of mine has a similar condition, and she gave me the name of her specialist.

Here’s where the story gets interesting.

I made an appointment with the specialist - and loved her. Within ten minutes of our first appointment, she’d described my condition with eerie accuracy and outlined what sounded like an effective treatment plan, with options that I’d barely even known about. Her bedside manner and level of expertise were terrific; she put even my grad school doctor to shame. At the end of the appointment we talked money. My current insurance didn’t cover regular office visits, so I’d be paying completely out of pocket. I gulped at her office visit fee - even paying for that first appointment was going to be interesting. I talked to my husband and we agreed that I’d have to get a new insurance plan. If we ditched the cable, the Netflix subscription, and a couple other amenities here and there, we could pay more for something better.

I looked at other Blue Shield plans while my husband looked at Kaiser. I figured that while I was getting a new plan, I might as well search for something that covered maternity. I looked at plans going up to $200, $250 a month - nope, nope, nope. Blue Shield doesn’t like its members having babies.

Meanwhile, my husband found a Kaiser PPO (at least, we thought it was a PPO, but I guess that’s kind of rare for Kaiser) just barely within our price range. It was $139 a month - yikes, but okay. It had a fairly good maternity plan. We called their office to find out if this doctor was in their network. They didn’t know. They gave us a regional number to call. We called. No, this doctor was not in their network.

Next we tried Blue Cross. I don’t even remember what plan we eventually found, because the whole website was so labyrinthine. We didn’t bother calling them before we filled out the form because, hey, everyone takes Blue Cross, right? The application took all morning - and we even left off in the middle because I needed to dig up some old information.

Later that day, I talked to the doctor to reschedule our next appointment, since it was taking so long to find a new plan. I asked if she took Blue Cross (just to be absolutely sure - because everyone takes Blue Cross!). “Uh, some of their plans,” she said. “I don’t know, some but not others. It’s all very strange. I don’t even handle that part of it.”

We called Blue Cross. No, the plan we’d selected didn’t cover her. Were there any plans in our price range that did? Tappa tappa tap, pause. No, there were not.

So we went back and called Blue Shield, told them I was already a member. We asked for any plans at all that covered this one doctor. Damn the cost! We’d use our savings! We’d move into a smaller apartment! We’d rob a bank if we had to! What was the doctor’s name again? We spelled it. Nope, they said. Blue Shield of California does not cover this doctor at all.

We called the doctor again, canceled the appointment, told her we just couldn’t afford her. I still owe her for our first (now useless) meeting - $150 down the drain. I cried, I was so disappointed. All that work, all that hope, for nothing.

I’ll probably never know why no insurance plan would touch her. She wasn’t some bizarre, esoteric practitioner or anything; my best guess is that only employer-paid plans cover her. But when I hear conservatives trotting out the specter of “a government bureaucrat between you and your doctor,” I have to laugh. Because right now, at this moment, I am gritting my teeth through 20-year-old pain while the doctor who could have treated me goes about her business 2 miles from my apartment. Bureaucrats are standing between me and my doctor.

On the one hand, if conservatives are going to try to block affordable health care, the least they could do is come up with a less insulting argument. On the other, I guess it’s to my advantage that they’re making themselves look like total idiots.

We’ll go ahead and give Pacificare and Aetna a call, but I think my course of action now is to go for the original Kaiser plan we found and hope that there’s a doctor as good as this one in their network. (Of course, the maternity coverage raises some troubling questions. Does Kaiser have midwives? Doulas? Birthing centers? Will I have to give birth on my back? But I’m not pregnant, so I can cross that bridge when I come to it.) If we ever get a national health plan in place, then sign me up - but I’m not holding my breath. My one wish for those who oppose it is that they someday experience health insurance that is comparable to mine.

(A note on comments: because I know what types of comments posts like these tend to receive, I am declaring myself Queen Tyrant on this thread and will delete offensive comments without warnings or justification.)

(Cross-posted at Modern Mitzvot.)