(More) Fauxgressive Hyocrisy

Fauxgressive

Jane Hamsher is a hypocrite. So is Pam Spaulding, and Rachel Maddow, and just about every other member of the fauxgressive blogosphere/MSM. I point these three out in particular because they should know better than to use language that is degrading to both gays and women, especially after they have themselves been so critical of such language in the past.

Almost a year ago now, I wrote one of my very first posts as a blogger about then NC governor Mike Easley’s endorsement of Hillary Clinton in the NC primary. I even attended the event myself. During the endorsement Easley made a remark that Hillary Clinton’s strength made Rocky Balboa “look like a pansy”. Maybe the governor made a poor choice of words, but the context in which he said it in no way was meant to mock anyone, and did not appear to be a deliberate slur against gays. That didn’t stop the Obamasphere from smearing Hillary as being allied with a raging homophobe. This is what Pam had to say:

…so why didn’t our outgoing governor just go ahead and say “faggot”?

Note that Hillary, who was right there with the NC gov, said nothing about his remark.

Rachel Maddow was equally offended:

Towards the end of the 2nd hour of her Air America show tonight, Rachel Maddow denounced and rejected Governor Mike Easley’s

use of the word ‘pansy‘ in his endorsement of Hillary Clinton today. Maddow also noted her disappointment that her fellow

Self Righteous

commentators on MSNBC’s Race for the Whitehouse just chuckled at the joke Easley made.

Rachel made it clear that in her opinion, Hillary had just lost the ‘pansy vote’ of which she considered herself a part (though it doesn’t sound like she is ready to endorse Obama yet.)

This continues the pattern of Hillary or her surrogates dismissing, demeaning, or disrespecting the constituents that make up the base support of the Democratic party. Whether it is race-baiting remarks, slamming Move-On, calling Barack’s well off and well educated supporters elitist, or now “the pansy vote” it seems that soon the only voters that Hillary will treat as if they matter are the Fox News viewers she’ll be courting on the Bill O’Reilly show tomorrow.

That last paragraph is kind of superfluous, but I think it is a much needed reminder of the slanderous things that the obots were saying about us at the time. Not to mention the irony that they were accusing us of the very thing that Obama himself was doing.

But let’s move on. Teddy on Jane Hamsher’s blog Firedoglake got into the “Clinton is a homophobe” bashing as well:

Easley’s a lame duck, and with incredibly important down-ticket primaries keeping Democratic activists busy, his endorsement may not carry the weight of her gubernatorial endorsements in Ohio and Pennsylvania. His political machines’s operatives are probably otherwise engaged in the primaries for governor and U.S. Senate.

Still, can we get a little “denounce and reject” action from Hillary Clinton about Governor Easley’s use of the word pansy at her endorsement party?

Fast forward to this week and the extremely popular “Tea Party” protests that took place across the country yesterday. These same fauxgressives did their best to paint these protesters simultaneously as racist, right wing nutjobs and professional astroturfers. They pulled out all the stops to try to discredit them. They even did a lot of mutual back patting for being clever enough to use the term “teabaggers” to describe the protesters. If 10th grade locker room humor could be considered “clever” that is.

This is what Jane Hamsher had to say about the protesters:

…they swell with teabaggy pride at the thought that they’ve demonstrated their awesome “power” to cowering liberals. If people tuned in because they are genuinely concerned about government spending, they were most likely left scratching their heads and wondering what his was all about, because the message dangled before the public by the teabaggers was something quite different.

Hypocrite

And from Pam Spaulding:

Poor RNC Chairman Michael Steele- no one remembers that he is the leader of the GOP party and no one wants to teabag him. Although he claims that’s not true and is just a rumor- LOTS want to tea bag him! It’s all just a matter of miscommunication and timing…

But you might want to watch this informational clip provided by Rachel Maddow and guest Anna Marie Cox. I had no idea what teabagging even was, let alone that so many Republicans were into it!

Here is the Beavis and Butthead Maddow and Cox clip she was referring to:

You see, “teabagging” is a reference to a sexual act. It is almost always used to describe women, and particularly gay men, in a derogatory manner. The implication is that only a “slut” or a “fag” would do something so degrading (from their point of view). Of course these hypocrites would probably say that they are just having fun with a little word play, and that the term in no way is specifically meant to degrade women or gays. That is bullshit. Take a look at the examples of the cultural use of the term, from wikipedia:

One track on rapper Ludacris‘ 2004 album Chicken & Beer is a skit labeled “T Baggin’”. It is a parody of phone messages that require the dialer to press a number for a service. It says, “If you woke up with a hangover and a pair of hairy balls on your forehead, press “7″. You pressed “7″. You’ve just been victimized and introduced to a moral crime known as “teabaggin’”. We suggest you promptly hang up the phone, beat the ass of any white guys you hung out with last night, and find and destroy all photos before they appear on the Internet. Thank you for calling. Good luck. Goodbye.”

In the NBC crime-drama Law & Order: Special Victims Unit episode “Heat”, a male murder suspect was said to have teabagged his college fraternity before being thrown out of it.

In the television show Kenny vs. Spenny during a humiliation, both Kenny and Spenny were teabagged by the crew members after a draw on a competition.

In the television show My Name Is Earl in the episode “Girl Earl,” a grocery store bagger (Played by Jon Heder) returns home to find his house vandalized, and robbed of all his furniture and belongings. He then sees spray painted on the wall across from him the line, “Teabagger, get it?”

In fact, if you follow the link in Pam’s post to what teabagger means it takes you to the urban dictionary definition of the word. One of the synonyms that it lists is “fagbag”, which is defined as such:

Another name for calling someone a faggot.

So Pam, why didn’t YOU just call THEM faggots? You self-righteous hypocrite. And there is no denying the context here. It isn’t just a poor word choice. It is meant as mockery and to humiliate the tea party protesters. You know, what homophobic, sexist terms like this were designed for.

I’m sick of these people trying to claim the moral high ground when they are just as nasty and mean spirited as the wingnuts they rail against. Pam Spaulding et al. are just the mirror image of the likes of Michelle Malkin and Rush Limbaugh. As far as I’m concerned they can all go to hell.

A storm is coming, and it’s raining men!

Love isn't scary.

The cable news channels don’t like the fact that the tide seems to be turning for gay marriage in this country. They want to take us back to the days of the “culture wars” and the “wedge issues” that they so casually used to divide Americans. This commercial by the rabidly homophobic and right wing National Organization for Marriage will soon be airing on CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News:

The MSM does its best to keep stirring the pot when it comes to issues like gay marriage. I for one never believed that this country was as right wing and religious as they tried to tell us all through GWB’s presidency. But they made it seem like for every believer in equality and fairness, there were two people whose rights were being trampled just because gay people wanted the same rights as everyone else. In my opinion the MSM is partially responsible for the spate of anti-gay constitutional amendments that were enacted over the last eight years.

The ad from NOM is full of lies and fearmongering. Typical homophobic propaganda. Yet MSNBC doesn’t find it “controversial”. In the past they have refused to run ads that they deemed as such, like this relatively benign gun control ad last year:

This is what MSNBC said about their policy at the time:

MSNBC spokesman Jeremy Gaines didn’t respond directly about questions as to what makes the ad controversial, but emailed, “We don’t accept controversial issue advertising.”

I guess they don’t consider statements like “my freedom will be taken away” (if gay marriage is legalized) controversial. I’d like to hear their spokesman explain that one to me. I think that what they want to do is to continue to divide Americans by magnifying the views of hateful, small minded bigots. It makes it easier to control us that way. And given MSNBC’s loyal devotion to all things Obama, it shows just how little he cares about gays and their civil rights.

Gay people respond, as they typically do, by thumbing their noses at these homophobes. This response is typical of how we often use humor to defuse the nastiness and lies of our persecutors. See, we agree, there is a storm a-coming. But it’s raining men honey, and there’s nothing you can do about it!

UPDATE: Much thanks to Taggles for pointing out this video that refutes in detail every single lie that the NOM commercial tries to propagate:

We Told You So! Part 3,245,874

It keeps going and going...

THE biggest argument that Obots made early on in favor of Obama was that he would be the president to end the war in Iraq. He gave a speech or something saying how very much he objected to it. Meanwhile they wailed and moaned that Hillary Clinton was never to be trusted given her vote to authorize the president to enforce UN Sanctions in Iraq. Never mind that Obama wasn’t even a Senator at the time, and didn’t even have a record on the issue. Which was exactly our point. He was an unknown whose trustworthiness and experience were questionable. That was racist according to them.

Well guess what Obots? We told you so!

President Barack Obama plans to request new funding from Congress for the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, but he risks a backlash from antiwar lawmakers. Mr. Obama is expected to seek congressional approval of $75.5 billion for the wars, perhaps as soon as Thursday. The issue is already raising tensions on Capitol Hill, especially among liberals who are sympathetic to the president’s broader agenda but voice concerns about his timeline for withdrawal of troops from Iraq and his plans to beef up forces in Afghanistan.

His loyal fan base might bend over backwards to explain this away, but members of congress who are weary of neverending wars are justifiably upset.

“I can’t imagine any way I’d vote for it,” said Rep. Lynn Woolsey, a California Democrat and leader in the 77-member congressional Progressive Caucus. It would be her first major break with this White House.

Ms. Woolsey fears the president’s plan for Iraq would leave behind a big occupation force. She is also concerned about the planned escalation in Afghanistan. “I don’t think we should be going there,” she said.

Similar sentiments echo across the House. Rep. Jim McGovern (D., Mass.) said he fears Afghanistan could become a quagmire. “I just have this sinking feeling that we’re getting deeper and deeper into a war that has no end,” he said.

Rep. John Conyers (D., Mich.) dismissed Mr. Obama’s plans as “embarrassingly naive,” and suggested that the president is being led astray by those around him. “He’s the smartest man in American politics today,” Rep. Conyers said. “But he occasionally gets bad advice and makes mistakes. This is one of those instances.”

Leave it to Conyers to figure out a way to excuse Obama. If incompetence is an excuse that is. Some of them come right out and admit that they were basing their previous opposition to war funding purely on a partisan basis.

Rep. John Larson (D., Conn.) suggests Democrats may be less inclined to joust with the current White House on the issue than they were with former President George W. Bush. “We have somebody that Democrats feel will level with them,”

But for most Democrats it comes down to the same question they hounded Bush with for years when it came to Iraq.

…the debate will come down to whether Mr. Obama can point to a way out of Afghanistan. “It’s more about the exit strategy,” he said…

Rep. Woolsey and two other congresswomen recently urged the president to set a clear timetable for redeployment of troops from Afghanistan and to reopen the congressional debate over what the U.S. role there should be. “A clear authorization of the use of military force must be established,” Ms. Woolsey wrote, along with Reps. Barbara Lee and Maxine Waters, both California Democrats.

In the end it won’t really matter because Republicans will certainly give Obama the votes he needs to continue our unending, undefined experiments in nation building. So what do the obots have to say about “the speech” now? Let me guess…

Where’s MY money?

Grand Nagus Obama

It looks like there’s trouble in paradise between the Obama administration and the fauxgressive blogosphere.

Some of the leading liberal bloggers are privately furious with the major progressive groups — and in some cases, the Democratic Party committees — for failing to spend money advertising on their sites, even as these groups constantly ask the bloggers for free assistance in driving their message.

I guess they never learned the Ferengi Rules of Acquisition. Rule #3 states: “Never spend more for an acquisition than you have to”. The Obama administration understands that rule very well. Why should they spend their money on people that have been giving it away for free for him going on 3 years now? They didn’t really expect a payback for all their hard work in smearing fellow Democrats and the party’s most qualified candidate for president in a generation did they? Well I guess so.

“They come to us, expecting us to give them free publicity, and we do, but it’s not a two way street,” Jane Hamsher, the founder of FiredogLake, said in an interview. “They won’t do anything in return. They’re not advertising with us. They’re not offering fellowships. They’re not doing anything to help financially, and people are growing increasingly resentful.” (snip)

“Most want the easy way — having a big blogger promote their agenda,” adds Markos Moulitsas, the founder of DailyKos. “Then they turn around and spend $50K for a one-page ad in the New York Times or whatever.” Moulitsas adds that officials at such groups often do nothing to engage the sites’s audiences by, say, writing posts, instead wanting the bloggers to do everything for them. (snip)

“We don’t invest in the future, and Republicans do,” says John Aravosis, the founder of AMERICAblog. “The party committees really get that we can be effective as their partners and that we’re happy to help, and they take advantage of that. But even so, very little ad money comes from them. It’s more than just wanting to share in the spoils. We are small business-people who are fighting to survive economically in a really bad year.”

It’s bad enough to hear these a-holes whining about not getting their share of the money, but with such indignity! Didn’t they lie and make excuses for Obama every time his inexperience was showing? Didn’t they banish from the web all opposition to him when it looked like he didn’t stand a chance against Hillary in the primary? And didn’t they wholeheartedly bash rank and file Democratic voters every chance they could, just like he wanted? Now they expect Obama to be honorable and fair? Yeah. They should have gotten paid up front. Because they obviously understood rule #13 from the Ferengi, “Anything worth doing is worth doing for money”, they just forgot to get that money in advance. At least they didn’t do what they did for something as stupid as principle, or because it was the right thing to do.

You have to hand it to Obama’s money handlers though. These sites helped his campaign raise millions of dollars. And what did the Obama campaign do in return? Of course, take the money and run.

Really, what are they going to do, start shilling for the Republicans? Where you gonna go sweeties? Nowhere, that’s where. Now just get over it.

Vermont Legalizes Gay Marriage!

Vermont, swiftly on the heels of Iowa, now becomes the 4th state to give gays and lesbians the civil right to marry.

Following tense and emotional proceedings on the legislative floor, the Vermont house voted, 100-49, at 11 a.m. on Tuesday to override Governor Jim Douglas’ veto of same-sex marriage legislation. After an earlier morning vote by the senate, 23-5, to override the veto, the house vote makes Vermont the first state to recognize marriage equality through the legislative process.

The outcome of the highly anticipated house vote remained uncertain until it occurred. In the end, the 100 votes generated was precisely the number needed to meet the 2/3 majority requirement for the veto override.

This is a huge win for our civil rights because it is the first time a state legislature has acted to make marriage legal for gays and lesbians.  Although our victories in the courts are every bit as legitimate, the right wing has always used the cry of “activist judges” to blunt our progression towards full equality.  How will they spin this one I wonder?

Looks like there should be some beautiful fall weddings in Vermont this year.  Gay marriage becomes officially legal September 1.

No They Can’t!

Obama made some sweeping claims during his “historic” campaign to buy get elected to the presidency of the United States. One of those broken record promises was that “Yes we can bring change to Washington”. Obama said the grassroots support that served as his army of dittoheads in the campaign would be a driving force in deciding what would take place at the highest echelons of power in Washington. No longer would special interests, lobbyists, or polling firms rule the day. The people would have a finger directly on the pulse of their government. Here is Oblahblah addressing the troops shortly before his inauguration:

On March 15 the Obamans sent out an email to their vast horde of zombies to get ready to mobilize in their first attempt to throw their collective muscle around since the November election. The media dutifully reported the Obamacrats’ sky high expectations for the effort. They also demonstrated how much they intended to rely on this strategy.

Several people closely involved in this campaign’s planning made it clear that they believe this is the moment Democrats have been waiting for since Obama’s election — the deployment of the volunteer army that helped catapult a freshman senator to the presidency…

Obama’s closest aides have been plotting for months when to make the move. Bringing Organizing for America under the umbrella of the DNC and installing a group of Obama loyalists — including Virginia Gov. Timothy M. Kaine as chairman and Jen O’Malley Dillon, a highly regarded campaign operative, as executive director — were aimed at re-creating the disciplined organization of the campaign.

“This is exactly the scenario OFA was moved into the DNC for, to take on the toughest tasks, the most transformational moments,” said one party source.

So did everything go according to plan? Well, not exactly.

When his post-campaign organization was unveiled in January, Barack Obama vowed that the 13 million-strong grass-roots network built during his presidential campaign would play a “crucial role” in enacting his agenda from the White House.

“The change we’ve worked so hard for will not happen unless ordinary Americans get involved, and supporters like you must lead the way,” Obama told backers just before his inauguration.

But in its first big test, the group dubbed Organizing for America (OFA) had little obvious impact on the debate over President Obama’s budget, which passed Congress on Thursday with no Republican support and a splintering of votes among conservative Democrats. The capstone of the campaign was the delivery of 214,000 signatures to Capitol Hill, which swayed few, if any, members of Congress, according to legislative aides from both parties.

As we suspected, those “changers” who went door to door jehovah’s witness style to get signatures to “pledge” support for the budget were wasting their time. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that they were given nothing but empty slogans to sell it with. Here’s a training video that tells obots how to answer tough questions about why Obama’s budget should be passed. At one point he tells them to answer with this convincing comeback: “Because the American people demanded it!”

In case you didn’t make it to the end, you get an inkling of a distinct motive that OFA might have for this pledge drive; that of gathering the personal information of voters. In fact this kind of seems like a massive way to do some old fashioned polling. Plus you have the extra bonus of gathering even more contact information from people that you can later hit up for money. So what did the pundits think of the result?

Thomas E. Mann, a congressional scholar at the Brookings Institution, said the petition drive was “a pretty lame start to the effort, and largely inconsequential to the outcome,” adding: “The fact is that the sort of hard politics of policymaking are still driven by partisanship, by public opinion polls, by the roles of interest groups and all the other things that have always mattered in Washington.”

And what about those people that signed the pledge? Did they call their lawmakers? Well, if you’re talking about the ones that needed their minds changed in the first place, Republicans, it doesn’t look that way.

Republicans scoffed at the effort, arguing that it showed that even most diehard Obama supporters were uncertain about the wisdom of the president’s budget plan. Several GOP aides noted that the number of pledges gathered online amounted to fewer than 1 percent of the names on Obama’s vaunted e-mail list.

“The phones rang off the hook this week, but the overwhelming majority of calls came from Kentuckians who agreed that this budget spends, taxes and borrows way too much,” said John Ashbrook, a spokesman for Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.).

Even aides to Blue Dog Democrats who at first protested, but then later voted for the budget claimed that the effort had little impact.

But Kristen Hawn, a press aide to Rep. Charlie Melancon (D-La.) who acts as a spokeswoman for the Blue Dogs, said the OFA campaign had little impact on lawmakers’ decisions on how to vote. Instead, she said, Obama’s promise to enact health-care reform on a deficit-neutral basis was the crucial factor in gaining support from 37 members of the fiscally conservative group.

“It was the policy issue, it was that specific commitment, that made a difference,” she said, adding: “I’m not sure how many members knew about the petitions.”

The real truth, obots, is that Obama was using you to do what Obama does best, collect money. Do you really think that you’re going to make any difference in what goes on in Washington? Yes you can? Don’t make me laugh.

But the Obamoonies will continue to blindly follow their leader, much like the loony 33%ers that stuck by GWB till the bitter end. I just hope that that happens after 4 years instead of 8 this time.

Launch of The Widdershins

GaryChapelHill, Lady Boomer NYC, MadamaB, Mawm, and Sheri Tag invite you to their new blog: The Widdershins.

Widdershins means to take a course opposite that of the sun, going counterclockwise, left hand-wise, or to circle an object, by always keeping it on the left. We are a mostly left-leaning community that was founded by bloggers who were orphaned by the hostile takeover of the Democratic Party in 2008 under the mantra of “Hope” and “Change” by decidedly non-liberal forces. These autocrats were aided by one of the most disciplined propaganda machines that this country has ever seen. They infiltrated the party, the mainstream media, and the so called “progressive blogosphere” that many of us had wrongly assumed to be just that, progressive.

Read more About us here.

The bloggers at The Widdershins would like to invite you to join us in an ongoing conversation about politics, economics, culture, art, or any other thing that might pop into your head. We don’t have any rules about being a member of this community other than showing respect and civility to those that you meet here. If you are reading this, we hope that you will take a moment to see what we’re all about, and maybe throw in your two cents as well.

We look forward to seeing you there!

No We Won’t! PUMA United Radio, 8:00 p.m. tonight.

I will be a guest tonight on PUMA United Radio’s “No We Won’t” on BlogTalk radio. The show is hosted by the fabulous Sheri Tag, MadamaB and AngieNC, and should be lots of fun. It starts tonight at 8pm. Just click on the photo below to get to the broadcast.

No We Won't

Obama’s cowardly reaction to the Iowa victory for civil rights

President Obama  is a homophobe and a coward.  He is a homophobe because he believes that gay and lesbian Americans do not deserve the same rights as everyone else.  He is a coward because he continues to hedge on the issue so as not to alienate gay and lesbian voters.  The White House released the following statement on the Iowa Supreme Court decision:

“The President respects the decision of the Iowa Supreme Court, and continues to believe that states should make their own decisions when it comes to the issue of marriage. Although President Obama supports civil unions rather than same-sex marriage, he believes that committed gay and lesbian couples should receive protection under the law.”

Notice that he “respects” the decision. He doesn’t praise, or hail it.  No, he respects it.  Which to me means that he tolerates it.  If that weren’t clear enough, he goes on to explicitly say that he disagrees with it.  Given that he is supposed to be a “constitutional scholar”, that is a pretty significant condemnation given that it was constitutional principles that drove the justices to unanimously reverse the ban on gay marriage.  Obama  thinks there should be a separate but equal system for gays and lesbians.  He believes that God is not in the mix and that our expression of love and commitment is not equal to that between a man and a woman.  The only problem is that such a system will never work.  Most of us learned that lesson from the civil rights struggle of the last century.  He is a disgrace to all of the heroes of that movement.  And any gay or lesbian American who still supports this homophobe is a disgrace to our community.

Even this statement had to be revised, because apparently the WH didn’t even consult with anyone from our community before releasing it. After The Advocate initially published the original, they released an update with the following change:

he believes that committed gay and lesbian couples should receive equal rights under the law.

I guess the sellout gays who are advising him pointed out that we aren’t looking for protection–which would signify some kind of “special status”.  We only want equality.  But that only makes the original statement that much more hollow.  How can he advocate for a separate system for gays and lesbians and then dare to say that we should receive equal rights?

On a lighter note, if you want to listen to some seriously good music, go listen to Goddess Radio hosted by the lovely and talented Swan Spirit 10:00am-1:00pm EDT:

SILENCE=DEATH

Iowa Supreme Court overturns ban on gay marriage

Iowa's first married gays

This is just in,  it appears that the Iowa Supreme Court has paved the way for that state to become only the third in the country to allow gay people the civil right to marry.  Although I’m not sure what the practical implications of the ruling are as of yet.

In the opinion, justices determined the statutory ban on same-sex marriage is unconstitutional because Polk County “has been unable to identify a constitutionally adequate justification for excluding plaintiffs from the institution of civil marriage.”

“Consequently, the language … limiting civil marriage to a man and a woman must be stricken from the statute, and the remaining statutory language must be interpreted and applied in a manner allowing gay and lesbian people full access to the institution of civil marriage,” the opinion states.

Justices also ruled that a separate institution, such as civil unions, that would offer relationship recognition but not marriage to same-sex couples would be “equally suspect and difficult to square with the fundamental principles of equal protection embodied in our constitution.”

“We are firmly convinced the exclusion of gay and lesbian people from the institution of civil marriage does not substantially further any important governmental objective,” the opinion says. “The legislature has excluded a historically disfavored class of persons from a supremely important civil institution without a constitutionally sufficient justification.”

A full PDF version of the court’s ruling can be found here.  I’m not sure if this means that as of now gay marriage is officially legal in Iowa, but if there are any legal eagles out there maybe you could explain it to the rest of us.

I must say that I am surprised to see this development coming out of Iowa.  Who knew that they were on the cutting edge of the civil rights movement?  I am ashamed to say that before this, my impression of Iowa was much like this video (apologies in advance to any Iowans out there):

…AND GAYS!!!