Their only saving grace is that they’re hilariously stupid. Many movement conservatives act like splooting FOX ‘news’ and GOP talking points all over a conversation without actually engaging opposing arguments means they’ve automatically won. Those dudebros in the previous post were basically doing an end zone dance while they were still in the parking lot.
Jindal's selective concern for the poor
Jindal and his allies want the public to see them as entirely sincere. They’re not trying to crush teachers’ unions, and they’re not on a privatization crusade, intent on destroying public institutions. They just want to help low-income children, even spending public funds to advance their goal.
But their purported concern for the poor is literally unbelievable. When the issue is health care and housing, Jindal and other conservatives say struggling families should rely on the free market and their capacity to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. When the issue is education, suddenly the right cares deeply about disadvantaged children and is eager to “help.”
When Jindal and other school voucher advocates are ready to assist “poor and disadvantaged” families in ways that don’t undermine public schools and teachers’ unions, I’ll gladly revisit the debate. Until then, this looks a lot like a scam.
How conservatives can regain popularity in America's inner cities
This article kind of made my evening. The four-part plan (written by some conservative author I’ve never heard of):
- Tougher sentences for gang members
- Less unions
- No more teachers’ unions
- More charismatic candidates
So not only is any talk of a ~Republican civil war~ totally bullshit because everyone is still agreeing on the same set of principles but also it’s pretty clear that this is how Democrats can keep campaigning on a gradually eroding status quo and getting elected because holy eff if a key plank your opponent’s strategy is literally just “more charismatic candidates” then the bar is pretty damn low.
Hahaha they’re so screwed.
I have seen similar articles and ideas from conservatives since the day after the election. The ones who have been saying there’s some sort of civil war among conservatives have largely been moderates and liberals (wishful thinking, probably). Conservatives truly believe they’re completely right about everything and that what they need to do is figure out how to trick convince all the folks out there who didn’t vote for them.
Violence Against Women Act - Tribal Provisions
In the past 24 hours, two new article emerged regarding the importance of VAWA for Native American women. PLease visit Facebook.com/Save.Wiyabi.Project for more information about how you can help.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/12/09/1167923/-Hey-House-GOP-How-many-Native-women-will-be-raped-today
http://masculinityu.wordpress.com/2012/12/10/not-in-our-name-a-sobering-realization/
Dear Conservatives: Your Opposition to Family Planning Comes with a Huge Price Tag
That deep-held distaste for women’s health providers led Texas lawmakers last year to slash $73 million from all of its family planning services and shift the money to other areas of the budget. This blunt instrument hit all of the state’s women’s health providers, but was meant to target Planned Parenthood and deny it taxpayer dollars—even though the clinics that received state subsidies for care never performed abortions.
This may be in line with their staunch opposition to what they see as a baby-killer, but that ideology comes with quite the price tag. News has surfaced that for the two-year period between 2014 and 2015, poor women are expected to deliver nearly 24,000 babies that they wouldn’t otherwise have had if they had access to state-subsidized birth control. Those extra births will cost taxpayers as much as $273 million, with between $103 million to $108 million of that hitting the state’s general revenue budget alone. Much of the cost comes from caring for those infants through Medicaid.
Violence Against Women Act: Eric Cantor, Joe Biden In Talks Amid Stalled Tribal Provision
From the article:
Leahy explained the provision, probably the least understood of the three additions in the Senate bill: It gives tribal courts limited jurisdiction to oversee domestic violence offenses committed against Native American women by non-Native American men on tribal lands. Currently, federal and state law enforcement have jurisdiction over domestic violence on tribal lands, but in many cases, they are hours away and lack the resources to respond to those cases. Tribal courts, meanwhile, are on site and familiar with tribal laws, but lack the jurisdiction to address domestic violence on tribal lands when it is carried out by a non-Native American individual.
That means non-Native American men who abuse Native American women on tribal lands are essentially “immune from the law, and they know it,” Leahy said.
The standoff over including VAWA protections for Native American women comes at a time of appallingly high levels of violence on tribal lands. One in three Native American women have been raped or experienced attempted rape, the New York Times reported in March, and the rate of sexual assault on Native American women is more than twice the national average. President Barack Obama has called violence on tribal lands “an affront to our shared humanity.”
Of the Native American women who are raped, 86 percent of them are raped by non-Native men, according to an Amnesty International report. That statistic is precisely what the Senate’s tribal provision targets.
Conservatives are vicious assholes
CC: everyone who says “wahhhhh i don’t want to pay for your birth control”
Birth control makes sense economically
The crazy thing is that I’m pretty sure the GOP knows this. That’s how bad they want to control us and our bodies. That’s how afraid they are…
Then again, if you pay attention to what happened in the senate today (re: the UN Disability Treaty), this does seem about right, unfortunately. That’s why we gotta keep the momentum from this past election.
You’re implying your unplanned pregnancies should be costing us ANYTHING.
Protip - you spread your legs and get knocked up? That is NOT my god damn fault nor is it my responsibility to take care of it. Handle it yourself. Learn to put a condom on your boytoy. Or hey, if you really can’t afford to have a kid at all, and you dont think condoms are good enough (ie: they can still fail and you cant take the risk of them not working), then heres a funny little fact for you. Sex? Yeah you know, sexual intercourse? its 100% optional. Yeah funny that, isnt it? You dont HAVE to have sex. You can literally NOT have sex and shockingly enough, you WONT die. I know, weird right?
So here is a better answer for you than “hur its economically wise for you to pay for THIS than for THAT.” Its not economically wise for me to pay for EITHER of them, and more to the point it is not my responsibility to pay for either, or rather it is not the GOVERNMENT’S job to do so using MY money. it is YOUR responsibility to handle your life. If you cant have a kid, you shouldnt be having kids, if you’re in SUCH a bad spot you cant risk getting pregnant at all? Then dont have sex. But that might mean you have to sacrifice something in your life like an adult rather than childishly demand you have your cake and eat it to.
Now, heres another funny fact. When you stop taxing the rich and making them pay their money in to the government to fund programs they disagree with? They end up giving MORE money to charities as a result. And those charities often (if not always) do a better job allocating funds and helping society than the government will ever do. Meaning for those kids who do get born and the mothers really tried to not get pregnant (ie: not the morons who have unprotected sex and then go “whoops damn, i didnt WANT to get pregnant”)? There will be even more funding to help them and their children.
Oh right one last tiny little fact to talk about. 11 BILLION dollars may sound like a WHOLE lot of money. But we bring over 2.2 TRILLION dollars a year in revenue into the government. Thats 2,200 BILLION dollars. The 11B we spend on unplanned pregnancies? Thats about 0.5% of our income. Less than 1%, barely even half a percent. To put this in perspective, lets look at the median household US income. Its about $45k right? Lets say you make that much. you know how much 0.5% of that is? Right around $200 for an entire YEAR. Thats nothing, hell thats not even the price of a new tv or a video game system, hell most new video cards for computers cost more than that.
My point is this, if you want to appeal to our pocketbooks, you’re gonna have to get in line, right now were worried more about medicare/medicade/obamacare/SSI and other major forms of welfare that make up in total 60% of our governments budget. Your 0.5%? That is pennies compared to the hogs of SSI/medi that alone are over 40% of our budget (fyi: the entire cost of government, all agencies, congressmen, and yes including the military we spend “SO much on,” only make up 40% of our budget in total).
Oh and right, you know what we COULD be using that $11 BILLION on? rather than paying for american women to be ignorant or irresponsible or to continue to coddle them and further their entitlement mentality? We could take that money and send it over seas to aid programs to help REAL women who are suffering oppression. Women who arent allowed to vote, or even go outside without a man escorting them, or men who get locked in prison for being gay, or women who get acid thrown in their face for having an opinion. You really want to crusade for what is “right?” Then we should be spending every penny of that $11B on people FAR more in need of it than american women who just dont know how to keep their legs closed (BUT HAVE THE FREEDOM AND RIGHTS TO DO WHAT THEY WANT! isnt it glorious? You can do with your body whatever you please, and no one is telling you you have to stop, ALL they ask, all we ask, IS THAT YOU TAKE RESPONSIBILITY FOR YOUR OWN ACTIONS)
For those of you who want a TL:DR version?
1) Neither is it my job, nor my responsibility, nor is it the governments job, nor its responsibility, to pay for EITHER your birth control OR your unwanted pregnancies. Telling us one is cheaper than the other means nothing because we shouldnt be paying for EITHER
2) Sex is optional, if women REALLY worried about unwanted pregnancies they’d have far less sex when they were worried about it. But they dont, meaning either they are very very stupid, or they’re entitled morons who think they should get to do w/e they want and someone else should take responsibility for it. So this does not encourage me to want to help you with birth control in any way.
3) $11B is almost nothing in our current government. $11B would fund the government for one day, yes ONE day. And you’re not even talking about cutting 100% of that $11B, just 85% or so of it, that still leaves us paying over $1.5B which means the money you saved us? wouldn’t even run the government for a full day. An appeal to our wallets means nothing in that regard.
4) if you truly cared about “women’s bodies” like you claim to, and thought the awful republicans were really out to “control your body” (fyi: i vote conservative, I dont give a damn about your womb, I dont want any control over it, but I ALSO dont want any responsibility for anything that goes in it or comes out of it, I want YOU to have to take responsibility for what you do with it) you’d stop dealing with government and start dealing with charities who are sympathetic to your cause where the “evil republicans” CANT tell you how you spend your money. Then maybe we could take that $11B and spend it on women who are ACTUALLY oppressed and who ACTUALLY have men controlling them, their bodies, and their lives. As opposed to wasting it on you who just want to whine that other people want to control you just because they dont want to have to deal with the consequences of YOUR actions.
Ladies, its time to open your eyes and take some responsibility.
But of course everything I just said will fall on deaf ears. Because lets face it, the meme about Sarah Fluke or whoever it is that was crusading for BC is true, you DO want the government in your womb, you just want it doing what you tell it to do. You want it to take away the need for you to be responsible for your actions. And thats pathetic ladies. Time to grow up.
I came.
Words of wisdom fellas.
^^^CONSERVATIVES ARE NOT ONLY MISOGYNISTS, THEY ARE MORONS HAHAHAHAHA^^^
Hey people: You pay for other people’s choices no matter. Either you’re paying upfront, like helping to pay for a public option for healthcare, or you’re paying down the line, like helping hospitals cover the cost of the emergency healthcare they have to, by law, give to people.
I don’t know why conservatives don’t seem to understand this. Is there a conservative brain condom that prevents basic economics from penetrating? Or are they too busy slut-shaming like the goddamned white patriarchs they are to fucking read a newspaper?
Republican hypocrisy in one chart
The outrage expressed by Republican lawmakers—spurred by the ambassador reciting intelligence-community-generated talking points that turned out to be partially inaccurate—is very different from their response to another administration official named Rice who was accused of misleading the American public on a matter of national security….When George W. Bush nominated Condoleezza Rice as secretary of state, some of the same Senate Republicans who are currently attacking Susan Rice supported Condi wholeheartedly, despite her role in helping to make the case for war in Iraq based on bogus intelligence. Back then, Republicans were much more willing to chalk up Condoleezza Rice’s parroting of flawed intel to well-intentioned mistakes as opposed to outright deception, even when the evidence said otherwise. Here’s how some of Susan Rice’s most vocal critics responded to the Bush administration’s disastrous handling of pre-war Iraq intelligence and the nomination of Condoleezza Rice.
There’s an unhealthy habit in American politics to lay blame on perceived or actual “extremists” — libertarians and Randians are attacked today in sort of the same way anti-war protesters and “the angry left” were attacked during the Bush Administration — even though they’ve literally never wielded power. Meanwhile, moderates and centrists brought us the policies responsible for the Iraq War, the Patriot Act, the financial crisis, every giveaway to lobbyists ever passed, and most recently a multi-country spree of extrajudicial assassinations carried out in secret with hundreds of civilian casualties. It’s lucky for the centrists and moderates that they have oh-so-frightening “extremists” to distract us from their sometimes criminal misgovernance.
— Conor Friedersdorf, The GOP Establishment Has Done Far More Damage Than the Tea Party
Half of GOP voters think a non-existent group stole the election for Obama
According to PPP — the pollster clearly having the most fun after the election — “49 percent of GOP voters nationally say they think that ACORN stole the election for President Obama,” compared with 52 percent who said the same in 2008. The problem? ACORN no longer exists. The community organizing group went bankrupt and disbanded in 2010. I think there’s a fairly “charitable explanation” for this, says Jamelle Bouie at The American Prospect. It’s clear “a large number of Republicans don’t like President Obama, and when offered a chance to endorse something that signals that dislike, they did it, even if the ‘something’ is absolutely insane.” That’s too charitable, says Steve M. at No More Mister Nice Blog. After all, “Fox News keeps telling its viewers that ACORN still does exist — at least in altered form” — and its former employees are responsible for a “massive subversion of the American way of life.”
The takeaway here is not just that Republicans are delusional, but that their delusions mean they aren’t going to learn anything from losing the 2012 election. So despite all the apparent soul-searching done by Republicans in the wake of the election, the chances of the GOP finally cleansing itself of the crackpots, bigots, misogynists, xenophobes, and zombie Reaganites are low.
Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC) is an asshole
Foxx said to the staffer, “This is a ‘members-only’ elevator; can you read?” She then demanded the staffer’s name before the elevator stopped after going just one more floor up. “Get out here,” Foxx supposedly commanded.
Before our insider and the berated staffer exited, the politician exclaimed, “What does this sign say? It says, ‘Members of Congress only.’ ”
But that wasn’t it. The innocent staffer attempted to point out that the sign next to it stated, “during votes,” which is when, our tipster says, Foxx started yelling, “Members only!” as she pointed to signs.
“I’m just making sure we are hiring people who know how to read,” the lawmaker said.
She also once referred to Matthew Shepard’s murder as a “hoax”. Why are Republicans such horrible people?
How to talk like a conservative
Serious (ser’ ee uhs) adj. any of a group of proposals that immiserates large numbers of ordinary people, either immediately or in the future, via cuts to broad-based social welfare programs.
Unserious (un ser’ ee uhs) adj. any proposal that slightly inconveniences rich people via modest tax increases or annoys military contractors via small cuts to the Defense Department.
I sometimes wonder if conservatives are even capable of calling a spade a spade.
Why the poor favor the Democrats
The title seems to be a bit misleading. I haven’t seen the study this piece is based on, but given what they say here, it looks like everyone does better under a Democratic administration, not just minorities or the poor. But Republican presidencies tend to be especially bad for minorities and the poor:
Under Democratic presidents, the incomes of black families grew by an average of $895 a year, but only by $142 a year under Republicans. Across 26 years of Democratic leadership, unemployment among blacks declined by 7.9%; under 28 years of Republican presidencies, the rate increased by a net of 13.7%. Similarly, the black poverty rate fell by 23.6% under Democratic presidents and rose by 3% under Republicans.
The results for Latinos and Asians, though based on fewer years of data, show the same pattern. For example, Latino incomes grew an average of $627 a year under Democrats and fell by $197 a year under Republicans. The data similarly show that the living standards of Asian Americans have improved under Democrats and stagnated under Republicans.
More important, these gains do not come at the expense of whites. On average, white incomes have similarly grown, and white joblessness and poverty have likewise declined, under Democratic administrations. These numbers show that economic condition need not be a zero-sum game pitting races and ethnicities against one another.
[…]
First, even accounting for the overall state of the economy and other longer-term trends in well-being, partisan differences persist. When controlling for inflation and changes in the gross national product, and accounting for other factors such as oil prices and the proportion of adults in the workforce, we find similarly large gains for minorities under Democrats and equally sharp losses under Republicans.
Second, these partisan trends are remarkably consistent. Black incomes grew in 77% of the years under Democratic control, while black poverty and unemployment declined 88% and 71%, respectively. In sharp contrast, blacks lost more often than not under Republican administrations.
Finally, the longer Democratic administrations are in office, the more they appear to help blacks and other minorities experience economic gains. As Republican presidents stay in office longer, however, the fortunes of minority groups increasingly suffer.
Notice a difference?
GOP’s new House Committee Chairs vs. Democrats
aka
19 white men vs. diversity
Political dog-whistles don't have an off-switch
This is just common sense. If your party has a long history of using racist coded language to win elections, then you can’t blame minorities for distrusting you when you suddenly start courting their votes. If your party has a long history of using racist coded language to discredit and attack prominent black people, then you can’t blame minorities for detecting racism in your attacks of Susan Rice (emphasis added):
[Jonah] Goldberg and [Charles] Murray…are casting about for a way for the GOP to win over minorities without saying ‘sorry’. Indeed, they are looking for a way to win over minorities while saying ‘you’re welcome!’ in an aggrieved, long-suffering sort of way (this white man’s burden hasn’t been lifting itself, y’know!)
[…]
…If you have earned people’s distrust, by not saying what you mean, you have extra work to do, convincing people you mean only what you say. If white people have found tribalism an attractive value, for so long, why shouldn’t non-whites find white tribalism to be off-putting, to a comparable degree?
[…]
Let’s grant, for the sake of argument, that Rice’s handling of Benghazi was plausibly incompetent…Problem is: if you have a history of saying abstract things, signaling something else, you have painted yourself into a rhetorical corner when it comes to saying abstractly negative things about Susan Rice and not having black people suspect you are really saying something else. It’s also obvious why Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, etc. do not remove the suspicion that you are trying to paper over your race problem without addressing it.
It might seem unfair that you can’t just be taken at your word, that you get accused of tokenism when you hope appointments of prominent blacks will betoken your good intentions. But, if you don’t like it, build a time machine, go back in time and kill Lee Atwater as a child or something. It’s a bit like whites who complain about the unfairness of being unable to say the n-word – even though every black rapper can! It’s not exactly mysterious how and why this admittedly superficially unfair state of affairs arose, so it’s a bit hard to see who you could complain against, unless it is your own ancestors….
The GOP made its bed decades ago, and now Republicans are complaining because they have to lie in it. Too fucking bad.
