Where Are The Republican Women On This?

I'm asking out of genuine curiosity the about the opinions when it comes to Republican women and the birth control brouhaha.  Short of The Distinguished Ladies From Maine wanting to see "final details" of President Obama's rule changes to provide contraception coverage through insurance companies, I've heard basically nothing from prominent conservative women this week on the GOP's trip back in time.  It's mind-blowingly obvious as to what I think about the sheer horror of it all, but I'm seriously trying to figure out if it's deafening silence that implies support (or silent rage), if it's none of my damned business, or if I'm just completely missing something.

And as Charles Pierce notes, at least one GOP woman candidate is running on the whole thing being nothing more than a First Amendment issue, like the campaign of Sarah Steelman in Missouri.

People living in these states are going to hear, over and over again, on free and paid media, through an entire primary season, that the real issue here is religious liberty and Obamacare. (What Republican candidate is going to come out and argue that it's an issue of women's health care? Anyone? Bueller?) This will continue into the general election cycle. By then, this ludicrous position will be set in concrete as a legitimate part of the electoral dialogue. I'm not optimistic at all that enough people will see through it.

Pierce has a point.  I fully expect Republican women to start coming out and saying that this idiotic position really has nothing to do with birth control, or women's control over their bodies, or institutionalized misogyny on a scale involving tens of millions, but whether or not President Obama is being mean to old white men in frocks.  That's what I expect to happen, but I want to know what the actual response is.

It's not like Republicans haven't had recent success running on "tyranny of the majority" over the last ten years, either.  Consider the number of states who gladly had mob rule contests to remove rights from LGBT friends and neighbors under the guise of "protecting the religious freedoms of marriage."  The whole thing seems aimed not at swing voters, but conservative women themselves.  They're the ones most likely to defect to the Dems at the polls, and this entire bizarre anachronistic antagonism seems designed to shame them into standing by their men.

How well it will work, only time will tell.  So I'm asking you guys what you're heard and seen from Republican women in your area.  Basically, I've heard plenty of comments from women on the left and the middle ranging from disbelief to outrage to semi-amazed glee that Republicans could be this dense, but what I've not heard is from women on the right, and especially elected Republican women.  I'm honestly interested in their opinions on this, because frankly I want to know if there really is all but silence, or if I'm just completely missing their responses in the noise.  I can't understand how anyone could remain silent throughout this, and that's my opinion, but I want to hear others.  Republican Roy Blunt made this about all Americans and all employers having the "right" to deny coverage based on moral objections for any procedure.

So yes, I want to know.

Bye, Pat!

And Pat Buchanan has officially been given his walking papers from MSNBC.

Conservative commentator Pat Buchanan, who's been suspended from MSNBC for the past four months, won't be coming back.

The network said Thursday that it had decided to part ways with the former GOP presidential candidate after 10 years.

He hasn't been on the network since the October publication of his book "Suicide of a Superpower." MSNBC President Phil Griffin says he didn't think the book should be part of the national dialogue.

Buchanan, in a column posted Thursday night, called the decision "an undeniable victory for the blacklisters."

You could count the tears I've shed over this on no hands.  Of course, Patty Boy will land on his feet at FOX News almost immediately, I would think.  He's too much of a prize for them to pass up in an election year with a black President, for sure.

The long, racist, awful knives will be out any day now.  The economy is improving.  The GOP is floundering.  They will go for broke with the this garbage.  Time to buckle up.

Eating Stupidity

So, those who don't know me well may not know this, but I don't share chocolate.  Nope, not a bit.  So I was horrified when I read that Mars is getting rid of the king-sized candy bar.  Then I relaxed when I learned they are just sizing the portions so the large candy bars can be shared (yeah, right) or easily broken into smaller pieces to eat later.  At least the latter might happen in my world.

Portion control is a major problem, so it makes sense that this would be a good idea.  However, the comments online have ranged from amused to terrified (as though Mars was going to cease production altogether).  It's not that big of a deal, and might actually lead to us getting more mileage for the same calories.

Speaking of that, there is a new rash of discussion about an eating trend called mindful eating.  It is exactly what you would expect, taking small bites, not talking or multitasking, and relishing the food.  Not only does the eater usually find themselves satisfied more by eating less, but the unplugging effect can give us some much-needed relaxation as well as truly enjoying what we eat.  It prompts us to wonder why we are eating, which isn't just meal control but a way of talking to our body.  The New York Times describes it in greater detail, and includes a list of the points to consider while chewing.

The Four Mindful Points: Check in with each dimension of mindfulness. When you eat, ask yourself these questions:

a. Mind: Am I tasting each bite or am I zoned out when I eat? (You can download the awareness checklisthere.)

Body: How does my body feel before and after I eat? Low energy? Stomach rumbling? Full? Empty?

c. Feeling: What do I feel about this food? Guilty? Pleasure? Joy? Disappointment? Regret?

d. Thoughts: What thoughts does this food bring to mind? Memories? Beliefs? Myths? Fears?

Food for thought, anyway.  C'mon, you knew I had to say it.

Wow, Indeed

Stephen Fry gave a one-word compliment to a video, and it has since become a sensation. I usually find these somewhere between "ew" and "meh" but this time I was blown away as well. This guy works his guitar like nobody I've ever seen. He tunes it while playing, and uses every square inch of the instrument. The article tells a little bit of his history, but please folks... play this for a minute or two and see him for yourself.

Chart Of The Day

Tea Party Republicans are changing the rules again and demand now that the only economic statistic that matters is labor force as percentage of population.






Their message might possibly be more effective if it wasn't being drowned out by the rest of the party being misogynist troglodytes from the 19th century.

The Long, Stupid Defeat Of Willard Romney

At this point Mittens is just plain giving up.

A Republican debate that was set to be held on March, five days before Super Tuesday, now appears to be on ice — with Newt Gingrich the only candidate confirmed for it, and the others either turning it down or not accepting.

The debate is (or was) set to be held in Atlanta, and was set to be hosted by CNN and the state Republican parties of both Georgia and Ohio. Recent polls have shown favorite son Newt Gingrich with a big lead in Georgia, and Rick Santorum pulling ahead comfortably in Ohio.

But the dominoes really started falling Thursday, after Mitt Romney opted to not accept the invitation.

And now the Georgia debate has been canceled.  To recap, the front runner is now pulling out of debates because he can't out-argue Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich, and Ron Paul.

I submit that Mitt Romney is now running the worst campaign in American presidential history.  And unless something dramatic happens, Mitt will *be* history...and the nominee will be Santorum.

That can't happen.  It would prove God exists, and that She's trolling the Republicans.

StupidiNews!

• German President Christian Wulff has resigned over a home loan he took when he was premier of the German state of Lower Saxony.
• Discount carrier Air Australia ran out of operating cash Friday, leaving thousands of passengers stranded across the Pacific.
• The new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's first regulatory target may be federal oversight of debt collection agencies and credit bureaus.
• Former New York Mets all-star catcher Gary Carter, who let the team to a World Series victory in 1986, has died at the age of 57 after a nine-month battle with cancer.
• Apple's newest MacOS 10.8 software, codenamed Mountain Lion, will not run on many Macs bought before 2008.

Last Call

The Man Behind The Froth has spent millions bankrolling Santorum through his super PAC so far, and today Foster Friess pretty much undid every dollar of "free speech" he bought with this awesome statement on birth control to MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell:

On this contraceptive thing, my gosh, it’s so inexpensive. You know, back in my days, they used Bayer Aspirin for contraceptives. The gals put it between their knees and it wasn’t that costly.

Of course, to be fair back then people used aspirin for everything: broken bones from unfortunate dirigible accidents, knee injuries suffered while dancing the Charleston, steam burns from auto-velocipedes, sprains from the Dickensian work houses, and various abrasions caused the occasional dinosaur stampede.

Now you kids get off of his lawn, he's missing his RKO Radio Pictures.

Crossing The Rubin Con: Endless Wargasm

Jennifer Rubin pauses from her Romney cheerleading day job to go after the 51% of America that actually learned a lesson from the decade of wars we've been thrust into, as the latest Pew Research poll finds there's not too much support for backing up an Israeli attack on Iran.  With only 39% of Americans wanting the US to follow Israel into the Hot Gates of Thermopylae Tehran, Rubin chastises the Dems for not being explodey enough:

It’s stunning, actually, that in the event of a conflict between the revolutionary, jihadist state Iran and our democratic ally Israel, Democrats want us to be neutral.

The Democratic National Committee chairwoman doesn’t want to make Israel an “election” issue. Maybe before lecturing Republicans to clam up she should work on educating her own party about the U.S.-Israel relationship and about the menace of a nuclear-armed Iran. It is embarrassing for the Democratic Party’s finger-wagging chairwoman to be saddled with a constituency that is so indifferent to the plight of the Jewish state. As for Obama, it seems he’s right in sync with opinion in his party on Israel. And that is a big problem for the future of the U.S.-Israel relationship, the survival of the Jewish state and the continued credibility of the United States, which under two administrations has vowed that it is “unacceptable” for Iran to obtain nuclear weapons.

Once again, I am struck as to how Rubin seems to have completely omitted our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan from the country's memory, and how we arrived at them, and that she has no issues with Israel dictating foreign policy to us.  Indeed, she is "stunned" to find that after nine years in Iraq and ten going on eleven in Afghanistan, that the American public really isn't terribly keen on going to war with Iran and want us to stay out of an Israel-Iran fight, and want us to not invest another lost decade's worth of blood and treasure just because Israel gets trigger-happy.

Besides the ridiculous notion that people who don't want war are somehow not only "indifferent" towards the Israel but ostensibly against Israel's very survival itself, I have to ask if all it took to get the US to invade Iran was Israel attacking Iranian nuclear facilities, why hasn't Israel simply done it already if the Iranian nuclear program is such an existential threat?

Also, it's not like the United States is truly "neutral" anyway, nor are we just standing around doing nothing to support an ally.  America is applying tough economic sanctions and has gotten the European Union to go along with them.  These sanctions get much tougher in another five months or so when the clause that the US will no longer do economic business with countries that do buy oil from Iran fully kicks in.  Hell, even FOX News is admitting the sanctions are working.  Oh, and yes, we have carrier groups hanging out in the region as well just in case Iran does something stupid, and in fact to specifically prevent Iran from doing anything stupid.  It seems to me that Israel is choosing not to act for a reason, and that reason is the sanctions are working.

But Rubin blithely insists war is the only option and goes after anyone who believes in any other approach to Iran, when President Obama is calmly proving that this just isn't the case in reality.  After a decade of blood and trillions of dollars, America is getting tired of having its patriotism questioned by armchair Alexanders who engage in nothing but endless wargasm.  Certainly the Post's readers deserve something slightly more nuanced than Rubin's cartoon-inspired approach to international relations.

Been Brown So Long, It Looked Green To Me

This is an important story that's being overlooked:  a Koch Bros. funded effort to teach climate change denial in public schools.

Internal documents acquired by ThinkProgress Green reveal that the Heartland Institute, a right-wing think tank funded by the Koch brothers, Microsoft, and other top corporations, is planning to develop a “global warming curriculum” for elementary schoolchildren that presents climate science as “a major scientific controversy.” This effort, at a cost of $100,000 a year, will be developed by Dr. David E. Wojick, a coal-industry consultant.

What's in the lesson plan?  Why, the endless "controversy" over man-made global warming, of course.

Dr. Wojick proposes to begin work on “modules” for grades 10-12 on climate change (“whether humans are changing the climate is a major scientific controversy“), climate models (“models are used to explore various hypotheses about how climate works. Their reliability is controversial”), and air pollution (“whether CO2 is a pollutant is controversial. It is the global food supply and natural emissions are 20 times higher than human emissions”).

Wojick would produce modules for Grades 7-9 on environmental impact (“environmental impact is often difficult to determine. For example there is a major controversy over whether or not humans are changing the weather“), for Grade 6 on water resources and weather systems, and so on.

And these modules would start in Kindergarten.   The plan of course is to continually call in to question the science behind climate change and call it "critical thinking", the same way cigarettes causing cancer isn't "settled science" and the way evolution is just a "theory".  What do you expect from an outfit that calls anyone who believes in climate change to be "an alarmist", as if it's a mental disease.

Meanwhile, this is why Republicans are doing everything they can to take over local school boards and county commissions and city councils, in state assemblies and legislatures and Governor's mansions.  2010 was a crushing defeat for Dems in local and state elections, one bad enough that it will take at least a decade just for the Democratic party to come up for air at the state level.

The best way to prove your argument that government can't work is to destroy it from within.

AT&T Customer Service: Epic Fail

At this point, I am wondering if AT&T is just trying to commit suicide.  They pissed off their customers with the announcement that the customers will end up paying the loss on the T-Mobile deal.  The earnest money they put up was unusual, offered in a cocky assurance of victory that fell through.  Sucks to be you, they said.  Sure hope you know you're going to pay for our mistake.

Now they have another customer crisis on their hands.  While happy to sell all the smart phones they could stock, raking in all the profit on device after device, they now blame customers for the data throttling.  It's your own fault, they tell them.  You shouldn't use your unlimited service so much, because now we can't actually provide what we promised, their statement implies.  The really crappy thing is that a 3 GB plan actually starts throttling as low as 2 GB.  So you don't even get what you pay for before they clamp down the service.

AT&T is conveniently whining about smart phone service after they pushed them at every turn.  They used phone discounts to get customers under contract, then failed to deliver.  And in what seems to be their regular response now, they shrug and tell customers to get over it.

If T-Mobile has a long enough vision and willingness to compete, they could wipe up right now.  Someone has to, or AT&T customers will be screwed for years to come.

Heart Attack Irony

In one of the more unfortunate cases of a company living up to its name, a man dining at the Heart Attack Grill in Las Vegas had what was on the menu: a heart attack.

The diner was eating a "Triple Bypass Burger" — including 1.5 pounds of beef and a dozen bacon slices — this weekend when he began complaining of chest pains, according to a report on KVVU-TV in Las Vegas. Paramedics arrived to treat the customer, who is recovering.

The restaurant opened in the fall in Las Vegas — a previous incarnation in Chandler, Ariz., closed — and quickly made headlines for its fatty foods, with meals that regularly feature nearly 10,000 calories. Servers are dressed — scantily — as "nurses" who take "prescriptions" from their "patients."

Got it. It's like Hooters, with more grease. I had promised to take my husband there, but since he has already had one blockage we may reconsider.

Nah. If Jack In The Box can sell a bacon milkshake, we can do this too.

Just The PolitiFacts, Ma'am, Part 2

Rachel Maddow again eviscerates PolitiFact's awful double standards, and deservedly so.

This week, the fact-checking website drew Maddow’s ire after rating Sen. Marc Rubio’s comment that the majority of Americans are conservative as “mostly true.”

PolitiFact cited a 2011 Gallup poll, which found 40 percent of Americans described themselves as conservatives, 21 percent described themselves as liberal and 35 percent described themselves as moderate. The website also noted that Gallup has never found that a majority of Americans describe themselves as conservative.

The site was apparently conflating a majority and a plurality — which is not at all uncommon, but technically wrong.

“Seriously,” Maddow said. “Claim A, false. Claim B, false. Overall PolitiFact rating, ‘mostly true.’ PolitiFact, please leave the building. Do not bother turning off the lights when you leave. We will need them on to clean up the mess you have left behind you as you are leaving.”

“PolitiFact, you are a disaster,” she added.

And she's right. PolitiFact is shockingly bad, and they have no credibility as a fact checking body anymore, for the simple reason that pleasing the Republican party and their cadre of stupid lies and the liars that tell them is more important than actually checking facts.

They're pretty much done.

Apparently If We Pass Enough Blatantly Unconstitutional Laws...

You have to admit, passing laws that are completely unconstitutional is a good way to prove that representative democracy isn't very useful at times.

Legislation introduced to the Iowa House of Representatives on Wednesday would completely outlaw abortion and mandate up to life in prison for those who purposefully terminate a pregnancy.

The bill, House File 2298, was introduced by state Rep. Kim Pearson (R). It would outlaw all abortions, even cases of rape or incest, or to save the life of a mother.

In response, Iowa Democrats blasted Republicans for pushing a divisive social agenda rather than focusing on improving the economy.

“Republicans have failed to focus on ways to make Iowa stronger,” Iowa Democratic Party Chairwoman Sue Dvorsky said in a statement. “House Republicans and their colleagues in the Senate would rather put the lives of women in danger than have a real discussion about how we create jobs and move Iowa forward.”

So go for it, Iowa Republicans.  Continue to prove why you should be in charge like this.  Hell, why stop there, just bring back Jim Crow laws and indentured servitude while you're at it.  At least this way is faster.

StupidiNews!

• Congress has reached a deal on extending the payroll tax cut for the middle class, unemployment benefits, and the Medicare "doc fix" that could be voted on tomorrow.
• House minority leader Nancy Pelosi is supporting officially adding an LGBT equality plank to the Democrats' campaign platform.
• Missouri's Supreme Court has unanimously struck down an ethics law as unconstitutional because it was attached to an unrelated bill when passed.
• Japanese securities regulators have dropped the hammer on six former executives of Olympus Corp, arresting them for their role in a 13-year fraud coverup.
• Apple's problems with a widespread number of iPhone apps uploading address books without permission stems from security loopholes that need to be closed.