Sunday, June 30, 2013

NEW VOICE COLUMN UP...

...about the many opportunities the brethren were given last week to talk about gays (Prop 8, DOMA decisions), blacks (the VRA decision, the Zimmerman trial), and women (Wendy Davis' filibuster) and what they made of them (a massive cock-up). Those new Benghazi hearings can't come a moment too soon!

95 comments:

  1. redoubt11:56 PM

    Bruce Carroll: "As a gay conservative, I've always been conflicted about the issue of gay marriage. I guess it is because my political and moral philosophies are not dictated by the desire to be loved by the president or the federal government."


    . . .or anyone else, for that matter.

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  2. hellslittlestangel12:29 AM

    I'm happy that soon marriage equality will be the law of the land. But I'm really really delighted at the anguish of the right-whingers.* Is that wrong?





    * I take equal pleasure in the suffering of Katherine Lopez and of Ben Shapiro. I'm bi-schadenfreudual.

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  3. AGoodQuestion12:32 AM

    The jokes are so ancient that it's impossible to tell who first thought them up. Try telling that to Darleen Click, though, who seems to be completely out of touch with everything but the dark side of the force.

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  4. DocAmazing12:33 AM

    Similarly, Some Guy
    at RedState called that reauthorization "without a doubt... a purely
    political gesture. No politician can afford to come off as bigoted in
    this day and age."



    Not after the first five Republican primaries, anyway.

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  5. Doc Washboard1:32 AM

    I'm a teacher. I've been in the classroom for twenty-three years, and I've never had to address the issue of marriage, traditional, hellbound, or other. I've tried without success to pin Righties down on precisely when and where the perform the indoctrination they all accuse us of. I'm so busy cramming facts down kids' throats in preparation for the standardized test that I can't imagine squeezing in a lesson on why we need to worship Obama.

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  6. Glock H. Palin, Esq.2:14 AM

    Because apparently "be loved by" and "receive equal treatment from" are freely interchangeable phrases.

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  7. Glock H. Palin, Esq.2:20 AM

    ...said Shapiro..."religious business owners will be leveraged to pay for benefits
    for same-sex spouses,"...


    As opposed to paying for the opposite sex spouses of couples married in Hindu or Buddhist or secular ceremonies, which are every bit as adulterous and removed from God's blessing as any gay marriage, according to Christian doctrine?

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  8. Pope Zebbidie XIII6:26 AM

    I'm even willing to accept there are religious people that disapprove of their tax dollars going to oil the machines of war.

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  9. Derelict6:34 AM

    Bruce must notice that he is despised by the movement he embraces and flacks for. Talk about a harmful relationship.

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  10. What's German for "they have a word for everything"?
    ~

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  11. BigHank537:46 AM

    At last, a situation where the question, "Why do you keep hitting yourself?" isn't just a cruel bully's joke.

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  12. mortimer7:48 AM

    In case the sheer brilliance of his bridge engineer/gay marriage argument missed its mark, Jeff Goldstein resorts to the intellectual rigor of his more customary rhetoric:
    The short version is this: go fuck yourself sideways with an open umbrella. You sicken me.

    (I thought Jeffrey fancied himself some sort of libertarian. And yet he thinks DOMA was just fine, and there's nothing wrong with the state discriminating against... oh what am I saying, he is a typical libertarian.)

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  13. Doghouse Riley7:49 AM

    It's interesting just how much of modern American conservatism traces to their opposition to the Civil Rights movement. The idea that certain groups should not be forced to pay for what they morally disapprove of, for example. As well as the decades-long attempt to render the obvious answer ("We all pay for things we disapprove of. It's called democracy") obsolete.

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  14. Jeffrey_Kramer7:50 AM

    Under the Kenyan Antichrist, Shapiro kvetches, "religious florists must provide flowers for gay weddings."

    I really, really want to see a modern-day conservative Niemöller wax poetic on that.

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  15. BigHank538:31 AM

    I'll admit I'm a bit disappointed that such a champion of freedom and noted rhetoritician (as well as a leading cockslapper) can't manage to articulate a better argument than ICKY.

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  16. montag28:44 AM

    Well, yeah, DR, that's an explanation, too, for that internalized terror he's exhibiting. Although I do think that both theses have some potential for creating amusing mental images.

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  17. Say it in French.

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  18. Well, log cabins ARE nice.

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  19. This ain't a golfclap, it's a standing ovation.

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  20. Republican outreach: If we don't hand out scarlet letters, pink triangles and blacks not welcome signs... how would you know it was really us? Respect the brand!

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  21. Robert M.9:08 AM

    'Ann Althouse informed us, on the authority of Urban Dictionary, that "the term 'ass cracker' could easily mean a man who rapes a man, especially one who goes after a teenaged boy...'

    I didn't know Althouse was such a fan of XKCD: http://xkcd.com/37/

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  22. montag29:10 AM

    For years--in many churches--they could discriminate and they didn't have to pay. It was the IRS decision to revoke the tax-free status of Bob Jones U. that really politicized the religious right and got them in bed with the political conservatives. Falwell, particularly, in his early preaching days, was greatly in favor of segregated churches and still expected tax-free status--that was the natural order of things, to his mind. It fit very neatly with the sort of institutional racism that Buckley was advocating in the `50s and `60s.



    That definitely created a melding of like constituencies--both groups had an outsized sense of their own self-importance and (white) self-entitlement certainly grew from that.

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  23. Helmut Monotreme9:10 AM

    Well, that is the totality of the arguments against gay marriage. There's only so many ways to convey that message.

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  24. I think the German term schiesskopf

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  25. Halloween_Jack9:52 AM

    I think that the pink triangle one is broken for them.

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  26. billcinsd10:04 AM

    The funny thing about that is that Green v Connaly and the IRS case were in 1972 and 1975 -- under Republican administrations yet Carter specifically got blamed

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  27. sharculese10:15 AM

    "As a gay conservative, I've always been conflicted about the issue of gay marriage."


    On the one hand, I have to be strident in my disapproval of it. On the other, I can't be so strident that I jeopardize my status as token gay. It's hard!

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  28. sharculese10:17 AM

    Being voted Biggest Buzzkill in the Keebler treehouse five years running really fucked with his head.

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  29. Shitheads, shitheads, rolly polly shitheads... yeah, that works.

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  30. Halloween_Jack10:19 AM

    Frankly, after reading Goldstein's comparison of getting married to civil engineering, I'm not sure if anyone else is worth looking at, since he's managed his own stupendous mechanical achievement of building the Eiffel Tower of bullshit. Nevertheless, Bruce Carroll essays forth to attempt, in the best Close Encounters of the Third Kind-style fashion, his own Devil's Tower of dung:

    In the words of our current ruler, "Let me be clear." If someone wants to engage in a civil contract with someone they love, nothing stopped them from doing so last week.

    Uh-huh. Except for the states that banned that along with SSM. And never mind all the ways in which it's separate and unequal. Oh, but it's not as if " gay Americans weren't allowed in schools, restaurants, or voting booths until the Supreme Court decision Wednesday" (for most schools, anyway, and of course plenty of wingnuts are battling for the right of various florists, B&B operators, etc. to turn away customers because they're gay; details, details), so whatever. Oh, and apparently now Teh Gheyz are morally obligated to oppose abortion. Bwuh?

    I was going to see what Kevin DuJan had to say about the big decisions, but for some reason he decided not to devote a post to it--so many more thousands of words to write in defense of Paula Deen, busy busy busy--but I did see this bit, in a paragraph about how his boyfriend gets out of chores by "accidentally" breaking stuff and Kevin thinks it's cute:

    I would have made a terrible father, by the way.



    Blind squirrel, meet nut.

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  31. Mr. Wonderful10:20 AM

    I've said this before, but to me young Ben's analyses and arguments are for display purposes only, to reaffirm his membership in the pundit's club. They are to conservative rhetoric as lorem-upsum Greeking in magazine layouts is to real articles. Of course, he doesn't know this. He thinks auditioning to be a pundit is the same as being one, and ersatz ideas are as good as (and as true as) real ones.

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  32. They never did have the right angle.

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  33. Mr. Wonderful10:26 AM

    "public schools across the country will be forced to teach homosexual marriage alongside traditional marriage..."

    How do you "teach homosexual marriage"?

    TEACHER: And where will they register? We talked about this yesterday.

    KID 1: Pottery Barn?

    TEACHER: No, these are *homosexuals*.

    KID 2: Pussycat Palace Adult Toys 'n' Videos?

    TEACHER: Good!

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  34. montag210:30 AM

    Carter is the all-purpose scapegoat, y'know. Clinton was, but he's been afforded some redemption after becoming George H.W. Bush's adopted son.

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  35. Halloween_Jack10:36 AM

    Oh, and because Goldstein wasn't enough: Same-sex "marriage" ruins friendship. On the other hand, it also seems to have ruined Darleen Click's day, so go Team Gay!

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  36. montag210:39 AM

    Oh, but doesn't the conservative world take him seriously, because he wrote a book when he was 20? (Wasn't it titled, Liberal Professors Are Big Poopyheads?)

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  37. It's like Carl Sagan said: "The fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown."

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  38. tigrismus10:53 AM

    I guess it is because my political and moral philosophies are not dictated by the desire to be loved by the president or the federal government.


    Duh, your philosophies, such as they are, are dictated by the desire to piss off liberals.

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  39. J Neo Marvin11:25 AM

    STANLEY MOON

    You're a nutcase! You're a bleedin' nutcase!

    GEORGE SPIGGOTT

    They said the same of Jesus Christ, Freud, and Galileo.

    STANLEY MOON

    They said it of a lot of nutcases too!

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  40. RogerAiles11:47 AM

    Don't go breakin' Ben's heart.

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  41. whetstone11:53 AM

    religious florists must provide flowers for gay weddings


    Someone should have told me about ObamaBouquets before I got married and had to give a pretty penny to the private market.

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  42. If someone wants to engage in a civil contract with someone they love, nothing stopped them from doing so last week.

    Uh-huh. Except for the states that banned that along with SSM.

    Seriously. I mean, Ohio worked so hard at making sure that the filthy faggots didn't have any right to contract that the state supreme court had to basically invoke "That's what it says, but not what it means" to keep the "Homos are legal non-persons" amendment from invalidating Ohio's domestic violence laws as applied to unmarried opposite-sex couples.

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  43. KatWillow12:41 PM

    Do schools still teach "Home Ec"? I thought it vanished along with "band" and "art" and "healthy lunches".

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  44. KatWillow12:42 PM

    Yes it was. Pity the New Yorker didn't have Tinky-Winky on the cover.

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  45. Being vile in the defence of vehement idiocy is not a vice!

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  46. I am continually marveling at the talent American wingnuts have for casting every single great historical advance in human rights as an assault on liberty. It's simply breathtaking.

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  47. Gromet1:03 PM

    "No, not even Muppets are spared in our culture war," quavered David
    Karsanyi at Human Events... "Bert & Ernie are iconic figures for children... And The New Yorker crudely murders it all with the crude, smutty snickering..."


    Now I see what all this garment-rending and teeth-gnashing is for! Conservatives are seizing their chance to claim the "muppet defenders" mantle, lost back when Romney campaigned on a promise to murder Big Bird.

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  48. Gromet1:26 PM

    I never took a high school history class that didn't stop history around the Korean War. I always figured that was because they didn't want to risk angering parents with any interpretation of the '60s.



    Those parents are grandparents now, so it's gotta be safe for history class to sail up to the Triumphant End of the Cold War -- and I suppose they have to teach September through December of 2001, so they skip the '90s to do that. Then it's the last three days of school, the teacher half-heartedly shows Zero Dark Thirty, have a great summer kids.


    I can't imagine the nation is going to see a single high school student cramming about DOMA, yellowcake uranium, the Tea Party, or the existence of gay people until at least 2027. So Shapiro can relax: our nation will stand at least another 14 years.

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  49. montag21:27 PM

    Hey, they're originalists. Liberty is only for white, property-owning men!


    There are only two amendments to the Constitution, really.


    1) Crazy as a shithouse rat or not, we get guns. And bazookas.


    2) Elected or not, no more four terms for pinkos like Roosevelt.

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  50. Paul T. Lazaro1:33 PM

    Speaking of things Jeffy, he's dusted off Lerleen Click's infamous(ly bad) cartoon "Obama raping Lady Liberty." He's started his July fundraiser, so I suppose this is meant as some sort of premium for his loyal readers.

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  51. montag21:34 PM

    Since Tinky-Winky is the bête noire of a man who's dead (Falwell is still dead, right?), maybe he's not so important to the cause any more.

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  52. So say the least, right after studying Goldstein's contrast to getting committed to be able to civil anatomist, Now i'm uncertain in case anybody else may be worth investigating, since he has been handled his own stupendous kinetic achievement to create this Eiffel Tower system connected with bullshit. Nonetheless, Bruce Carroll documents forth to attempt, inside greatest Close up Runs into on the 3 rd Kind-style vogue, his own Devil's Tower system connected with dung:

    ______________________________

    design
    sarees

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  53. satch1:46 PM

    Young Ben the Conservative wunderkind, eh? I remember the more recent example of Jonathan Krohn, another kid raised in a wingnut Skinner box, who nevertheless managed to pull together enough brain cells to see the light and escape. As soon as he's able to afford his own counter tops, Michelle Malkin will be on HIS case, you betcha!

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  54. sharculese1:51 PM

    You laugh, but the B+ Virgin Ben got in History of Elton John almost derailed his academic career, and he's stil upset about it.

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  55. Mooser2:55 PM

    The Muppets? Hell, they're nothing! You want to see an entire generation corrupted? Just watch "Mr. Rogers" and listen to John Costa and the rest play excellent grown-up Jazz for tired tots! An entire generation of swingers and hipsters got started right there!
    John Costa could play. There may be a few less modern-country-rap-and-roll fans today because of that man and his work on Mr. Rogers. Why should kids listen to commercial crap after hearing great jazz like Costa's every day when they were little? The man is subversive!

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  56. Mooser3:00 PM

    Yup, they regulate motorcycles, cars, and every other goddam thing you can think of. But did they ever even think of regulating the volume of electric guitars? A nation of eardrums became sclerotic, and the windmill arm motions of tertiary syphilitics became de-rigueur for young men.
    But did they ever do anything about that? Nooooo! And what is the harvest? Justin Beiber!

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  57. Mooser3:04 PM

    I thought the last line was going to be: "and so they forced me to sell to everybody and then I strained my back quite badly carrying the money to the bank! Is there no end to minority perfidy?"

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  58. tigrismus3:06 PM

    Scalia's got some gall to write the nastiness he wrote while claiming the other side relies political grandstanding and bad-mouthing their opposition.

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  59. redoubt3:06 PM

    Add "drunk" to "ass cracker" and you begin to see her motivation. (One box at a time)

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  60. Mooser3:07 PM

    Well, gay marriage can destroy straight marriages! It happened to me! Yes, last night my wife looked up from her knitting (she's working on my shrouds) and said: "You know, Mooser, this gay marriage thing has given me a new outlook. Next time, I'll marry a man!"
    And she calmly went back to knitting and purling.

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  61. sharculese3:25 PM

    I've never really understand why Republicans consider "so simple a child can understand" it to be a positive selling point regarding their philosophy of government.

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  62. Rod Dreher wrote that in his DOMA dissent Justice Antonin Scalia "has chillingly illuminated the truth for marriage traditionalists: the only reason to oppose same-sex marriage is hate... the logic of the Court's language here ought to put fear into the hearts of anyone who does not share the belief that homosexuality's legal status shouldn't rely on the government's establishment of purely sectarian religious doctrines as law. Every comment we make says we are haters, full stop."


    Fixed that for you, Rod. No charge. After all, you know what the Bible says about greed.

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  63. Well, I sure as shit didn't resurrect the bastard. And the Muppet theme song is the theme of my childhood. A childhood that taught me to welcome people and play well with others. And not to be a shithead unless required. "Human Events"... Very human, but the worst kind... Events? Shit, you can call anything that. Me shooing a fly away from ticklin' my nose even counts..

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  64. This is it. Exactly. What the fuck is the problem with giving more rights to people? You don't lose yours. But oh, noes, they worship different, they look different and maybe they even GASP! fuck different. So fuckin' what? Nothin' is taken away from you.

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  65. No, that's MY picture!

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  66. montag24:03 PM

    Convince them of that, sir, and you've saved the nation... and maybe the world along with it.


    But first, you'll have to convince them that it won't raise their taxes. That's a hard, hard sell.

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  67. I'm wicked confused.

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  68. Man, I'm thinkin' of takin' those tax monies and putting them inna sock. Improvised weapon. But I'm bad at street fights. I usually end up laughing.

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  69. Halloween_Jack4:11 PM

    Oh, man, that's hilarious. "Look, dude, I really hate to have to come out and say this to you, but we're all on our way over to Little Debbie's and... shit... you're specifically not invited. Not after last time."

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  70. montag24:14 PM

    Ah, well, Scalia's got all the rules memorized and internalized. Never admit error. Lie, fabricate and dissemble whenever necessary. Originalism is the best legal dodge evah. If a legal principle doesn't exist to support your view, make one up. Never acknowledge one's own hypocrisy. Whether necessary in self-defense or not, always blame someone else. And, of course, that the name of the game is, "Fuck You, Buddy."


    For Scalia, gall is an essential ingredient of the law.

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  71. montag24:18 PM

    Just remember what Margaret Smith said about fights: " I love fights. Well, I don't like the actual fight; I like the loose change on the floor afterward."

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  72. Heh. It's just I can't sustain the anger required, MY anger runs deeper, but it ain't at specific people.Plus, pain is something I'm bad at.gauging. Scrambling on the floor for pocket change, though, that's me to a T.

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  73. montag24:34 PM

    School lunches were healthy?

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  74. Big_Bad_Bald_Bastard6:19 PM

    Why don't they just admit that they hate LGBT people? They're not fooling anyone, and the semantic gymnastics they try to perfrom to avoid saying that they hate LGBT people is nothing short of embarassing.

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  75. Big_Bad_Bald_Bastard6:27 PM

    Whoa, they're defending "Sesame Street"? "Sesame Street" was always about teaching the fundamentals of reading and math to children (specifically children of inner city neighborhoods like those depicted on the show) whose parents didn't have the time or educational backgrounds to give their kids a good pre-school foundation of learning. I imagine righties always hated "Sesame Street" for allowing sultry latin provacateuses to undermine the morals of imprssionable young children.

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  76. Same reason none of 'em will admit to hating poor people or not-white people, or never consider that white privilege exists or male privilege exists, or that capitalism is a highly flawed economic structure, particularly when it's left to run without any sort of intervention or supervision. No one really wants to be seen as an asshole, though a whole lot people take great pleasure in being an asshole. It's all about appearance, they want "Yeah, that guy's right" and not "man, what an asshole".


    'Cause calling these assholes assholes hurts their fee-fees, and that's worse than slavery and the Holocaust all combined.

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  77. KatWillow7:43 PM

    Well, we got a meat portion, veges (canned), starch (mashed potatoes or rice) and fruit (desert) and milk. Sneaking your peas into the milk carton & throwing em out was disapproved of by teachers who would peek into the milk container. Cost: 25¢ That was 1969.

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  78. KatWillow7:49 PM

    I'm sure he texted creepy-ass cracker, not ass-cracker. Man, if they aren't dwelling lovingly on gay sex=bestiality, they're interpreting everything as gay sex.

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  79. Jeffrey_Kramer8:08 PM

    Another beneficent concept which needs to be rescued from thoughtless, reflexive liberal hostility is slavery. Because, after all, didn't Beethoven consider himself a "slave" to his muse?

    Semiotics, motherfucker! Do you speak it?

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  80. MRC2108:16 PM

    Dujan already rags on his boyfriend's mother constantly - I believe the latest was calling her a zombie -- so I'm sure he can't wait to get married. Imagine the potential for endless ranting once she's his MIL. He might want to watch his back at the ceremony, though -- or at least look out for a well-placed foot as he walks down the aisle.

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  81. Spaghetti Lee11:48 PM

    Introducing Althouse to XKCD could be a worthwhile experiment: "Hey, SCIENCE BOY! Maybe if you stopped being such a WEIRDO, people would RESPECT you more!" (clink, glug)

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  82. DocAmazing12:16 AM

    It's always the right time for Barnes and Barnes.

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  83. Jon H1:34 AM

    Theirs are all obtuse.

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  84. Man, that is good. And has the virtue of being true.

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  85. Plus, the Right-wing hates Sesame Street and has forever been trying to kill it by way of defunding it's venue, PBS. Righties, especially Evangelicals, even managed to hate Mr. Rogers, which begins to feel like an achievement of sorts: What's not to like, for Heaven's sake, and what the hell was there to hate?

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  86. Al Swearengen2:18 PM

    Scalia fancies himself Pope of America. As Pope, he's infallible.

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  87. montag22:24 PM

    Maybe so. But, if he expects me to kiss his ring, he can kiss my ass.

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  88. JennOfArk2:25 PM

    I really kind of wish they would start teaching it again. Among other things, it could teach kids about how to prepare healthy food at home, household budgeting and how to avoid predatory lending and other financial pitfalls in this brave new world of ours. I'm afraid a lot of kids aren't getting any of this information at home.

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  89. JennOfArk2:27 PM

    You left out the orange wedge, which some kid at your table would inevitably shove into his mouth and hold in his teeth, drawing his lips back to reveal a sock monkey grin.

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  90. JennOfArk2:33 PM

    I never hated Mr. Rogers, but as a kid, I never liked him. I think I just felt his whole schtick was insulting to my intelligence. As a five year old.
    I felt the same way about Scooby-Doo when it first came on a couple of years later. Every week the kids would get punked, again, by the same trick. I remember walking through the family room while my older brother and one of his friends were watching when I was 8 years old and saying, "you know the ghost is just going to be some guy with a projector, don't you?"
    Shit, I was doomed from the beginning...

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  91. realinterrobang4:28 PM

    Oh thank goodness. I thought I was the only one who wasn't ravingly fond of Mister Rogers. Saying so out loud on the internet is practically a hanging offense, though.

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  92. endanciles9:43 AM

    ...about the many opportunities the brethren were given
    last week to talk about gays (Prop 8, DOMA decisions), blacks (the VRA
    decision, the Zimmerman trial), and women (Wendy Davis' filibuster) and
    what they made of them (a massive cock-up). Those new Benghazi hearings
    can't come a moment too soon!

    download Spybubble pro

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  93. Cthulhu081811:33 AM

    And it's only gay MALE sex they find icky. One notices they rarely mention lesbian sex.

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  94. Cthulhu081811:38 AM

    Except their "Right" to treat everyone not like them like shit.
    If everyone is equal, then these self important assholes aren't, by extention, special anymore.

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  95. malcolmspeakeasy7:43 PM

    ROTFLMAO! Titbits like this makes cruising the internet worthwhile.

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