There should be humiliation and pain in government assistance. Every time someone accepts food stamps, they are spitting on the principles of independence, and they, not the taxpayers who fund the program, should be reminded of that fact.He also seems to think that you can currently buy cigarettes and beer with food stamps.
"The last I checked, about a third of the people in this country have a college degree,” [Republican operative] Musgrave says. Santorum’s remark, she says, connects with voters who are skeptical of Obama’s emphasis on higher education, which is a costly endeavor for many families and unnecessary for many workers...This is how you talk when you have propaganda instead of a policy. These people have no coherent plan for restoring a blue-collar economy except trickle-down bullshit draped in moldy populism. They yelled when Obama bailed out Detroit and saved the kind of jobs they claim to honor, and propose to replace this approach with tax cuts and "passion and anger."
[Campaign advisor] Brabender acknowledges that Santorum’s jibes may not be warmly received by reporters or by every voter. But he does not expect Santorum to back away from calling Obama a snob or touting the benefits of growing the economy in ways that do not revolve around academic credentials.
“What Obama and Romney do not understand is that there is a lot of passion and anger out there,” Brabender says. “There is a sense that our basic freedoms are being destroyed. People are gravitating around somebody who is not shy, who stands up and says what they really believe.”
Last night I recorded the broadcast, and later I watched small snips of it, fast-forwarding through 95% of it and just stopping at a few of the winning announcements:Inevitably:
Actress: The winner: Meryl Streep for a role that made Margaret Thatcher look like a senile old woman rather than the magnificent world leader she was and is
Foreign Film: nominees from Israel, Belgium, Canada, Iran, and Poland. The winner: IRAN
Supporting Actress: nominees were 4 white women and 1 black woman. The winner: the black woman
Supporting Actor: The winner: Christopher Plummer for playing an older man who comes out as gay later in life.
I reiterate that I have not seen most of these films.The whole thing's a treasure, especially when she does the "You Hollyweird lieberals are so 'courageous,' here's what would be really courageous" schtick -- in my humble opinion, as well as it's ever been done:
Here’s what I believe would have been courageous: And entire Oscar broadcast without one snarky remark about Republicans, conservatives, family values, Christians or Jews. Beginning the show with the Pledge of Allegiance. Or an invocation. Having a singer sing the National Anthem. Giving free front row seats to members of the United States Military, veterans, wounded warriors, family of troops currently serving in harm’s way. Creating an “American Patriot” award, analogous to the Lifetime Achievement awards they present to someone who has had a long, illustrious career in Hollywood. [I would nominate Gary Sinise for this]...Don't dream it, honey, be it. I believe Rick Santorum's got an old barn in Bucks County. Let's put on a show!
Iran hailed the country's first Oscar-winning film as a triumph over arch-foe Israel on Monday...
A state TV broadcast said the award succeeded in "leaving behind" a film from Israel. Javad Shamaghdari, head of the state Cinematic Agency, portrayed the Oscar win as the "beginning of the collapse" of Israeli influence that "beats the drum of war" in the U.S. and elsewhere.Wow -- movies really are magic!
THE HORROR: Pakistanis Desecrate Holy Korans in Smelly Sewage Ditch (Video).I used to hear this one a lot on the playground, but I think even the dimmer kids realized it wasn't folk wisdom by the time they reached 9th grade. If the election doesn't go his way, maybe the Perfesser will haul out the one about fucking dogs to make hippies.
Like black people saying “Nigger,” it’s okay when they do it.
The former Pennsylvania senator criticized the president’s environmentalism as representative of a “phony theology.” The press snipped the remark out of the context...Out of context! How can that be out of context? That's like saying you can't appreciate the pyrotechnic qualities of the Challenger disaster if you insist on focusing on the people who died in it.
Internationally, this administration has been arguing for freedom of worship instead of freedom of religion. That’s not just semantics.So I went and looked it up. Apparently this was a big rightwing thing back in 2010 (I don't see how I missed it; maybe I'm getting too old for this game): The more Jesusy conservatives (and Fox News) were then telling the world that Obama and his handmaiden Hillary Clinton had stopped using the words "freedom of religion" and started using the words "freedom of worship," in order to usher in a new age where people could pray all they liked but they couldn't go to the park, wave their Bibles at young fornicators and yell, "Howl ye, for the day of judgement is at hand," because Obama is Your God Now or something -- here, let one of those crazy fuckers who's still running this scam explain it to you himself:
The reason is simple. Any person of faith knows that religious exercise is about a lot more than freedom of worship. It’s about the right to dress according to one’s religious dictates, to preach openly, to evangelize, to engage in the public square. Everyone knows that religious Jews keep kosher, religious Quakers don’t go to war, and religious Muslim women wear headscarves—yet “freedom of worship” would protect none of these acts of faith.
Those who would limit religious practice to the cathedral and the home are the very same people who would strip the public square of any religious presence. They are working to tear down roadside memorial crosses built to commemorate fallen state troopers in Utah, to strip “Under God” from the Pledge of Allegiance, and they recently stopped a protester from entering an art gallery because she wore a pro-life pin.Thin end of the wedge! Soon the sheeple will be so lulled by the incantation of "freedom of worship," they'll forget all about freedom of religion, and when Obama turns their churches into gay abortion bathhouses they won't remember why they're supposed to be upset.
Referring to the Obama administration, Santorum said: "You can see why they don't stand up for religious liberties. It's pretty obvious that they don't think religious liberties are particularly a high priority. When you have the president of the United States referring to the freedom of religion and you have the secretary of State referring to the freedom of religion, not as the freedom of religion but the freedom of worship, you should get very nervous, very nervous.
"Because there's a lot of tyrants around the world who will talk about freedom of worship, but they won't talk about freedom of religion. Freedom of worship is what you do within the four walls of the church. Freedom of religion is what you do outside the four walls of the church. What the president is now seeming to mold, in the image of other elitists who think that they know best, is to limit the role of faith in the public square and your role to live that faith out in your public and private lives..."People sometimes wonder aloud why Santorum has been saying so many absurd things lately. I'm becoming convinced that he's too busy campaigning to make up his own remarks anymore, or even think about what he's saying, and so is just taking handoffs from staff who comb the fringe right blogs and Opus Dei newsletters for material that suits his image as a hardass religious conservative.
Thank you for summoning me, Mr. Edroso! Though in the future I would prefer that you use the MLA "President-signal," a powerful beam that casts the silhouette of Edward Said over the cityscape of Manhattan (don't ask how. No, really, don't.)I don't know about you, but I feel much improved by Professor B's address. We should have him at the Lyceum more often.
I have determined, on the basis of my thirty years of advanced (and, on occasion, national-security seekrit) literary study, that Mr. Poulos' work is indeed modern, perhaps on the very cusp of the post-modern. To wit, forthwith, and without further ado, my textual evidence:
To the growing discomfort of many, that framework hasn’t come anywhere close to answering even the most basic questions about what women are for — despite pretty much universal recognition across the political spectrum that a civilization of men, for men, and by men is no civilization at all, a monstrously barbaric, bloody, and brutal enterprise. Given the existence as uttered forth in the public works of Puncher and Wattmann of a personal God quaquaquaqua with white beard quaquaquaqua outside time without extension who from the heights of divine apathia a few inherently meaningful implications about what women are for flow naturally from this wise and enduring consensus, but no faction of conservatives or liberals has figured out how to fully grasp, translate, and reconcile them in the context of our political life it is established beyond all doubt what many deny that man in Possy of Testew and Cunard that man in Essy that man in short that man in brief in spite of the strides of alimentation and defecation wastes and pines wastes and pines and concurrently simultaneously ironically, one of the best places to look for a way out of the impasse is the strain of left feminism that insists an inherently unique female “voice” actually exists that’s a claim about nature what is more for reasons unknown in spite of the strides of physical culture the practice of sports such as tennis football running cycling swimming flying floating riding gliding conating camogie skating tennis of all kinds dying flying sports of all sorts autumn summer winter winter tennis of all kinds hockey of all sorts penicillin and succedanea much good would come from a broader recognition that women have a privileged relationship with the natural world. That’s a relationship which must receive its social due — if masculinity in its inherent and imitative varieties (including imitation by quasi-feminized males of quasi-masculinized females!) is not to conquer the world.
Honestly, Roy, I think this pretty much speaks for itself. Modern, postmodern -- it speaks to us all.
If my claim is doomed to be met with an avalanche of contempt, it seems likely that in our lifetimes social conservatism as we know it will be mocked, despised, and shamed right out of existence.Hot diggity damn!
You might be deeply uncomfortable with that even if you do hope to see an America without a social conservative movement.It would cut into my sources of material, but in this ObamaHitler Socialist Republic we all must make sacrifices for the greater good. Plus there'll always be something to mock, despise, and shame; it's not like Jonah Goldberg retired.
In liberal metropolises like Los Angeles, Washington and New York (homes of [Conor] Friedersdorf, [Jennifer] Rubin and this columnist, respectively), a high proportion of conservatives have internalized the assumptions of feminism. One of those assumptions is that female sexual freedom, an essential component of sexual equality, is an unadulterated good. Santorum's statements to the contrary challenge this deeply held view.Similarly, black activists/poverty pimps talk about black people's social freedom as if it were an unadulterated good. But intelligent people can disagree!
Furthermore, contemporary feminism is, as we recently argued, a totalitarian ideology, by which we mean one that tolerates no divergence between the personal and the political. If you are not a feminist, you can enjoy a lifestyle of sexual freedom and also take seriously the idea that sexual freedom is bad for society. If you are a feminist, that is a thoughtcrime.People who have read 1984 but haven't kept up with rightwing theology may wonder how this thoughtcrime is punished. Does Big Feminism run the boardrooms and factory floors, and are offending non-feminists fired from their jobs and forced to live in shanties in Butchtown?
In a simpler time Sigmund Freud struggled to understand what women want. Today the significant battle is over what women are for.I'm going to make a wild guess and predict: On the one side, babies and Jesus, and on the other side, sterility, plus maybe careers, soft drugs, Tumblr, and kittens.
None of our culture warriors are anywhere close to settling the matter. The prevailing answer is the non-answer, a Newt-worthy challenge to the premise that insists the real purpose of women is nothing in particular.I'm liking my odds thus far.
If the conservative movement’s nominal unity is actually belied by a stunning range of right-wing views on the status and purpose of women (and believe me, it is), the left’s alleged philosophical uniformity on the woman question is a complete fabrication — despite the fanatical discipline and norm-enforcement of much of the liberal cultural establishment.I'm not expecting to hear an actual explanation of this "stunning range" of conservative opinions of what women should be -- maybe it has to do with this idiotic CPAC slutwear debate -- but I am eager to hear about "the left's alleged philosophical uniformity."
The purpose of lifting the left’s Potemkin skirts is not to score tits for tats.Uh-huh-huh-huh-huh.
Lurking beneath this procedural non-judgmentalism was a stubbornly conspicuous judgmental end. Roe couldn’t be overturned, the plurality argued, because Americans might think the Supreme Court was bending to public pressure. The court’s solution was to bend to the public reality that millions of women had altered what it meant to be a woman — and what status that meaning conferred — by having or supporting abortions. On the bogus theory that all linear change is progress, the plurality embraced the immoderate view that a descent into barbarism is impossible.I can only extrapolate from these bits of rightwing cuneiform that women's insistence on having abortions is commandeering the meaning of What Women Ought To Be from the people who by right should be deciding it: Male public policy dorks.
Continued on Page 2 >>Oh shit.
Today, the left is increasingly torn between old-school modern liberals who think like O’Connor and new-school postmodern liberals who find their cognitive elders in thrall to a haute-bourgeois conventionality that the deep premises of their own thought seem to strip of authority.OK, I get that the O'Connor team hearts abortions, but what's the postmodern crew about?
So postmodern Cynthia Nixon, who used to be straight but now isn’t, tells The New York Times Sunday Magazine exactly what establishment liberals don’t want to hear when it comes to the sexual politics of women — “you don’t get to define my gayness for me.”Gasp! He's onto us! This was all the liberals at my liberal cocktail parties have been talking about all week -- the crack in the aborto-haute-bourgeois facade represented by Cynthia fucking Nixon.
Nixon was swiftly accused by the left’s cultural policemen of “aiding and abetting bigots and bashers.”I may be old-fashioned, but it seems to me you oughtn't use the plural of "basher" when you're talking about one guy, particularly one who added, "it might be wise if Nixon articulated her feelings in a more thoughtful way that would not lead to LGBT youth stuck in Bible Belt communities ending up in 'ex-gay' boot camps." Call me childish-foolish, but I have a hunch deviation from liberal orthodoxy was not high on his list of concerns.
Reihan SalamOh Jesus Christ.
has hinted that typically left-wing implications of academic theories like “erotic capital,” including mainstreaming prostitution, point in directions quite at odds with the dominant but failing framework of liberal sexual politics.I have seen Poulos in the flesh; I know he gets around. Yet to read this anyone would be tempted to imagine he'd been imprisoned in a faculty lounge since infancy. At union demonstrations against Scott Walker, the brethren would only be talking about "erotic capital" if it were the name of a strip joint in Madison.
To the growing discomfort of many, that framework hasn’t come anywhere close to answering even the most basic questions about what women are for — despite pretty much universal recognition across the political spectrum that a civilization of men, for men, and by men is no civilization at all, a monstrously barbaric, bloody, and brutal enterprise. A few inherently meaningful implications about what women are for flow naturally from this wise and enduring consensus, but no faction of conservatives or liberals has figured out how to fully grasp, translate, and reconcile them in the context of our political life.
Ironically, one of the best places to look for a way out of the impasse is the strain of left feminism that insists an inherently unique female “voice” actually exists. That’s a claim about nature. Much good would come from a broader recognition that women have a privileged relationship with the natural world. That’s a relationship which must receive its social due — if masculinity in its inherent and imitative varieties (including imitation by quasi-feminized males of quasi-masculinized females!) is not to conquer the world.Pardon me, I realize this (thankfully closing) section is long, but I have included it because I have something I wanted to ask about it:
The bishops say that the White House’s proposal for insurance companies to directly pay for and provide contraception to the employees of Catholic universities and hospitals and other religiously affiliated institutions couldn’t work because “the cost of providing those service are born some place.” The Catholic Church opposes most forms of birth control.Guess the new Magisterium says that if anybody pays for contraception, it's a reverse Inquisition.
First, the Left is getting away with saying that religious organizations want to deny coverage for birth control. That is sheer idiocy. As I contended in last weekend’s column, contraceptives and abortifacients are cheap, cheap, cheap in this country. If there were enough months in the year, you could have two second-trimester abortions for less than I spend on pizza — to say nothing of flat-screen TVs, iPods, X-boxes and the scores of other extravagances that the “poor” in America manage to score without government mandates. What we are talking about here is not walling people off from birth-control — condoms will still be free in New York City, the pill will still set you back less than $4 per week, and so on.So, to recap: The proof that the Catholic Church doesn't want to deny birth control coverage is that "poor" people get all the good electronics plus birth control, and Andrew C. McCarthy spends a surprising amount on pizza (perhaps because he has it specially delivered by Gitmo slaves just for the lulz).
See, some people think that Romney’s decision, 20 years ago, to strap his Irish Setter (ensconced in a canine travel crate) to the roof of his station wagon during a family trip was an act of animal cruelty. Was it? Depends on the dog. I can certainly think of some dogs who would be terrified of such a prospect. Others — including pooches I have known who favor riding in the front seat with fully half their body out the open window, jowels aflap — would probably find it exhilarating.Later Foster affects to find carrying a small dog in a protester's papoose inhumane. Maybe his physical universe has different properties than the one the rest of us inhabit.
The animation’s finish includes a half-dozen tiles featuring various ”couples,” including an astronaut and an alien; a dog and a cat; and a frog and a prince, reported the Post's Michael Cavna. "Some early viewers of the Doodle wondered whether the tile featuring two tuxedoed men holding hands would stir any controversy." Says the animator, Michael Lipman: “I think Google was pretty aware of everybody in those final squares and they decided [them] with purpose.”
Gay advocates would likely claim that the cartoon before the end is awfully "heteronormative." Perhaps they'll complain that they don't like to be compared to love between an astronaut and a space alien.I don't know what's sadder here: NewsBuster Graham's eagerness to show us that, oh no, the gayness wasn't sneaked in by stoned animators behind their bosses' backs but approved by the Google Central Committee; or the "gay advocates would likely claim" bit, apparently meant to exempt Graham from charges of bigotry on the grounds that the homosexuals in his head are totally bigoted against something ha ha joke (commonly known as the Goldberg Maneuver).
