Barefoot And Pregnant

http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2014/3/2/105317/4020

Booman rightly notes that the center of Douthat's position is his definition of "traditional marriage".  This is what needs to be unpacked.

Booman writes:

Throughout his column he refers to the "older definition of marriage," but he doesn't mean by that what you would think. For me, the older definition of marriage was that it is necessarily between a man and a woman, not that it was all about procreation. I've known too many childless couples or exclusively adoptive parents for me to ever have had Douthat's view of marriage. For me, marriage is primarily about commitment. Two people take a vow involving certain promises. If they then procreate, that's their choice.

The centrality of gender difference in Douthat's "traditional marriage" is for procreation.  People get married in the "Catholic" manner of being fruitful and multiplying.  And there is tradition and some scriptural support for that, I guess.

But there are also 6 billion people on the planet. Maybe enough of the multiplying, people!

The problem is the overlap with other positions, especially on the "religious freedom" front.  The other big issue involving "religious freedom" is the requirement to provide contraceptive coverage on the health care exchanges.

The same people who are freaking out over same sex marriage are the same people who seem to think that birth control pills are "slut pills".  These are also people who run around yelling "Freedom" like they were Mel Gibson at the end of Braveheart.

One would think the right's intersection with libertarianism on guns and taxes would extend to marriage, but it doesn't, and for the same reason they oppose birth control mandates.

They see women as vessels for child birth.

Seem extreme?  Consider this: a GOP legislator just referred to pregnant women as the "host" of the fetus.  OK, that might be "nutpicking", but the overwhelming opposition to abortion rights is founded on the principle that women are not morally able to make a difficult decision on whether or not to carry the pregnancy to term.  The right wing position is simply to remove that decision from them.  The fetus is more important than the woman.

Similarly, women who want to have sex without pregnancy, should pay for their own contraception.

And marriage can't be marriage if there is no conception involved.

This "tradition" of women's roles within a marriage is indeed an old one.  Women are urged in the Bible to submit to their husbands.  Hindu women were expected to climb on their husband's funeral pyre, her life literally ending with his.

I am certain that the theocons - like Douthat - would reject this interpretation.  They are defending a certain privileged position of motherhood.

But when you dig down to bedrock, you get the fact that conservatives seem to want every ejaculation to get birthday cake.

Douthat admits something profound, even if I'm not sure he understands what he's admitting.

"Now, apparently, the official line is that you bigots don't get to negotiate anymore."

Well... yeah.  You don't get to base marriage on gestation.  You don't get to deny services to LGBT Americans.  You don't get to deny women the right to control their reproductive choices.

Women aren't vessels for babies.  Marriage is about who you love, not how your plumbing fits together.

I'm ambivalent about a Hillary Clinton presidency.  But I imagine it will rip the cover of the subtext within the GOP, just like Obama exposed the racism at its heart.

It's Getting Real

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/thoughts-on-the-ukraine-situation

I think Josh Marshall makes all the relevant points here.  There is little that the US can do to force the Russians to do anything.  But this is also not the same as the Georgian war of four years ago.  There, Georgia was at least as much to blame as Russia.  Here, the issue is really Russia's invasion of territory that is indisputably Ukrainian.

I think Marshall also makes a very important point that you could miss skimming the news.  It's unlikely that Putin has a game plan here.  He is simply letting Ukraine know that A) they better be careful about crossing him and B) he is not willing to lose Russian access and bases in Crimea.  He doesn't have a master plan.  He's reacting to the fall of Yanukovych and what that might mean for his immediate plans to draw Ukraine into his EU counterpart.

It's also worth remembering that Russia is profoundly weaker than the Soviet Union.  Yes, it is still a nuclear power, but it's military is much less impressive than it was in the Cold War.  The troops are underpaid, under-trained and under-equipped. And what's more, Russia is much more integrated into the world economy than you might think.  While their control of Europe's natural gas supply is a huge problem, the fact is that Russians have assets around the world now that can be seized. Sanctions will hurt Russia in a way that they couldn't hurt the Soviet Union.

Obama has always been prudent and slow moving in these situations.  It is his best quality as a foreign policy president.  Events in Ukraine may require a reaction, but it doesn't have to be today.  We simply don't know what tomorrow might bring.

Their Reality Outruns Our Outrage

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/02/28/one-hand-takes-while-the-other-gives-the-finger/

This is the pathology of the modern GOP.  A complete lack of self-awareness, coupled with a sense of entitlement, augmented by a sense that everyone else is feeling entitled to things that they shouldn't have.  And by everyone else, I mean blah people.

I'm nominally a Christian, but I've never believed in hell.

I'm willing to reconsider.

Yeah, This Is Good

http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2014/2/27/203813/844

I am looking forward to what Obama will do with his post-Presidency.  My guess is he will do more than make bad paintings of himself in the shower.

I Knew Her When...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3RaAidZReQU&feature=youtu.be

Great Googly Moogly...

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/27/us/politics/despite-rifts-gop-has-election-edge-poll-finds.html?hp&_r=0

This is the great conundrum of American politics.  And it comes down to those feckless "Independents" and "undecided voters."

When you ask the electorate, "Would you like the person you vote for to agree with you on most of the issues or the candidate with the best chance of winning?" not surprisingly, 70% of Americans want someone who agrees with them on the issues.

And when you ask about immigration reform, raising the minimum wage and increasing taxes on the wealthy, you get majority support for those positions.

Which is why the GOP currently has a slight edge in voter preference.  Wait, what?

A lot of this is the "six year itch" as people have Obama fatigue.

But there is a lot of just plain stupid out there, too.

People support the provisions of the Affordable Care Act, but hate "Obamacare".  People support the provisions of immigration reform, but hate "amnesty".  The derp is strong among the American people.

The last four years have shown a complete and utter abdication of the responsibilities of governing from the GOP.  They have embraced a legislative nihilism that is equal parts cynicism and bug eyed craziness.

And yet, they will likely get rewarded at the polls because Democratic voters are too stupid to show up at the polls during Winter Olympics years and Independent voters are too enamored by their faux-savvy "both sides do it" bullshit.

We get the government we deserve, I guess.

Oscars As They Should Be

Yeah, that will do.

Excuse Me, I Have To Go Stick My Head In An Oven

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/daily-show-fox-slavery-lincoln

Some dipshit over at Faux News made the audacious claim that Abraham Lincoln started the Civil War over slavery, when he could have just bought them.

For decades after 1776, there were many Southerners who advocated a form of compensated emancipation combined with repatriation to Africa.  Usually these were Southern men of education and means who owned a lot of slaves but understood the moral implications of it.  Men like James Madison, for instance.

Once Northerners and free blacks started advocating for the end of slavery, about the same time Nat Turner made his "statement" against the peculiar institution, the South went from the "necessary evil" argument to the "positive good" argument.  They began to defend slavery and demand its unfettered expansion.

By the time Kansas was given the ability to choose whether or not to have slavery, Southerners and a few Northerners were willing to kill and die over the issue.

But it was the South who seceded.  It was the South who opened fire on Ft. Sumter.  And, as Jon Stewart notes, Lincoln did actively try the "buy and free" plan on the border states.  Lincoln had been an advocate of compensation and repatriation for decades before the Civil War.

Ultimately, the Civil War was about the spread of slavery into the West.  It was about whether Southern plans to annex places like Cuba should be patronized to extend the number of slave states in the Union.  This was not in dispute at the time.

And, you know, slavery was a great moral stain on this country.

Which makes Andrew Napolitano's screed on Fox a telling indictment of the wingnut understanding of our own history.  They have created not just an alternate news universe on Fox, but through the various right wing publishers and TV channels, they have created an alternative history.

Now, as I tell my students, history is not fact, it is interpretation.

But what is distressing is how people like Napolitano have to change the facts to support their interpretation.

But then that IS the modus operandi at Fox on all things.

BitCoin

Would could have predicted that a stateless, intrinsically valueless currency would turn out to be disaster?

Great Tribute

http://www.esquire.com/blogs/news/ramis-and-his-quiet-genius?click=feed

Harold Ramis was involved with so many of my favorite movies, including my all time favorite comedy, Groundhog Day.

The piece above nails what made him so essential to so many funny movies.

He spoke at my film school, and he was just as generous and kind as you would have guessed he would be.

He was a gentle man among anarchists.

Bullet Dodged

Last year, several of my students (almost all male) had prominent Romney stickers on their laptops.

I guess they don't know how lucky they are that their guy lost.

Walking Dead Deadblog

OK, time to pick this back up again...

Excited for the addition of Sargent Abe Ford.  But really was that die job necessary?  Or did he simply tint his hair with the guts of dead Walkers?

The kid who plays Carl is good, but he doesn't do mirth.  Glad we moved on from that.

The Rick,Carl, Michonne troika certainly lucked into a nice neighborhood.

Is there a more helpless feeling than hiding under the bed?  (That was a well done scene. Not seeing their face.)

Laughing Carl?  Soft Michonne?  WTF is up with this?

The two consistently excellent things in this show are the makeup effects and Bear McCreary's music.

How did that group (the intruders) possibly survive as long as they did being such colossal a-holes?

Uh, no, he doesn't...  Eugene is a liar.  You know why?  Mullet.

The multiple storylines are good.  Keeps the action flowing.

Loving the guy playing Eugene.  Creepier than a herd of Walkers.

Abe looks like the new "Moral Center".  That sort of messianic visionary the series needs.

Ah... Sanctuary.  The next great story point.

These Folks Deserve Better Than Putin

http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/olympics-fourth-place-medal/russia-pokes-fun-at-olympic-ring-mishap-during-closing-ceremony-163753360.html

The Sister Souljah Moment

Back in 1992, when the Democratic party was seen as being held hostage to blacks, lesbian-feminists, tree huggers and socialists, Bill Clinton had what was called the Sister Souljah moment, when he called out a rapper for her violent statements in response to the Rodney King riots.  This allowed Clinton to distance himself from the Jesse Jackson wing of the Democratic party.

Clinton won, because the economy was in the toilet, Ross Perot was on the ballot and Republicans had held the White House for six years.  But it certainly helped to reduce what was seen as the extremism of the '70s Left within the Democratic Caucus.

Such "game changers" as this are almost entirely BS narratives foisted on political analysis by journalists who are trying to replace fundamentals with story points, to turn the chaos of real life into a tidy novel.

However, it isn't completely ridiculous.

And when a party is in the grips of extremist political interest groups, they have to work back to the center.  Sometimes you can re-define the center, but that takes years and it helps to actually control power for some time during that time.

So you have to tack center to win national election.

Which makes this somewhat interesting.  Jeff Flake is a conservative Senator from a Red state.  But he isn't 126 years old like the Senior Senator and the Governor.

When Arizona and Kansas start pressing laws to allow discrimination against LGBT people, I honestly don't give a damn.   These laws are going to be ruled unconstitutional by any federal judge who isn't ridiculous.  "Please proceed, Governor."

These are bad laws that won't be on the books for very long.

But they make the GOP look like bigots.  So, please proceed.  Bills like this insure that the GOP remains old, white, male and evangelical.

For a younger Republican like Flake, standing up against LGBT discrimination at its more naked is a smart play.

Of course, in Arizona he could get a primary from someone who wants to put LGBT people in prison.  And lose.

Ukraine

It seems like once a year a country decides to fall apart into warring factions.

I don't know why that is, though obviously every country is different.

But I do know every country that seems to fall apart has a democracy deficit.

So despite the asshatery on display in Missabamasaw, I don't think we'll be breaking up soon.