“I have always believed that marriage is between one man and one woman. Like the majority of Americans, I support the Defense of Marriage Act and find it appalling that the Obama administration decided not to defend this federal law which was enacted with broad bipartisan support and signed into law by a Democrat president. It’s appalling, but not surprising that the President has flip-flopped on yet another issue from his stated position as a candidate to a seemingly opposite position once he was elected.”
The Quitter is, of course, wrong.
Obama stated his opposition to DOMA on the campaign trail, repeatedly. One would imagine that Sarah Palin would know this, since she ran on the opposing ticket. But then again, we’ve come to understand that Palin’s not too concerned with the word “reality,” unless it is directly followed by the word “show.”
What’s awesome about the crop of yahoos who have taken over the Republican Party is that as we get further into the 2012 campaign, the infighting is going to be absolutely hilarious.
The other day, Rick Santorum suggested that Sarah Palin couldn’t go to CPAC because she’s too busy being a mommy, and also because she’d rather be doing things that involve her making money [rawr!], and now Sarah Palin has replied, and for once, she used words in the correct order!
There are people in this country who think that Sarah Palin is, like, just as important as Martin Luther King, Jr. Actually, the people who think that don’t tend to really like Martin Luther King, Jr., but they know they’ll never win the battle of ideas on that front, so they just try to co-opt his legacy for their own purposes.
While the world focused on the tragic Arizona shootings, another horrific crime took place in New York City. The New York Post reported today that a Portuguese male model tortured and murdered his “sugar daddy” in a Manhattan hotel. For more than an hour, Renato Seabra, 20, beat Carlos Castro, 65, before he castrated the older fashion journalist with a wine corkscrew.
Seabra (pictured) said he murdered the jounralist “to get rid of Castro’s homosexual demons”. The suspect then declared, “I’m not gay anymore!”
Like the Arizona assassin, Jared Loughner, there is no doubt that Renato Seabra is profoundly disturbed. However, that does not absolve those who placed the dangerous idea that homosexuality is attributable to demons in Seabra’s head. Where might he have gotten such a notion?
We can start with the “ex-gay” organization Exodus International, where its President, Alan Chambers, once wrote, “One of the many evils this world has to offer is the sin of homosexuality. Satan, the enemy, is using people to further his agenda to destroy the Kingdom of God and as many souls as he can.”
Chambers also told a crowd of social conservatives, “We have to stand up against an evil agenda. It is an evil agenda and it will take anyone captive that is willing, or that is standing idly by.”
Given this harsh rhetoric, it is understandable that an unbalanced individual distressed about his sexual orientation might resort to violence. After all, Chambers clearly states that homosexuality is evil and then offers a remedy, which is to “stand up” against the perceived evil spirits and not stand “idly by”.
In Jeff Sharlet’s latest book, “C Street: The Fundamentalist Threat to American Democracy”, a Ugandan man justifies supporting the death penalty for gay people because, “They” – the gays – “are trying to end the human race.”
His comments sound strikingly similar to Focus on the Family’s founder James Dobson, who once told The Daily Oklahoman newspaper that same-sex marriage will “destroy the earth.”
This week, Pentecostal preacher Cindy Jacobs warned that the repeal of Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell has caused God’s wrath, including the “potential that there is something that actually happened in the land where a hundred thousand drum fish died and also where these birds just fell out of the air.”
It is irrelevant whether Sebra or Loughner were directly influenced by the “spiritual warfare” of these preachers or the Tea Party’s vitriol. What matters is that the constant demonizing of certain groups of people – whether minorities, liberals, or employees of the federal government – sets the stage for bloody reprisals.
Social conservatives would likely counter that sanguinary acts come from the hands of deranged individuals. Technically, this is true – however public figures generally understand that a small percentage of their audience is unhinged from reality. So, providing fiery rhetoric that can incite mentally ill people to take criminal actions is grossly irresponsible and an abdication of moral leadership.
A perfect example of this disconnect is Rush Limbaugh. Even as he defended right wing extremists today from accusations that their rhetoric led to the Arizona massacre, blogger Jim Burroway provided a photograph of a Limbaugh promotional billboard in Tucson painted with bullet holes and the headline, “Straight Shooter”.
Such violent imagery was in line with Sarah Palin’s infamous graphic targeting vulnerable Democratic legislative districts with crosshairs. As we now know, critically wounded Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ) was one of the legislators in Palin’s gun sights.
Unfortunately, the media tries to draw a moral equivalence between the rhetoric of the left and right, which is inaccurate and unhelpful. This bogus media attempt at “balance” obfuscates the reality that the vast majority of alarming rhetoric comes from Republicans and Tea Party adherents.
It is House Speaker John Boehner and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell who allowed the healthcare bill to be portrayed as a step toward communism. It is former House Majority Leader Dick Armey who helped organize the bitter Town Hall healthcare meetings designed to intimidate legislators. It is the GOP that disrespects the office of the President by acting as though Bill Clinton and Barack Obama lack legitimacy.
My intent is not to say that most Republicans are bigots, nor are I implying that the names I’ve mentioned are directly responsible for causing deaths. However, they have soured the political climate in America by consistently catering to bigots, pandering to religious extremists, serving as apologists for militia kooks, and entertaining the wild fantasies of sick conspiracy theorists. Instead of restoring sanity, they have treated these crackpots as if they were legitimate, even respected, constituencies.
It is time America stops living in denial and considers the possibility that over-the-top bombast may lead to a body count.
Is Sarah Palin supportive of the repeal of DADT? Has her Twitter been hi-jacked? Did she see a tweet with lots of misspelled words and feel an emotional connection, regardless of content? Inquiring minds want to know.
Yesterday, the uber-conservative lesbian radio host Tammy Bruce tweeted this, in a string of comments about DADT repeal:
But this hypocrisy is just truly too much. Enuf already–the more someone complains about the homos the more we should look under their bedabout 15 hours agovia webRetweeted by 95 people
So, what is she saying? Was “Sarah Palin” [you know she doesn't run her own Twitter or Facebook] following Tammy’s conversation and agreeing with her about DADT repeal? Was she just being catty?
Max Read at Gawker points out that it’s a wee bit unprofessional for a politician [but not for a reality teevee star or a professional Facebooker!] to be using the word “homo,” even if she’s retweeting someone else, and then he breaks down the possibilities for us:
She is coming out in support of DADT repeal and gay rights.Bruce thinks that Palin is expressing her point of view on “DADT, treatment of gays & attempts to marginalize us.” Which isn’t out of the question—Palin is not, in the context of her party, rabidly homophobic, and her stance on Don’t Ask Don’t Tell was limited to a sort of feeble “not right now” back in February. So, yes, maybe reality ungulate-shooter Sarah Palin is expressing her solidarity with gay soldier-types via microblogging. What a blow for the forces of freedom and openness!
She didn’t understand the Tweet. It’s not the most professional way to come out, so to speak, in support of DADT repeal, is it? (Though, Jesus, why am I looking for professionalism from this woman of all people? I mean—she would come out for gay rights in a way that would piss off a lot of gay people, wouldn’t she?) It’s possible she—whoever is in charge of the Official Palin Twitter—just, well, didn’t get the joke, or didn’t understand the Tweet at all.
She clicked the wrong button. Maybe! Though the re-Tweet’s been up an awful long time.
She thinks we should be looking for gay people hiding under beds.
I say there is absolutely no telling which one of those options is closest to the truth, because we are dealing with Sarah Palin here.
This happened yesterday, and the tweet remains up, so I’m guessing #3 is out, while #2 and #4 are distinct possibilities.
Well, whatever, I’m sure she’ll be on The Foxes “clarifying” the whole thing in a four-minute run-on sentence sans verbs in the next 24 hours.
This is the most pointless survey, and accompanying article, I have ever seen, at least this week.
NASHVILLE, Tenn. – Protestant pastors overwhelmingly believe that Oprah Winfrey isn’t a Christian, but three-quarters of them say former president George W. Bush is.
Winfrey and Bush, along with Glenn Beck, Barack Obama and Sarah Palin, comprised the list that LifeWay Research presented to Protestant pastors along with the question, “Which, if any, of the following people do you believe are Christians?”
The majority of Americans self-identify as Christian, and Protestant is the largest category of Christian denominations. With that in mind, LifeWay Research set out to examine the beliefs of pastors leading Protestant churches. The national telephone survey took place Oct. 7-14 and included 1,000 interviews.
Winfrey earned the lowest affirmative response, with only 19 percent of pastors saying they believe she is a Christian. The other television personality on the list, Beck, earned the second lowest affirmative response at 27 percent.
Ooh, but Barry O was in third place, just behind Dubya and Snow Snooki!
File this crap in your Useless Information databank — maybe it will come up in trivia one day!
My favorite thing about this video from Sarah Palin’s daughter Bristol is that it actually [accidentally?] sends the message that people should use condoms to protect themselves when they choose to have sex, which is completely sensible, but not really the “pro-life” message they’re trying to send. My other favorite thing about it is that she claims to not get in “situations.” From what I can tell, Palins get in “situations” on a fairly regular basis.
Anyway, enjoy, for your Tuesday giggles!
Oh wait, we are not done yet!
Because Bristol Palin has some homophobic words for Margaret Cho! Excuse me, Bristol’s mother’s Facebook ghostwriter has homophobic words for Margaret Cho. Quoting it in its entirety for hilarious purposes:
I met so many interesting people on Dancing With The Stars. It was an incredible experience that I will cherish the rest of my life. I have explained my own motivations for accepting the invitation to dance, which included the simple fact that I was ready to get out of my comfort zone and try something new and challenging. I thought dancing would also be a great way to exercise–and it was. I thought it would boost my confidence–and it did. Notably absent from this calculus were political considerations. You want to talk politics, talk to my mom. You want to talk rumba, waltz and the beautiful Spanish paso doble, I’m your girl (but if you want to talk to the expert, call Mark).
So with this in mind I was somewhat taken aback to read about me in a blog by my friend and fellow contestant, Margaret Cho. In a post she called “Pistol Whipped” she wrote that “the only reason Bristol was on the show was because Sarah Palin forced her to do it. Sarah supposedly blames Bristol harshly and openly . . . for not winning the election,and so she told Bristol she “owed” it to her to do DWTS . . . .” Let me shamelessly steal from Saturday Night Live: “Really, Margaret? Really?”
I will give my friend credit for creativity, and extra points for getting so many “facts” wrong in so few sentences. Let me be blunt: my mom did not “force” me to go on DWTS. She did not ask me either. The show approached me. I thought about it. I made the decision. After first worrying for me in terms of being exposed to those who hate us for what we believe in, both my mom and my dad became my number one supporters. Anyone who watched the show could tell I performed better, and I felt better about myself, when they were in the audience. I wanted to make them both proud, but politics had nothing to do with it. Loving my parents had everything to do with it.
It saddens me that people would think that my mom would “blame” me for anything that occurred in the 2008 election–much less “harshly” and “openly.” I think that canard (there, I said it again), has been floating around since then also. I will set the record straight, though my mom already did in her bestselling book “Going Rogue”; there were a number of reasons President Obama won in 2008, but the primary reason was that the economy was starting to falter and the majority of voters thought Obama could do a better job than my mom and John McCain. It turns out, two years later, the majority of voters were wrong, but we can talk about that another time. The point is, I seriously doubt anyone who considers herself a student of American politics truly believes I impacted even one vote in that election.
There you have it. Why do I want to set the record straight? Because it is this type of hurtful and false narrative that people promote to make my mom look bad. For 20 years my mom had my back–and for the rest of my life I will have hers.
To my friend Margaret Cho, if you ever have a question, call me girlfriend. Don’t ever rely on “sources” who claim to know me or my family. You will be taken every time. And we need to talk. You say you “don’t agree with the family’s politics at all” but I say, if you understood that commonsense conservative values supports the right of individuals like you, like all of us, to live our lives with less government interference and more independence, you would embrace us faster than KD Lang at an Indigo Girls concert.
P.S. If you want to baby-sit Tripp, I could use a night off.
Bristol Palin
Yeah, because snarky comments denigrating lesbians are really going to go over well with Margaret Cho.
Tbogg has much more on the latest behavior from that classy, classy Palin family.
I’ve said this many times: Sarah Palin will be the GOP nominee in 2012. New York Times columnist Frank Rich agrees with me.
While she only has a 39-percent favorability rating and 67-percent of Americans view her as unqualified to be President (ABC News/Washington Post poll), 80-percent of Republicans like her. This is more than enough to give her the nomination over Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee. Her only true competition would be Jeb Bush, if he decided to run.
On Sunday, The New York Times Magazine had a cover-story on the author, politician, FOX News commentator, and reality TV star. Here are ten things we learned about Sarah Palin from the interview:
She works hard and keeps long hours. Thus, she is not lazy like former President George W. Bush
She is not a total idiot. In the New Hampshire Senate race, Palin endorsed the establishment candidate, Kelly Ayotte, rather than a Tea Bagger favorite who sent her a photograph of himself alongside the carcass of a deer he had just shot. I would have totally thought she would have swooned over the guy who just whacked Bambi.
Palin is kind of a hypocrite. She avoids professional campaign operatives who she considers, “these unprincipled people who are in it for power, money and job titles.” Yet, she has done nothing but cash out, self-promote, and strive for the job title of president since the McCain campaign ended. Pot calling the kettle black?
Palin is disorganized and surrounded by chaos. She does little forward planning and, like Bush, makes decisions from her gut. One of her chief strategists admits that, “there is no uber-strategy”.
The former Alaska governor is paranoid and obsessed with loyalty. She is still wounded by her perceived treatment in her VP run.
Surprisingly, Palin began her career as somewhat moderate, trying to work with Democrats to solve problems. She veered hard right during her foray with McCain on the national stage and has not looked back.
Palin’s liaison to the evangelical community is Pam Pryor. It is worth looking into her background to see what her views are on LGBT people.
Palin may be able to move to the center in a general election. During the McCain campaign, she edited out a disparaging reference to liberals, telling an aide, “We want liberals to vote for us too.” I can’t imagine she will have too much luck with that. But, it does suggest that she might be more flexible politically that we had thought.
Palin had previously believed in the Separation of Church and State. When running for governor of Alaska in in 2006, Palin said, “I do not wear my faith on my sleeve.” She also promised not to let her religious beliefs “bleed into policy.” Now that she is pandering to extremists, she applauds those, “proudly clinging to your guns and religion.”
Palin tends to poll 5 or more points better among men
Fun quotes from the article:
Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-Ct.): “My impression is that she and Todd are the kind of people that I’d like to have as my next door neighbors. That’s a separate question of whether she’s capable of being president.”
Geraldine Ferraro: “…when you get down to substance, it wasn’t there.”
TWO Reader Joshua Paxton via Facebook: “It’s not so bad… can’t we just all vote for her and swap her out for Tina Fey when nobody’s looking?”
UPDATED: The New York Times’ star columnist Frank Rich agrees with me that Sarah Palin may get the GOP presidential nomination in 2012. With 80-percent of Republicans holding a favorable opinion, it seems Sarah Palin is the only person who can stop Sarah Palin. This may lead to a cake-walk for Obama….or maybe it won’t as the economy continues to have problems.
If we get President Palin, how many of you will move to Canada, Europe, South America or elsewhere? I’m opting for Vancouver….
Pissing off the angry gay left is so easy and fun. I honestly never get tired of it.
It is good to know that Barron’s GOProud has lined up so many GOP votes on Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell and other LGBT issues that he has the idle time to needle the left.
The pathetic toadies at GOProud had this to say about Willow Palin using the word ‘faggot’ in a series of loutish FaceBook messages:
“Willow Palin is a 16 year old girl who, like all 16 year olds is going to make mistakes and say things she shouldn’t have. This, however, has nothing to do with Willow Palin or the substance of what she said on Facebook. The ‘slur’ used here is one you could hear on the streets of West Hollywood or Chelsea every day of the week. Apparently, it’s only a ‘homophobic slur’ when it comes from the daughter of a conservative female leader. Make no mistake; this is all about destroying Sarah Palin by any means necessary.
“The angry misogynistic left and their accomplices in the main stream media have been unable to take down Governor Palin – no matter how hard they have tried. Unable to take her down directly they now have decided to try to hurt her by attacking the most important thing in her life – her family. “Any person, gay or straight, who participates in this cheap political smear should be ashamed of themselves”
What GOProud is doing is called “projection”. The simple fact is that they are the ones defending the Palin family based on partisanship. The idea is that if you suck up to your enemies, they will admire you and decide you are worthy of support. Unfortunately, this strategy has been a dismal failure. Gay Republicans have been kissing ass on bended knee as long as I have been in the movement and the party has veered further right. Indeed WAY FAR RIGHT.
GOProud is correct to point out that Willow is only 16 and can make mistakes. But apologists like Tammy Bruce are delusional when they say that Willow’s comments are irrelevant. Sarah Palin is only where she is by proclaiming herself an evangelical protector and promoter of family values. Given this fact, it is fair to see what kind of family she has raised. Even more so because she has degraded and marginalized same-sex families who have clearly raised children with more class.
The sad truth is that GOProud could give a damn about LGBT Equality. They are simply a bunch of self-involved Uncle Mary’s who would sell this movement down the river for a tax cut on a pack of bubble gum. That they are trying to get in the good graces of Sarah Palin — who has nothing good in store for LGBT people — shows how out of touch they truly are.
I’d love to hear from the folks at GOProud and have them explain how elevating Sarah Palin is good for the LGBT movement and for America? Name ONE thing beneficial that she brings to the table.
Oh, yeah, I forgot, she can see Russia from her igloo.
Donny D.: Nick K. wrote,
Next Mr. Blatt will be saying that it’s actually Obama who’s oppressing the LGBT community and not the...
David Fishback: For those who wish to keep moving the ball forward in Montgomery County, please check this out:
http://metrodcpflag.wordpress.com/2012/02/08/its-about-more-than-just-fliers/
David Fishback, Advocacy Chair
Metro...
Bonnie: I'm not crazy about the ad. I find it a bit juvenile and insulting to porn actors. But...
PhillipP: She looks and sounds like she just tumbled out of a meth trailer in a trailer park....
Paterfamilias: Shmuel: Point is, once a gonif always a gonif....
Word salad and factual problems; it’s another day in Sarah Palin’s life!
Seabra (pictured)
A perfect example of this disconnect is Rush Limbaugh. Even as he defended right wing extremists today from accusations that their rhetoric led to the Arizona massacre, blogger 
