"History is a nightmare from which I'm trying to awake." - James Joyce

Monday, August 19, 2013

Idiotocrates of the Day - Sandy Rios


Recent comment by ultra-right wing conservative talk show host, Sandy Rio, comes in on a 10 on the douchebag scale for ominously hateful rhetoric (hat-tip Towleroad). Thought you should know that there are still proto-fascist morons like this out there:

"I would not want to be in the shoes of any of the left right now. I would not want to be in Barack Obama’s shoes. I would not want to be in the shoes of homosexual activists. I say that with humility and with fear for them because God will even the score, he will sort things out, he will be God and he will not be mocked. Whereas they think they are getting away with breaking all kinds of moral laws and mocking everyone in the process, they just don’t know God, they don’t know who they are up against and we do. And that should bring out some mercy in us because I wouldn’t want to be—what did that old evangelist say: ‘it’s a fearful thing to fall into the hands of an angry God.’"



Wednesday, June 26, 2013

Marriage


Hannah Arendt, 1959

Idiotocrates of the Day: Justice Scalia


What? Him again? Yes, he just keeps on being himself: grandiose, obtuse, reactionary, and, here, self-pitying because he can't get his way. As Paul Waldman writes at "The American Prospect":

Scalia is outraged at the majority's contention that the core purpose of DOMA was to discriminate against gay people, and this, he asserts, means that they're calling everyone who supports it a monster. "To defend traditional marriage is not to condemn, demean, or humiliate those who would prefer other arrangements, any more than to defend the Constitution of the United States is to condemn, demean, or humiliate other constitutions. To hurl such accusations so casually demeans this institution," he writes.

His overreach is breathtaking: he surely ignores what happened in Congress at the time of DOMA's passage, the intentions behind the bill, and the atmosphere of America at the time. Because the Court has acknowledged that, and declared singling out a group of people for special animus and discrimination is unconstitutional, it is somehow being massively unfair to those who took that action then and still support it. Thus, Scalia enunciates the "victim" mentality which animates so much of the right-wing nowadays: because we cannot get our way, and discriminate at will and force others to bend to our demands, we are being discriminated against! Boo-hoo...poor us! This is resentment raised to the level of sociopathy. 

Waldman concludes:

After all, this is a guy who, in a decision delivered just yesterday, helped gut the Voting Rights Act, one of the most important pieces of legislation ever passed by Congress and one that was reauthorized in 2006 by votes of 390-33 in the House and 98-0 in the Senate, yet spends two-thirds of this very dissent arguing that the Supreme Court is a bunch of black-robed tyrants when they invalidate a law passed by Congress. In other words, despite his carefully cultivated reputation as a principled "originalist," the only principle that guides Antonin Scalia is "what he can get away with." For him, it's the outcome that matters. The justification comes after. Is that true of the Court's liberals as well? Maybe. But it's a little rich to make that charge when your own hypocrisy is on such obvious display.

Scalia must be the least self-aware person on the planet when he declares that this decision "demeans this court."


Monday, June 24, 2013

Beautiful Man of the Day


Oscar Wilde on Art

Pat Condell - Singling Out a Billion Muslims


Military Sexual Assault Mostly Male-on-Male

Who woulda thunk it? Well, reasonable people:

Slate reports:

In its latest report on sexual assault, the Pentagon estimated that 26,000 service members experienced unwanted sexual contact in 2012, up from 19,000 in 2010. Of those cases, the Pentagon says, 53 percent involved attacks on men, mostly by other men.

Part of the reason for this is that women are still a small minority in the military, representing only about 15 percent of service members. But what this astonishing number demonstrates is the truth of what feminists have been saying about sexual assault all along: It is not caused by an overabundance of sexual desire, but is an act of violence perpetrated by people who want to hurt and humiliate the victim, using sex as a weapon.

And lest you think this male-on-male crime is the result of the repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell,” Dao shows otherwise. As one male victim told Dao, “The people who perpetrated these crimes on me identify as heterosexual males,” which is frequently true of male-on-male rape.

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