A Dog’s Gonna Bark

It seems to me that, when the overarching theme of someone’s legislative career is that women are lying bitches who need to be kept under tight control, and poor children are so problematic that they need to be starved if they don’t act right, and that gay people are such a menace that gay children need to be humiliated and treated like freaks, a dude has deep issues.

Not deep enough to send up a lot of red flags among his colleagues, but it should have.

So, I’m interested to see what happens when he’s now openly calling said colleagues stupid.

But I wonder what kind of politician does that? You get bills passed by building coalitions. How do you build coalitions with people you’ve called stupid?

My opinion is that he enjoys making people, at the least and to put it mildly, uncomfortable. If he’s got a common enemy with you, then fine, I guess you can just not notice his motivations. But when there’s no common enemy left? Then it’s you he’s gunning for. It’s just his way. It appears to feel good to him.

And that, my friends, after years of observing him, is what scares the shit out of me about him. He knows what he does hurts people and he does it anyway, because it feels good to him. Only now we know it’s not enough for him to go after abstract “women” or “poor children” or “gay people.” He’s willing to be shitty to, say, Glen Casada or his other colleagues.

Should we call that an escalation?

Wait. Is Will Pinkston about to go all Will Pinkston on Beth Harwell?

I have many feelings–contradictory feelings–about this. I like Beth Harwell and I have deeply negative feelings about Will Pinkston, and yet, I’m kind of rooting for someone to point his cage in her direction and throw open the gate.

Quick! Megan Barry, have another Christmas party!

Deny, Delete, Destroy

I feel a bit bad for Governor Haslam, as I’m sure that he didn’t intend for his “Running the state more like a business” strategy to mean that the state would be run more like Enron an hour before the Feds moved in. But here we are, learning that, when the going gets tough, the tough get deleting.

First DCS just left out whole swaths of information that was supposed to be public. And now Tennessee’s Virtual Academy, which was supposed to save us from the horrors of public school-dom, just deleted low grades so that it wasn’t immediately obvious how much they’re not doing what they’ve promised to do.

I have a theory that part of what’s going on in this state right now is that we’re living with an unfortunate error in judgement by Republicans. Rather than assume that most Democrats had been operating in good faith, most union leaders, most public workers–you know, most everyone who’s been on their boogeyman list over the years–they really did come to believe that those people were bad and that therefore the things they were doing were bad. And, as a result, whatever their buddies wanted to do that had been thwarted under the decades of Democratic rule must be good ideas unjustly denied.

Now, we’re getting their buddies put into positions of power–say at DCS–and their buddies’ “good” ideas enacted–like the Tennessee Virtual Academy. And their ways of doing things suck, much to the unpleasant surprise of Republicans. After all, they’re the good guys. How can good guys have bad ideas?

I think we’re going to continue to see this kind of shit until Republicans come to realize that even people ostensibly on their side can be doing the wrong thing.

The question then becomes whether Haslam is willing to concede that point and start coming down hard on this crap.

If We’re Not like the Soviet Union, Then What Are We Like?

Friend-of-blog, Mike Turner says, “It’s not the Soviet Union. We’re not a dictatorship. We let our people make their own decisions,” when speaking about Democrats who still will not fucking get their noses out of my vagina.

Mike, I love you, but I’m about three seconds away from setting up a reminder on my calendar so that I can send Charlie Curtiss a vagina status update once a day. Today’s would read “Thursday: My vagina is pissed the fuck off at Charlie Curtiss.” I’m going to guess that’s how tomorrow’s would read, too. Probably going to read that way for the foreseeable future.

So, Mike, you ask him whether he’d prefer to get my vagina status updates via text or email. And we’ll just time how long it will take for it to dawn on him that what goes on in my vagina is none of his business.

Meanwhile, having to report my vagina status to some politician sure does feel pretty fucking Soviet to me.

Representative Jeremy Faison is a Jackass

This:

The sponsors say they’re merely legalizing what is already a pervasive practice.

“Let’s be honest. There’s not a parking lot in Tennessee today that doesn’t have a gun inside the car,” Faison says.

Parking lots with weapons in glove boxes include the grounds of the state capitol. Faison admits to keeping firearms in his vehicle while in Nashville.

“I’m not ashamed of it. I’ll tell anybody that,” he says. “I’ll tell the highway patrol. Listen, that’s just part of life.”

Faison, however, would still be breaking the law even if his legislation passes, at least as written now. While the Cocke County representative says he’s “carried a gun all my life.” He says he’s never sent in the paperwork for his handgun permit.

“One day I’ll probably get caught if I don’t get a permit, and I’ll get in trouble,” he says.

He tells the media that he illegally keeps a gun in his trunk while at the state capitol, a gun for which he does not have a permit. This is a man who feels free to make laws that I have to follow. Fuck him. Under this logic, why isn’t weed legal in Tennessee? Hell, you’re a million times more likely to need weed to cope with driving in downtown Nashville than you ever are to need a gun.

Here’s the thing. There’s just an enormous unbridgeable gap between people who think they need a gun every single place they go because shit could break out at any moment and people who don’t. As much as I appreciate that people who carry would like non-gun people to acknowledge that there are safety issues, I think non-gun people would like some acknowledgement that, if you’re a 36 year old white guy who works in a building that already has armed guards, you’re not actually in that much danger from life. Which means you certainly have time–plenty of safe time–between the moment you decide you want a gun in your car and the moment you should actually put a gun in your car to get the proper permit.

I Could Watch This All Day

I have two words for Campfield now that he’s annoyed Ramsey, “Mae Beavers.”

Cultural Imperialism

We’re publishing this book at work that is about the Oportunidades program in Mexico, which is one of the programs Campfield claims to have based his starve-the-kids legislation on. I haven’t read the book yet, since it doesn’t exist, but I’m curious about the author’s claims that this program has strong ties to the eugenics movement in Mexico.

I tried to do some research on Campfield’s bill, to see if there were other bills like it at state level, because I have a hard time believing he wrote it. I think he’s advancing it on some group’s behalf. And I’m curious about that group. One of the things that’s obvious from the discussion surrounding it–even the discussions Campfield claims to be having on his blog–is how closely this bill is tied to the idea that there is some set of people who are “right” and other groups of people that have to be either abused or bribed into acting right, because they, intrinsically, are just wrong acting. The teachers, for instance, that Campfield claims have been calling him up in support of the bill because poor people just aren’t good parents.

You see how insidious it is–this idea that you have the standard for what good parenting is and people who fail to achieve it deserve to suffer. Especially because there’s no reporting if these are the parents of children doing poorly or if these parents are hurrying off to work or what. Always the assumption that, since they aren’t like the viewer, they are up to something wrong.

That push to make people act like you, even if–especially if–how they’re doing is working for them, is a wrong against them, is attempting to strip them of something that is recognizably them. You can see how that feeds into a lot of nasty shit.

In Which I Soften to Governor Baby

After my day in WTF? land–and can I just say that I felt so bad because I had coffee with one of my favorite people on the planet, someone it would have been completely inappropriate to tell about what had just happened, and I couldn’t pay a lick of attention to him. I was completely faking being interested while my brain echoed with, “My god! Why were you going to wipe that lump of earwax and plastic on my desk?! In front of me? Why god, why?!?!?!?!?!”s from earlier in the day. Not that god was going to do that, but… ugh… anyway.–I caught the end of Haslam’s State of the State.

Eh, it didn’t suck. His digs at the federal government are annoying and hilarious. But, in general, he said the things I would expect a non-evil Republican to say. And he seemed willing to put some skin in the game and ask the legislature for at least judicial reform to his liking (and against the liking of many of them). I think it’s going to be interesting to watch him position himself for the next election. Last night, he did some moving-to-the-center bits that made me laugh because it means that he thinks the Tea Party is over. Those folks aren’t a cohesive enough unit anymore to need his pandering.

The thing that’s got to be at the back of his mind–and watch for this because I bet it’s at the back of Beth Harwell’s as well–is that this state already has a large, disgruntled voting block with no state wide candidates that represent them. It’s not that hard to stand in front of the state and say, “Listen, you already know who I am. You already know all the ways my political beliefs differ from yours, so I am never going to unpleasantly surprise you. And look how I’ve managed to reign in the worst impulses of my party.” And it’s not that hard to believe that Democrats would respond to that.

Which, of course, then makes it more likely that Democrats will try to position themselves similarly–which is unfortunate–because you know they’ll think voters are responding positively to Haslam and Harwell’s positions and not to the promise of being who they claim to be and reigning in the far right. So, that’s going to suck and be hilarious.

But look for some reaching out to Democratic voters’ concerns. Haslam and Harwell want those votes.

Some assholes can always find a gal willing to put up with them, huh?

My Love for Will Pinkston Grows

Keeping in mind that I love Will Pinkston like you love a Burmese python slithering through the Everglades, munching on small deer and scaring the shit out of the tourists. I love him with a mixture of “Holy fuck? What the hell is he doing?! Why is he doing that?!” and “Please don’t make me get too close to that.”

The Tennessean today has a great and bizarre story about Pinkston getting in some bizarre fight with everyone at Megan Berry’s house.

Things escalated, with each man now blaming the other. Pinkston called the incident a “heated conversation where I cleared the air, and then Bill Freeman left.”

The gist of the conversation included personal insults and expletives. At one point Barry entered the fray to instill calm, and eventually Freeman and his wife decided to leave. At that point, an angry Pinkston turned his focus to outgoing party chairman Chip Forrester. After another few minutes of intense conversation, Forrester said he and his girlfriend also left the party.

Freeman said he didn’t recognize Pinkston when the 40-year-old school board member approached him about his son’s firing. Freeman said his son left the state Finance and Administration Office on his own accord and was not fired. Freeman said Pinkston crossed a line.

“I felt he was a bully,” said Freeman. “The fact is there’s really nothing he could bully me over.”

Pinkston said he approached Freeman for a frank, but polite, conversation about the rumors regarding his son’s former employment with the state.

“It was quite the holiday moment,” Pinkston said. “Freeman has been telling people from all over town that I had his son fired from state government.” Pinkston said he played no role in the matter.

Forrester said he and his girlfriend left the party after Pinkston seemed “out of control.” Several partygoers declined to comment, but acknowledged the incident created a scene.

And then! Then he admits, “he expressed his lingering frustration with Forrester and Freeman for the direction they’ve taken the state party.” Gosh, yes, if only they’d taken the party in the direction some mean hothead thought it should go! What bad things could come of that?! And this is the nice, improved Pinkston. This is Pinkston trying to get along with folks now that he’s on the school board. This is Mr. “It’s for me to find ways to work with people” Pinkston.

I mean, it makes you wonder if Bredesen just kept him in a cage and threw raw steaks at him before or what. Because if this is “trying to be nice,” his regular old self must just be all piss and vinegar.

(The thing that’s most hilarious about this is that the Republicans have redistricted us into a party whose most reliable districts are urban and black. And the white guys all bemoan how the party needs to spend more attention on “outside of Nashville.” Where they hate Democrats. It’s important to realize that these dustups are happening–and more publicly–not because either of these groups of warring white guys has a good idea for what direction to take the party, but because the era of the white dude Democratic party is over. Our parade doesn’t look that way anymore. But at this second, there’s not someone who looks more like the people who actually vote Democratic–black people, women, gay people, young people who live in cities, etc.–who can get the support of the Executive Committee and step up to be Grand Marshall of said parade. So, we have these two factions fighting over who gets to lead a bunch of people who aren’t going to concede parade leadership to them.

My bet is that what happens is this–the TNDP continues  to flounder. They continue to have amusing public shows of ass to the state. And Democratic politicians start to just bypass them as much as possible to get done what can be done with a smaller apparatus.

To switch metaphors, maybe it’s more like two drunks fighting over who gets to drive you home. It’s not unreasonable to shrug your shoulders and hitch a ride with someone sober. Look for Democratic politicians to just get their own rides.)

Random Thoughts

1. Here’s the problem Rocketown has: these are their defenders in the comments. This is now the problem all people who aren’t comfortable around gay people have: you can either get more comfortable, decide that being uncomfortable isn’t worth fighting over, or these are your allies. It becomes a double-problem when your reason for being uncomfortable around homosexuality is that you’re Christian. Because, surely, if you are Christian and you find yourself on the side of the most hateful people in an argument, the ones wanting any excuse to keep hurting people, it must give you great pause. Even when Jesus admonished sinners, he never took a stance that would have left them publicly more vulnerable to harm. That the “Christian” stance is “leave those gay folks out in the cold” is a problem and its the kind of problem that Christians are going to have to wrestle with for themselves. Because, right now, a lot of people–many of whom are also Christian–are protecting people from Christians. Protecting from. If that doesn’t bother you as a Christian, I don’t even know what to say to you.

2. The Roy Herron thing. I think it just basically means that the troubles continue for the Democratic Party. Folks are rightly worried by a guy aligned too closely to Chip. But that the viable response you have to that is a guy too closely aligned to the bad old “Let’s just pretend we’re Republicans Lite” days is also not good. I mean, what does Roy Herron think a Democrat is? On the third hand, it may be that the Democratic Party does end up running some Republican Lites, because they figure out that they can’t win on their primary ballots, but have a shot at winning in the general. (I don’t think this is going to be true for a few more years, though. Republicans need to get a bit more codified.)

3. $900,000 for nothing? Lord almighty. As much as it pains me, you can’t say that voters were wrong to toss Democrats out on their ears. The level of lazy, genial corruption is just staggering.

4. But that kind of lazy, genial corruption is human nature. And a problem Republicans are going to have is keeping their members from indulging in it. If Tennessee threw Democrats out solely because it’s become a more conservative state, then Republican corruption won’t matter. But if Tennessee at any level threw Republicans out because they thought they were going to get more moral people, then Republicans succumbing to the temptations of office is a huge problem for them. And one they should not forget.

Jim Cooper Embarrasses the Whole City

2010: ‘ “There is a lot of hardship in Nashville,” said Congressman Jim Cooper. “A lot of streets, homes, a lot of businesses that are still hurting. We got to make sure everybody gets every penny of help.” ‘

2013: He’s the only Democrat to vote against disaster aid for people who need it.

Someone needs to primary that fucker.

For the Record

Mike Byrd says:

Last October local SouthComm blogger Betsy Phillips introduced new SouthComm reporter Andrea Zelinski in an interesting way. Yes, full disclosure counsels that Phillips’ wrote some “homer” PR fluff on behalf of the news corp she blogs for. So, take the cheers with a grain of salt and then verify for yourselves. And yes, it is remarkable that Phillips dropped a double-edged sword of praise for Zelinski qua woman (saying males “don’t really know a lot about the reality of women’s lives” even as she also argued that women’s issues are not different than issues, like jobs, that concern males). Yes, it can be argued that Phillips takes away with one hand what she gave with the other.

Let’s just be clear. I don’t know what Byrd thinks I should have more fully disclosed. I wrote that piece because I wanted to and it’s what I believe. No one asked me to write it. Even when people at SouthComm send ideas my way, they never tell me what opinion to have about those things or how “fluffy” to make those things. But that doesn’t really matter, because I wrote that post on my own.

I’m also not sure how one should “take the cheers with a grain of salt and then verify for yourselves.” Verify what? That I wrote the piece? I did. That I meant what I said when I wrote it. Well, world, if my word then wasn’t good enough, I’m not sure how my word now is supposed to be, but here you go: I meant what I said when I wrote it.

But I would like to thank Byrd for illustrating my point so clearly. In the real world, a woman can be excited about another woman getting a more prominent job writing about politics because she is genuinely excited about seeing more women’s voices in prominent positions when talking about politics. That’s my agenda–support for more women’s voices talking about issues that affect us and support for men who don’t treat women as some strange species that plays by different rules and who don’t write dismissively about us.

In Byrd’s world, if a woman writes positively about another woman, it’s evidence of some secret agenda dictated to her by her SouthComm superiors. In the reality of women’s lives, we don’t all automatically hate each other unless some man tells us to fake it for the general public.

Hell, if all Zelinski did was write about Rhee without using the term “tough cookie” to apply to a grown-up woman making (or attempting to make) national decisions about our educational system, it would be an important change in tone from how adult women making national public policy get talked about here on the internet.

If that makes me a co-conspirator in some grand scheme to… I don’t know what… then consider me a co-conspirator.

Now What?

I’m finding the stories about the new direction of the Republican party to be interesting. Not in a snarky, schadenfreude way way–though there’s a little of that, too–but the problem of what to do when you think you’re doing exactly the right thing and you believe that things are going your way only to wake up one morning and realize that you’ve been completely wrong is an interesting one, and scary.

And this isn’t an easy problem to solve. In the Washington Post, there’s a story of Beth Cox from Hendersonville (please ignore the fact that the reporter claims to be reporting from Central Tennessee, which is not a place in our universe).

“I will be okay,” she told one caller. “I just don’t think we will be okay.”

Here in the heart of Red America, Cox and many others spent last week grieving not only for themselves and their candidate but also for a country they now believe has gone wildly off track. The days after Barack Obama’s reelection gave birth to a saying in Central Tennessee: Once was a slip, but twice is a sign.

If, as Obama likes to say, the country has decided to “move forward,” it has also decided to move further away from the values and beliefs of a state where Romney won 60 percent of the vote, a county where he won 70 percent, and a town where he won nearly 80.

This is a good illustration of a problem the New York Times identified for the Republican Party. Southern Republicans don’t think the Republican party fucked up. They think their position is the right, moral, and just one, but that the country is abandoning it in a terrifying fashion.

From the Times piece:

Many Southern Republicans said that the lessons of Tuesday could be overlearned, and that the message was not the problem — it was the messengers, or at least the messaging.

“I don’t think for a second Republicans ought to change what we believe and what we stand for,” said Andy Taggart, a lawyer in Madison, Miss., and a former executive director of the state Republican Party. “I do think we could do a more effective job of communicating that.”

Nearly everyone admits that the party will have to broaden its demographic appeal. But for state-level politics across much of the region, there is no reason to be in a hurry. The racial and partisan divide is nearly absolute in the Deep South, with a Democratic Party that is almost entirely black and a Republican Party that is almost entirely white. That electoral math favors the Republicans — for now.

You know, there’s a way in which I sympathize with Taggart here. I mean, I feel like I get up every weekday and say things at Pith that seem ludicrous and contrary to reality to the majority of commenters (if not readers) and yet, I feel pretty certain that I am, for the most part, right. On the other hand, it’s kind of mind-boggling that someone thinks there’s some way to dress up “white men retain control of everything; Evangelical Christianity is the state religion; and everything we decide is immoral is against the law,” that would make everyone in the country happy to go along with it. On the other hand, when you have that kind of surety, when you can’t begin to imagine the validity of thinking about these things in other ways, it seems plausible that, if this message is attractive to you, there must be some way to say it that would be convincing to others.

And yet, the truth of the matter seems to be sinking in to some. Ron Ramsey, for instance, is talking about the necessity of roping Hispanics in to voting Republican. He thinks this can be solved by immigration reform of some sort. But we’ll see. The true test of whether Hispanics in Tennessee begin to vote Republican in large numbers will be if Republicans are willing to run Hispanic candidates.

That will be interesting to see.

Yes, We Can Can

I stayed up until MSNBC called it for Obama. Then I woke the Butcher up to tell him the good guys had won and then went to bed myself. I’m obviously glad and relieved Obama won. Living in a red state, it’s nice to feel like there’s some Democratic national weight to be brought in to protect me, if need be.

Maybe that makes me a moocher. I think, rather, that makes me a member of a group Republicans like to steamroll.

Speaking of said steamroll attempt, I think every idiot who had an opinion on rape rape he could not wait to share with the nation lost. Some in decidedly Republican parts of their states. I am all for bipartisan ass-kicking of these sorts of jerks. If I had to guess, my guess is that it wasn’t just that they had retrograde attitudes about rape. It was the frightening realization that they had these retrograde attitudes about rape because they are grown men with no clue how women’s bodies work. And yet, they still thought they should be in charge of them.

Marriage equality passed in every state it was on the ballot. This is just amazing. I think we all knew the corner was coming up. But to turn it so abruptly–to go from four years ago when Obama was all “Oh, I don’t know” and there was all that Prop 8 nonsense–to having gay people talked about in such awesome ways at the Democratic convention this year and now this? To have our first openly lesbian congressperson? Like I said, I knew it was coming. It was still stunning to see the day arrive so soon.

The third thing that makes me happy is that I read that young voters–18-24–outnumbered voters over 65. I think, frankly, this probably accounts for a lot of the stuff above this. Young people were paying attention and knew the issues that were important to them and, I bet, communicated that to their friends and family. I’ve already seen some kvetching about how young people don’t “really” vote so we shouldn’t somehow treat this as a real trend. But listen. This is two elections in a row with huge youth turnouts. Some of these voters, this was their second time voting in a presidential election.

The 24 year olds will be 28 next time. They won’t be young voters, you know? They will be practiced, habitual voters.

This is great news for our country. Young people should feel invested in voting. It’s the country they’re going to live in we’re shaping here, after all.

Anyway, good and interesting things.

Scott DesJarlais Keeps Making His Ex-Wife’s Case

I don’t know Scott DesJarlais’s ex-wife, but the more he is in the public eye, the more plausible her stories of abuse become. It’s not just the “cajoling his mistress into having an abortion while trying to get out of taking her” stuff. Now his campaign is threatening to call the police on the Chattanooga Times-Free Press. This is not a man who’s used to being in positions where he can’t be controlling.

If you want people to not believe that you abused your ex-wife, you can’t really go around forcing your mistress to have an abortion, trying to gaslight voters over it, and then going thermonuclear on anyone who doesn’t go along with your made-up version of events.

At the least, it proves that you have and will deploy the skill set used by abusers when necessary. At the most, it proves that your ex’s accusations are probably true because it seems to be the only skill-set you have.

And what’s funny is that that cartoon is pretty yucky. DesJarlais had the moral high-ground here. If he’d come out and said “Wow, you know, for the media to continue to bring up and now make jokes about what was the darkest time in my life is pretty vile.” who could have disagreed with him?

But he’s just not the kind of guy who is willing to be vulnerable, even when it is obviously the stronger position. For him, it’s just continually striking out, over and over.

Like I said, the more he does, the more I believe his ex-wife.

I Never Think Romney is Doing as Bad as Others Think

I watched a little bit of the debate last night and I was glad to see Obama back on his game. But I just don’t know if it’s because we have Haslam here or what, but I never think that Romney comes off as bad as other liberals think he does. I mean, I disagree with him. But there’s some way in which I feel like we run around all “And now people will see what a slime-ball he is!” But he doesn’t really come across as a slime-ball, in general.

He comes across like a boss. And to me, that’s what it comes down to. If your feelings about bosses are that they are, in general, competent people who’ve worked hard to get where they are, and who maybe are sometimes a little out of touch with the struggles of people who work hard but haven’t gotten that far, but who are, in general, well-meaning, I think that’s how Romney mostly comes across.

If you feel like bosses think they’re better than you, what, with their fancy educations and all, and that they will say anything to get ahead and that they don’t understand what your life is like, then I imagine that’s exactly how Romney comes across.

How big the disconnect between his concerns and yours appears and how much that bothers you has less, I think, to do with him and more to do with how you feel about guys like him you already know.

There was one moment I am most curious about the implications of. Was I misunderstanding or did he claim he was the pastor of a church for some years? There aren’t Mormon pastors. They don’t use that word. Now, I don’t know if it grates the way someone calling themselves a Lutheran priest might grate–which is to say, it sounds wrong, but you can imagine an audience in front of which a Lutheran pastor might describe herself that way in order to bridge a gap in understanding if the people she was talking to only had experience with priests–or if it grates the way someone calling themselves a Baptist priest might grate–which is to say, there’s no fucking Baptist minister in these here United States whose calling himself a priest and, if one did, his congregation would be creeped out and pissed.

But I did wonder what Mormons made of that.

The women in a binder thing was hilarious. But I feel like this blogger says all there is to say about it, “I’m not at all worried that Romney organizes his women in a giant binder. It’s probably just a Mormon thing, because you know how they are about genealogy.” (The very next part of the paragraph I’m quoting is even funnier, but I didn’t want to steal two punchlines.)

The most troubling thing was this idea that we could reduce gun violence through marriage. First, violent crimes in this country are way, way down. Second, most of the parents of the famous spree killers folks are fretting about were married.

Neither a vagina nor a wedding ring a magic. I can’t make a baby into a killer with the power of my unmarried vagina and a little piece of gold doesn’t prevent it.

I know it’s a big change, but it is very important that people be able to choose who they marry and to not be pressured into marrying someone terrible just because a child is involved. It is better for everyone–including the child–that this change has been made.

Anyway, I thought Obama did great. I thought Romney did less than great, but not so bad that he frightened off likely Romney voters and I think it’s not necessarily going to be an easy victory for Obama. That frightens me, but I think that’s the truth.

I Guess Being a Dude is More Complicated than It Looks

Scott DesJarlais now says, “During this conversation I was incredibly frustrated. As such, I used rather strong rhetoric in hopes that it would lead to her admitting the truth — that there was no pregnancy.”

Now, see, to me this–

“You told me you’d have an abortion, and now we’re getting too far along without one,” DesJarlais tells the woman at one point in the call while negotiating with her over whether he’ll reveal her identity to his wife. They then discuss whether he will accompany her to a procedure to end the sort of life the congressman now describes as “sacred.”

“You told me you would have time to go with me and everything,” the woman complains.

“I said, if I could, I would, didn’t I? And I will try,” DesJarlais says. “If I can [find] time, you’re saying you still will?”

“Yeah,” the woman answers.

–sounds like a man who is trying to pressure a woman into having an abortion while weaseling out of taking her to do it. After all, if she’s not pregnant, it’s going to be pretty strange when they end up at the clinic in Atlanta, you know? That place she’s trying to get him to go with her?

To my way of thinking–and again, I’m not a dude, so maybe it works differently–if you don’t believe a woman is pregnant with your child when she says she is, you say something like “I don’t believe you’re pregnant. Let’s go get an ultrasound. Right now.” You don’t whine about wishing she would go to the abortion clinic without you.

I mean, is DesJarlais arguing here that his strategy was to be such a big, annoying baby about the whole thing that she’d finally just throw up her hands and say “Whatever, you know, I’m not even really pregnant. Never call me again.”?

I think the truth is much more likely that he is exactly the man his ex-wife has accused him of being–an abuser who is used to being able to control the women in his life through threats against them or against himself. And this “I was engaged in Level 3 Trickery, where I was only pretending to love abortions when they’re convenient to me, but was really just trying to get this woman I fucked to admit she wasn’t pregnant without just accusing her of not being pregnant” is his attempt to use the same manipulative tactics he’s used on the women in his life on the voters.

He’d better hope this woman never comes forward to tell her side of things.

The Debate

I thought Romney had an excellent night as it was happening. But after seeing online reactions and what stuck with people, it might not have been a good night in retrospect. As I said on Twitter, I noticed that most women on Facebook and Twitter who follow politics and most men in general thought that Romney “won.” But women who don’t follow politics, for whom this was their first big introduction to Romney? They were, during the debate, using words like “aggressive,” “rude,” and “boring.” And I noticed that many of them either stopped talking about the debate or said they were changing the channel after the Big Bird fiasco.

That’s not a good first impression. And if Obama spends the next couple of weeks running ads that just feature clips of “Romney said this. [something] But during the debate, he said this [the opposite].” it seems like there will be a receptive audience for that.

So, I don’t know. I thought it was obvious that Romney did great, but I’m used to arrogant politicians. I don’t think anything of it. And so I’m not sure how to read the number of people who don’t pay that close of attention to politics who turned in and were like “Oh my god, who is this asshole blowhard?”

It’s not the impression I got, but I feel like it’s important to realize that’s an impression some women had.

The Wide-Eyed “Good Lord, No.”

The dumbass running against Jim Cooper posted a picture of a gun on his Facebook page and the words, “Many people in Tennessee keep asking me about my opinion on Second Amendment rights. Apparently Tennesseans are part of that crazy crowd that Obama says ‘cling to (their) religion and guns.’ Well, then I must be part of that crazy crowd. Here is something that I usually have with me. Welcome to Tennessee Mr. Obama.”

And then, when he was asked if that was an implicit threat against Obama, he got to play all wide-eyed and innocent and said “Good Lord, no.”

Oh, really? Then why didn’t he post a picture of a Bible?

I truly hate this bullshit, that a person can do something that is obviously a threat and then, just because he makes the most puny bullshit effort to pretend that it’s not a threat, we’re all supposed to act like we believe his account of what his intentions were. Or at least we’re supposed to give him the benefit of the doubt.

I honestly hope Cooper wipes his ass with this jerk.

Bad for Republicans, Bad for America

I am a liberal and a life-long Democrat. I think if you read me, you know that pretty clearly. And yet, liberals have some tendencies that, when left unchecked, are not good. Just take a gander at the Alyssa Douglas fiasco. That desire to hold a whole community responsible for the actions of an idiot teenager? Not good.

In order for our country to function, we need functioning political parties, possibly more than two, but let’s start with two. If there’s one thing that sitting here in Tennessee has shown me–in a land where there is no functioning Democratic party–it’s that we need the push and pull provided by two healthy parties. People are best served by political tussle and compromise, as ugly as that process can be.

So, frankly, I’m deeply concerned about the state of the national Republicans. I mean, there’s a lot of good analysis about Romney’s 47% remarks already. I’m not going to rehash them. But that’s not something the leader of a party that is doing okay says. And yet, who would have been a better candidate? Romney was literally their best choice and this is him! A man who argues to his audience of rich white people that his life would have been easier if his grandparents had actually been Mexican.

Obviously, there’s just a level of disconnect from reality that would be terrible for this reality-based country if it ever got in charge. And yet, you know, it’s really going to be on Republicans to change this. In a way, I feel like the Republicans are our drunk friends. As long as they are drinking, they’re incoherent with rage, operating under the assumption that they’re wittier and smoother with the sexy-times and more well-liked than they actually are. Plus, they’re wrecking things and endangering everyone.

We really need them to sober up and yet, they want to avoid the hang-over at all costs, so they just keep drinking.

I mean, people, we actually had political conventions this year where the Democrats were better about the military and the needs of the troops. Just let that sink in. The Republicans have squandered that.

I wish I could find this funny, but, like I said, it’s bad for the country. I don’t know what Republican change is going to look like, but I’m ready for it.

Alyssa Douglas

Here’s the thing. Yes, she should get a shit-scaring-out-of-her visit from the Secret Service. And if there are legal repercussions she has to face, I will laugh and laugh and laugh. What she tweeted was stupid and evil.

And what they’re doing at Daily Kos is stupid and evil, too. How many times do we have to watch internet shit-storms get completely out of hand before we learn that they’re a terrible idea? I will never forget, nor forgive, how Jesus’ General cost Britney her job because he felt like playing judge, jury, and jailer and hadn’t bothered to discover whether there was any surrounding context. He just brought down his unholy shit-storm and there was no defense against it. There were just too many people who were too angry for him to call it off once it sank in to him how he’d fucked up.

But one of the things that struck me about that incident–and it strikes me about this one–is how easy it is to build a mob against a girl. and how, once the crowd gets revved up about going against a girl, whatever they want to do to her is fine. Whatever happens to her, it’s somehow her own fault. Harass her, harass her family, harass her school, harass her workplace, whatever you want! It’s all cool and fine, because… well… because bitches have to be kept in line.

There will be no defense she can give, no sorry that is enough for her to get her life back. And the truth is that all most folks know is that one thing they saw, nothing about the context. Not that I think the Douglas thing has context, but I DON’T KNOW. And neither do most of us.

I loved Obama’s speech last night. I found it deeply, deeply moving, especially when he quoted Lincoln. And the funny thing is that I think the Daily Kos writer really gets at what was so powerful about it:

But The Choice is also about something far weightier, something far longer-term than our economic prosperity or the American Comeback or of freedoms to love and marry who you want or pursue whatever dreams you have regardless of your background or your fortunes.  It’s something far outside the boundaries of this election alone: it’s a choice between the kind of world in which hope is codified into our laws and values as a nation, and one in which the seeds of division, exclusion, and anger triumph over the greater good—wherein the fabric of society is allowed to erode at the vestigial hands of hate.

I disagree with the part in bold there. I mean, that’s almost hilariously stupid. But ignore it for a second. The point I want to make is that this Kos writer can ask if we want to live in a nation where anger triumphs over the greater good and then turn around and unleash an angry internet horde on everyone who even knows this girl.

So, really, even though it’s framed as “anger” vs. “greater good,” what it means in practice is still that same old change vs. exchange problem. These folks at Kos–as evidenced by their own actions against Douglas–do not want actual change–where you would see a tweet like that, report it to the proper authorities, monitor the authorities to make sure it’s been properly dealt it, and then not indulge in your misogynistic internet blood lust–but want exchange–where liberals get to be terrifyingly angry and folks like Douglas get to be afraid for a while.

I want no part of that.

Bill, Who is Fixing to

I’ve really been enjoying the DNC, though I haven’t been writing about it because, honestly, it’s nice just to watch and enjoy people I mostly agree with talking about a direction I’d like the country to take. I like hearing people being openly happy for their gay Marine friends and those gay Marine friends’ boyfriends. I like a crowd full of people who look like America to me. And I like how excited and happy everyone seems. It’s just nice.

So, analyzing the shit out of that isn’t really interesting to me and attempting to understand it isn’t really necessary, so what is there to say?

The Butcher and I were riveted to Bill Clinton’s speech, which was, of course, terrific, but also, of course, about ten minutes longer than you think you can bear. It was at that point, ten minutes out, when the Butcher said, “You know there’s someone running around asking people in the audience if they can play an instrument, because they’re trying to assemble a band that can play that dude off the stage.”

And then we both laughed. But we still watched right to the end.

One Last Thing about Eastwood

So, I read over at Talking Points Memo that, “Romney advisers so trusted Mr. Eastwood, 82, that unlike with other speakers, they said they did not conduct rehearsals or insist on a script or communicate guidelines for the style or format of his remarks.”

All I can think is that this is the most bizarre part of it. Eastwood is a libertarian, not in “Ayn Rand is my Bible” sense, but in the “I want to be left alone to do my thing and I want to leave you alone to do your thing, and if government can operate quietly in the background, without me having to notice, that’d be great.”

And the Republican convention had already had some issues with libertarians earlier in the week. So, you’d think it’d be fresh on their minds that there’s a curmudgeonly contingent who’s not all happiness about the state of the Party.

The fact that the Romney campaign could look at Clint Eastwood and say “‘Oh, he’s like us. He’ll do what’s best for us.” shows such bizarre thinking that it gravely concerns me. Part of politics is knowing who your friends are. Between this speech and Christie’s, I really wonder if Romney gets that.

Eastwood

I said this a little on Twitter last night, but here’s the thing about Eastwood and Rice at the Convention that’s important to not overlook. They were not about playing to the base. Nor were they really on stage, it didn’t seem to me, to appeal to potential voters.

I think they were a message to the base about what a viable future of the Republican party has to look like. You can be racist, but it has to be a la Archie Bunker, not “throw peanuts at a black person.” You can be an enormous cheerleader for war/war criminal, but it has to be based on policy not on religion. Plus, Rice and Eastwood are both pro-choice and pro-gay rights. And represent a kind of multicultural comfort with the nation as it is, not a nostalgia for how we imagine it was sixty years ago.

Someone was using old, familiar faces to make an argument for the fresh direction the Party has to take it if wants to survive.

That’s why I can’t really dog on Eastwood’s chair thing. I thought it was weird, but, on the other hand, when was the last time we saw a Republican modeling actual discussion with the President? That’s kind of refreshing. It might not have worked quite right, and it, I don’t think, caused anyone to decide they weren’t going to vote for Obama.

But I don’t think that was the point. I think it was a painful point delivered to the Republicans sitting there about the direction the Party needs to take, camouflaged as a piece of performance art about the direction voters need to take.