I am so tired of religious conservatives calling atheists immoral

Here’s Stephen Moore, a rather prominent conservative chosen by Trump to serve on the Federal Reserve board, a fellow who has strong opinions on the importance of traditional marriage, husband as the breadwinner, wife as the mother and homemaker.

Moore has lamented the steady decline in US marriage numbers, asserting in an October 2014 article that “intact families” were important for the economy and criticising “those who cheer divorce as a form of women’s liberation”.

Concluding the article, he called for a “personal and national commitment to sturdy families” and strong parenting as part of a “culture of virtue” aimed at saving the American economy from what he called a path of decline.

Moore’s 2018 book Trumponomics, co-authored with the veteran economist Arthur Laffer, said many Americans felt “a sense of not being loved (tied to divorce and family breakup)” and argued this was one reason people should be required to work to receive money from government assistance programs.

He has frequently derided the views of the American left on cultural issues, claiming in a 2015 article published by the Christian Broadcasting Network that to liberals “if you support traditional marriage, you are a fascist”.

You would think a guy like that would be a dedicated husband and father, wouldn’t you? Setting an example and all that.

Nope.

The 2010 divorce filing from Moore’s wife said he had destroyed their marriage through adultery, after creating two accounts on the dating website Match.com and beginning an affair with a woman early in 2010.

Moore is said to have discussed the affair “openly and tastelessly” with his then wife, and to have said at one point: “I have two women, and what’s really bad is when they fight over you.” He also left evidence of the relationship around the home, the filing said.

Allison Moore said in the filing she had been a “good and dutiful wife” and quit her job to raise the couple’s three children, only to suffer infidelity and poor treatment from her husband.

There’s more. He has remarkable history of bad ideas.

“The women tennis pros don’t really want equal pay for equal work. They want equal pay for inferior work,” Moore wrote. He went on to claim that the real “injustice” was that female pros were paid, while men playing college tennis who could “beat them handily” were not.

“I’m a radical on this; I’d get rid of a lot of these child labor laws. I want people starting to work at 11, 12,” he said during the debate.

“The biggest problem I see in the economy over the last 25 years is what has happened to male earnings — for black males and white males, as well. They’ve been declining, and that is, I think, a big problem,” he said in a CNBC interview.

“I want everybody’s wages to rise, of course, but you know, people are talking about women’s earnings — they’ve risen,” Moore continued. “The problem, actually, has been the steady decline in male earnings, and I think we should pay attention to that, because I think that has very negative consequences for the economy and for society.”

“Colleges are places for rabble-rousing. For men to lose their boyhood innocence. To do stupid things. To stay out way too late drinking. To chase skirts. (At the University of Illinois, we used to say that the best thing about Sunday nights was sleeping alone.),” Moore wrote. “It’s all a time-tested rite of passage into adulthood. And the women seemed to survive just fine. If they were so oppressed and offended by drunken, lustful frat boys, why is it that on Friday nights they showed up in droves in tight skirts to the keg parties?”

“The NCAA has been touting this as example of how progressive they are. I see it as an obscenity,” Moore wrote. “Is there no area in life where men can take vacation from women? What’s next? Women invited to bachelor parties? Women in combat? (Oh yeah, they’ve done that already.)”

Moore’s solution? “No more women refs, no more women announcers, no more women beer venders, no women anything.” He did offer one caveat: “Women are permitted to participate, if and only if, they look like (sportscaster) Bonnie Bernstein. The fact that Bonnie knows nothing about basketball is entirely irrelevant.”

I think it’s kind of obvious that he has a deep contempt for women, and that his ideal of traditional roles for women is simply chattel slavery.

Wow, Jacob Wohl is really working hard to be the poster boy for Dunning-Krueger

Wohl is just full of ambitious plans, most of them revolving around presenting himself as a Machiavellian genius, despite being the dumbest man on the internet. One of his recent schemes was a company, the Arlington Center for Political Intelligence (ACPI), which would make money by manipulating political betting pools.

Bumbling conservative provocateur Jacob Wohl pitched investors this spring on a scheme to use fraudulent news stories to manipulate political betting markets, according to a fundraising document obtained by The Daily Beast.

The document indicates that Wohl attempted to raise $1 million to fund the Arlington Center for Political Intelligence, which he claimed would “make shit up” to profit from bets on political races and would suppress Democratic turnout in 2020.

“Make shit up” is a direct quote from his plea. It’s also the centerpiece of his cunning plan — all he had to do was lie, lie, lie, and nobody would ever notice his reputation as a liar.

“With a superior handle on American cultural nuances ACPI will be able to have a devastating impact on Democrat candidates,” the document reads.

The group also planned to create “high-impact political publicity stunts” to affect political races. The pitch praises two recent headline-grabbing conservative efforts—the GoFundMe campaign to fund the border wall and anti-Muslim activist Laura Loomer handcuffing herself to Twitter’s New York office—as activities to emulate.

“ACPI plans to execute similar sophisticated and impactful stunts as frequently as possible in order to influence political outcomes in the favor of our backers during the 2020 election cycle,” the pitch reads.

Wohl really needs to crack open a dictionary. Words he needs to learn the definition of are: intelligence, nuance, sophisticated. Everything he does is the opposite of those.

Also in his catalog of stupid schemes, he decided that Pete Buttigieg was a major danger for Trump, so his goal was to kneecap him.

That scenario jibes with how the Buttigieg smear circulated on Monday. After the sexual assault allegation appeared in a vague Medium post under Kelly’s name, the unverified claim was quickly trumpeted by a number of right-wing blogs, including Big League Politics, The Gateway Pundit, and InfoWars. From there, it circulated widely on conservative Twitter accounts and other blogs for hours until the accuser denied the allegations and The Daily Beast revealed that Wohl and Burkman were accused of soliciting men to make up stories about the candidate.

A source told The Daily Beast that Wohl and Burkman said the goal of that scheme was to take down the Democrat who poses a threat to President Donald Trump’s re-election. The apparent aim of ACPI’s plan was profit.

Fool. His pointless ploy was to no avail, because as we all know, you only have to wait for a Democrat to open their mouth before they’ll kneecap themselves. As Mayor Pete promptly did, saying something idiotic about vaccinations.

These exemptions include medical exemptions in all cases (as in cases where it is unsafe for the individual to get vaccinated), and personal/religious exemptions if states can maintain local herd immunity and there is no public health crisis.

Vaccinations are to prevent that public health crisis — complacency and obliging faith-based rejection of good medicine, as Buttigieg is advocating, is what leads to them. His statement is simply political pandering to both sides.

I married a Russian bot

I tend to be loud and angry in my political views, I freely admit. My wife, on the other hand, is more subtle and open to exploring other political perspectives, but she is also deeply concerned about the direction the country is taking. She’s been more active in local political organizing than I am (no one wants me in their campaigns, for some reason), and she’s also been quietly working in online communities. She’s far more interested in, and better at, healing the rifts and dispelling the nastiness, so, for instance, she’s been posting in some of the online fora in a positive way. She’s an advocate for Bernie Sanders, but she only says good things about other candidates and does not engage in trying to tear down Warren or even Biden.

I brought her her breakfast this morning, and she was shocked. She could not believe it. She had just been banned from Democratic Underground. She just ignored my lovely breakfast. I think her feelings were hurt.

I couldn’t believe it either. My breakfast was healthy and delicious, and Mary is a gentle vision of sweetness and light online, kind of the opposite of me. I guess DU is committed to fractiousness, though. Either that or they were unable to believe someone who wasn’t cutthroat and vicious was human.

I should have noticed that she said something strange like “doobryuh ootruh” when I brought her plate in, though. She also seems to be drinking a lot of machine oil lately. Should I worry?

Not subtle at all

Here’s a fascinating 18th century political cartoon:

There’s a short essay to go with it.

One could provoke debate about the sexualized imagery throughout the cartoon, the purpose of a racialized America, the ways in which imagery of class, race, and gender intersect, and the place of the “civilized” European versus the “natural” American in the rhetoric of the American Revolution. Does the artist believe Britain holds the moral right; does the cartoon display America’s winning ideology? Which should win, or who shall?

One could. I’m just overwhelmed with the freight of associations here.

Jacob Wohl does it again

Fresh from his expedition to the savage wilderness of Minneapolis, rested from the harrowing experience of faking death threats from gay Hispanic diversity coordinators, Jacob Wohl launched himself fearlessly into his new mission, to defeat the candidacy of Democratic hopeful Pete Buttigieg by hook or crook.

Far-right activists Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman helped coordinate a fake campaign against Democratic presidential hopeful Pete Buttigieg through a Medium post on Monday that accused the mayor of sexual assault.

The two men used fake social media accounts for a 19-year-old Ferris State University student named Hunter Kelly on Monday without his knowledge or consent to publish a vague post accusing the presidential hopeful of assault this past February.

It’s too bad that Don Knotts died, because he’d be the natural choice to play Wohl as a bumbling villain in the Disneyfied live-action movie of this caper. Their patsy, Kelly Hunter, has since released a statement disavowing the whole mess.

I WAS NOT SEXUALLY ASSAULTED

It’s important for everyone to know that I was not sexually assaulted and would never falsely accuse anyone.

To keep it brief for now- I was approached by a political figure to come to DC to discuss political situations from the standpoint of a gay Republican. When I arrived they discussed Peter Buttigieg and started talking about how they would be working a campaign against him.

I went to bed and woke up to a fake Twitter @RealHunterKelly and an article that I in no way endorsed or wrote.

I have since left and am working on a formal statement to give to everyone including the Buttigieg family.

Thank you for standing behind me and knowing that I would never accept or allow any of this.

You can’t be too bright to be a gay Republican, but even worse is to be the kind of liar who manufactures transparently phony hit pieces like Wohl and Burkman.

Burkman would be played by Tim Conway.

Health care and colleges — does Canada have to do everything better than us?

I’m thinking it would be to our benefit to secede and join the more liberal country to our north. They really seem to have it together. They also demonstrate that elitism and exclusivity do not make for a better university.

The University of Toronto, rated one of the 25 best institutions of higher education in the world, has around 71,000 undergraduate students and an acceptance rate of 69 per cent.

Higher education is also cheaper in Canada. The average annual undergraduate tuition is $6,838, compared to $9,700 for state public colleges in the U.S. and around $35,000 for private colleges.

Sign me up. I also hear we get poutine and Tim Horton’s when we enlist. I’m willing to learn a little French.

Contemptible liar

Our president. Our shame.

The baby is born, the mother meets with the doctor. They take care of the baby. They wrap the baby beautifully. And then the doctor and mother determine whether or not they will execute the baby

His imaginary scenario is false. Anyone who executes a baby after it is born healthy is a murderer, and would be treated as one. This is a man throwing red meat to a mob of anti-abortion fanatics, feeding their fantasies and giving them justification for violence.

He has been lying nonstop for his entire life, and yet the NY Times still refuses to recognize that simple fact, instead referring to that claim as “an inaccurate refrain”.

Our president is an out-of-control demagogue who whips up his followers into a frenzy with lies. He must be impeached. Now.

Why does Prometheus Books even bother

I occasionally get books sent to me in hopes of a review, I guess, and more often than not they don’t interest me. But I check anyway! This was probably the fastest nope yet; I flipped it over, and the first blurb on the back cover was from…Michael Shermer. On that grounds alone, I’d throw it away, but his blurb was hilarious.

[The] best book I’ve read on [this topic].

The brackets aren’t mine! They actually had to butcher his quote that much to get something they could use!

Then, further down, the Washington Monthly blurbs,

…explaining the now well-documented psychological, biological, and genetic differences between liberals and conservatives with reference to human evolution…

That’s from Chris Mooney, who ought to know better.

Well. All I can say is that my genetics won’t allow me to read this crap, and right now I’m praying for a speciation event.

You have got to be kidding me, George Takei

He wants Democrats to take a pledge.

No fucking way. Do we want a good, strong candidate who will represent our values and who has been thoroughly vetted for skeletons in their closet? Then rip and rend and tear now, winnow the field, and get the nominee who has the greatest chance of surviving the ripping and rending and tearing that the Republicans will do. Takei’s idea is the stupidest way to dribble our way to defeat. In the absence of criticism, we’ll just get a boring party apparatchik who represents a passionless status quo.

We’ll get this asshole.

Right now the insufferable conservative media is calling Biden the “grown-up” in the sprawling chaos of the Democratic candidates, unaware of the insult they’re dealing to all the others, some of whom actually have substantive experience and policy plans. He’s not the grown-up — he’s the corporate politician who’d continue the Democrat party’s slide into irrelevant centrism. The Democrats would be dead right now if the Republicans hadn’t made an incompetent malignant orange pustule their flag carrier for their party, making the most miserably awful human being their candidate. You don’t respond to a weak opponent by fielding a doddering glad-hander who is barely better than a Republican, you put up your best. Biden ain’t it.

This is our time to rage and let the Democratic party know who will motivate us to go to the polls. Stick the knife into bad candidates before they get the official nomination rather than waiting for the Republicans to do it for us. And jeez, but Biden is on a par with Howard Schulz. Move on, please.

That said, if the party fools were to give us something as lackluster as a Biden/Schulz ticket, I’ll still drag myself reluctantly to the polls in 2020 and mark the ballot for them. The question is, will the more apathetic, Democrat-leaning electorate do likewise? I don’t think so.

Will this be the end of Carl Benjamin?

The basis of Carl Benjamin’s popularity on YouTube has always been his racism, sexism, outright misogyny, homophobia, antisemitism, and just plain nastiness to his ‘enemies’ on the left. It’s not as if he has any intellectual, artistic, or even thoughtful contribution to make — he’s nothing but a fart from the middle-class id. He has recently tried to make something more of himself (not much more, though) by running for the European Parliament under the banner of UKIP. Maybe he thought that since one crass, anti-intellectual, outspoken white nationalist had succeeded in becoming president of the US, the door was open for other dumbass thugs to rush in, too.

He’s run into an obstacle, though. The media have been exposing his YouTube career to the light. Buzzfeed ran a rather revolting review of his greatest hits which reveals why he hates “trigger warnings” so much, since any Sargon of Akkad retrospective has to be preceded by explaining that you’re going to see a lot of unpleasant racist, sexist filth.

Here’s a fine example of the Carl Benjamin style. He made a response video to another video that was protesting hate speech. This, of course, simply prompts him to vomit up hate speech all over the place.

Another male actor then says to the camera, “It’s not acceptable to call me a kike.” The video pauses and Benjamin says, “I totally agree, absolutely unacceptable, how dare you.”

Anti-Semitic images are then overlayed on the screen, showing several different versions of hook-nosed caricatures.

The video ends on Potter, who has Down syndrome, asking not to be called a “retard”. Alongside her, Lynch says the r-word is like any other minority slur.

“Well then good job trivialising minority slurs, you nigger, spic, fag, chink, kike, retard,” Benjamin said, again pausing the video. “Who the fuck do you think you are? Do you think you’re my mum or something?”

I’m hoping that Carl Benjamin has just hit a brick wall that will kill his political career dead, but I don’t know — Trump could say “grab ’em by the pussy” and he got elected. Abusing children with Down syndrome is just another step in conservative devolution.

By the way, the other guy UKIP recruited to represent them goes by the moniker “Count Dankula”, and his sole claim to fame is that he trained his dog to do Nazi salutes. That’s it. That is all he has accomplished. This is the intellectual heavy artillery of the party, I guess.