Minnesota Republicans are not nice

We try. We really try. But no matter how progressive the state might be, we’re still afflicted with horrible, demented people who run for office. Fortunately, there’s a tell: they always join the Republican party.

Look, here’s Michele Bachmann (she’s still around?). She thinks because a few immigrants committed crimes once upon a time, the entire recent influx of foreigners — including the children! — are all an invading horde of rapists.

“Foreign nationals that have come into the United States are between 300- to 500,000,” Bachmann told an incredulous Crossfire co-host Van Jones. “My heart is broken for a female college student in Minnesota who was raped, murdered and mutilated by a foreign national who came into our country. We had a school bus full of kids in Minnesota — four children were killed on that school bus because an illegal alien driving a van went into that schoolbus.”

“There are lines that can’t be crossed here,” Jones responded. “I’m sorry, congresswoman. Are you gonna scapegoat children for the crime of this despicable person?”

Uh-oh. Did you know the guy who kidnapped the Lindbergh baby was Bruno Richard Hauptmann, a German? All you Germans — out of my state. Robert Hanson was a serial killer in the 1980s. Look at that name. Scandinavian. All you Swedes, Norwegians, and Danes…out. The Lakota…you can stay. Clearly all those European immigrants were a bad influence.

But Bachmann is a fading star, soon to be out of Minnesota politics altogether and persisting only to haunt the media, where a dumbass conservative is always welcome. Are there any others we should watch out for?

Meet the Freys.

Bob Frey is running for state office. His big issue is sodomy, and he has a theory, which is his, about what causes AIDS.

“It’s more about sodomy than about pigeonholing a lifestyle,” he explained. “When you have egg and sperm that meet in conception, there’s an enzyme in the front that burns through the egg. The enzyme burns through so the DNA can enter the egg.”

But Frey said that it was a different story when the “sperm is deposited anally” because “it’s the enzyme that causes the immune system to fail.”

“That’s why the term is AIDS – acquired immunodeficiency syndrome,” he opined.

That’s an amazingly distorted version of the acrosome reaction. Yes, the sperm head releases enzymes like hyaluronidase to digest away matrix that surrounds the egg, and also triggers changes in the oocyte membrane to facilitate fusion at the entry point and to also inhibit fusion elsewhere. This has nothing at all to do with AIDS. For one thing, the reaction is specific; it requires recognition of receptors on the egg surface that are not present in generic epithelial cells. For another, we know how the HIV particles (which are not sperm) enter immune system cells and it doesn’t involve a mechanism anything like the acrosome reaction. We also know quite obviously that sperm aren’t the cells involved in transmission.

Mr Frey is an idiot.

Also, if his sperm is transmitting anything, it seems to be idiocy. His son Mike also has the same silly idea.

Last year, Frey’s son, Mike, used the exact same theory while testifying against a same-sex marriage before the Minnesota House Civil Law Committee.

And earlier this year, Frey distributed a DVD that claimed an anti-bully bill was part of a plot to infect the general population with AIDS through sodomy.

I’m trying to puzzle out how anti-bullying legislation would spread AIDS. Because…if bullies aren’t beating kids up, they’re … having …anal sex … with them?

I’m also reminded that years ago, when Cheri Yecke was on her crusade to get creationism into Minnesota public schools, Bob Frey was a particularly loony witness at state hearings, who would show up with a giant plastic bone, claiming he had proof that there were giants in the earth in those days, and therefore every word of the Bible was true. He also threatened the education committee.

Frey: I have about 25 hours of presentation material with lots of slides of dinosaurs, lots of slides of this sort of thing, and also the consequences of teaching known fraud and everything to society.

Kelley: Thanks very much Mr. Frey .. .

They’ve always got hours and hours of noise.

Oh well, if it’s any consolation, this dynasty of Freys will end with this generation. No one is ever going to marry a Frey ever again.

Creepy WorldVentures cultists welcome here

mlmrules

Stephanie Yoder wrote a blog post criticizing WorldVentures, one of those nasty MLM pyramid schemes. She pointed out that 72% of those roped in to the scheme made no money at all, and the median commission was only $40, etc., etc., etc., par for the course for these kinds of phonies, in which only the scum at the top get any money out of it.

So now WorldVentures has sent out one of those blustery vague cease-and-desist letters (oh, I’ve seen a few of those) to Ms Yoder, and the Popehat signal has gone up. I am not a lawyer, I’m not even vaguely knowledgable about legal matters, but I’m posting this because Popehat made a promise:

If you write a blog post questioning WorldVentures, you will very likely draw a crowd of very enthusiastic, very intense, somewhat off-putting WorldVenture supporters.

‘Offputting’ doesn’t worry me at all — my inbox has biohazard warnings splattered all over it, and leaks venom whenever I shake my laptop — but enthusiastic crowds…bring ’em on. I get paid for the visits, and I expect I might make 10, 15 cents with an invasion of MLM wackos, and besides, my commenters need chew toys. They wear them out so fast! Multi-level marketers probably don’t have much endurance — WorldVentures sounds like a pathetic, desperate lot — but if we get enough volume, it might make up for their friability.

It was a portrait of a delusion

Holly Hobby Lobby explains what she was thinking with that picture of her holding a bible and a rifle in front of a flag.

“I expected less backlash with this than I did the first one because the picture is, like, America’s founding principles,” Fischer opined to Fox News on Wednesday.

Hold it right there. Guns and God are what you get out of the Enlightenment principles that inspired America’s founders? That’s rather missing the point.

“That’s all that’s in the picture. And I really didn’t think it would cause the uproar that it has.”

What uproar? Pointing out, on media like blogs and twitter that parading about with a Bible and a gun isn’t exactly progressive, and exactly mirrors the attitude of the worst of the Abrahamic fundamentalists (heck, it is modern Abrahamic fundamentalism) isn’t exactly a riot. What I saw was a great deal of amusement on the left at the juxtaposition of Christian and Islamic ‘freedom fighter’, and most of the outrage came from the right, where they were howling in denial and insisting that they weren’t the same, because Muslims were gun-toting barbarians with a false god, while Holly was a white human being married to an American soldier. Totes different.

Fisher said that she posted the photo because there was a “growing intolerance among the left, and conservatives are becoming more and more afraid to speak up.”

In my culture, martyrdom is folly and a martyr complex, where no sacrifice is made but one pretends to be oppressed, is contemptible and stupid. Here, let me quell your fears.

Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Fox News (hell, Holly was being interviewed on Fox), World Net Daily, Ann Coulter, the Family Research Council, Dinesh D’Souza, Sean Hannity, Sunday morning television punditry, Alex Jones, Michael Savage, Sarah Palin, Clear Channel, Pat Robertson, Focus on the Family, Phyllis Schlafly, and the entirety of the Republican Party.

Conservatives aren’t afraid to speak up, because they sure won’t shut up. Everywhere I go, the Far Right Noise Machine is squawking nonstop.

Meanwhile, you probably think President Obama is a far left socialist/communist radical. He’s actually a centrist apparatchik who is less obstructive and destructive than the screaming idiots on the right.

You can complain when President Bernie Sanders is in office. Until then, your fears of socialism running the country are groundless. (And even then, a hypothetical Sanders presidency would be an even greater slog against the right-wing no-bots than the current one.)

So that’s mental illness

Read this account of a man slipping away into madness. It’s not about melodrama or violence, but about an ordinary person drifting towards paranoia, cutting off all contact with his family, and acquiring strange obsessions in place of normal human relationships. It’s harrowing and tragic.

The story also points out the social and legal difficulties in handling these cases. The man is clean and presentable, he can engage coherently for periods of time, and he will tell you that he is not sick — which means everyone is helpless to deal with his problems, and for good reason.

Once, the man’s family might have handled the situation by having him involuntarily committed to a psychiatric institution. For decades, it was a routine and simple procedure: If a doctor agreed that the patient had a mental illness, he could be institutionalized even against his will.

The problem was that it was a process with few safeguards, and during much of the 20th century, all kinds of people who didn’t belong — from free-thinking women to gay people, minorities and rebellious children — wound up locked in hospitals where abuse was common and conditions were often bleak.

So the system changed, with one catalyst being a 1975 Supreme Court ruling that effectively restricted involuntary commitment to instances when a person becomes a “danger to self or others,” a phrase that now appears in one form or another in state laws across the country.

Keep that in mind next time someone declares that labeling someone “mentally ill” is a good response to a problem.

Hobby Lobby won

Of course they did: in a court packed with Catholics and their twisted views on reproduction, it would have been a surprise if they decided otherwise. So now, the Supreme Court has ruled that corporations have a right to dictate how you manage your health care, and the corporation’s religious convictions (they can have them, apparently) trump yours.

You’re all boycotting Hobby Lobby, right? And if you work there, try to get out.

We now have the underlying truth about the decision.

thesame

Timothy Ray Murray is an Oklahoman and Republican.

Although Oklahomans and Republicans may not wish that news spread widely. He was a candidate in a congressional primary, but he got clobbered by his opponent, Frank Lucas. Murray got 5.2% of the vote.

But he is contesting the election, for some rather novel reasons. He claims Frank Lucas is dead.

News Person,

 

The election for U.S. House for Oklahoma’s 3rd District will be contested by the Candidate, Timothy Ray Murray. I will be stating that his votes are switched with Rep. Lucas votes, because it is widely known Rep. Frank D. Lucas is no longer alive and has been displayed by a look alike. Rep. Lucas’ look alike was depicted as sentenced on a white stage in southern Ukraine on or about

Jan. 11, 2011.

 

This is a situation similar to the Senators’ from Kentucky situation in the 2012 election. I am contesting that this matter has happen since his election was blocked, because of the U.S. Defense Department’s use of Mr. Murray’s DNA. To my knowledge, the U.S. Defense Department has not released to the public that information, as it is their confidential information about many people. Congress is likely wanting me to state that all my DNA used will not result in benefits to people I have never had relations with of a family nature. I have been bound to protect that information unless it causes harm to The People.

Ooookaaaaaaaay.

I don’t think he should bother contesting the election. When Sarah Palin runs for President on the Tea Party ticket, she can pick Murray for her running mate — they’re a perfect match. Then when she resigns two weeks after taking office, he’ll be president, and representing his Republican electorate perfectly.

The courts giveth, and the courts taketh away

While we’ve all been pleased to see the courts enforcing minority rights by striking down restrictions on same sex marriage, the flip side also happens: the Supreme Court has now ruled that abortion protesters can’t be restricted by a ‘buffer zone’ around clinics. Their rationale is some nonsense about “sidewalk counseling”.

Some of the individuals who stand outside Massachusetts abortion clinics are fairly described as protestors, who express their moral or religious opposition to abortion through signs and chants or, in some cases, more aggressive methods such as face-to-face confrontation. Petitioners take a different tack. They attempt to engage women approaching the clinics in what they call “sidewalk counseling,” which involves offering information about alternatives to abortion and help pursuing those options. Petitioner Eleanor McCullen, for instance, will typically initiate a conversation this way: “Good morning, may I give you my literature? Is there anything I can do for you? I’m available if you have any questions.” If the woman seems receptive, McCullen will provide additional information. McCullen and the other petitioners consider it essential to maintain a caring demeanor, a calm tone of voice, and direct eye contact during these exchanges. Such interactions, petitioners believe, are a much more effective means of dissuading women from having abortions than confrontational methods such as shouting or brandishing signs, which in petitioners’ view tend only to antagonize their intended audience. In unrefuted testimony, petitioners say they have collectively persuaded hundreds of women to forgo abortions.

So the court recognizes that many protesters use “aggressive methods”, but they side with the sweet little lady who claims to be kindly offering pamphlets, rather than with the women who are being frightened away from medical care. If there is a buffer zone, poor Ms McCullen is denied her right to be condescending, but if there is no buffer zone, patients are denied the right to seek legal medical treatment without harassment.

I fail to see how this “unrefuted” claim that their tactics of suppression actually work is relevant to their claim that their right to lie to patients trumps the patients’ rights to care.

But I wonder how the court deals with the stark reality that abortion clinics need volunteer clinic escorts to help women get through the lines of shouting protesters? Isn’t the fact of their existence evidence that there is a problem with access? Apparently not. The escorts are the problem.

…theBoston clinic uses “escorts” to greet women as they approach the clinic, accompanying them through the zones to the clinic entrance. Petitioners claim that the escorts sometimes thwart petitioners’ attempts to communicate with patients by blocking petitioners from handing literature to patients, telling patients not to “pay any attention” or “listen to” petitioners, and disparaging petitioners as “crazy.”

It’s clear where the judges’ sympathies lie.

It’s great when the courts are on the side of justice, but not so great when you’ve got bought & paid-for clowns of the reactionary right, like Roberts and Scalia, calling the shots.

This is amusing. The Supreme Court is surrounded by a rather restrictive barrier.

scotusbarrier

But what if I want to give the justices some ‘sidewalk counseling’?

Joining the ranks of great American masters of the English language

Twain and Webster, Lincoln and King, every past paragon of the American idiom, are sighing in their graves right now, because Sarah Palin has announced her desire to split the Republican party in two.

Well if Republicans are going to act like Democrats, then what’s the use in getting all gung-ho about getting more Republicans in there? We need people who understand the beauty of…. the value of … allowing  free market to thrive. Otherwise our country is going to be continued to be over-regulated, driving industry away, driving jobs away. We’re going to be a bankrupt, fundamentally transformed country unless those who know what they’re doing, and aren’t going along just to get along with those in power, it being today the Democrats. That does no good. So yeah if Republicans aren’t going to stand strong on the planks in our platform then it does no good to get all enthused about them anymore.

While I applaud her desire to take the Tea Party on a lovely ride off the cliff of irrelevance, to explode in a cloud of futility on impact with reality, I regret that she’s doing her damnedest to drag the language to hell with her.