This Is A Republican, Part 3: Paul Ryan ... With a Hint of Mittsy

I’ve often said we dodged a bullet in 2008 when Obama bested Grampa McCain at winning the White House; and not just because the Mama Grizzly Bore™ would have been a heartbeat away from the presidency but because McCain is crazy.

But we dodged an even bigger bullet in 2012, when Obama took on Mister One-Percent, Mittsy Romney, and his lapdog Paulie Ryan, and sent both of them to the loser’s corner.

Mittsy would have been awful because he never met an issue onto which he couldn’t come down on both sides, and Paul Ryan is no better.

Paul Ryan is a hypocrite.

Let’s start at young, not-yet-in-office, Paul Ryan: the Paul Ryan whose father died when he was a boy. The Paul Ryan who received Social Security benefits until his 18th birthday because of his father’s death. The Paul Ryan who, wisely enough, saved those benefits to help pay for his education at Miami University—a publicly ­funded school. The same Paul Ryan who saved and used those benefits and now calls Social Security a Ponzi scheme.

Unless it benefited him. Hypocrite.

• The man who prides himself on small government, less government, used government aid—for which he was entitled—to pay for public school education.
• The man who seems to champion the ‘private sector’ over government but has never had a job in the private sector; he has only worked for the government.
• The man who prides himself on being a fiscal conservative and yet voted to fund both the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan while voting for the Bush Tax Cuts.
• The man who voted for, and lobbied for, stimulus bills under the W Regime; he also voted for the $152 million stimulus package passed under W in late 2008.
• The man who then publicly condemned the Obama stimulus package less than a year later, and then sought to receive some of those stimulus funds for his home district.
• The man who voted for Medicare Part D—passed in a W Regime—which has cost the American people trillions of dollars.
• The man, the fiscal conservative, small government Republican, who voted for the seven-hundred-billion TARP — Wall Street — bailout; and voted to bail out the auto industry, too.
• The man who has voted for some $1.8 trillion in defense spending over his Congressional career.
• The man who keeps pushing for a budget that would cut taxes and then asks for $554 billion more in defense spending.
• The man who, along with some 16 other republican hypocrites—see their names below—and yet secretly pursued Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion dollars while hypocritically slamming the law in public.

Hypocrite. Paul Ryan.

And then let’s toss in some Mittsy and his latest flip-flopping hypocritical lie. Romney, possibly still stinging from his loss last November, is unable to come to terms with one of the reasons he didn’t win the white House: his 47% comments.

Here’s his quote:

“There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it. That that's an entitlement. And the government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what… These are people who pay no income tax..."[M]y job is not to worry about those people. I'll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives."

He now says what he said was that the "Democrats have 47 percent, we’ve got 45 percent, my job is to get the people in the middle, and I've got to get the people in the middle.'"

Except go back and reread his original verbatim quote and see that his memory isn’t accurate.

Then he says the remark was taken out of context: 

“The president said he's writing off 47 percent of Americans and so forth. And that wasn't at all what was intended. That wasn't what was meant by it. That is the way it was perceived.”

Uh huh. Mittsy is clearly flip-flopping. Again.

Like I said at the top: Dodged a bullet.

And now, here are those other GOP hypocriteswho hate Obamacare, and yet are seeking Obamacarefor their constituents:

• Senators Kay Bailey Hutchinson and John Cornyn of Texas.
• Senator Saxby Chambliss of Georgia.
• Senator Thad Cochran of Mississippi.
• Senators Mark Kirk and Rob Portman of Illinois.
• Senator Joe Lieberman of Connecticut.
• RepresentativesMary Bono, Jerry Lewis, and David Valadao Mack of California.
• RepresentativesJohn Barrow and Johnny Isakson of Georgia.
• RepresentativeGregg Harper of Mississippi.
• RepresentativeLee Terry of Nebraska.
• Representative Steve Pearce of New Mexico.
• RepresentativeBob Gibbs of Ohio.
• RepresentativeKirsti Noem of South Dakota.
• RepresentativeMichael McCaul of Texas.

via Forward Progressives and Occupy Democrats

Mittsy Hypocrisy via Mother Jones

Read More

Hypocrite Bakers: Sweet Cakes by Melissa and Fleur Cakes

Once again, before I rant, let me preface this post by saying that I begrudge no one their religious beliefs, or lack of religious beliefs. I do, however, have a problem with those people who try to use their ‘faith’ as an excuse to deny me equality, to deny me my rights, and, well, to deny me cake.

Aaron Klein [top]
Pam Regentin [bottom]

We’ve all heard the story of the bakeries in Oregon that have refused to bake wedding cakes for same-sex nuptials. The first was Sweet Cakes by Melissa, which actually left a bad taste in my mouth last February when Aaron Klein, the owner, told a lesbian couple, “we don’t so same-sex marriages.”

My first thought was, ‘No one asked you to do a same-sex marriage, they asked you to do what you advertise and bake a cake.

Then we had Pam Regentin who owns Fleur Cakes who also told a lesbian couple that she doesn’t bake for The Gays because of her, um, ‘beliefs’.

Both Klein and Regentin cited their religious beliefs as the reason they don’t bake for The Gays and their weddings, and both Klein and Regentin called themselves Christians.

Don’t get me started on that part. I mean, I haven’t personally met Mr. Christ, but from what I understand he never uttered a word about The Gays and was really better known for saying things like “love your neighbor as yourself.”

But these so-called ‘Christians’ set that aside, and instead base their bigotry on Leviticus, which purportedly condemns homosexuality, while it also condemns tattoos—uh oh, for me—and eating rabbit, wearing clothes of mixed fabrics, or even cutting ones hair. But, Klein and Regentin probably don’t have a problem with those things, among other condemnations in Leviticus, they just single out the passages about The Gays.

In fact, Pam Regentin, when asked about her refusal to bake those cakes, said, “I believe I have the liberty to live by my principles.”

Live by your principles? Yes. Operate a business in the state of Oregon by your principles? Maybe not so much.  Oregon statute makes it illegal for businesses to turn away customers based on race, religion or sexual orientation, i.e. being one of The Gays.

But this post isn’t about that topic, you know, turning away The Gays, it’s about other cakes that these Bigot Bakeries bake.

Recently, five reporters from Willamette Weekly [the source for this post, read it HERE]  called both Sweet Cakes and Fleur Cakes to get prices for a variety of other special occasion cakes; occasions that many so-called ‘Christians’ also frown upon.

Not quite so surprisingly, both bakeries willingly agreed to bake cakes for a divorce celebration, for unmarried parents, for stem-cell research, and even pagan solstice parties. But not a cake that celebrates the marriage of same-sex couples.

After making these calls, and getting the pricing of these cakes, the Willamette Weekly then called both bakeries back to ask them why they’d celebrate a divorce, of unwed mothers, but not a same –sex wedding.

Fleur Cakes owner Pam Regentin refused to comment, though she did ask if the original call had been recorded; it had not.

Sweet Cakes owners Melissa and Aaron Klein were angry that the paper “would even try to entrap a business”.

Here are the transcripts of those phone calls:

Baby Out of Wedlock

WW Asks - I’m shopping around for a nice baby shower cake for my friend. It’s her second baby with her boyfriend so I’m not looking for anything too big or fancy—probably enough to serve 15 to 20 people.

Sweet Cake says - “We have a sheet cake that will feed 30, or a 10-inch cake that would feed 30 people. The 10-inch cake is $50 and the sheet cake is $52. Or we have an 8-inch cake that would feed 15 for $40.”

Fleur says - Prices vary based on decoration and frosting, but a basic cake is $3 per serving.

Divorce Party

WW Asks - My friend is getting divorced and we’d like to throw her a little party to mark the start of her new life. Do you ever write messages on those—we’d want it to say “congratulations!”—and how much would it be for a cake that could serve about eight people?

Sweet Cake says - “A 10-inch is $29.99. That should probably do it....We can definitely do something like that.”

Fleur says - “The price for a 10-inch cheesecake is $36 and up. So it’ll be between $36 and $45, but you’re going to have to call in advance because my schedule for June and July is very busy.”

Stem-Cell Success

WW Asks - I was wondering if you could do two little cakes. My friend is a researcher at OHSU and she just got a grant for cloning human stem cells, so I thought I’d get her two identical cakes—basically, two little clone cakes. How much would they cost?

Sweet Cake says - “Ha. All right. When are you looking to do it? It’ll be $25.99 each, so about $50 to start.”

Fleur says - Did not pick up phone or return messages. Acknowledged receiving requests by email but refused to comment.

Non-Kosher Barbecue

WW Asks - I’m looking to get a special cake for a barbecue we’re having next week. Our cow just died of old age and we’re planning to grill some steaks along with lobster and pulled-pork sandwiches—what size would we need for 10 people and how much would it be?

Sweet Cake says - “A 6-inch cake serves about eight to 10 people at $25.99. The apple goes really good with pork, and the caramel will complement the lobster. For a barbecue, it’s all really good.”

Fleur says - Did not pick up phone or return messages. Acknowledged receiving requests by email but refused to comment.

Pagan Solstice Party

WW Asks - I was calling to get a quote on a cake for a midsummer solstice party. My coven is celebrating on Friday, June 21. The decoration would be very simple: just a green pentagram. We’d like to pick it up sometime that afternoon, before the bonfire. It’ll be for about 30 people.

Sweet Cake says - “For 30 people we have a couple options... We have two kind of cakes you could have. About the diagram you want on the cake, I’m not sure how much extra that would be.”

Fleur says - Did not pick up phone or return messages. Acknowledged receiving requests by email but refused to comment.

So, while these two ‘Christian’ bakers found something repellent about making a cake to serve lesbians at a wedding, the idea of divorce, and stem cells, and unwed mothers and pagan rituals, didn’t seem to cause a blip on their Christian radar.

Makes one think that their refusal to bake a cake for a same-sex wedding had less to do with religion and more to do with being homophobes. And, apparently, liars.

Now, again, I don’t begrudge them their faith; I begrudge them using their faith to mask their bigotry. And, all I ask is that, if you own and operate your own business and there is any segment of the population that you won’t service because of some belief system you have, please announce it in your ads, on your website, at your door.

No Jews.

No Blacks.

No Hispanics.

No Gays.

No fill in the blank

Then we’d all know.

Read More

It’s Time To Out Lindsey Graham

I read this piece on AmericaBlog and was going to talk about it, but all I could think was that John Aravosis already said it all, and a helluva better than I could. So, I'll just post the entire piece, verbatim. John Aravosis, writing for AmericaBlog:

_________________________________

IT'S TIME TO OUT LINDSEY GRAHAM

It’s time to finally out Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC).

Graham has had it coming for a while now. Not because he’s a Republican. But because he’s an anti-gay Republican. And while it’s one thing to be gay and a closet case, it’s quite another to be a hypocrite, an anti-gay gay, someone who uses his power to harm others in the name of morality, all the while knowing secretly that he is one of the others.

In this case, Graham’s hypocrisy that broke the camel’s back is immigration reform. I have it on good authority from someone intimately involved in the immigration reform process that Lindsey Graham is the central reason that the Uniting American Families Act (UAFA), which would help stop the forced deportation of foreign-born gay spouses, is being blocked from being added to the immigration bill. While other Senators might be bluffing about their opposition to addressing the immigration needs of gay binational couples in immigration reform, I’m told Graham isn’t bluffing.

The obvious question arises as to why Graham is holding gays hostage in the immigration bill.

One theory is that UAFA is Graham’s legislative beard. A beard is a woman a gay man socializes with in order to throw off suspicions that he’s actually gay. In this case, the theory goes, Lindsey Graham is using UAFA in order to throw off the suspicions of the Tea Party voters back home who are challenging him in a high-profile primary. Their suspicions are that: A) Graham is a liberal; and B) he’s gay.

Graham’s support for immigration reform is hardly helping him dispel the closet liberal image.  But his opposition to UAFA, the theory goes, is a two-fer: It let’s Graham oppose something, anything, related to immigration reform (his support for the measure has been a thorn in his side with the far-right back home), and it has the added benefit of bashing gays.  Everyone knows that a closeted gay man wouldn’t bash his own people, right?  So bashing UAFA “proves” that Graham is straight.

Roy Cohn, a closeted gay man who destroyed the lives of other gay men. (Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division. New York World-Telegram and the Sun Newspaper Photograph Collection.)

And that is why it’s finally time to out Lindsey Graham.

If Lindsey Graham thinks an open discussion about the evils of homosexuality is necessary to further our country’s, or his own, best interests, then let’s have at it.

Lindsey Graham voted against the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, because he believed that gays should not be serving in the US military.  Yet Lindsey Graham himself is a colonel in the Air Force Reserves.  If Lindsey Graham thinks gay are unfit to serve in the US military, and he were in fact gay, then he’d be unfit to serve in the US military by his own definition, would know it, but would still be serving in spite of that knowledge.  That would make Graham a hypocrite, a liar, or both. (And let’s not even talk about the security risk people with dire secrets, and Senatorial security clearances, pose.)

The question facing us is not whether you or I think Lindsey Graham’s sexual orientation is relevant to a public policy debate.  The question confronting us is whether Lindsey Graham thinks one’s sexual orientation is relevant, and he does.  So by the Graham Standard, America deserves to know if Air Force Reserve Colonel Lindsey Graham is gay.

Lindsey Graham celebrating the anti-gay Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day.

And the same goes for Graham’s position on UAFA.

And it’s not just those two issues.  Graham has been terrible on gay issues for years.  In the last three Congresses, the Human Rights Campaign scorecardgives him a 0, a 13, and a 15 out of 100.  Graham also famously participated in Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day, in order to show solidarity with the chicken-chain’s anti-gay views.

Lindsey Graham clearly doesn’t believe that sexual orientation is a non-issue.

Graham is a queer duck. He’s what I like to call a closet heterosexual: Somehow who avers to being straight, but does so in such a diminutive, and odd, manner so as to lack all credibility.

Straight people aren’t normally shy about being straight.  Usually, they don’t even realize the degree to which they“flaunt” their heterosexuality.  They bring dates to public events, go on vacations with their significant other, and more generally have a public record of people they’ve gone out with.  Everyone does, gay or straight.  So you start to ask questions when you find someone like Lindsey Graham, who’s 57 years old and says he’s straight, but for whom the entirety of his Wikipedia “Personal Life” section reads:

Graham has never married.

It makes a girl wonder.

I don’t know if Lindsey Graham is gay.  But I’m having a difficult time believing that he’s straight (and I’m clearly not the only one). And what’s more, he seems to be having a difficult time proving it, or even explaining it.  Even Graham’s full-throated denial came off to many as incredibly gay:

During a South Carolina Tea Party rally this spring, one speaker created an uproar by postulating that Graham supported a guest-worker program out of fear that the Democrats might otherwise expose his homosexuality. (Graham smirked when I brought this up. “Like maybe I’m having a clandestine affair with Ricky Martin,” he said. “I know it’s really gonna upset a lot of gay men — I’m sure hundreds of ’em are gonna be jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge — but I ain’t available. I ain’t gay. Sorry.”)

Lindsey Graham decided long ago that one’s sexual orientation was fair game for politics, then so be it.  It’s time someone did an in-depth investigation of whether Lindsey Graham is gay, straight, or asexual, because under the Graham Standard, America has a right to know.

If Lindsey Graham wants to make his primary about being gay, then it’s time to click his heels three times and give him his wish.

Read More

Cardinal Keith Admits To Schtupping Priests

It’s clear to even the most casual readers of this blog that I am no fan of the Catholic Church. I suffer fools, I suffer wingnuts, I suffer morons, but I cannot suffer hypocrisy.

The Catholic Church has spent decades, centuries even, talking up all the good they do in the name of children, while hiding child rapists and pedophiles to avoid any shame. They say they help the poor and yet they give the recently resigned Pope, Pope Benny the Quitter, the Catholic MGB™, a palace in which to live with his male secretary while millions go hungry. So, no I am not a fan.

The newest target of my rage is one Roman Catholic Cardinal Keith O’Brien—the head of the Catholic Church in Scotland, the most senior Catholic prelate in all of Britain, and its sole cardinal eligible to vote in the upcoming papal conclave—who was suspected of engaging is homosexual affairs with priests and whomever he could get his hands on.

Now, naturally, the good Cardinal denied all of this, and railed against those who would besmirch his name by linking it to The Gays, but then, well, he resigned and it looked like the stories were true. But still he denied and denied and denied until……

In recent days certain allegations which have been made against me have become public. Initially, their anonymous and non-specific nature led me to contest them.

However, I wish to take this opportunity to admit that there have been times that my sexual conduct has fallen below the standards expected of me as a priest, archbishop and cardinal.

To those I have offended, I apologise and ask forgiveness.

To the Catholic Church and people of Scotland, I also apologise.

I will now spend the rest of my life in retirement. I will play no further part in the public life of the Catholic Church in Scotland.

So, we can all smile smugly and say, Oh, I knew it but before we do that let’s also remember that Cardinal Keith—as he’s probably known at the local Gay Bar—was one of the most outspoken and highest-profile homophobes in the entire Church. He imagined himself the leader of the Roman Catholic Church’s war against The Gays, and repeatedly smeared loving and committed same-sex couples for having the temerity to ask for marriage equality. All while he was boning a priest.

He spread fear among his minions, calling marriage equality a “grotesque subversion of a universally accepted human right” and threatened an “unprecedented backlash” if the Scottish government allowed same-sex couples to marry. He also lied, which I guess is what one does when one becomes a Cardinal and a priest-f**ker, when he said that if same-sex marriage became legal in Scotland, the Catholic Church would be forced, forced, to perform same-sex weddings. He called -sex relationships unhealthy and inferior to opposite-sex relationships, and said they are detrimental to children; he whipped himself into a frenzy and said that marriage equality would force schools to stock what he called “homosexual fairy stories.”

While f**king priests and lying about it.

Is it any wonder that the numbers of people leaving the Catholic Church grows every day? I mean, why would you stay with a religion that spreads hate and fear and horror stories when the scariest stories of all happen within the church walls?

source

Read More