Clarification for Atrios

Atrios is having a facepalm moment over the possibility that, oh, hell, I don’t know. Part of it has to do with the Grand Bargain that the Obama administration and the Democrats are going to strike after Obama is re-elected (a bit premature but there you go. Never let it be said that it isn’t easy to stampede liberals to do exactly what the authoritarians who have taken over the party tell them to do).

And somehow this is tied up with abortion. As in, the idiots who took over the party thought they could work with the anti-choicers. From Atrios’s post:

As stupid liberal bloggers have tried to explain for years, the anti-choice movement (not all anti-choicers, but the movement) is anti-female autonomy, anti-unapproved by them sex, and, yes, anti-sex without consequences, otherwise known as anti-contraception.

Boy us stupid liberal bloggers were sure crazy for suggesting that! Almost as dumb as when we said the Iraq war was a dumb idea! Stupid liberal bloggers. So stupid.

As a liberal blogger who has family members who are squarely in the anti-choice, pro-illegal abortion, pro-motherhood whether you like it or not camp, who are more incensed at the thought of women having unapproved sexytime than the deaths of thousands of servicemen in a pointless war after I told them over and over again that there were no WMDs in the desert, I have probably a better fix on this than Atrios does.

So, here it is: I have been hearing over and over again for the past couple of weeks that Hillary Clinton was exactly like these pro-illegal abortion nutcases. She was trying to make abortion look icky and stuff and placating the pro-bloody dead woman on the floor contingent. Let me tell you something. There is NO talking to that contingent. There is no common ground on abortion. None. Whatsoever. And having spent some time in Arkansas, you can bet your sweet ass that Hillary Clinton already knew this. That is why she focussed her attention on prevention. I don’t understand why it is that lefties don’t get this but I am going to assume that they have never had to argue with a person who still thinks that Noah’s Ark is in the mountains of Turkey and insists that the principle of natural selection that you’ve built your whole career around is a lie.

Mind you, these are not stupid people. They are just so indoctrinated in religion past the point of reason and sanity that there is no talking to them. The best you are ever going to get is preventative measures. That’s not capitulation to the supposed disgusting nature of abortion. That’s just reality. There is absolutely no talking to fundamentalists on this issue. Don’t even try. To ever get them to change their mind, you would have to deprogram them over a couple of weeks and never let them near a television set or a church again. Short of that, you have to vote every one of their representatives, including the ones who run as Democrats, out of office.

Now, you might say they were always after contraception but having lived with these people for many decades and knowing how they think, I can tell you for absolute certainty that the case against contraception was not widespread among fundies until the last couple of years. It was only a small minority of them who were anti-contraception until very recently. In fact, I noticed a change in my own bellwhether fundies right about the time the Duggars started appearing on TLC. Before the Duggars, if you had asked my relative fundies what they thought about contraception, they would have told you that a.) only married people can have sex b.) whatever married people decide to do was up to them and c.) if unmarried people are going to FORNICATE, they should do everything they can to not get pregnant. You might not have liked this very much (I certainly don’t), but it wasn’t about to impinge on anyone’s right to get birth control. That’s what Hillary was working with and that was as much common ground as you’re going to get. Hillary never has and never was trying to cater to the anti-abortion nuts because they are unreachable. The only thing you can do is appeal to the teeny tiny strip of humanity they have left when it comes to contraception.

The anti-contraception meme has spread quickly in the past couple of years. And now it looks like all the fundies wanted it from the very beginning. This is not true. What we are seeing here is the very swift and effective spread of a new authoritarian identity factor. The Duggars are held up as the ideal Christian family. But just because this very vocal minority is anti-female sexytime, doesn’t mean that their point of view is so irresistible that we must be crushed by it. We’re not all locked up in a mall waiting for the zombie horde to surround us and eat our brains. For that to happen, we have to be left almost completely defenseless. And that, my friends, is what the Democrats have decided to do.

What was needed when this started to spread was a very quick and forceful push back. That is not what we got. Instead, we got pandering, which is where I think the Grand Bargaining comes in on every important issue with the Democrats. This doesn’t mean the immovable objects that are the right wing nutcases have to yield at all. It’s quite to their benefit to never give in. But Democrats started to kiss up to them anyway. Now, the Republicans are inserting wedge issues between the Democrats weak coalition partners because they know that the Democrats refuse to stand for anything. Well, what did you expect? Barack Obama showed his true colors all during 2008 when it came to women’s issues. Far from being a feminist, he’s probably the worst misogynist we have because his bias flew under the radar. I guess everyone assumed that because he was african american he would have some kind of natural empathy for underrepresented groups. I have no idea where people got that idea because there was no evidence of that as far as I could see. His record was silent on the matter but his actions were definitely screaming loud and clear. Now, you act all surprised and angry.

This stupid liberal blogger could have told you four years ago, and in fact I think I did, that the Democrats were wiping out all traces of reproductive rights issues from their campaign webpages in order to court the evangelical vote. They were so desperate to win that they were willing to turn their backs on their own base. What the fuck do you think I’ve been complaining about for 4 long years??

This is the party you voted for. If you don’t like it, no one is holding a gun to your head to make you vote for them. There are choices. Pick one. The election is still 8 months away. Tell them what to do and if they don’t do it, walk away. You have nothing to lose at this point. Nothing.

PS. I would never call Digby a “dim-witted dupe”. That title belongs to women like icebergslim over at DailyKos. Maybe chickenshit is more like it for Digby. I do understand the feeling of feeling totally powerless and clinging to a group out of desperation, hoping they will do the right thing. But you’re still totally powerless if you never challenge them and they do what they want anyway. I’d rather not beat my head against Ayer’s Rock. The Democrats don’t give a shit about anything but your vote and that cartoon, as disgusting as it is, has a kernel of truth to it. Republicans watched the Democrats over the last four years and definitely have our number.

Friday: Found in the spam filter

In case there is any doubt that the left has a serious problem with women, I thought I would share this stinky piece of spam I found in our spam filter this morning.

The person who wrote this is too stupid to even think of a clever username.  He (it has to be a he) is coming from domain Hush.ai*.  Here’s the text of the spam:

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RiverDaughter RiverDaughter@Hush.ai 208.53.157.117

Cleared by AkismetSubmitted on 2012/03/13 at 9:01 pm Yo, wasssup?! I just got done watching Game Change on HBO. Reminded me of when me and my bros pwned your site in the summer of 08 (we were doing the whole tag team faux-hacker thing via various proxy servers because your admin kept banning us/me, and you thought it was Team Obama trying to rile your silly site with all of 100 readers) because the PUMAs wanted to vote for McCain because Hillary didn’t get the nomination. Seriously, can you now agree that your vote for McCain was wasted and would have put a dumb-ass cunt-a-zoid one heartbeat away from the office of POTUS? We still have 9 months left until election day. Do you still want to make that bet? Really, you would want Palin to be your leader? Really? Really?! Answer truthfully, or we will come back and pwn the shit of your site, silly-ass, angry old-ass beatches… Hollaaaaa…. We will pwn your site at will and cause serious dissension in your ranks. So you better answer honestly. Not Spam | Delete Permanently

Where to start?

Yes, we do remember your silly games.  You didn’t upset us nearly as much as you think.

By the way, PUMA stands for Party Unity My Ass.  It was a response to the nauseating pressure on us to check our brains at the door of the voting booth and do as the party told us or be called racist, un-educated old ladies.  Well, we weren’t racist, uneducated old ladies but we were definitely right about Obama.  He’s an inexperienced, over his head, overly ambitious, mediocre at best, politician who was catastrophically miscast as president when our nation needed a more prepared leader.  And he doesn’t really work for us, so there’s that.  Don’t believe me?  Just try to get him to act like a Democrat.  We’ll wait.

We also weren’t pro McCain, although there were some people here who immediately decided to support him after the Democratic national convention.  Have you seen the pictures I took of Denver that week?  The police presence made an Occupy event look like a field day.  The Democrats brought in the fricking National Guard.  It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out which party is engaged in a full-on suppression of Occupy Wall Street.  But whatever, some people supported McCain outright.  Some voted for him as a protest vote against the primary vote manipulation tactics of the Democrats and sat in their cars and cried afterwards.  Maybe YOU are willing to let your primary votes be given away to a candidate you didn’t vote for without a fight, but we weren’t.  And now, the parties might as well do away with the primary system.  It’s all rigged.  The answer is already known in advance and you the voter have no say in the matter.  I assume that’s ok with you.

As for Sarah Palin, there’s a difference between treating female politicians with respect and admiring them for their political views.  We tried very hard to do the respect thing, until she teamed up with Glenn Beck and put a target on Gabby Giffords home district.  I would call that foolish.  We never admired her for her political views but we don’t think it’s particularly helpful for the left to indulge in misogynistic attacks on her.  These attacks would include calling her stupid, even before it had any proof, or calling her a cunt, which I have trouble typing, much less saying.  That’s one of the words that even I, foul mouthed as I can be, find unacceptable.  It goes right up there with the word nigger, which I also don’t say and haven’t since I was 4 years old and had my mouth washed out with soap before I even knew what it meant.  I don’t know how YOU were brought up but there are certain things you aren’t even allowed to think much less say and one of those things is you never should call any woman a cunt.  Ever.  Under any circumstances.

I haven’t seen the HBO series, because having been laid off in the biggest decimation of the science industry in history during the Obama administration, I have been forced to cut the cord to save money. But knowing as I do that Obama has a well known problem attracting independent women who previously voted for Hillary Clinton, I’m not surprised this film was produced and aired.  The only problem is that Palin is not running this year.  Obama is.  I have to ask myself why the president of the United States and his party are still running against the has-been female governor of a rural state.  Confident and competent political leaders don’t need to pile on a former female politician who poses absolutely no electoral threat to them.  What’s the point unless bashing Palin gives them a smug sense of superiority and machismo.  Does the Obama administration thinks it is scoring points by humiliating and shaming the women who still admire Palin?  If that’s their best attempt at winning over the wimminfolk, it’s a complete waste of money and makes me wonder what the hell twisted ideas they are thinking about the independent women who are sooooo not impressed with Barack Obama.

So, it doesn’t matter how many shows are rolled out to make Palin look like the biggest idiot that side of the Yukon.  She isn’t relevant.  We’ve got our eyes on Obama and Romney.  And Obama’s campaign is in the habit of ignoring the fact that there are two versions of the independent female voter: the kind that went over to the Tea Party and the kind that stayed liberal.  We are in the latter camp and have NEVER been Tea Party voters.  And I think that with this movie, he has just insulted our intelligence.  Again.  There’s also the famously insulting touting of the Lilly Ledbetter act as being some equivalent to the Paycheck Fairness Bill that never made it out of committee.  Like we can’t look at our paychecks, assuming we still get them, and figure out if we are any better off under Obama.  We aren’t.  In fact, we’re going backwards.  But the Obama administration still acts like women have the mental capacity of eight year olds and can’t tell the difference and that constant repetition of this deception is going to convince us otherwise.

I don’t come from a family where women are treated like dirt and their lack of mental gifts exaggerated or where african americans are treated like second class citizens.  That kind of crap wasn’t tolerated in my house.  But if you do, then that tells me all I need to know about the kind of people the Democrats are attracting these days. It doesn’t speak well of their fan base.  It’s not that we’re grabbing the smelling salts.  We’re just very, very angry. Or is it the kind of people the Republicans are attracting these days?  For all I know, your purpose in coming here and spewing this drivel is to try to drive people away from the Democratic party.

As far as I’m concerned, neither party should be playing games with women or using push-pull marketing techniques to get them to commit to one side or the other.

All that counts is the data.  What have you done for us lately?  Neither party should feel comfortable with its upcoming performance review by the women they are hoping to attract to their side.

So, to sum it all up: we’re not Palin supporters here, you ‘git.  We don’t like your misogynism, no matter which party you support.  And we will hold both parties accountable for being cynical political monsters who have done nothing to improve our lives in the past four years.  Keep playing these games and you might find yourself on the losing end of the biggest political protest vote in history.

*Rather unusual name, don’t you think?  Perhaps this is completely coincidental but Hushai was the name of King David’s counselor in the bible.  Hushai went to David’s son, Absalom, and pretended he was defecting.  In reality, he was spying for David.  Anyway, the whole rebellion didn’t end well for Absalom.

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In other news, Hell has officially frozen over and pigs are now flying somewhere in the world.  Maureen Dowd is trying desperately to not show a tinge of regret that women were stuck with Barack Obama and maybe he is an inadequate advocate for women’s rights.  She even quotes Hillary Clinton’s speech from a couple of days ago.  (See below)  Of course, she also rolls out the idea that Hillary will run in 2016 but I think that’s nonsense.  Who knows what Hillary will do?

One thing is for sure.  With 8 years of Obama under our belt, by the time 2016 rolls around, it will be waaaaay too late for women.  He will have set us back by 50 years.  The time to elect a woman was 2008, Maureen.  If only you had taken two seconds to think about it instead of gleefully and gratuitously bashing Hillary.

Violet Socks posted one of the comments from Modo’s thread on her post that merits reprinting here:

Who would have thought that Hillary Clinton would have to fight for women’s rights at home? Oh, I don’t know — maybe anyone who read your columns between 1992 and the present? The ones that simpered and snickered over her husband’s infidelities, called her “the most degraded wife in history,” repeatedly compared her to a sadistic dominatrix during the 2008 campaign, speculated without any basis whatsoever that she would hijack the Democratic convention, and then, when you turned out to be wrong about that, that she would secretly connive with John McCain to defeat Obama? And how like you to keep bringing up the ludicrous notion that Obama might replace Biden with Clinton on the 2012 ticket, even if you know it’s absurd. When will women finally be liberated? Well, for starters, when we learn to stop kneecapping each other.

Pretty much sums up MoDo’s shortsighted attacks on Hillary going back over the past two decades.  Let me add that given the number of elected delegates Hillary had going into the convention, she would have had every right to “highjack” it, if that means insisting on a legitimate roll call.  The blame for Hillary’s ritual humiliation at the convention can partially be laid at Dowd’s feet.   It’s no surprise that women should be feeling some regret now after the vicious attacks we’ve been subjected to in the past couple of months.  Let this be a lesson to Maureen, who is one of only two female columnists on the NYTimes Opinion page.  Let’s see, what is the Plum Line Metric for the NYTimes opinion page?  2 females / 10 males = 0.2. That’s pretty far from gender parity at our nation’s “paper of record”. Given that number, doesn’t it make sense, Maureen, that when women write about women political leaders that they try to put women in the best possible light so that women writers are treated with the same respect and authority as men?  Writing snippy, nasty little digs on Hillary Clinton over the past 20 years was the equivalent of carrying the water for the assholes who are attacking us now.  It would have also contributed greatly to your job security.  When it comes time to add another female columnist, it is much more likely that you will be replaced instead of supplemented.  Just sayin’.

Charles Pierce wonders if there are women who really feel that Barack Obama wouldn’t be a better alternative than Romney.  Um, Barack is certainly no better than Romney, Charles.  I know you don’t have ladyparts so your perspective on this is somewhat stunted but, no, Barack Obama is not our savior from the mean old Republicans.  It goes beyond birth control.  When both parties have been able to get away with sexism and misogyny virtually non-stop since the 2008 election, the fallout goes beyond the bedroom.  It starts to infiltrate the workplace and public sphere as well.  It becomes a free-for-all to undermine women in all aspects of life.  I have seen it up close and personally in the industry I worked in.  Men get carte blanche to undermine women because they know that no one in power is going to stick up for them.

I’m sure that I am not the only professional woman to have noticed this fallout effect from Barack Obama’s election, Charles.  Ask Christina Romer, Elizabeth Warren, Sheila Bair and Nancy Pelosi.  He was about the worst thing that could have happened to us.

Here’s the segment of Hillary’s speech that MoDo quoted: