And yet I can’t stop laughing!

Here for more.

Via Andrew Sullivan comes yet another tale of Southern homophobia.

A Lowcountry legislator says he wants to cut South Carolina Educational Television’s budget after it aired a documentary on gays in the South.

“An analogy would be a librarian buying books for the bookshelf. ‘We are your Neighbors’ was just one 26-minute show out of 8,700 hours of programming. We are just presenting a point of view. This is just one book on a shelf of thousands of books,” Bresnahan said.

They want to control what we think. That’s enough reason to tell ‘em to shove it up their collective assholes.

But! There is a bright side to this, and that is that Alabama (for once) is not involved. So, very good Alabama! Let’s try to keep up the good not-hating gays work for a little bit longer, m’kay?

You can read more here, and here.

So, first we’re going to ban all gay characters from fiction, then we’re going to ban gay thought? Since when did we become the thought police?

I know a lot of conservatives think gays are “sick” and that they’re going to burn in hell. Well, y’know, it isn’t your job to save them, guys, and don’t try to understand why other non-gay folks support their rights to live as married couples. You won’t understand it, the same as fifty years ago, some white folk didn’t understand why other white folk didn’t like the whole “seperate but equal” concept.

But, y’know, a lot of conservatives don’t agree with this anti-gay crusade. A lot of elected Republicans don’t, either, or your ammendment probably would have had a lot more support going through Congress. You don’t even have the backing of your entire party - well, good. It’s good that there are some conservatives, and some Republicans, willing to stand up to what I’m sure is the small but vocal minority within the right that wants to surpress the rights of an entire group of people. And why? Because the religious right doesn’t view their lifestyle as “appropriate.”

Well, the religious right is going to learn to keep their noses to themselves.

Freedom is on the march. Oh, it’s been stopped for the moment (and slightly more effectively than with a water hose), but once it starts, you can never stop it - slow it, yes. But you homophobes, you thought police, you anti-freedom fuckers had better wake up and take notice.

You’ve already lost.

(Thanks to Chepooka for the note, via Pinko Feminist Hellcat & Patridiot Watch.)

Yeah, it’s that time of season - the so called “Christmas spirit” comes to town and people all go out shopping, being rude to clerks everywhere, honking the second the light turns green, and just generally acting like asshates.

And its cold. Brrr.

I need to find a present for my Dad. I usually get him some books — generally fiction, although I did think he might enjoy Conrad Black’s FDR bio. I got him hooked on Alan Furst’s WWII spy novels, so I can’t get him Dark Voyage because I’m fairly certain he’s already read it. And I’m planning on getting my Mom Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell: A Novel, and I’m sure he’ll find time to read that anyway, so there’s really no point buying two copies of it, y’know?

So … uh, any good book/fiction recomendations?

Check out the front page of CNN, you won’t believe it!

Like, “coalition of the willing”, only without the bribes. And Poland.

Um, more later.

Once again, Cat M. over at “My Left Brain” demonstrates why she kicks ass:

As the movie “Inherit the Wind” and Alan Dershowitz’s book “Genesis of Justice” so aptly illustrate, it’s impossible to take every word in the Bible as the literal word of God because the Bible is highly contradictory. Further, Biblical translations are often at variance with the original texts. So how does one pick and choose which Bible verse is the accurate one between two conflicting verses?

In the Middle Ages, the Catholic church undermined opportunities for peasants to become educated or increase their financial status as an opportunity to maintain its grip on power. Meanwhile the behavior of higher-ups in the church was greatly at odds with what they preached to said peasants about moral values. You can again see the parallel between them and today’s self-ascribed moralists, like the thrice-divorced Newt Gingrich and drug addicted Rush Limbaugh or the Bush administration, which believes in torture and napalm.

Awesome.

Thanks to Chepooka (yeah, thanks), I found this site: Louisiana Conservative. I did some reading. I read this:

The truth of the matter is that liberals see things as black and white all the time. The core conviction of a liberal will change at the behest of political convenience. Anything by the left is good. If it’s done by the right, then it is evil. It’s that simple to them. You can see it in the blogosphere. On many blogs from the left, dissenting comments are deleted on a daily basis. One only has to try it to find out. It’s hard to imagine any liberal blogger who hasn’t, at some point, deleted comments of dissent.

Right off the bat, this other Jeff (my name, by the way, if also Jeff, and I wonder if this Jeff is the JeffB from this Talking Points Memo post, but I doubt it - Lousiana Jeff knows how to spell) assumes that since I am a liberal blogger, I had “deleted comments of dissent.” Actually, I haven’t. I’ve deleted comments from people trying to hawk penis enlargers and viagra and payday loans, but that’s all. And I’d like some hard evidence for this accusation, but of course, Blanco can’t prove this accusation. As he says, “your actions dictate the perception that others have of you.” Or more to the point, his perception of liberal bloggers colors his opinions of them.

Well, that’s fine. We’re not many of us here in the blogosphere trying to hide our political and ideological beliefs in some attempt to be seen as unbiased. One of the great thing about blogs is that you can usually pretty quickly determine a blogger’s bias and judge that blog, in part, on that bias. Like, when I read conservative blogs, like Louisiana Conservative or Lee’s Right Thinking from the Left Coast, I know what I’ll read won’t be unbiased - it will usually be slanted slightly or fully towards the readership of the right.

But getting back to the point of that first paragraph from Blanco is that the bias is one present only in liberal blogs, or only present in liberal people — this is a truly intellectually dishonest arguement. I will be the first to say, “Yes, I can be intellectually dishonest depending on the subject matter.” But since Blanco hasn’t, what he’s saying is “I am intellectually dishonest on the subject of intellectual dishonesty.”

Where am I intellectually dishonest? Here’s an example. On the so-called “vice” sins: drugs, sex, etcetra, I believe people should enjoy as much freedom as possible — smoke marijuana while you enjoy the services of a same-sex prostitute. But if, say, Tom Delay was busted smoking weed while having sex with a gay prostitute, you know the headline on my blog the following morning would be, “TOM DELAY IS A DRUGGIE FAG & A HIPOCRITE!” But why is this, you ask. Shouldn’t you say, Tom Delay should enjoy these rights that you believe everyone should be able to enjoy? You’re intellectually dishonest!

And I could make the counter arguement, “Hey, you guys are the ones claiming to be the ‘moral majority’ and always getting your panties in a bunch whenever someone has sex, or smokes weed, or doesn’t think it’s evil for gays to marry*.” But that would be dishonest, wouldn’t it? Let’s face it - I’d just be releshing in being able to drag a leader of the opposing party through the mud.

Let’s move on to another paragraph:

“…[liberals] silently agree with generalizations that all Republicans are evil, Nazi, and racist. Ads by the left often accuse all Republicans of cutting Medicare and taking free lunches from small children. They don’t seem to mind generalizations then. Again, the word Liberals describe a specific faction of a political party, the word Republicans is inclusive of the entire party.”

Well, no, I don’t “agree with generalizations that all Republicans are evil, Nazi, and racist.” I think most Republicans fall into that political ideology because they believe it most resembles their belief structure. I do believe that the anti-gay marriage, anti-civil rights ammendments supported by Republicans, both for the Constitution and in eleven states supports the notion that the Republican Party and many of its members are more than willing to put hatred on the platter to gain votes. But this also doesn’t mean that I think Senator KKK Byrd (y’know, a Democrat?) should lead a debate on race relations.

Thinking to the most recent Presidential election, except in the case of Zell Miller, I also can’t remember a time when the word “Democrat” wasn’t used as a synonym for “liberal.” Once again, Blanco’s arguement deteriorate on the basis of his intellectual dishonesty.

Heck, for all Blanco talks about how the left agrees with all of these generalizations, you don’t really see Blanco talking past generalizations, do you? In fact, he plays up the generalizations that the right has about the left. Why, isn’t this intellectually dishonest? I believe it is, as well as an indication of his conservative bias. The bias is no big deal - everyone reading the site knows about the bias - but the underlying arguement he presents is based on his intellectual honesty, something which clearly, isn’t much in show here.

Let’s take a look at some of the reasons Blanco claims liberals are dishonest:

Clinton bombing Iraq = Good
Bush bombing Iraq = Bad

The problem wasn’t Bush bombing Iraq, it was Bush lying to the country and invading Iraq when Saddam was no threat to us, when there were no connections to the September 11th attacks. What was just as bad as the invasion was the complete lack of planning that has led us to over a thousand American dead, but this is what happens when you elect someone to high office because they have the same name as the guy who came after Reagan.

Clinton having sex in the oval office = good
29 year old Rnold having sex with a black girl = terrible.

There was nothing good about Clinton having sex in the Oval Office. What was worse was the Republicans throwing a huge fit about it and wasting tax-payer money while ranting about a lack of morality in the White House, while all the while pretending that all Republicans were clean and spotless. Please.

Clinton dodging the draft = Normal
Bush in the National Guard = despicable

Well, here’s intellectual dishonesty if I ever saw it. What if it read, for a Republican version: “Clinton dodging the draft = Bad”, “Bush using Daddy’s connections to get him from going to Vietnam = Good.” Loaded question, eh? But what Blanco decides to ignore - in another example of his dishonesty - is that truly what was despicable was the smearing of Democratic Vietnam Vets by the Bushies during this campaign. In fact, Bush used similar tactics against John McCain in the 2000 Republican Primary. Most people don’t give a shit that Bush was a coward, they just get pissed off when Bush tries to make himself look good at the expense of men who actually went to war and put their lives on the line.

Americans being hung and burned on bridges = no big deal
Americans torturing prisoners = atrocity

Of course Americans being hung and burned is a big deal. You know what else is a big deal? Being the good guy. Do you know what being the good guy involves? Acting like the good guy. I realize this is a problem for many people to understand. After all, they probably saw Superman attaching electrodes to Lex Luther’s testies in Superman III. Or Captain Kirk threatening to shave off a Klingon’s ridges. Or something “un-American.” But, no, these right-wing asses think that they can behave slightly-less badly than Saddam Hussein and be seen as “the good guys.” They can’t, and their failure to understand that has most likely cost American servicemen and women their lives.

Cruz Bustamante saying the “N” word = accident
Trent Lott praising Jesse Helms = racist.

Y’know, a few months ago, a Democrat called a Republican a “faggot.” And did I say this was an accident? No. I said “for shame”, and urged him to apologize. Hardly defending it as an accident, now am I?

Serial killers = misunderstood
American Soldiers = War Criminals

Certainly now all American soldiers - but the ones at My Lai? At Abu Gharib? Absofuckinglutely.

Blanco is right about one thing, though - “most of what I say on this blog is my opinion. When I speak of liberals progressives and post about my view of liberals progressives it doesn’t make it true.” And certainly the same can be said about this blog, and this writer. But the difference is, I can take a step back and recognize my biased dishonesty, and that makes me more honest than Blanco can ever be.

-Malnurtured Snay

* I actually know a lot of conservatives - well, I guess libertarian leaning conservatives who don’t really care if gays get married, people smoke weed, or prostitution is legal, but that’s ‘cuz these are those old fashioned and now rare “we like small gu’vment” conservatives. Dying breed? Maybe.