Uhhhh.

Well, this is lovely.

Nowhere to go. Nowhere! Won't someone please think of the oppressed white people for a change?

Well, That's a New One

1995 was the pivotal year in my faith journey. Srebenica came hard on the heels of Oklahoma City and--short version--Boltgirl decided the idea of a god that was unable to prevent one or both massacres failed to square with logic, and one that was able but unwilling, if extant, would be a sadistic bastard, and so both of the above could piss off. Permanently.

So it's fascinating to hear retired Marine General John Sheehan's explanation for the former atrocity. It wasn't so much Slobodan Milosevic's fault after all! It was The Ghey!

A retired Marine general told senators on Thursday that the Dutch Army failed to protect the city of Srebrenica during the Bosnian war partly because of the presence of gay soldiers in its armed forces.

[Following the collapse of the Soviet Union] the Dutch allowed troops to join unions and enlisted openly gay soldiers. Dutch forces were poorly led and unable to hold off Serb forces in 1995, leading to the execution of Bosnian Muslims and one of the largest European massacres since World War II, Sheehan said.

Who knew we needed to put "genocide" on our list of general failures, right after "objectively disordered," "intrinsic moral evil," "destroying society," and "making straight men feel squicky unless it's hot straight girls pretending to be lesbians we're talking about?" I sure didn't.

And Remember, Death Is Not an Option

In the Arizona senatorial primary, Walnuts McCain or this guy?

One More Thing on Team Canada

Skip Bayless and Jay Feely? Get the fuck over yourselves. Particularly you, Skip; at least Feely managed to not tremble in spitting indignation while decrying alcohol (eeek!) and cigars (quelle horreur!) playing visible roles in a team's championship celebration.

I don't recall Bayless getting the vapors when Michael Jordan smoked cigars in front of the cameras after his NBA championships, or when Red Sox players sprayed fans with champagne from the warning track, nor do I recall him, you know, wondering what message it sends the children (tremble, sputter) when NHL hockey players have been shown drinking champagne out of the Stanley Cup on the sacred stage of their sport (ZOMG!!!!11!1!1eleventy uno uno!).

Won't someone please think of the children?

Oh, it wouldn't be that big a deal for Sidney Crosby to take a Molson and a Cohiba along on his victory lap because NHL players are hardcore professionals, Bayless says, so that's different. With "hardcore" here meaning, of course, "men," and "professionals" also meaning "men" since there's no professional women's hockey league around awarding cups for their players to drink champagne out of on national TV, or at least as national as Versus is.

As Dana points out, it's not like they were drinking and then jumping into cars to drive. But they were drinking while female in the presence of cameras, and role modeling and decorum are apparently very very serious matters when it's women involved. Bayless and Feely toss in some very concerned concern trolling over perpetuating drunk-Canadian stereotypes, just in case they looked like they were focusing too much on the hockey players' failure to uphold the standards of decency and chaste pure holy Olympic honor that exist mostly in their heads, but I haven't seen many people tsk-tsking over the Jon Montgomery (male skeleton gold-medal winner) chugging a pitcher of beer as he walked down the street.

In other words, this.

Summary: Some hockey players drank and smoked in an empty arena, and one of them is less than a month shy of legal drinking age in BC, although she is of legal age in her home province of Quebec. Evaluation: (1) They're hockey players; and (2) big fucking deal.

Don't clutch those pearls too tightly, Skip. Your head is liable to explode clean off your neck.

Never Mind Who Dat, What the Fuck Dat?

Damn, what a call--opening the second half with an onside kick? The Saints converted that bit of ballsiness into a touchdown, grabbed the momentum, and 30 minutes and several clutch plays later, grabbed the Lombardi Trophy. And, as my friend India pointed out, felt no need for Jesus shout-outs in the postgame interviews.

That was the good. The bad? The breathtaking misogyny in the commercials. Forget Tim Tebow and his mom; against the baseline set by GoDaddy.com, FloTV, and Bridgestone, Focus on the Family rated a giant meh. What knocked the Tebows completely off my radar? Oh look, here's Danica Patrick abandoning her last shred of dignity and getting into a strip-off, with the promise of additional unrated web content. Ah, here's Jim Nance saying that a guy who goes shopping with his girlfriend has lost his spine! Oh, here's a guy who gets conceived, grows up, gets a job, gets married, and sires a kid of his own--whew, he deserves a break after all that! And here's a guy who abandons his wife to a Road Warrior gang rather than give up his tires! Oh, look, men strike back! Because they're been so grievously put upon for the past couple of decades out of the last 160,000 years of anatomically modern human history!

Fuck. Oh, want to see them? Here.

In happier news, chocolate Chex + rice Chex + chocolate Cheerios + pretzel sticks + mini marshmallows + mini chocolate chips + butter + vanilla + NUTELLA = OMFG awesome snackies. Also, roasting thinly sliced cauliflower with olive oil, garlic, and rosemary results in some stunning crunchy/tender bits of FUCK YES CAULIFLOWER IS GOOD. Who knew? My mom always boiled it to death. I would have eaten a lot more of it without complaining if she'd roasted it instead.

Boggle.

O_o. While I was away ripping out chicken wire and catclaw and building new fences and baking the wrong cookies and half-assedly dusting, the Republican leadership officially went batshit crazy.

Wow. When did Hulk Hogan get a second job as a mouthbreathing evangelist? And where is his spandex? I was originally going to slice this up and deal with the little bits piece by piece, but it's taking longer to scrape my jaw off the floor than I thought it would. Just watch the whole thing, maybe three times, and explain to me if I'm wrong in concluding that these witnessing chowderheads have finally conclusively demonstrated that they have abandoned any pretense of rational thought. Who is the Logic: Ur Doin It Rong poster boy here? Jim DeMint (R-Leviticus)?

If we have the government making decisions about the most personal and private part of our lives, it is so naive to think that that coverage is not gonna include a number of things that cause people of faith a lot of heartburn, whether it's funding abortions... whether it's funding medical marijuana...

Or Sam Brownback (R-James Dobson's Pocket)?

The Democrat [sic] leadership wants to fund abortion in this bill. And it's real tragic, because abortion's not healthcare!

Nice effort there by Brownback, but then DeMint brings it home with the simplest and only summation you really need.

We cannot fall for this idea that we need to keep our faith in the closet and let the country go its own secular way.

Congratulations, Jimmy D, for that spectacular bit of fail. Pardon me for not sticking around to join the jesusjesusjesus mumblers around you, but I need to get shopping for a bigger hat if y'all are calling down so much wrath from heaven.

Continued Moments in WTF-ery

It's cold and dark when I have to get out of bed in the morning now, which I do not want to do in general and not at all now that we put the flannel sheets and extra blankets on, making the bed more of a giant warm marshmallow wrapped in a flannelly cloud cocoon that I DO NOT WANT TO CRAWL OUT OF EVER, plus judging from the interesting odor in here something appears to have died in my office overnight and it wasn't just dreams of weddings and rings and fabulous parties in New York.

Humph.

So I'm spending my smoking breaks today--since I don't smoke--finding bits of marriage-related right-wing fuckery and posting them here. No fumar aqui, pero fumo cueste lo que cueste. Forthwith, courtesy of Joe.My.God.:

In a Christian Post article about an upcoming biography of Saddleback megachurch Pastor Rick Warren, we learn that Warren freely admits that when he married his wife, he didn't love her, was not attracted to her, and had "no feelings" for her at all. But he married her anyway because the marriage had been arranged. By God.

Good for you, Rick! Congratulations on your loveless arranged marriage! Fucking hell.

Because Predictability Is Comforting

Sonia Sotomayor sailed through the Senate confirmation, with neither help nor consequence from any but nine Republican senators (neither of which belonged to Arizona's stellar brace of senior representation), and the GOP of course immediately began crowing that this was, in fact, a victory. No, not for her--for them.

Although the 68 to 31 vote was a GOP defeat, Republicans contended that they had succeeded at framing the confirmation debate in a way that could influence Obama's future nominations throughout the federal judiciary, including to the Supreme Court if vacancies arise.

In particular, Sen. Jeff Sessions (Ala.), the ranking Republican on the Judiciary Committee, said that Sotomayor and Democratic senators had discarded a standard that Obama and left-leaning legal thinkers have held out: the idea that judges should be guided, in part, by empathy. If Obama nominates other people to courts who believe in that idea, Sessions said, "I don't think that would play well. . . . It could hurt this administration in other areas."

Okay, the administration is now officially On Notice that word choice will be a really important factor in future nominations, and hopefully will remember not to reference the value of a minority nom's life experience as, you know, a minority in America in crafting a court that moves just a smidgen closer to reflecting the demographics of, you know, America rather than the membership list of Augusta National circa 1972.

Anyway, perhaps as befits a double Oh Fuck No vote from our senators, the comments on the Daily Star Sotomayor story are predictably fragrant. I'll pick two from a really strong field:

I will not rest until we have a justice with Peyronie's disease on the Supreme Court, because until then, all men who suffer from painful misangulated erections will continue be victims of discrimination and hate.

Hey, it makes as much sense as saying we have to have a Latina Chick who self proclaims herself smarter than white men on the court.

~~~~~~~~~~

AMERICA's FIRST RACIST SUPREME COURT JUSTICE.

Roger B. Taney and Henry Billings Brown clearly don't count as racist justices, see, because they were white men. And, as Jeff Sessions and Jon Kyl and Chuck Grassley and John Cornyn definitively cleared up for us during their Judicial Committee questioning, white men have neither race nor gender, and so can't possibly have a biased bone in their bodies. Also, first guy? Leeeeeetle too much self-advertisement, there. Good luck with your Craigslist postings, and here's hoping you don't use "Onan T." as a handle over there too.