Ep 125 The Professional Left Podcast

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Find the Easter Egg in this video!

Known at Wikipedia as the "Wolf Blitzer is a douchebag" Easter Egg. Podcast posting soon.

Let them bake a cake!

so many choices, a photo by flangum on Flickr.

Ann Romney as Marie Antoinette at the Republican National Convention in Tampa, Florida.

Click here for full size.

Perfect.

I hardly ever post "funny youtubes," but this one... yes.

Ep 124 The Professional Left Podcast

The Professional Left App is available at the App Store.



The button below allows listeners to throw a contribution specifically towards the podcast.  Thanks for your listenership and support!  We really appreciate it:

Thanks again Marlene at ZMac Consulting and  Heather at Crooks and Liars Video Cafe for their help. And don't forget you can listen to our archives for free with no downloads or registration at Professional Left.

"Care for the poor" is inconvenient? For a Catholic lawmaker?

Exact quote and backstory here.

"If you give a girl a paycheck...." [RNC Press, 2012]

based upon the "If You Give a Mouse a Cookie" books, and h/t to this tumblr post.

Ep 123 The Professional Left Podcast

The Professional Left App is available at the App Store.



The button below allows listeners to throw a contribution specifically towards the podcast.  Thanks for your listenership and support!  We really appreciate it:

Thanks again Marlene at ZMac Consulting and  Heather at Crooks and Liars Video Cafe for their help. And don't forget you can listen to our archives for free with no downloads or registration at Professional Left.

Did somebody say Communist *Party* in the Congress?

Watch out when Carl Levin and Barbara Mikulski get jiggy.

[not work safe] Newt remains confident!

Photoshopper's Sketchbook: The Biden Meme

Picked up from College Humor, but turns out Daily Beast had it a month ago.

Short Coffee Rant

Color me completely unsurprised that those stupid k-cup coffee makers are bad for the environment.

The coffee they make also tastes like shit.

Next?

 ps. Mug from here. The network doesn't make these so I made my own.

Ep 122 The Professional Left Podcast

The Professional Left App is available at the App Store.

The button below allows listeners to throw a contribution specifically towards the podcast.  Thanks for your listenership and support!  We really appreciate it:

Thanks again Marlene at ZMac Consulting and  Heather at Crooks and Liars Video Cafe for their help. And don't forget you can listen to our archives for free with no downloads or registration at Professional Left.

Blog #AgainstTheocracy 2012

Blog Against Theocracy is an annual blogswarm dedicated to the separation of church and state.  It takes place this weekend.

It is not a blogswarm against religion.   Bloggers who believe in religion and those who don't are equally welcome here.   What we share is a common commitment to the First Amendment to the Constitution and, paging Teabaggers, the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, and the current and former denizens of Komen, its guarantee of church-state separation.

Everyone can choose their own topic concerning anti-theocracy.  My theme this year is simple.   Like the most famous unwed pregnant girl of all time, I stand with Planned Parenthood.

And as I said when I first published this photoshop:

...before anyone goes all "Sacrilege!" on my ass, I believe with my heart of hearts the Mary is the mother and sister and companion to every frightened girl who enters a Planned Parenthood clinic for HELP.   And I know for a fact that not every pregnant woman who enters a PP clinic gets an abortion.   Many of them go there so their babies will be born HEALTHY.   And in many parts of the country, it's the only place many women CAN go for prenatal care.   Think about that, fundie mofos.

But they don't think about that.  I have become utterly exhausted by arguments with those who think being in control of every uterus in America brings one closer to Jesus.   The arguments are no longer about religion or theocracy or God or goodness.  This is about power:  who has it, who can have it taken away from them, and how those with it can PROFIT from having it.

Follow the money, people.  The anti-abortion crowd is, apart from the Koch brothers, the only reliable cash register the Republican Party has.

I am so very sorry the fight for separation of Church and State has to fall along party lines.  That is not my wish.


UPDATE:  This from Tengrain, which we both agree is over the top and totally called for.

Frickken Emo Hipsters, I hate 'em.

And remember, Ryan's M.O. is always

1.  Propose outrageous cuts to government, in programs that the public generally favors.
2.  Get called out for the outrageous cuts.
3.  Be outraged at the mean-spiritedness of the person who said his proposal is outrageous.

From Ezra Klein in Wapo, emphasis mine:

[Ryan] didn't say his budget doesn't focus its cuts on programs for the poor, or non-defense discretionary spending. His statement, ... lamented Obama's "empty promises" and efforts to "divide Americans." But it didn't argue that the president got Ryan's numbers wrong. And that's because he didn't....

What divides Americans is 44% of them hate having a Black Democrat as President to the point at which they are willing to sacrifice any appearance of reason or common sense.  The rest are either under general anesthesia, or think tax cuts for millionaires and cuts in food programs for children and seniors is absolutely ridiculous.   Divided?  You betcha!

PS.  That shirt is a real thing in the world.  I think they mean it ironically, along with the one of Tonto saying "Speak Native American or get the fuck out."

Ep 121 The Professional Left Podcast

The Professional Left App is available at the App Store.

Links:

• How Lockheed/Martin bosses the State Department around
• Amanda Chatel writes about her abortion
• The National Organization for Marriage are awful, awful people
• Driftglass Seven Year Blogiversary Orgy and Fundraiser 
• On the Media and Pundit Tracker
• American Spectator - “Republicans have no reason to interfere in this fight.”
• Driftglass on Chicago City politics here and here.

The button below allows listeners to throw a contribution specifically towards the podcast.  Thanks for your listenership and support!  We really appreciate it:

Thanks again Marlene at ZMac Consulting and  Heather at Crooks and Liars Video Cafe for their help. And don't forget you can listen to our archives for free with no downloads or registration at Professional Left.

Ep 120 The Professional Left Podcast

The Professional Left App is available at the App Store.

Links for this Episode:


Wonkette:  Shocker!  Rick Santorum Endorses Barack Obama


Send your congressman a handknit uterus


Nasdaq.com reviews the "bipartisan" JOBS Bill


Sara Robinson on the 40 hour work week


The most nepotistic member of Congress.


The button below allows listeners to throw a contribution specifically towards the podcast.  Thanks for your listenership and support!  We really appreciate it:

Thanks again Marlene at ZMac Consulting and  Heather at Crooks and Liars Video Cafe for their help. And don't forget you can listen to our archives for free with no downloads or registration at Professional Left.

The Photoshop Everyone Will Be Doing Today - Mitt as Etch a Sketch

h/t Jeanne, Here's an actual Mitt Romney Spokesmodel who does not seem to be aware of these things they call the YouTube or the television camera and how they work.


The Think Progress piece accompanying their video is here.

National Review Online's BlogMother just keeps giving and giving.

I want to state for the record that I just love Katherine Jean Lopez, and not just with the "for the grace of God there go I" prayer I say every single time I hear about her. h/t WhiskeyFire, here she is defending Darryl Issa's panel.  PS. Honestly, Katie, Darryl Issa is not defending Darryl Issa's panel. You can give up now. But no:

Liberal Democratic women ask, “Where are the women?” — ignoring women who have publicly opposed the coercive mandate in hearings and letters and protests of various sorts. And, just for the record, there is yet another answer to their question: Women are in the pope’s prayers.


Yeah, I know exactly how the Pope's prayers for women are going, too.  Emphasis mine, from the best article on the Catholic abuse scandal ever written:

The idea that the Church authorities simply don’t understand what is going on was further emphasized when the Vatican last month [July 2010] outlined its opposition to the sexual abuse of minors by members of the clergy and to the ordination of women in the same document, and threatened greater punishment for those who got involved in the latter than in the former.

Too bad the Pope's*** prayers aren't doing much for National Review Online, who obviously would do well to repeat their threat of last spring:

***most of the commenters at Catholic.com say if you're talking about the specific fabulously shoe-d pontiff currently residing in Vatican City, it should be capitalized.  K-Lo,  I hope the POPE, CAPITAL P-O-P-E, is praying for you to get a new copy editor.

Meghan McCain in Playboy and Why It Matters

Meghan McCain is in Playboy (google it yourself) quoted as saying "I like sex and I like men." Which leads me to re-run this post I wrote in 2009. You might also be interested in using the search box above to search my blog for "abortion." Lots of writing there. -- BG





I attended a Community Organizing type meeting sponsored by the school district where as of next year, all three of my children will attend. The meeting was run by the President of the School Board, a man who clearly came from a long line of AME preachers, because "parental involvement in education" was not just the theme of the meeting, it was the God bless-ed gospel, and don't you forget it.

We parents who attended a 90 minute mid-day meeting to discuss parental involvement over cold Subway platters? Yeah. He was preaching to the converted.

The purpose of the meeting was to gather feedback and help to form a plan of action to help more parents in our community involve themselves in their children's education. We brainstormed on reasons why parents in my community might not become involved. Some of the reasons, and I am not making these up, on the paper flipchart (thank you Jesus there was no Powerpoint presentation):

Lack of transportation
Holding down multiple jobs
Substance abuse
Power is turned off at home
One or both parents are incarcerated

I mean, we got to "incarceration" within four minutes.

I live in a poor city. Every elementary school in the district is designated Title I, which means extra Federal funds because, duh, the majority of parents in the district are low income. It's called "Improving The Academic Achievement Of The Disadvantaged" but in the world of No Child Left Behind the focus is, of course, far more about standardized test scores than about making sure the child's home has a paid electric bill and at least one parent not in jail.




image from drunkstepmother's collection. Irony is dead.

A few days after this meeting, I met, literally on the schoolyard, an acquaintance, the mother of one of my 6yo's friends. She's under 30, dayglo red hair, tattoos, and a hand-cut cleavage wild child t-shirt.

She's pregnant. Again.

"We found out late. I'm due August 4. I just found out this week."

Dear readers: I do not do math in my head very quickly, but I knew right away for a fact that this woman had gone four cycles pregnant and had just "found out." Granted, as someone who has gone through infertility treatment, I STILL know two years after my tubes were done my exact day of would-be ovulation every single month.

But look, it's one thing to not know anything about what is going on in the world or even your kid's school and not give a shit. It's another to not know what the hell is going on in your own body.

Mr. Gingrich, while I have you on the phone, allow me to say that I am far more worried about the threat to this nation of ignorant parents and their neglected children, as well as a government policy that thinks they can fix these problems with standardized testing, than I am about some invented terrorist boogie man you want to prop up on the Sunday shows. And don't you EVER mention family values while I'm within castrating distance of you.

________________

Unlike this whole torture-the-terrorists BS brought on by Cheney and Gingrich, there is an actual debate going on in the Republican party over sex: exemplified by Bristol Palin on the 'anti-sex' side and Meghan McCain on the 'pro-sex' side. It recalls a New Yorker article I've linked many times before and will again, Red Sex, Blue Sex:

Social liberals in the country’s “blue states” tend to support sex education and are not particularly troubled by the idea that many teen-agers have sex before marriage, but would regard a teen-age daughter’s pregnancy as devastating news. And the social conservatives in “red states” generally advocate abstinence-only education and denounce sex before marriage, but are relatively unruffled if a teen-ager becomes pregnant, as long as she doesn’t choose to have an abortion.

So Bristol Palin gets pregnant and doesn't get an abortion, and her choices are understood and even accepted in Red State world. And Meghan McCain is clearly sexually active but doesn't get pregnant, and describes herself as a "progressive Republican."

It's become very clear to me this week after offering, sincerely, to help the "just found out" mom find some hand-me-down baby clothes, that the debate between Bristol and Meghan is not about political party or feminism or even sex itself. It is about economic class. (Yes, my preschooler can tell you that Mommy is a Marxist in the intellectual sense.)

Remember the wonderful old movie Pygmalion, from the Shaw play, with Wendy Hiller and Leslie Howard? Done far better than the My Fair Lady version, mind you. Professor Higgins announces that he will make Eliza Doolittle into a fine lady by teaching her to speak properly:

HIGGINS [carried away] Yes: in six months -- in three if she has a good ear and a quick tongue -- I'll take her anywhere and pass her off as anything. We'll start today: now! this moment! Take her away and clean her, Mrs. Pearce. Is there a good fire in the kitchen?

MRS. PEARCE [protesting]. Yes; but—

HIGGINS [storming on] Take all her clothes off and burn them. Ring up Whitely or somebody for new ones. Wrap her up in brown paper til they come.

LIZA. You're no gentleman, you're not, to talk of such things. I'm a good girl, I am; and I know what the like of you are, I do.

HIGGINS. We want none of your slum prudery here, young woman. You've got to learn to behave like a duchess.

Behaving like a duchess means having no concern over whether society thinks you are a 'good girl' sexually. George Bernard Shaw understood that the cultural battle over sexual morals is not about sex. It's about whether you need to position yourself as morally superior about sex, because that is your economic class's only claim to gentility. (Notice Eliza's slum prudery extends so far as to getting naked for a bath.)

Oh. Did somebody say duchess?



There she is, the daughter of military royalty and brewmaster aristocracy. The word "privileged" comes to mind.

Something Bristol Palin is not.

Bristol Palin recently said "If girls realized the consequences of sex, nobody would be having sex. Trust me. Nobody." Clearly, 'nobody' does not include Meghan McCain, because Meghan has the financial, emotional, and educational resources to protect herself from the unwanted consequences of sexual activity. In a word, she can afford to be pro-sex. Hell, if she gets pregnant, she can afford a crib that costs as much as educating three kids in Catholic school for a year.



Or have Cindy's people call for shipping. The wealthy can afford the crib and the sex and the babies and even the abortions, even if the poor in the red states were to succeed in making that illegal. There's always a trip to Canada, Norway, or a high-priced physician willing to perform an undocumented "procedure." Most importantly, unlike the vast unwashed of Red State Evangelicalism, the rich do not need a pro-life anti-sex political position to be Better Than You.

The rich can also afford to opt out of Title I public education. In doing so, they leave their debt to society completely and utterly unpaid. Not ironically, education leads to a higher 'class' of people, people who don't need slum morals and sexual hypocrisy to prove superior societal status. If we want less influence for the religious right and the Republican Party that takes advantage of their ignorance, we have to start going to public school board meetings and find baby clothes and maybe a clue for the unrefined mother down the street. Paying my debt to society includes her baby, too.

cross-posted at SexGenderBody