Pandagon

The Rise Of The Moostapo

imageSarah Palin is amassing an army of horny, angry middle aged white people who will bravely shout racist things at black camera people.

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Is the court already 5-4?

The reason that there's been so much focus on abortion this election season (though often in covert terms, such as wingnuts going to great extents to praise Palin mother and daughter for what they perceive as a choice to give into the patriarchy, though it must be understood that pro-choice people can choose teenage motherhood or to have a child with Down's), because McCain needs the fundies to win, and the fundies are aware that the next President is almost surely going to appoint the justice who will be the swing vote if The Sole Supreme Court Decision Of All Time is challenged. Sadly, people have become numb to warnings that Roe is fixing to go because it's taking so long to happen. There's an irony there---it's fashionable to say Roe was badly decided, but in fact, one reason that it's so hard to overturn is that the reasoning in it is sound and popular, and anyone who wants to overturn it will have to find a way to do so without threatening the traditional respect for precedent shared on the court and without alarming the public by telling them upfront that the right to privacy is now kaput. (They'll learn that after the fact.) So incrementalism has been the key. Instead of getting ban-happy, anti-choice activists nibble at the sides, creating enough confusion that a clever judge can finally overturn Roe once and for all without actually overturning it. John Roberts is that clever sort of asshole, actually. Without much public fanfare, he pulled a stunt that all but overturned Brown v. the Board of Education (at least as the court has always understood it) by citing Brown as precedent. It was not just evil, but with a dash of hateful irony. That's how right wingers roll these days, and that explains why South Dakota and Colorado aren't waiting for a definitive 5-4 anti-Roe court to be appointed to start banning abortion. I suspect that they trust that Roberts will get it done for them.

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Daddy Dobson lays out his priorities - and shares his glorious view of Palin

The press releases haven't exactly been churning out of the Focus on Your Family machine at breakneck speed these days, so it's news when Daddy D features some of his bleatings. In his latest newsletter, he reiterates the importance of the Supreme Court in this election, something we know the right has been focusing on like a laser beam. It's all they have since they are losing the culture wars.

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Election season sci-fi reading

io9 asked me to contribute a recommendation for what sci-fi book you should read before the election. I was unduly tickled to be the token female in a question about science fiction. On one hand, I'm not like a huge sci-fi geek or anything. On the other hand, I wrote my honors thesis one million years ago about the place of The Handmaid's Tale in the pantheon of sci-fi, and so I have a soft spot for the genre.* It was sort of my first inkling that feminism could be expanded in creative ways. Of course, as the token feminist, I had to pick The Handmaid's Tale. Here's the quote:

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Riddle Me This

Confederate Yankee Bob Owens is one of my favorite conservative bloggers of this election. He manages to write in a way that's so chock full of things being said, without actually managing to clue you in on why he's saying any of the things that he's writing, like a piece of ready to assemble furniture with fourteen extra bolts and a plank of wood that doesn't go anywhere.

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Dependence is really not a cure-all

This post by Leslie Bennetts at Huffington Post about how the cult of female dependence is only going to get more dangerous for women in an economic downturn is just fascinating. I admire Bennetts for writing her book The Feminine Mistake, which is about the financial pitfalls and dangers of allowing yourself to become dependent by choice on a man, no matter how upstanding a guy he is. This isn't a popular thing to say. You're stomping on the image of the happy homemaker, which is near and dear to the conservative heart, but you're also going to find hostility from feminists, who are afraid to violate the tenets of choice by suggesting that some choices have more pitfalls than others. Or there's even just a fear that it sends the wrong message, like, "Housewives can't be feminists," which isn't true. So, when this book came out, I feared Bennetts was going to get it coming and going, but I think feminists have mostly left her alone because she presents her information as just that---information to take into account before you make a choice to be dependent on a man. It's true enough that people that are empowered with good information are less likely to make certain choices (god knows good information has reduced the teenage birth rate considerably), and saying so doesn't constitute an assault on the right to make choices.

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21 Questions...And They All About Us

imageVictor David Hanson and Peter Krikorian have a combined twenty-one questions for Barack Obama, roughly eighty-three of which have to do with Bill Ayers.

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Extremely weird personal reactions offered up for public discussion

So Jessica has a post up about a truly wretched Dear Abby answer to a woman who wanted her boyfriend to split the costs of birth control with her. (Dear Abby's advice? Don't bother him with you girlie shit. Okay, I'm paraphrasing, but that's the basic gist of it.) To exactly no one's surprise, the commenters got on board with the "dudes split costs", even going so far to say they'd immediately dump someone who didn't immediately agree to it. (I'm skeptical---people's stated willingness to DTMFA is often stronger than their actual willingness in the moment.) Obviously, the wise man is one who, when his girlfriend asks him to split birth control costs, falls all over himself apologizing for not offering and suggesting that she's generous to ask merely to split costs when she still has 100% responsibility to remember to take the pill every day, get the prescription, pick it up, etc. The man who resists is clearly engaging in a power play to see how much bullshit she'll put up with, because he really doesn't have a leg to stand on, argument-wise, and because it's not that big a deal.

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John McCain forced to denounce racist, homophobic member of Virginia leadership team

After a Florida middle school teacher uses 'n*gger' in the classroom to describe Barack Obama (and isn't fired), who knows how this is all going to escalate. Wonder no more - look at what was tapped out on the keyboard of Bobby May, who is treasurer of the Buchanan County (Virginia) Republican Party and the (now-former) county's representative on McCain's Virginia leadership team (h/t NotLarrySabato), in an article in the LAT:

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Can you make a fear-the-terrorists-love-war movie that's actually funny?

Reading this post by Scott, and clicking through the links was a cringe-inducing moment that almost made me feel pity for Glenn Reynolds, because he's such a pathetic wanker. And also pity for conservatives who buy into the idea that they should see "An American Carol" as a "patriotic" duty. ("Patriot" doesn't mean loving your country so much as battling the meanie liberals, in wingnut speak.) Call me shallow, but I go to movies to be entertained, and if a movie can't deliver that, I'm not seeing it, no matter how much I share its politics and/or loathing of my political enemies.

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At noon ET, click over to KeatingEconomics.com

The smell of desperation is in the air:

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Reminder to Texas readers

Today is the deadline for voter registration. Stop by any of the voter registration tables around town to register, if you haven't already (or just need an address change). By the way, I found this part of the article that I linked amusing:

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