Pandagon

This video caught my eye in no small part because it's miracle enough that it caused me to momentarily question my atheism. It shows Michele Bachmann, faced with a chance to talk on camera, instead choosing to run away. I know there's a first for everything, but after seeing this, I wouldn't be surprised in my cats start barking at me.

[caption id="attachment_414931" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Woman walking on the street via Andrey Arkusha / Shutterstock"][/caption]

Man, wingnuts in Arizona really are obsessed with people of color and having your "papers". Despite the fact that it makes you an automatic laughingstock to do this, Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County in Arizona made a big to-do over his "investigation" of the President's birth certificate. I'm sure you'll all be surprised to discover that Arpaio has determined that Obama's birth certificate doesn't measure up to his standards of authenticity, because he looked closely and frankly, he doesn't want it to be real, though there's some gobbledy-gook about how the numeric codes aren't filled out to their satisfaction. Since there is literally no birth certificate pristine enough to be filled out to their satisfaction, however, the exact complaints aren't particularly relevant.

So, it likes like Obama wants to tweak our horribly inadequate welfare system so slightly fewer women with children have to plunge into homelessness and starvation, mostly by allowing states who want to do so the opportunity not to force women off the rolls if they can't get a job during this period of outrageous unemployment. Naturally, this extremely mild adjustment for economic realities is enough to cause Republicans (and those who always support Republicans while pretending to be Democrats) to react as if the zombie apocalypse had come to D.C. Now Sen. Hatch is making the shockingly low number of women with dependent children who might starve a little less Public Enemy #1.

[caption id="attachment_435589" align="alignleft" width="189" caption="Don Mattingly, sad about political polarization (photo courtesy Wikimedia Commons)"][/caption]

CSA Week #5

What a week! We definitely need a Panda Party to roll out the weekend after this week, especially after the epic and often confusing online battle over rape jokes. So come play some tunes or just listen, if you want.

Since Mitt Romney certainly isn't going to pick up many---if any---black voters by making a speech for the NAACP, his choice to go there and make a big media stink about it had to be about something else. There's a couple of interpretations of his behavior. Jamelle Bouie offered the best I've seen:

Recently, I was on a panel about reproductive rights and sexual health and at one point I mentioned a blogger at Pursuit of Harpyness who blogged her abortion experience in detail, including a photo of what came out after she took RU-486. Even though it was a pro-choice audience, they were shocked by this description, to which I basically pointed out that while looking at blood clots is no one's idea of a good time, it's important to show what actually happens during a typical abortion to counter misleading anti-choice claims that actual baby bodies are coming out.

For decades---at least until the big economic crash of 2008---the country has grown increasingly fond of the conservative narrative that claims that the only reason the majority of government regulation exists is because liberals are all secret communists who want to regulate corporations out of business just to do so. Regulations are seen as unnecessary for any purpose other than to clip profits, and the actual reasons behind most regulation---safety, human rights, environment---are minimized or outright denied with claims liberals are making it up as part of an anti-corporate agenda. There are a handful of leftists who reject any kind of regulation, no matter how useful otherwise, that doesn't serve the purpose of clipping corporate profits (they've been loud in the aftermath of the ACA decision), but they're a tiny minority. The reality is that most of us want government regulation not because we love "Big Government" or have some secret agenda, but simply because we think that corporations' right to do business ends where the rest of our noses begin.