Revisionist History on FOX? I am shocked!

I swear, these people live in a fantasy world.

Fox’s Stacey Dash: No One Would Have Been Beheaded Under Bush

“When George W. Bush was president, the most important thing to him was not to be liked, but to be respected,” she said. “And you better believe no one would have been beheaded when he was president.” 

Oh my Gawd! So no one would have dared to behead any Americans when Dubya was president? Well, let's look at some of the things that people did dare to do while Bush was in office.

1. Nine Fucking Eleven.
Do we really need to go on?

2. Two American contractors were burned, mutilated and hung from a bridge.

3.  Nicholas Berg, an American, was BEHEADED by Iraqi militants, and the video of the beheading was posted online. In 2004. When George W. Bush was President.

4. American journalist Daniel Pearl was BEHEADED by Iraqi militants. In 2002. When George W. Bush was president.

But, yeah. Obviously the rest of the world just respected Bush so much they never would have dared to do those things that they actually did. Oh, and here are a few highlights from Politifact's list of incidents in which other countries showed how much respect they had for America under Dubya:


June 14, 2002: A suicide bombing in front of the U.S. Consulate in Karachi, Pakistan, left 12 dead and 51 injured.
Nov. 9, 2002: The security supervisor for the U.S. embassy in Nepal was shot dead at his house in Kathmandu. Maoist rebels claimed responsibility for the incident.
May 12, 2003: In a series of attacks, suicide bombers blew themselves up in a truck loaded with explosives in a complex that housed staff working for U.S. defense firm Vinnell in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. (The contractors worked out of the U.S. embassy.) At least eight Americans were killed in the incident. Al-Qaida was suspected responsible for the incident. This was one of three attacks, involving at least nine suicide bombers and suspected to have involved 19 perpetrators overall.
July 30, 2004: Two people, including a suicide bomber, were killed and one person was injured as a suicide bomber set off an explosion at the U.S. Embassy in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. The Israeli Embassy and the Uzbekistan Prosecutor General’s Office in Tashkent were also attacked in related incidents.
Oct. 24, 2004: Edward Seitz, the assistant regional security officer at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, Iraq, died in a mortar or possible rocket attack at Camp Victory near the Baghdad airport. An American soldier was also injured. He was believed to be the first U.S. diplomat killed following the March 2003 U.S.-led invasion.
Nov 25, 2004: Jim Mollen, the U.S. Embassy’s senior consultant to the Iraqi Ministers of Education and Higher Education, was killed just outside the Green Zone in Baghdad.
Dec. 7, 2004: Gunmen belonging to al-Qaida in the Arabian Penninsula stormed the U.S. Consulate in Jedda, Saudi Arabia, triggering a bloody four-hour siege that left nine dead. One American was slightly injured in the assault.
Jan. 29, 2005: Unknown attackers fired either a rocket or a mortar round at the U.S. Embassy compound in Baghdad. The strike killed two U.S. citizens and left four others injured.


What kind of a fantasy world do you have to live in to think that no one would be getting beheaded in Bush was in office? The same fantasy world in which Putin would never have dared to invade Ukraine if Bush were still around. Sure, he invaded Georgia under Bush, but no way Ukraine!

Shouldn't there be some requirement that these people have some tether to reality?

Marco Rubio is right about something. Stop the Presses!

“There is no federal constitutional right to same sex marriage. There isn’t such a right. You have to have a ridiculous reading of the U.S. constitution to reach the conclusion that people have a right to marry someone of the same sex. . . ."

Okay, technically that is true. There is no right to same-sex marriage in the Constitution. There also is no Constitutional right to opposite-sex marriage. There is no Constitutional right to drive a car or walk your dog or wear white after Labor Day.

What there is is an "Equal Protection" clause, which means that if I'm allowed to drive my car, you're allowed to drive yours. You can't say my next door neighbor is allowed to walk his dog because he has a cool German Shepherd but the guy across the street with an ugly rat-dog is not. And if Bob and Jane are allowed to get married, so are Jim and Hank.

It's not that complicated.

Republicans Discover Love for Immigrants

The Republican-led House Judiciary just approved a bill that would make it easier for immigrants to stay in the U.S. Not all immigrants, of course, but some. What makes these particular immigrants different than, say the children from Central America fleeing certain death?

Well, for starters, they're white.
In fact, there about as white as white can be, they're German.

And they're fleeing the "persecution" of having to give their children a proper education.

In other words, future Republican voters!

House panel approves asylum bill for homeschoolers

Erin Kelly, USA TODAY
WASHINGTON — The House Judiciary Committee passed a bill Wednesday that would allow people to seek asylum in the USA if they are persecuted by their governments for homeschooling their children. At the same time, the bill would make it tougher for children fleeing gang and drug violence in Central America to gain refuge here. 

Yes, apparently in Germany and other sensible countries, it is not legal to homeschool your children. And in the spirit of that great lady who said "give me your poor, your tired, your huddled masses of people who don't feel like they should have to obey their nation's laws. . ." House Republicans are proposing granting "asylum" to German parents who would prefer that their children not learn from qualified professionals.

The Asylum Reform and Border Protection Act, sponsored by Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, would make it more difficult overall for refugees to win their asylum cases, while opening a category of relief for families who live in countries that outlaw homeschooling. The bill would allow up to 500 grants of asylum per year to families fleeing persecution for homeschooling their children.

 Supporters of the bill point to cases in Europe where parents have faced fines and imprisonment for refusing to send their children to schools outside the home.

 Or, and I'm just spitballing here, but maybe they could just obey the fucking law and send their kids to school. It's really not that hard a problem to solve. Insisting on enforcing a simple law is not really what "persecution" means.

Some people really are persecuted. Gay people in Russia, for example. They face jail time and violence for being who they are.  There are countries in which people are jailed for their religious beliefs. That's persecution. The government not giving you an exception to the law because you don't feel like following it is not persecution. I mean, am I being persecuted because the stupid government won't let me drive 90 miles an hour when I'm late for work?

You wanna know how offensive this bill is?

Rep. Raúl Labrador, R-Idaho, said asylum has always been reserved for refugees persecuted by their governments.
"Asylum law is not there to protect crime victims, it is there to protect those persecuted by government," Labrador said.

Tea Party favorite Raul Labrador is bothered by it. 
 Do you have any idea how far beyond the pale you have to be to offend a teabagger?

If the law was changed to allow victims of crime-ridden nations to gain asylum, the USA would be unable to absorb the millions of refugees who would flee from countries where gangs run rampant, Chaffetz said.
Chaffetz's bill would make it more difficult for refugees to prove a "credible fear of persecution" to gain asylum in the USA. It would bar taxpayer funds from being used to pay for attorneys to represent children as they seek asylum in immigration court.
The bill would give the Department of Homeland Security the power to make refugees wait in other "safe countries" such as Mexico while applying for asylum in the USA.

Jeezus! Going out of your way to fuck over desperate children so you have room for anti-government nuts from an affluent, peaceful country? That's pretty much the definition of pure evil.

People Who Will Never Be President. Chapter 10

Chapter 10: Marco Rubio




Oh, Marco, Marco, Marco! You had a shot. I mean, sorta. You at least could've been a player in the primaries. But then you made a mistake. You decided to try not being a complete asshole. You decided to try tracking towards the center waaaaayyy too early. And you said, out loud, that maybe we could try treating immigrants like human beings. How did that work out for ya?

Rand Paul wins CPAC straw poll, Jeb Bush 5th, Marco Rubio 7th

Seventh!

At C-Pac! That's your base right there. The people who vote in Republican primaries. You know, the lunatic fringe. And you finished seventh. It's over for you and you haven't even declared yet! You're polling just below "what if we ran Romney again?" and just above "ah, fuck it, let Hillary have it."

Why are you even bothering to try and run? Are you angling to be someone's running mate? Try and ethnic-up the ticket? Because I think your numbers are too low even for that.
Because you forgot the first rule of Republican politics. A. B. C. Always be crazy. And always be a dick. Until you have the nomination sewn up. THEN you try to seem like a human being.

It's too late now, and you will never be President.

It's hard to argue with this logic.

Because, if you tried, you'd just be driven insane.

Societycommentary

Forcing States to Recognize Gay Marriage Could Increase Number of Abortions

Gene Schaerr / April 17, 2015

Um, honestly, I guess I'm just looking at the surface here, but the two seem completely unrelated.

On the surface, abortion and same-sex marriage may seem unrelated.



 However, as explained in an amicus brief of 100 scholars of marriage, filed in the pending Supreme Court marriage cases and summarized here, the two are closely linked in a short and simple causal chain that the Supreme Court would be wise not to set in motion.

Really? 100 "scholars of marriage?"
What University has a department of marital studies?
What kind of degree would one have were one a "scholar of marriage?"

I clicked on your link to see who these scholars were. The first marriage expert cited (for 3 seperate papers) is a professor of ECONOMICS at Simon Fraser University.

The next is Helen M. Alvare, a professor of Family Law at George Mason, who probably knows a thing or two about marriage, divorce, and custody.  Of course, she's also one of the founders of "Women Speak For Themselves," a group whose mission statement claims: "We are women who support the competing voice offered by religious organizations and individuals about women, sex, marriage and family life. " And claim to supoport completely debunked hack "research" - "Even setting aside their simplistic equation of “costless” birth control or abortion with “equality,” note that they have never responded to scholarly research indicating that abortion harms women as well as their children,"
So, I'd take her expertise with a grain of salt. If your scholarship on the subject of marriage includes the phrase "well, the Bible says. . ." you're probably not a serious scholar.

You also include " Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Book VIII, which means you're getting marriage advice from someone in whose time it was considered perfvectly normal for marriage to be between one man and one woman, but the man could also fuck boys on the side.

But anyways. . . Let's just go ahead and stipulate that your 100 "Marriage scholars" have the necessary level of expertise. What's their argument? Just give it to me in a nutshell.

In a nutshell: A reduction in the opposite-sex marriage rate means an increase in the percentage of women who are unmarried and who, according to all available data, have much higher abortion rates than married women. And based on past experience, institutionalizing same-sex marriage poses an enormous risk of reduced opposite-sex marriage rates.

Jeez, where to begin?

I guess I would start with "what past experience?" How many examples do you have of places where same-sex marriage has been institutionalized?

And let's assume that you're right. Let's assume that if gay marriage is legalized, that for some unknown reason, hetero marriage rates were to decline. So what? How is that an issue? Bob and Jim can't get married because by some weird logic, it will discourage John and Susan from getting married? So what? How is that Bob and Jim's problem?

Why do you assume that John and Susan's relationship is somehow more valuable than Bob and Jim's? And even if you do make that assumption - which you clearly, unabashedly do - John and Susan are still perfectly free to marry or not marry or do whatever they want with their lives. No one's stopping them, certainly Bob and Jim aren't.

And yes, I'm sure that single women are more likely to have abortions than married ones, most women probably want to wait until they are in a stable relationship before taking on the burden of child-rearing. (did I say "burden?' I meant "blessing." No, wait, I was right the first time) Anyway, so what? First of all, abortion is a perfectly legal procedure that single or married women have every right to avail themselves of should the need arise. And if more abortions start happening, how is that Bob and Jim's fault?

 

They get blamed for everything!

 

The metamorphosis of marriage from a gendered to a genderless institution would send the message that society no longer needs men to bond to women to form well-functioning families or to raise happy, well-adjusted children. That would be bad news for children of heterosexuals on the margins: the poor, the relatively uneducated, the irreligious, and others who are susceptible to cultural messages promoting casual or uncommitted sex.

Seriously? If same-sex couples can legally tie the knot, suddenly hetero parents are going to abandon their kids, because of some sort of societal message that says that. . .um . . .  somehow these people have been unaware that casual sex is a thing? And allowing gay couples to marry will let that cat out of the bag? "Gee, dear, now that two women can marry each other, I suddenly realize that non-marital sex exists, and so I would like a divorce because even though I love you and little Junior, I  just received this message from society that told me, um . . . something about not bonding? Or something? I don't know, I'm poor and uneducated, and also irreligious so I'm easily influenced by, um, things. . . "
Sorry, I was trying to follow the logic there, but I got lost in the weeds pretty quickly. And I think that if I put any more thought into trying to understand this argument, I'll probably go quite mad.