The GOP’s McCarthy Gene - Oogedy Boodgedy

From the LA Times:

Ever since the election, partisans within the Republican Party and observers outside it have been speculating wildly about what direction the GOP will take to revive itself from its disaster. Or, more specifically, which wing of the party will prevail in setting the new Republican course — whether it will be what conservative writer Kathleen Parker has called the “evangelical, right-wing, oogedy-boogedy” branch or the more pragmatic, intellectual, centrist branch. To determine the answer, it helps to understand exactly how Republicans arrived at this spot in the first place.

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The Religious Right Has Warped the Nation

From Visalia Times:

Republicans continue to preach fear. Liberalism means that just maybe we will all share in the American dream.

King George and his conservative evangelists would prefer that we set aside the programs established in the 1930s and privatize Social Security, so that the rich who control Wall Street would now have more than half the paycheck of the elderly as they now have more than half of the retirement funds for the American worker.

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King George would also change the Constitution of the United States denying people freedom that the Constitution guarantees “separation of church and state.”

Right Wing Talk Show Host to Vote for Obama

After 28 years of voting for republicans,  Michael Smerconsigh will vote for Obama.

Smerconish hosts the right-wing morning drive-time talk show daily on WPHT-AM (1210) which is the Philadelphia (a right wing talk radio station). WPHT is also home to the likes of Limbaugh, Beck, Hannity, O’Reilly, etc. Smerconish, a lawyer turned commentator, is a fill-in host for Bill O’Reilly on the Radio Factor, and a guest host for Joe Scarborough on MSNBC’s Scarborough Country. He has appeared on the Today Show, It’s Your World with Neil Cavuto and Hardball with Chris Matthews.

In an article in the Philadelphia inquirer he states:

I’ve decided. My conclusion comes after reading the candidates’ memoirs and campaign platforms, attending both party conventions, interviewing both men multiple times, and watching all primary and general-election debates.

John McCain is an honorable man who has served his country well. But he will not get my vote. For the first time since registering as a Republican 28 years ago, I’m voting for a Democrat for president. I may have been an appointee in the George H.W. Bush administration, and master of ceremonies for George W. Bush in 2004, but last Saturday I stood amid the crowd at an Obama event in North Philadelphia.

Five considerations have moved me:

Read those considerations by clicking here.

Goodbye & Don’t Let the Door Hit You

From the SFBayTimes.com:

In response to mounting criticism of gay conservatives, Dale Carpenter, a prominent gay writer, is threatening to bolt the movement. In a recent column, he spoke of his “rising anger” with how gay advocates treat his ideological brethren. Of course, we know this is a bluff because Carpenter and other gay conservatives have nowhere else to go. They are dependent on the very liberalism they condescendingly deride and rejected by the very political party they claim to be a part of.

What is notable about Carpenter’s tirade, is how it is at odds with his often intelligent columns. He regularly offers sharp legal critiques and prescient political analysis. However, when discussing gay conservatism, Carpenter uncharacteristically becomes irrational, falling into an undeserved victimhood that is a hallmark of gay Republicans.

For example, Carpenter is upset because Jonathan Crutchley, the co-founder of the gay cruising site Man Hunt, was skewered after giving a contribution to John McCain. Carpenter surmises that there is a witch hunt because of Crutchley’s political affiliation. This is not true.   If he were just another gay business owner, no one would care whom he contributed to. However, it is preposterous for a man whose commodity is sodomy to give money to a candidate who wants to appoint Supreme Court Justices who would be in favor of outlawing gays from having consensual sexual relations. It is this type of cognitive dissonance that earns gay conservatives such deserved contempt.

Republicans in Congress have blocked gay rights progress for nearly three decades. It was President George W. Bush who stumped for a Federal Marriage Amendment. It was Sen. Majority Leader Trent Lott who once compared gay people to kleptomaniacs and alcoholics. I could fill 10 columns with despicable acts and words lobbed at the GLBT community by members of the Republican Party. While the Democrats are not perfect (see Sam Nunn), anyone who compares the two parties is smoking something that has higher street, than political value.

The modern Republican Party was molded by President Nixon’s “southern strategy” and built by Ronald Reagan, a president who ignored the AIDS crisis. It has been home to horrendous bigots, such as Sen. Jesse Helms, Rep. Bob Dornan, commentator Pat Buchanan and Vice President Dan Quayle - who pushed the term “family values,” which notably did not include GLBT families.

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On the Contrary, Absentee is NOT the Right Way

According to a recent article on alternet.org;

Magazines. Fashion. Dating. Comedy. These are all large parts of contemporary teen culture. Who would have thought they could also become the latest weapons in conservatives’ war against sexual autonomy?

But after a decade of the Bush administration pouring millions of taxpayer dollars into abstinence education programs, only to see them fail, that’s exactly what’s happening.

Study after study has shown that those schooled in abstinence rhetoric are just as sexually active as those who aren’t, leaving the right wing with virtually no credibility on the subject. Now, conservatives have to be a little savvier if they want to lie about condoms’ effectiveness against sexually transmitted infections, make bogus claims about a link between abortion and breast cancer, or manipulate teens into thinking that premarital sex is damaging to one’s self-worth. That’s why conservative ideologues have taken abstinence-only discourse outside of the classroom and are trying to woo students through a different strategy: by making abstinence the teen trend of the year.

To boost the no-sex-’til-marriage cool factor, conservatives are co-opting everything from teen magazines to fashion to comedy routines. But behind the trendy talk are the same shame-inducing tactics and medical misinformation that could potentially put teens’ self-esteem, health and lives in danger.

Read the rest of this amazing article at alternet.org.

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