'Why don't we impeach him?'

Borrowing a page from Bill Maher, I'd like to establish a new rule: those who propose presidential impeachment should come up with some sort of coherent rationale for doing so. And before conservatives ask, no, "I don't like Obama" is not an actual reason.

Last week, Rep. Blake Farenthold (R-Tex.) not only expressed an interest in impeaching President Obama, he said proponents "could probably get the votes in the House of Representatives to do it." On what grounds? Farenthold didn't get around to explaining why the president would be impeached, though in context, it apparently had something to do with what the Texas Republican described as "the whole birth certificate issue."

And then last night, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) said something similar.

In a question and answer session following a speech he gave at a Montgomery County GOP dinner last night, an audience member asked Cruz, "Why don't we impeach him [Obama]?"

"It's a good question," Cruz responded, "and I'll tell you the simplest answer: To successfully impeach a president you need the votes in the U.S. Senate."

Actually, it's not a good question, and to successfully impeach a president you need the votes in the U.S. House. But other than that, the right-wing senator clearly knows what he's talking about.

National Review posted an audio clip of the Cruz event, and listeners will notice that neither the senator nor his audience actually bothered mentioning a rationale for impeachment; they just seemed to think it was a good idea. Cruz said something about his belief that Obama has acted outside the law, but he offered no details or specifics.

I remember the good old days -- back in 2011 -- when unhinged conservative Republicans in Congress used to come up with pretenses of high crimes when talking up presidential impeachment. Lately, they don't even bother. Obama is the president; he's a Democrat; the right doesn't like him; ergo impeachment is a credible option. QED.

Glenn Beck slaps Oprah!

Glenn Beck has not just joined the right-wing war on Oprah Winfrey, he’s holding himself up as some kind of living Statue of Liberty to lead the poor, huddled masses who are oppressed by her racism into the light of freedom. I kid you not.

In case you missed it, Winfrey recently told The Grio she felt that Trayvon Martin’s death was “parallel” to and, “in my mind, same thing” as the lynching of Emmett Till. Even though, almost in the same breath she added:

“You can get stuck in that and not allow yourself to move forward and see how far we’ve come. …We need to give ourselves a round of applause. In this country, with all of its injustices, look at what we’ve been able to do in the span of one man’s lifetime.”

It’s pretty clear to me that Winfrey was not saying the two events were literally the same but that she was speaking about their impact on and resonance with African-Americans. But instead of trying to understand what she meant or how an African-American might view the killing of Trayvon through a different prism than a white person, the right-wing has been frothing at the mouth with racial animus toward her.

Oprah sent the right into another tailspin relaying an incident in which she said she’d felt racially profiled when a salesclerk in Zurich would not show her a very expensive handbag.

So, leave it to Glenn Beck to join the outrage and use the opportunity to promote himself – the guy who was pushed out of Fox News after he infamously accused President Obama of hating white people – as some kind of racial liberator.

Beck said:

“We’re not the country that is trying to do the right thing. We are not that country. But the good news is, we are those people.”

Actually, what Beck meant is he is those people:

“Oprah Winfrey, you disgust me.
“…Why are you telling everybody else they can’t make it? Why are you telling us that white people are the problem? Oprah, I choose to be the person that America thought you were. I choose to be the person that will overcome the bad things in my life. Nobody’s going to tell me what I can and can’t do and who I am. I know who I am and I will not be beaten down by the system. And I will hold those people up that feel the same way, no matter what color. Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free. Give me the ones that you have told ‘You’ll never make it.’ Send… to me the tempest-tossed because I hold my lamp beside a golden door.”

If anyone can show me where Oprah ever said that “white people are the problem,” then I’ll believe that Beck has a smidgen of credibility on the subject of her race remarks. Until then, I’ll keep on thinking that he has a bad case of Freudian projection.

Maddow: Virginia Republicans move too far right and face serious voter backlash

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On Wednesday night’s edition of “The Rachel Maddow Show,” host Rachel Maddow discussed the growing unease with which Virginia voters seem to be regarding their Republican elected officials. As the governor’s race begins to take shape in that state, some of Virginia’s one-time conservative stars are losing their shine with voters who are growing wary of overheated conservative rhetoric.

Virginia, Maddow explained, has their state elections in off years, so “their 2013 is like everybody else’s 2012.” Up for grabs are the governor’s office and a number of other high level state positions. Rather than have a primary, the Republicans had a state convention to choose their nominees for the races.

The result, Maddow said, is a “rather off-the-hook, far-right slate of Republican nominees,” including gubernatorial candidate Ken Cuccinelli, the man so prudish he ordered that the bared breast of the Roman goddess on the Virginia State seal be covered, and attorney general candidate E. W. Jackson, who claims that doing yoga opens the soul up to demonic possession.

The Democrats, on the other hand, had a primary. One of the surprises came in the race to run for Lieutenant Governor. In spite of all the conventional wisdom favoring a candidate named Aneesh Chopra, the candidate who won was dark horse Ralph Northam, a pediatrician with no real political track record and one main campaign plank, that he would repeal the Republican efforts to make abortions invasive and humiliating for women. Virginia was the first state to mandate trans-vaginal ultrasounds, a completely unnecessary procedure, for women seeking abortions.

Northam’s ads specifically stated that he would stand up for women and their right to choose. He was endorsed by Planned Parenthood’s President Cecile Richards and he handily won the primary race in spite of Chopra’s stellar resume and much larger campaign war chest.

The same thing happened in the race for attorney general, candidate Mark Herring placed women’s health issues front and center in his campaign and won the nomination.

Women’s reproductive rights are a winning issue in Virginia right now, said Maddow, mostly thanks to the state GOP’s wild overreach into women’s health issues. She called Virginia a “petri dish” for the rest of the country, where Republican Congressmen and state elected officials have spent the last several years mounting a full court press against women’s freedom to make their own health choices.

“We’ve just seen it work in a Democratic primary in Virginia,” Maddow said. “We’ll see how it works in the fall in the general election against those Republicans.”

She added, “But with the Republicans in the House of Representatives in Washington today, voting again today for a new nationwide abortion ban, frankly all eyes are on Virginia to see how this electoral experiment plays out in the end.”

That's SOO gay!

Yes, I know I did a post about saying "that's so gay on Saturday. I'm  using that title to make a point.

Homoerotic anti-”gay marriage” protesters disrupt French Open finals

An anti-gay coalition in France of the religious right, Catholic church and opposition party UMP disrupted the finals of the French Open tennis tournament today at Roland Garros. Ostensible, they were protesting France’s recent legalization of gay marriage, but now that gay marriage is legal in France, the protests are rather moot.

A bunch of half-naked buff young guys, wearing carnival masks, streaked on the tennis court, and held signs, while holding flares.  You can only see one in the video below.  Buzzfeed has photos of the other protesters, and an excellent demonstration of the homoeroticism of France’s Catholic church/UMP.

The French religious right has been using this leit-motif of buff half-naked men in Mardi Gras masks, to protest gay marriage, for a while now.  And it’s more than a bit odd.  Do you remember France’s unitard bird-man “flash mob” for traditional marriage from  a few months ago?  Yeah, nothing gay about that:

Here are more gayer-than-gayer religious right protesters via the Advocate magazine.

Tight pants, muscled physique.  It’s like all the homo and none of the phobe.

You see, France legalized gay marriage a few weeks ago, and the French right has been beside itself over its defeat and the gays’ victory.  Much like the American Republican party’s Frankenstein coalition with the Catholic church, the evangelicals, and the Mormons, the French right-wing UMP party also hitched its wagon to the anti-gay prejudice of France’s minuscule religious right, mostly led by the Catholic church, and allied with America’s anti-gay marriage right, led by NOM.

As it became increasingly clear that the French parliament was going to pass marriage equality, France’s  anti-gay right became more and more violent.

First, religious right protesters violently attacked the French police, and then used their own pre-school age children as human shields against tear gas, which was ironic in a protest supposedly devoted to saving the children.

Then came the fascist-salute crowd attacking the police.

Then came an attack on Paris’ main LGBT center.

Then the threats to kill gays, and hate crimes against French gays.

Then, powder-laced letters were sent to the head of the parliament.

All the while, France’s religious right leader, and the Catholic church’s top leader in France, both seemed to make excuses for the violence.

Then skinheads murder a young French poli-sci student who had just participated in pro-gay rallies in Paris, and the religious right blames gay marriage supporters for the 18 year old’s death – after all, the religious right says, this wold have never happened had the government not legalized gay marriage.

The French Open is rather sacrosanct in France.  And attacking it, during the finals, is not exactly the wisest move if you’re interested in winning French public opinion.  The problem is, it’s not clear what the right-wing coalition of the Catholic church and France’s UMP want, other than, seemingly, to foment violence, hatred and intolerance in what was once thought of as one of Europe’s more tolerant countries, at least sexually.

GOP Candidate: Yoga Opens You to Satanic Possession

Guess that explains the hot yoga craze! It's preparation for eternity in hell!

Virginia lieutenant gubernatorial contender E.W. Jackson in 2008 took a stance that's apparently common among Christian conservatives.

Maybe it's the crow poses.

National Review's Betsy Woodruff looked into controversial Virginia lieutenant gubernatorial candidate and pastor E.W. Jackson's 2008 book Ten Commandments To An Extraordinary Life for a deeper understanding of his views on the human spirit, society, and, uh, yoga. Yes, yoga.According to Jackson:

John Chapman, 1809. Collection of the New York Public Library.

When one hears the word meditation, it conjures an image of Maharishi Yoga talking about finding a mantra and striving for nirvana. . . . The purpose of such meditation is to empty oneself. . . . [Satan] is happy to invade the empty vacuum of your soul and possess it. That is why people serve Satan without ever knowing it or deciding to, but no one can be a child of God without making a decision to surrender to him. Beware of systems of spirituality which tell you to empty yourself. You will end up filled with something you probably do not want.

Yoga has become so normalized in American life that this seems an extreme position (no pun intended). And yet Jackson's warning about on the spiritual dangers of yoga are not uncommon among Christian conservatives representing a variety of denominations.
R. Albert Mohler Jr., president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, sparked a passionate discussion on the topic of Christians and yoga in 2010, when he wrote in a book review:

The GOP Never Let Facts Stop Them from Being Stupid!

Somebody Is Pissed That Her Invitation To The WHCD Got Lost In The Mail

The President's Act in case you missed it: