Cool!  I never realized you could happen upon armadillos like that.

Yeah, the jokes about dead ones on the road are sadly based in fact.  They run around all over the place, though they don’t tend to get into your backyard or anything.  Unfortunately, we have possums for that.  What’s sad is that as gross as possums are, they don’t even come close to topping the list of Most Disgusting Texas Animals.  Nor do javelinas.  Right now, it’s an even tie between the flying tree roaches of East Texas or the equally East Texan monstrosity known as the nutria, which is a giant swamp rat.

I wish we had armadillos around here to eat the slugs!

I have a crazy 80’s knitting book with a pattern for a knit armadillo stole/scarf thingy. It’s freaky.

I remember the Zilker Botanical Gardens! My dad used to take us there all the time when we were kids. Do they still have the Japanese Gardens in Zilker Park? That was my favorite part…

As for Disgusting Texas Animals, I recently realized that I’d done that “blanking childhood traumas from my memory” thing—I’d almost entirely deleted my memories of having to sit far away from light sources in the evening to avoid Austin’s flying, light-loving roaches…

He knows and we know he’s lying,

Oh, I think they’re able to work themselves up into a state of perfect sincerity within the space of about 30 seconds or so, and insist that they’re being perfectly honest.  If you bring up the contradiction, they’ll deny it if they can or ignore it if they must - but they’ll be perfectly sincere about their snit du jour.

And just appalled that you might question them.

Wingnuts.  They run on cognitive dissonance like we run on irony.

Wingnuts.  They run on cognitive dissonance like we run on irony.

A golden nugget.  Good enough for the front of a t-shirt.

Johnny Thunder? There’s a name from the past;

Slam dancing at the Peppermint Lounge on Thursday nites waiting for JT to to make it to his own gig, usually showed up around 2am. Now and days it seems Manhattan starts closing up around that time, what a shame;

Do you have a workable definition of wingnut? I googl’d and didn’t find anything more specific than wiki and a few other citations. One curious one was an article by William Safire comparing the origins of wingnut and moon bat. In particular, is there some general consensus on wingnut attributes? Is it a continuum of beliefs? The term is in such wide use that it seems to fall into the “everyone knows what it means” mode. Thanks for the help.

ayutokamina:

It is short for right-wing nut.  (I guess).  Workable definition?  It is an automatic, knee-jerk reaction to anything that might intend to improve the lot of any colored or female person.  It is a core belief in a static universe wherein anything anybody else gets per force reduces what they have or may someday get.

That’s my story and I’m stickin’ to it.

Oh, yeah, music.

By the way, where is katz!?

Last Lonely Eagle–New Riders of the Purple Sage        
I Can See for Miles–The Who
40 Acres–Caedmon’s Call        
The Ballad of Boot Hill–Johnny Cash
Bring It Back to Love–Gerideau
My Songbird–Emmylou Harris        
Paint It, Black–The Rolling Stones
Trumet Concerto In D Major: Andante Molto–Telemann
Lovely Rita   –The Beatles    
By the Way–Red Hot Chili Peppers

I loved Surber’s list. Michele Bachmann? Sarah Palin? Michelle Bachmann?

He couldn’t even be bothered with Condoleeza Rice.

Meanwhile, we’re so threatened by women such as Hillary Clinton, Janet Reno, Sonia Sotomayor and Nancy Pelosi that we - um, what? Kick them upstairs? Is that what he’s saying? I don’t even know what he’s saying.

A wingnut is a person whose entire political philosophy centers around doing things that liberals hate.  He’s basically a conservative, but way more serious about it.

“but I have special affection for Don Surber claiming that “the left” is a hotbed of misogyny. “

I wish I could ride this train with you, but I’m getting off at this station because the left IS a hotbed of misogyny, just as much as the right.  Olbermann your idea of a feminist?  And what did that crap sound like when alleged progressives were attacking Hillary Clinton during her campaign because she was supposed to be unlikable and shrill and all the rest of that horseshit?  You think the misogyny is exclusively on the right?  That’s just not the case.

By the way, the last major party to run a woman for vice president was the Republican Party.  I don’t care what you think of Sarah Palin (I personally despise her politics and was about as prepared to be a vice president as that lightweight George Bush was to be president…and we all know how well that worked out), but she is a woman, the GOP ran her for vice president, and the left is the part of the political spectrum that is attacking her in a sexist manner.  The right attacks Pelosi in a sexist manner and the left attacks Palin and they are both brimful of misogyny.

Don’t pretend that the right is the only part of the political spectrum that is guilty here.  The “left” (and specifically, the Democrats) have always been prepared to throw women’s rights, for instance, under the bus for political gain.

DBK has a point. So the left is a hotbed, and the right is a fluidized-combustion furnace that glows in the high infrared and can boil nonferrous metals up through aluminum…

Your right DBK.  I actually think that Olbermann is less anti-feminist than his reputation is.  And I don’t know why he has that reputation, unless it is based on his over-the-top histrionics about Hillary.  Especially his special comment when she made the “we all remember the California primary” comment.  I wouldn’t call him a feminist but I don’t know that he’s actually a sexist.  Kos is.  Period.  An arrogant pos sexist and a lot of his followers are as well.

Palin is so difficult for me because she embodies so many of the worst female stereotypes.  On one hand, she has every right to dress in open-toed shoed and be attractive.  She is attractive.  Huffpo showing closeups of her painted toenails and all of the liberal men talking about hate fucking her, are just crazy.  Calling her look the “sluttish airline stewardess” look, is sexist.  On the other hand, Palin uses her looks in a way that I consider out of bounds and problematic for all women, especially for business women out there busting their asses and not winking and flirting and using their sexuality to get ahead.  Of course it goes without saying that her politics are anti-woman. 

The problem with the right is that they have a certain definition of sexist.  When Rush Limbaugh says that “we’ve got a babbbbbbeeee on the tickets folks” they, and Palin, eat that up.  They don’t get the sexism in that.  And I heard the tape of an Alaskan radio show that Palin was on where the right wing disc jokey’s attacked a political nemisis of hers who was also a woman, based on her looks.  And Palin giggled.  That enrages me.  She plays up to sexist men, and enjoys using her looks to do so,  and then when she is attacked in a sexist manner, she expects me to lift my sword.

She makes it really hard to want to.

But all in all, I don’t find liberal men that much less sexist than conservative men.  You have to find an actual leftist to get that, and those are rare.  I have one, and I’m keeping him.

Palin is so difficult for me because she embodies so many of the worst female stereotypes.

I agree. And I can’t accept her nomination as evidence against the Republican’s misogyny, because her nomination was rife with it. She was chosen specifically to appeal to women, under the impression that we would base our votes on who looks like us, instead of whose policies would actually benefit us. Her nomination was based on the Republican’t enshrined belief that women are shallow and stupid.

And while I think it’s intensely hypocritical for Republicans to get up in arms about the misogyny when it’s their bread and butter, I can’t say that the left is misogyny free.

Look, we know and they know that they don’t actually mean a single word when condemning rape jokes or objectification, and we know and they know that they can barely bring themselves to type the words “strong woman” without breaking into giggles over how this is going to get the feminists this time. 

I am seriously sometimes grateful to the internet for coming up with trolling so that I have a context for understanding this sort of right-wing bullshit.

Again, I bring up McCain’s failure to understand the question “Why not pick a more qualified woman than Palin?”

Because all women are be definition less qualified than the least qualified man.  They are there as window dressing and puppets for the men who tell them what to do.

Palin embodies this entirely.  She is NOT qualified, except as a puppet to parrot wingnut talking points.

The GOP placing her on the ticket was not a strike for feminism in the least.  I’d say it was the opposite.

Condi Rice is also on my shit list.  She went for the Republicans b/c she thought she could get farther—and she did.  Her office was right next to the husb-President’s.

Condi Rice is brilliant, and she used her brilliance to aid a doofus, to tear down our freedoms, and to try to turn us into a mini-USSR.

Also not a strike for feminism.  Or against racism.

It does point out how incredibly white and male the power structure is.  Roland Burris, Obama’s senatorial seat warmer has no chance in hell of being re-elected.  Jan Schakowsky bowed out of running for the Senate and is staying in Congress.  Lisa Madigan is looking at the Governorship.  No doubt their decisions were made b/c Chris Kennedy (yes, of those Kennedys) has thrown his hat in the ring.

I like Chris Kennedy.  He’s been in Chicagoland for 20+ years and will make a fine Senator.

He’s also white and male.  And when most of the Senate is also white and male, that’s a disadvantage to the country.

She was chosen specifically to appeal to women…

Ironically, I think she really only appealed to men, that is conservative and moderate men, and alienated all liberal and moderate women (not including the most die hard PUMAs).  One thing many women don’t like to see is a stupid woman promoted because of her gender and her looks.

Sorry, DBK, but that there’s sexism on the left doesn’t justify the childish equivalence between the two, or ignoring that things like being pro-choice and for equal pay do, in fact, matter.  I never said there weren’t sexists on the left.  But I get off the train when we let conservatives bait us into claiming it’s the same or worse.  Then we’re just being blind, and blinded by feminist ideology, no less.

ARMADILLOS!  I want some! CUTIES!
I can’t think about the right-wing right now.  Too much has happened lately, and… well, I’ve lived my whole life in the KCMO area, both KCMO proper & KS side.  volunteer for Planned Parenthood…

anyway: 
1. “Living Well”- Bedhead
2. “One to Three”- Les Savy Fav
3. “Shredders on Fry”- Eat Skull
4. “Weed Demon”- Wavves
5. “I’m Not Done”- Fever Ray
6. “Stuttering (May 4)”
7. “Oh Meu Deus”- Patsy
8. “So Fine”- Telepathe
9. “Marat/Sade”- False Prophets
10. “Fripp”- Catherine Wheel

@ Caton:  I have one of those, myself!  aren’t left-wing, feminist, men the best?
@ PIATOR:  See my husband’s eldest sister- um, we’re (liberals/ “Dems”- her words) the ones that’re causing all of the problems of Guantanamo Bay.  How.  Fucking.  Convenient.

oh, and I know all of the reasons why we cannot have separate countries, but I can still dream:  Liberals and Democrats- over here.  Right-wingers- go over there.  If they had their own country, they’d totally implode.  and, I do not wish that on their children, and we could settle this without a war, and I know Amanda has addressed this before.  but, I can wish, wish, wish, all day.

I do not wish that on their children, and we could settle this without a war, and I know Amanda has addressed this before.  but, I can wish, wish, wish, all day.

This, I think, is one of the huge difference between liberals and right-wing types. Even as we have those fantasies of letting the other side have their just desserts, we recognize how impractical they would be, how destructive and nasty. And we can enjoy the fantasies while being horrified with the idea that someone might actually carry them out.

the nutria, which is a giant swamp rat

Awwwww I find nutrias incredibly cute!
But then, they’re very scarce over here, to the point of being almost extinct.

Is it just me, or has Sarah Palin’s accent disappeared?  During the campaign she affected this Midwestern twang that you could spread on crackers.  During the recent Gingrich/Palin dustup the news played a clip of her speaking on Hannity’s show and the accent was virtually gone.

I don’t know, it might be me.

All I have to add is that I live in Charleston WV, and I think it’s just hilarious whenever a major blogger mentions Surber. Don’t get me wrong, he deserves nothing but ridicule, and I’ve spent quite a few pixels bashing him myself. But take comfort in knowing that he’s a small-time man, writing for an even smaller-time paper. The Charleston Daily Mail is well on its way to sinking, and I hope it takes Surber with it. They recently lost one of their major reporters to a Chamber of Commerce funded propaganda rag—apparently, they pay better.

Those of us who’ve had the misfortune of being exposed to Surber’s column on a regular basis know that he’s known locally for making simple factual errors that totally ruin whatever point he was trying to make, then, when people call him on it he’ll either ban them or insist that it doesn’t matter that he added 5 extra zeros to whatever statistic he was citing—usually both.

But the worst thing is how whenever someone local mentions his stupidity they’ll say something like “oh, I know—but he’s catering to the Daily Mail’s audience! HE SELLS PAPERS!” And I can’t help but think that these people don’t know what the fuck they’re talking about. Because I happen to think that your average Charleston Daily Mail subscriber would MUCH rather read the inane banter of Bill ‘O or George Will instead of the inane banter of a third-rate hack from Poca, West Virginia. Surber is a little microcosm of why the newspaper industry is drying up like a mud hole on a warm summer day: they’re paying some local no-talent nimrod around $60K a year +bennies to do something they could get better and cheaper off a wire. OR, they could take his salary, and GASP, hire 2 or 3 reporters. But instead of paying reporters to cover the news in CHARLESTON, they’d rather pay this guy to keep tabs on a blogger in Austin.

they’d have chosen one who is closer to the top of the “is she qualified?” list than she is to the top of the “is she attractive?” list. Palin doesn’t even come close.

You said a mouthful there.  I actually suspect, as sick as this sounds, that they picked her not only because she’s attractive, but because conservatives are highly invested in the idea that liberal women are fat, ugly beasts.  Firstly, cons are obsessed with looks.  In all my years on political message boards I can’t tell you how many times I would post something about say, the Iraq war, and get “YOU FAT FUCKING BITCH, WHY DON’T YOU JUST ADMIT YOU’RE FAT” as a response from some conservative man.  Or how many times they would tell me that I’m a fat ugly bitch whose problem is that I haven’t been laid in years.  Really crazy shit, not to mention, could not be farther from the truth.  And con women are no better, they are just as obsessed and very invested in the idea that con women are better-looking than liberal women because “they take better care of themselves.”

So I think that cons, like Rush Limbaugh and his ilk, loved having her on the ticket because they know that no real feminist could ever support her, and that liberals would not support her, and then they could claim that feminists and liberals were “jealous” of her good looks.  (the best was watching one of those idiots actually making this claim outright to rachel maddow one night, and her “hello, gay here?” wtf look.)  This really shows how little they value women.  If you have fuckability, then you hold value.  If a man, any man really , should deem you unfuckable, then you have no value.  This is why Rush Limbaugh who Palin the new feminist crusader, just adores, could call her a babe, while saying about Hillary Clinton “I don’t want to watch a 60 year old woman aging for the next 4 years”.  Right there is the enraging hypocrisy of Sarah Palin, who does use her looks to cozy up to sexist men, whines about sexism when a sexist man says something she doesn’t like, and giggles when her sexist male friends who she cozies up to, demeans another women’s looks.  It’s only a small part of why I can’t stand that woman, but it’s an important part.

Of course Amanda is right about choice and equal pay, but I feel that that is ideology.  And certainly the liberal ideology is superior to the con one for women.  (and for all humans).  But, I do agree that Democratic men are if anything, only slightly more likely to be non-sexist than con men.  And that Democratic male politicians will throw women off and under the bus any chance they get. Thsi post is getting too long or I’d go into examples, but I’ve got em.

And further that in the general population, men who vote for Democrats are just as likely to be jerking off to violent degrading porn, have generally degrading attitudes towards women, and basically be sexists.  I still say that to find a true feminist man - and yes Holly, the are great and worth the wait! - you have to find yourself a leftist.  Even with all of that, since Republicans vote for conservative ideology which is harmful to women, and Democrats generally don’t unless they deem it politically opportune, then to say that they are both the same is not actually true.  Sometimes it just feels like it is.

One curious one was an article by William Safire comparing the origins of wingnut and moon bat

Safire - there’s your problem.

I think a key part of being a wingnut is a certain pride in ignorance.

A better definition would be that wingnuts are the expression in American politics of the authoritarian personality. This is well worth reading on the topic, or you you can get the gist from [url=“http://www.themodernword.com/eco/eco_blackshirt.html"hrf=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authoritarian_personality”>the Wikipedia</a>:

The authoritarian personality is an influential theory of personality developed by University of California, Berkeley psychologists, Theodor W. Adorno, Else Frenkel-Brunswik, Daniel Levinson, and Nevitt Sanford in their 1950 book of the same name. The personality type is defined by nine traits that were believed to cluster together as the result of psychodynamic, childhood experiences. These traits are conventionalism, authoritarian submission, authoritarian aggression, anti-intraception, superstition and stereotypy, power and “toughness,” destructiveness and cynicism, projectivity, and exaggerated concerns over sexuality.[1] In brief, the authoritarian is predisposed to follow the dictates of a strong leader and traditional, conventional values.

Recently, John Dean made use of the theory (as well as research by Robert Altemeyer) to analyze the contemporary political climate in his book Conservatives without Conscience.

Gee, don’t those characteristics sound… familiar…?

Compare with <a ]Umberto Eco’s classic essay[/url].

What, AGAIN?!?!?!

That last link is http://www.themodernword.com/eco/eco_blackshirt.html.

Cursed am I by the HTML Gods, doomed forever more to be their butt monkey!

Our Pride festival was last weekend.  That combined with all the states going with marriage equality lately has made me want to listen to this song all the time recently.  It is called The Rise of Sodom and Gommorrah.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HFOddQf0HjA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gsx9mMtcfoM

Incidentally I read that bit of the Bible and it wasn’t just that the towns had a lot of gay people, but that the entire male population attempted to gang-rape two male angels that visited.  That’s immoral by any standard assuming for a moment that angels are real.

PIATOR,

Thanks for the references. I appreciate your thoughtful response.

I can’t get to Surber’s article - I get a 403.  I suspect it has been Instalanched. 

Anyway, here’s a cache for anyone else having trouble.

Latest from iTunes:

Suicidal Tendencies - Institutionalized

Sir Mix A Lot - Baby Got Back

Cheap Trick - Surrender (live version)

Jody Watley - Looking for a new love

Motley Crue - Dr. Feelgood

Ohio Players - Love Rollercoaster

Ozzy Osbourne - Flying High Again

Robert Palmer - Addicted to Love

The Tubes - White Punks on Dope

Wild Cherry - Play That Funky Music

But, I do agree that Democratic men are if anything, only slightly more likely to be non-sexist than con men.

I have to point out that we’re talking about rape jokes that conservatives wouldn’t give a shit about if they couldn’t disingenuously exploit them.  For all that “most” liberal men are supposedly identical to conservative men in their attitudes, I have yet to read a single liberal male blogger actually defend the Playboy article, and most said it was atrocious.

Meanwhile, I have yet to hear our newly minted feminist conservative wackadoodles object to the relentless abuse that feminist bloggers get.  Most liberal men who have been made aware of it have one of two reactions—-a few doubt you, but most believe you.  Both think it’s horrible.  This is an actual, verifiable difference from conservatives who wish to play like it’s fair play to stalk and abuse women who disagree with you, and accuse the targets of being sensitive babies.  I’m not saying liberal men aren’t sexist, but if we can’t or won’t recognize actual differences, we’re fucked, because we won’t even know how to push for progress, since we can’t or won’t see what progress looks like.

“I do agree that Democratic men are if anything, only slightly more likely to be non-sexist than con men.”

How is what you’re saying not sexist?  Or is this a case of IOKIYAF?

What, in your opinion is the most sexist thing my dad has ever done?  Or my male friends?  Or my brothers?  Or the sweet old guy who lives next door to me? 

Surely you must be swimming in evidence to make a claim like this: “men who vote for Democrats are just as likely to be jerking off to violent degrading porn, have generally degrading attitudes towards women, and basically be sexists.”  Do tell.

Seems to me you have a pretty degrading attitude towards men.  You don’t see it?  Well, try this one on for size: “Democratic women are if anything, only slightly more likely to be non-stupid than conservative women.”

Oh, and I hope you realize that “men are all sexist pigs and that’s why I never get laid” is just the lady choad version of “women are all stuck-up feminist pigs and that’s why I never get laid”.

OT but amusing - Bill O’Reilly, the techno remix...