...so, what you’re saying is that wingnut trolls are not a part of the Reichwing, so much as the Reichwing consists of trolls…is that about right?

It all makes so much sense now…

How can you read that stuff, Jesse? Even filtered through your hilarious synopsis, the stupid still makes my head throb in pain.

1) This seems pretty similar to other insanity defenses.  Post-partum depression is actually serious, despite the fact that it doesn’t happen to men.

2)

comparing feminists to abortion clinic bombers

Umm, I don’t think he knows what “feminist” means.  The commenter says that women are bombing waterboarding facilities.  Does s/he realize that this happens in places we mostly don’t have access to?  (Not that we would bomb the places anyway.)  This particular person doesn’t make much sense at all.  It almost seems like s/he is trying to justify abortion clinic bombings by saying that we do the same thing.

3) Comedians aren’t afraid to make fun of Obama, there’s just nothing to make fun of.  He’s not a doofus and if he has any secret scandals, we haven’t found out about them yet.  When you have to resort to making fun of mustard, it’s probably better to just not even bother with the joke.

P.S. I lived in Philly for 5 years and I love Cheez Wiz on my cheesesteaks.  I wouldn’t try to force it onto anyone who doesn’t like it though.

1.) They cannot read.

2.) This is compensated for by picking out the few trigger words which spark babbling outrage and then copying only those words in an effort to feel like they actually can read, like a high schooler who only read two pages of the English assignment but tries to make everything revolve around the one phrase he remembers if he gets called on.

If you hadn’t singled out conservative bloggers for this description, I’d have thought you also read all the way through the last Miss California comment thread.

I lived in Philly for 5 years and I love Cheez Wiz on my cheesesteaks.

And you dare to call yourself an America-hatin’ librul elitist? It’s melted brie on organic shredded bison meat, all on an artisan multi-grain brioche—that’s what Blackazoid would order in Philly.

The link between being pro-choice and wanting mental illness to be a mitigating factor, even when the illness only affects women, is that someone is, yep, a feminist, and striving to eliminate sexism.  There’s a lot of irony here, because anti-feminists have all sorts of ideological reasons to conceal the existence of post-partum depression, but the result of trying to silence any kind of discourse about it is that more, not fewer children, will die at the hands of mothers who have slipped into post-partum psychosis.  The only way to protect children is to admit that their mothers have problems that make them a danger to themselves and their children, and get the mothers help.

The problem is that anti-feminists literally see women as the enemy—-the enemy of men, the enemy of children (who are mainly a representative of the patriarchal order).  So they can’t conceive of feminist solutions that protect children by taking women’s needs and health seriously.  They prefer a world where women are pitted against their children, who are seen as representatives of male power.  Reality: children do best when women do best.  Attempts to take away women’s rights to control their fertility, make equal pay, and get equal access to health care all have bottom line negative effects on children’s health and well-being, which is intricately tied up with their mothers’. 

Post-partum depression and psychosis are just an extreme example.  Case in point: Andrea Yates.  Her husband and her pastor’s patriarchal approach that treats women like a Fifth Column who can only be controlled by being ignored and beaten into submission led directly to the deaths of those five children.  The sense is that caring for women’s needs takes away from men and children, and so when Yates begged for care for her severe mental problems, she was told basically to fuck off and have more kids.  This extreme disregard for her health didn’t do her husband or her children any favors, obviously. 

Those murders happened in Texas, by the way.  Which is why it’s not surprising that this is an issue here.

And you dare to call yourself an America-hatin’ librul elitist? It’s melted brie on organic shredded bison meat, all on an artisan multi-grain brioche—that’s what Blackazoid would order in Philly.

You left out the organic Maui onions, watercress, and radish sprouts.  Which all sounds like a real good sandwich, come to think.  In fact, skip the grass-fed bison, and go with the head-explody librul 1337ness of a grilled cheese.

Yep, even though I love to kill and eat babies, use stem cells from precious snowflake embryos to stay young, let murders go free, make Americans work harder so their jobs aren’t stolen by illegals, force my Satanism and atheism on young children in schools, ban all prayer and burn all churches, and allow women and minorities to steal jobs away from much the smarter white menz, I just can’t bring myself to eat brie or multi-grain bread.  I’m ashamed that I just don’t hate America enough.  I’ll go register with the Republican party now and get started on that quiverfull of white babies :(

On a serious note, I think that fundies don’t like the idea of post-partum depression and psychosis because they have this idealized view that having children is just naturally all rainbows and puppies for all women, and it’s the natural order of the universe for them to completely love all aspects of it.

The scary thing about these wingnuts is that they are so stupid/crazy/evil that, not only do they readily believe that Democratic congresswomen (and presumably men too, but especially those uppity bitches with their abortions and stuff) are pro-infanticide, they actively read any bill, statement or vote having anything to do with abortion or babies by these people as somehow being pro-murder. I just find the presumption that liberals, especially liberal women, are so sub-human as to think infanticide is great, really fucking creepy. I mean, many wingnuts are emphatic pro-torture sadists, but I am at least willing to give conservatives who have not unambiguously demonstrated that they get a hard-on at the idea of torturing people the benefit of the fucking doubt. It’s just way too icky (and not good for political judgment) to subscribe that kind of lack of basic human decency to my ideological opponents across the board. Bad enough are the vast numbers of them, including the most powerful people in the government, that have already demonstrated their freaky sadism.

And honestly, while the torture issue is pretty clear-cut to anyone with a conscience, one can see the argument of serious national security concerns and fear of a deadly terror attack making it a thorny issue to navigate in a given situation. I mean, I can totally understand the temptation arising in interrogation officers who believe that their work is protecting thousands or millions of their fellow citizens from possible harm. I would expect regulations to make the matter clear and the interrogation officer to therefore know what to do, but I can understand the existence of tension there.

But to actively believe, under completely unambiguous circumstances, that liberals like child murder oh-so-much, and will happily introduce bills to decriminalize it all the live-long day? That’s just some freaky shit. That doesn’t compute at all. I really don’t get it.

But to actively believe, under completely unambiguous circumstances, that liberals like child murder oh-so-much, and will happily introduce bills to decriminalize it all the live-long day? That’s just some freaky shit. That doesn’t compute at all. I really don’t get it.

Wingnuts like to believe that their enemies are cartoon supervillains, because then, they get to be Superman.

I think you forgot rule 3 - they really have no idea how sarcasm or irony work.

You left out the organic Maui onions, watercress, and radish sprouts.

I’ll take the Maui onions, but I prefer illegally imported jalapeno peppers and a dash of Christ-killin’ Kosher salt on my sandwich (which, for those who want to order it, is known in fine Arab-run diners as “The Flag Burner”).

“And do you ever get the feeling that if they could stand black people, Eriq La Salle’s character from that movie would be their hero?”

Yes.

My favorite Rethug gambit is talking about something that happens once in a blue moon and making it sound rampant and universal.  How many mothers kill their children, really now?  And why should one psychosis be any less of a defense than any other?  My guess is that this bill only came up because some Texas Legadork concocted a “save the baybeeez” bill in the first place and they are trying to fix the damn thing.

I would just like to point out that Jon Stewart has made jokes about Obama, and they were funny. (Off the top of my head, on his speech to Congress (the one Jindal followed). And his response to Jindal was comedy gold.)

I love how they’re reacting to the pro-choice argument that they only care about babies when they’re still inside the womb by countering that they also care about the babies when doing so would further punish women.

I wouldn’t be surprised if this legislation is a direct response to the Andrea Yates case.  There was a lot of outrage, both inside and outside Texas, that someone who had such a strong history of mental illness could be tried for capital murder as though she was completely in control of her actions.  (Eventually, she was given a retrial because of false testimony by “expert” Park Dietz and found not guilty by reason of insanity, which really only means that she’ll spend the rest of her life in a secure mental hospital instead of a prison.)

I’ll stand by cheesesteaks with whiz, no matter how disgusting it is.  But it’s why I try to avoid ordering a cheesesteak more than once a year.

In any case though, the “dijongate” thing is really, really stupid, and good lord that blogger is frustrating i the comments, with all the smug “I guess I touched a nerve” kinds of responses.  Along with the “I thought you could dissent here” blah blah blah.

I think the GOP’s decline in the past five years can be attributed in no small part to the fact that their leadership is made up of smug jackasses.

In any case though, the “dijongate” thing is really, really stupid

Just when you thought conservatives could not possibly get more petty, childish, and inane…

It sounded like Jacobson was whining mostly because the press didn’t focus in on the Dijon comments and make a big kerfluffle out of it. Which is even funnier—they’re not just upset at Obama, they’re upset that the press isn’t engaging in their favorite kind of stupid antics.

OH!  Speaking of GOP losers:

http://mrbillingham.blogsome.com/2009/05/06/eric-erickson-is-a-troll-in-real-life/

I just blogged about this - RedState’s Erick Erickson is on the city council in Macon, GA, and used that perch to call Souter a goatfucker (not making that up) and the kill a resolution honoring Obama by threatening to force a debate on 101 amendments he wrote that talk about cocaine and Ayers, all to piss off a black lady on the council who called him on being a jackass.

“Right now, murder of a child under the age of six in the state if Texas is capital murder. [...] Because if the child is under a year old, they’re worth less than a child aged 1 - 6?”

If that’s actually how it works, I’m now wondering about what both Texas and the author of that post have against seven-year-olds.

she’ll spend the rest of her life in a secure mental hospital instead of a prison.)

Would that it were true of this one:

Despite Russell Yates’ statements to the media that he was never told by psychiatrists that Andrea was psychotic nor that she could harm her children, and that he would have never had more children had he known otherwise,[23][24][25] Andrea revealed to her jail psychiatrist, Dr. Melissa Ferguson, that prior to their last child, “she had told Rusty that she did not want to have sex because Dr. Starbranch had said she might hurt her children.” Russell, she said, simply asserted his procreative religious beliefs, complimented her as a good mother, and persuaded her that she could handle more children.[26]

  “During the trial, he’d successfully maintained the position that Andrea would be found innocent. He had fantasies of having more children with her after she was successfully treated in a mental health facility and released on the proper medication. <u>He worked his way through various fixes for their damaged lives, such as a surrogate motherhood and adoption (horrifying Andrea’s family, attorneys and Houston psychiatrists) before giving in to reality.”[27]
</u>

............................................................

Yates told her jail psychiatrist, “It was the seventh deadly sin. My children weren’t righteous. They stumbled because I was evil. The way I was raising them, they could never be saved. They were doomed to perish in the fires of hell.”[11]

Mantis:

not to mention how much they clearly hate adult men… Oh, wait.

Comedians aren’t afraid to make fun of Obama, there’s just nothing to make fun of.  He’s not a doofus and if he has any secret scandals, we haven’t found out about them yet.

He grew up on comic books and can’t give up his blackberry, and still people think he’s not a doofus? OK, maybe a dork, but still. There are plenty of jokes to be made, they’re just not stupid obvious jokes.

I thought Justice Kennedy already settled this for us, no?

While we find no reliable data to measure the phenomenon, it seems unexceptionable to conclude that some women come to regret their choice to abort the infant life they once created and sustained. Severe depression and loss of esteem can follow.

Postpartum women should be able to puree their neonates, if we go by Kennedy and Carhart.

Jon Stewart did a commentary on Obama where he compared the President to James Bond, complete with the pistol-graphic…OObama. I think the “O” was the camera-lens-view also.  It was pretty funny.  Very funny, actually.

As for women who kill their children, try to imagine yourself in a place of such darkness and misery, such pain that you simply cannot recall ever being happy, or perceive anything ever changing or improving.  No one will help you: instead you get comments like “Snap out of it!” or “Cheer Up!”, or worse “You don’t know how lucky you really are!”.  You might start thinking what a ghastly, dreadful world this is, and it would not be long before you convinced yourself that this suffering would also be inflicted on your children, and that, perhaps, the best thing would be to free them of a lifetime of the agony you’ve suffered.  I expect more than a few women have felt that way, but did not act on it.  But in such a mental state it would not take much to ‘set one off’.

And, no I haven’t killed anyone, ever.  I have been suicidally depressed, and I am only extrapolating from that experience.

“He grew up on comic books and can’t give up his blackberry, and still people think he’s not a doofus? OK, maybe a dork, but still. There are plenty of jokes to be made, they’re just not stupid obvious jokes.”

The Onion had a great bit a little while ago in which he was befuddling his cabinet with obscure references to Conan the Barbarian back-issues.  Unfortunately for lazy or somewhat dimwitted comedians and their audiences, that sort of joke isn’t exactly lowest-common-denominator-friendly.

Kwillow,
I hate how depression is trivialized by so many people.  I’ve never had it, but my mom has suffered from it.  A lot of people don’t take it seriously because they think it’s not the same as other mental illness.  I think we need a better name for it that doesn’t make it sound like you’re just sad.  Mental illness isn’t taken seriously enough in general, but it’s worst for depression.  I really think that things would have been much less tragic for Andrea Yates if her husband and family had taken her mental illness as seriously as the doctors told them to.  Her husband pressured her to stop taking her medication so she could get pregnant again, and he left her unsupervised when the doctor said she needed constant supervision because he thought she needed more responsibility to just get over it.

It’s melted brie on organic shredded bison meat, all on an artisan multi-grain brioche—that’s what Blackazoid would order in Philly.

Oh my, that sounds good.  Don’t forget the chipotle aioli.

I don’t mean to go all “woo, we’re better than you” about this, but English law is that a woman who kills her baby within the first year isn’t guilty of murder but of infanticide, since it is assumed that she wasn’t in her right mind. 

I mention this simply because this has been the case since 1922, way before post-natal depression understood and recognised.  Nowadays, a woman who commits infanticide probably won’t even go to jail.  How is it that in 2009, some people can be so ignorant and lacking in empathy?

Katherine, it isn’t so in all cases when a woman is accused of killing her child (e.g. the unfortunate Sally Clarke), but yes, under English law when a woman kills her infant due to post-partum psychosis, she generally gets probation, counselling, and other health care. It has been suggested that the law be amended: <a >to make it more responsive to women’s situations</a> (at present for a psychiatric defence, a woman has to admit she did it. In some cases, not admitting it can be part of the illness).

A good number of other countries seem to have similar wars, but perhaps it wouldn’t work in countries without state healthcare, because it would be admitting that it might benefit society to take care of people on occasion.

Attention, Jacobson et al.: Maybe we’d recognize your jokes as jokes if they were actually, you know, funny.

As regards post-partum psychosis (not depression), Eric Zorn of the Chicago Tribune has a very good take on a recent sentence commutation in Illinois.

Katherine, it isn’t so in all cases when a woman is accused of killing her child (e.g. the unfortunate Sally Clarke)

No indeed, that’s why I said “a woman who kills her baby within the first year”.  Sally Clarke’s two children were quite a lot older than that.

Oh my, that sounds good.  Don’t forget the chipotle aioli.

“The Flag Burner™—Treacherously Delicious”

Obama ordered his burger with DIJON MUSTARD!

Oh, brother.

(The above, by the way, markets all over Australia and NZ - not exactly bastions of elitist effete street culture)

They tried this attack on Clinton to. Specifically, a Mallard Fillmore strip used this exact “joke” about Dijon mustard on a hamburger years ago.

Leon H. Wolf at Redstate

For some inexplicable reason, I read that as “Leon H. Redbone at Wolfstate”. BTW, I spent four years in Philly eating several Geno’s whiz with per week.

Postpartum depression, like many mental diseases and psychology itself, just doesn’t exist in the world of many sexists. You’ll hear and read plenty of anti-psychology sentiments, though few of the ones I encounter are obviously sexist. Most camouflage themselves as religious (“Mental illness comes from a lack of faith”; “Suicide sends you straight to hell because only god has the right to take life”). Of course, many mental illnesses disproportionately affect women, and religion is perhaps the best refuge for the unrepentant sexist.

If that’s actually how it works, I’m now wondering about what both Texas and the author of that post have against seven-year-olds.

I’m guessing that’s the age when the conservatives in charge get all hot to strap them to the gurney.

Diane, I know exactly what you mean.  My uncle had schizophrenia, and he actually had an exorcism when he was about 19.  To be fair, a part of that was his family’s poverty so they couldn’t afford medical treatment.

Billingham: My God, what a childish asshole! This is why it pays to keep track of local/obscure elections. Some real circus freaks can slip in under the radar.

How can these people be all up in arms over Dijon mustard when you can buy it in such God-fearing stores as Wal-Mart?

Dijongate?  Really.  Because choosing dijon over good ol’ yellow mustard is a treachery to our nation on a par with breaking the freaking law and then saying that as president you aren’t subject to the law.

Sally Clarke’s babies were both less than three months old. However as she certainly didn’t kill the children, and didn’t have post-natal depression, the relevance of the case is in showing that however humane the system can be when you have infanticide laws, their existence doesn’t prevent miscarriages of justice due to other reasons, including how she was regarded as a mother.