Enter the Miscarriage Police

The triumphant return of the famous Assy McGee Award®. The Award possibilities these days are endless. But wow. You really cannot, cannot, cannot make this stuff up. In addition to the usual attempt to overthrow Roe v Wade:

Franklin wants to create a Uterus Police to investigate miscarriages, and requires that any time a miscarriage occurs, whether in a hospital or without medical assistance, it must be reported and a fetal death certificate issued. If the cause of death is unknown, it must be investigated. If the woman can't tell how it happened, than those Uterus Police can ask family members and friends how it happened. Hospitals are required to keep records of anyone who has a spontaneous abortion and report it.

This country is losing its fucking mind. The fact that someone, even one person can attain political power with such an agenda, suggests that the nation in which that it a possibility might well be a hellhole. Combine that with the fact that there is nothing extreme about Rep. Bobby Franklin in the context of the party to which he belongs. Combine that with the fact that there is only the barest legitimate opposition to this bad craziness in the US political system, and you've pretty much got a good probability that this country is a hellhole.

Assy McGee Award® for Saturday, June 20th: Bill O'Reilly Laments the Culture of "Personal Attacks Leveled Against Public People"

Chalk this one up in the OMFG category. Bill O'Reilly's column today weighs in on Letterman's now infamous joke about Sarah Palin and her daughter(s), and wags his righteous finger at an American discourse in which "increasingly, personal attacks are being used to marginalize opposing points of view."

Even more entertaining is this line: "I've been on the Letterman program five times. Last time around, he called me a goon and mocked Rush Limbaugh's weight. I asked him why he was doing that, but he did not have an answer."

So yeah, OMFG. Here we have a worldview in which Sarah Palin, Bill O'Reilly and Rush Limbaugh, are victims of increasingly crass, personal discourse represented by David Letterman.

O'Reilly, whose mode of discourse is fairly represented by the fact that he continues to pride himself on branding George Tiller with the "Baby Killer" moniker for year upon year. He laments the personal attack on Palin and her daughters. Palin, too, decried it as sexist, condescending, and more than a little bit gross to boot. All of which is bad. But calling GOP voters and their leaders the "real Americans," and the Dem candidate a friend of terrorists: that's just being "folks."

Ugh.

Deeply Retroactive Assy McGee Award® to Michael Reagan

An extremist white supremacist radio host named Hal Turner was just arrested for engaging in what apparently DO constitute "fighting words." Turner has been charged with:

inciting Catholics to “take up arms” and singling out two Connecticut lawmakers and a state ethics official on a Web site -- was taken into custody in New Jersey late Wednesday after state Capitol police in Connecticut obtained a warrant for his arrest.

But blightful a human being as he is, it is not Turner who wins the Assy McGee Award® for today. That honor instead goes to President Ronald Reagan's son, Michael Reagan. The clip below, Harrogate learned about from one of the commenters in the above link, and from there it did not take long to find video footage of a blood-chilling exchange that took place between Reagan and a caller on 8/15/2006. This is some of the most extreme rhetoric you will find on Right Wing talk radio, and that is saying something.

What we encounter below on its face would appear to be hyperbolic, not representative of right wing punditry. But given the increasingly shrill climate on the internet, the radio, and even on cable news today, one wonders just how hyperbolic it really is in the circles to which Bill O'Reilly caters, and to which George Tiller's murderer undoubtedly belonged.

Assy McGee Award® for 3/13/09: Paul Edwards

The piece is entitled "How I'm Praying for the President."
Just. Wow.

Representative Spewage:

Based on the policy positions alone, there is solid evidence that Barack Obama has made himself an enemy of God and the enemy of God’s people.

The Michael Phelps Discourses: An Assy McGee Award® as well as a Tip of the Hat

The Assy McGee Award® for February 9th, 2009, goes to Baptist Press staff writer and Townhall contributor Kelly Boggs, who is OUTRAGED at Phelps, both for his visit to Pete's Couch and for his past DUI.

A Righteous Snippet:

Kellogg's has already announced it will not continue its endorsement deal with Phelps. A company spokesman said that Phelps' recent behavior is not in keeping with the company's image. Any company that is forking over big bucks to Phelps has every right to expect him to behave in a fashion that will not reflect poorly on the company.

As for Kelloggs. What banality that cereal company has manifested. Hopefully the consumer backlash against these asshats will be strong. American public opinion on marijuana use in general is surprisingly removed from the draconian laws and from the stigma that some in the media wish to maintain. So we will see.

Unsurprisingly, Seth Myers nailed the right way of looking at the Michael Phelps Rhetoric on the most recent SNL.

Assy McGee Award®: Richland County, South Carolina Sheriff Leon Lott

By now everybody knows that Michael Phelps, winner of Eight Gold Medals at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, was recently photographed smoking marijuana at a party that supposedly took place somewhere on the University of South Carolina Campus.

But now arrives this nonsense.

Michael Phelps could face criminal charges as part of the fallout from a photo of him inhaling from a marijuana pipe at a house party.
Richland County Sheriff Leon Lott told The State newspaper of Columbia, S.C., that he would file charges against Phelps if he determines the swimmer smoked marijuana in the county. The sheriff's office released a statement Tuesday saying it "is making an effort to determine if Mr. Phelps broke the law."

It really raises the question. Really. Do these people ever think about who and what they are and just feel overcome by a profound sense of embarrassment?

Pre-Inauguration Assy McGee Award®: Harrogate's Favorite Muckraker Manages to Attack Obama and the Academic Humanities in One Fell Swoop

Brent Bozell's column on Friday made a strident case
that there ought to be controversy over Barack Obama's choice of Yale
African-American Studies professor Elizabeth Alexander, to recite an original poem at his inauguration.

This is a doozy of a read, Situationers. He manages to attack not only Obama and Alexander, but Bill Clinton, Maya Angelou, aspiring poets, English professors and PhD candidates, and of course the far left mainstream media alll in one hysterical rant.

A snippet:

Many remember Maya Angelou in 1993, proclaiming in grandiloquent tones some nonsense about a river, a rock and a tree. It was a flop. If the poem is too opaque, it will suggest to the millions watching on television that poetry is a high-faluting art best saved for gatherings of tenured professors and Ph.D. candidates sipping their lattes.

In today's America, poetry is either high art or lowbrow commerce. It comes either from avant-garde poets, writing only for a snobbish elite and ignored by the broad public; or from commercial sources, assembly-line verses crammed into a Hallmark card, written for the masses and spurned by the tastemakers. In today's culture, the most popular poems are usually song lyrics, from rock anthems to rat-a-tat rap songs about the thug life. They're not the kind of poetry you read on marble platforms for presidents and Supreme Court justices.

What a deserving recipient of the Award. Banality trebeled. Yet another believer in the Before Time. When Men were Men, Women were Women, and Furry Little Creatures from Alpha Centauri were Furry Little Creatures from Alpha Centauri.

Assy McGee Award®: Townhall Blogger and Former Winner of this Award, Amanda Carpenter, Wins Again

Carpenter won this Award on October 20th, Ye will remember, as a Double-Decker Deal. She both levied an Ad Hominem Attack on Tina Fey & Began a Vociferous Defense of Minnesota Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann.

Verily, Carpenter has been shown to be one of the most deserving recipients of the Assy McGee Award®. Now comes her treatment, on the Townhall Blog, of the Anti Prop 8 Musical Video circulating, which stars Jack Black, Neil Patrick Harris, John C. Reilly, and other Hollywood luminaries.

As to the Actual Video. Harrogate will leave it up to Readers to Determine the Value of its Arguments.




But whatever ye think of the video, Carpenter's little write-up of it exemplifies the kind of Bad Rhetoric that we Situationers are dedicated to defeating. The Piece is Entitled Jack Black Trashes Mormons, Blacks Over Prop 8. What is Wrong with this Headline? Without watching the Video, you might think nothing would be wrong with it, since it is well known that the African-American Community as well as the Mormon Church factored centrally in the Passage of Prop 8. Except there's one little thingy, here. The video Makes Absolutely No Mention, Explicit, Symbolic, Whatever, Of Either African Americans or Mormons.

Does the Video attack Proposition 8? Well of course it does. But it does so by pointing up the Hypocrisies inherent to Biblical Literalists seeking to Shape the Law. Jack Black, for example, offers the familiar counter-argument that the same text which condemns homosexuality also says you cannot eat shrimp cocktail, that a man may sell his daughter into slavery, have his wife stoned to death, etc.

All of which is to ask, WHY does Carpenter lie so overtly in her Headline? Thoughts?

Supreme Court: "Fuck the Dolphins"

Reported by McClatchy Newspapers:

The Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that the Navy could use sonar in submarine-hunting training exercises off Southern California without heeding restrictions imposed by a lower court to protect whales and dolphins.

The high court didn't question the scientific basis of concerns about harm to marine mammals, but ruled that the Navy's need for the exercises was more important.

Harrogate's Assy McGee Award® Nominee for the Weekend: John Hawkins

Link. Christ on a Crumb Heap.

Rep. Bachmann's Richly-Deserved Economic Freefall; or, A Follow-Up to Amanda Carpenter's Assy McGee Award® of 10/20

Amanda Carpenter is outraged:

The National Republican Congressional Committee, tasked with raising money for GOP congressional candidates, is blowing off Rep. Michele Bachmann after she came under fire for a recent appearance on Hardball.

In a brazen assertion that there are indeed entire parts of the country and entire voting demographics that deserve to be called anti-American, Carpenter adds this:

Here is her online contribution page if any Townhallers are inclined to step in and help where the NRCC won't. Bachmann is a reliable conservative vote in the House and you all know her from her blogs here at Townhall.

Meanwhile she adds plenty of ethos to her argument by pointing out that the bastion of truth known as Red State is also upset about Bachmann's obsene victimization. Writes Red State Poobah Erick Erickson:

Now, in the height of all douchebaggery, he has pulled all funding from Michelle Bachmann's very winnable race in Minnesota, in which she is presently leading, though not by a great deal.

Why? Because Bachmann had the nerve to point out Obama pals around with anti-American domestic terrorists and other unsavory characters, i.e. she's echoed Sarah Palin.

But that's okay. Apparently we have Republicans to spare.

Help Michelle Bachmann. This race is absolutely winnable. Hell, she's winning right now. But she needs our help.

Republican Big Wigs, Pundits, and Politicians--bereft of even the shred of an argument with which to persuade Real Americans (heh) of their "case" that Barack Obama is a terrorist/Radical Muslim/Pagan/Atheist/Communist--are now on their way to being reduced to identifying Douchebaggery in one another.

Geez. Surely the American people will not reward this party for its behavior on election day. Surely sanity will pevail this time.

What It Means to Be an Elitist, Explained by Ben Shapiro; or, Assy McGee Award® for 10/21

For today's Assy McGee Award® Harrogate throws a link out to Ben Shapiro's probing analysis of what it means to be an elitist. Shapiro's Column, entitled "You Know You're An Elitist If....", lists off a wealth of markers whereby we can see if we are, indeed, elitists.

Verily, his rubric couldn't be more helpful in our current Rhetorical climate. Because you know, we haven't had nearly enough talk yet about Real Americans®, Real Virginians®, Real Patriots®, and the like.

Readers, what are YOUR favorites among the items Shapiro enumerates? There are so many to choose from, but Harrogate is gonna have to opt for the one that Paperweight will likely find most amusing:

You’re an elitist if you know what arugula is but don’t know who Jimmie Johnson is.

Assy McGee Award® for 10/20--Amanda Carpenter, Both Currently and Retroactively

First: Carpenter this evening, blogging on and on about the sadness of Tina Fey's life, when juxtaposed against the one and only Sarah Palin.

And here's Carpenter from Sunday the 19th, vociferously defending Rep. Michele Bachmann's performance on Matthews' Hardball, which Solon recently committed to the eternal Memories of Situationers everywhere. Snippets just won't do it justice. Really, ye have to read. the. thing. to. believe. it.

Assy McGee Award® for 10/17: The Right Blogosphere

Sure, you can call out all the usual suspects on the internet, those who scaffold people like the horrid woman featured in Solon's video, posted below. You know, the Little Green Footballs, the Urgent Agendas, the Red States, the Michelle Malkins, the Ann Althouses, the Powerlines, the Captains Quarters. Yes, they are all participating in the "he's an anti-American terrorist" meme, because that is all they have, and all they have had in this election. Four years ago they had homophobia, now they don't even have that.

But it's also the many little sites like this that do the groundwork of perpetuating lies, smears, scare tactics. Take a good look at this guy's site, Readers. Verily he deserves a shout out for participating in the great project of hate-filled political discourse.

"Our job is delivery; not safe delivery"

I've been working to resolve a UPS damage claim for over two months now. I just learned today that UPS will settle my claim for less than 1/3 the replacement value of the damaged item, a mere 1/2 of the estimated repair costs. Why? Because that's the dollar figure for which the shipper insured the package.

Okay, sure. I guess this makes sense. It doesn't seem reasonable to settle a claim for more than the insured value of the item. At least not until you consider this:

They damaged the merchandise!!!

They were hired to deliver a package. And they dropped it along the way, damaging my stuff. But somehow they don't think they ought to be held accountable. Why is this?

You know, when I hire someone to deliver a package, I'm not just hiring them to get it from A to B, I'm hiring them to get it there in good condition. If they break it, then they didn't do their job. But somehow, they think differently. They think their job is simply to get it there, in any condition. If you want to make sure that your merchandise is protected, well you have to purchase insurance for that. Don't expect them to be responsible for what they're handling.

"Sometimes things just happen," the UPS representative told me. Yes, I understand that. But if that something happens on your watch, is it not your responsibility? "It's no different than when you buy a car and have to purchase insurance for the car," she followed up. No, it's not just like that. If I buy a car, and the dealer wrecks it prior to delivery, then said dealership is responsible, right?

I mean, what if insurance hadn't been purchased for the package at all? What would they tell me then? "Yes, it's our fault that it's damaged; too bad you didn't purchase insurance, because now your stuck with broken stuff." But thankfully some insurance was purchased for my item. So now they're just telling me, "if you want to fix the damage we caused, then you have to pay half."

Bullshit! Pure bullshit!!

Assy McGee Award®: Camille Paglia (Heh)

Harrogate suspects there might be Board Members at least somewhat curious as to what that crazy old gal, (Heh), Camille Paglia, has to say about the election.


Well, Breaking News: Paglia still calls herself an Obama supporter, but for the life of her, cannot figure out why Palin's Veep run isn't being celebrated as a huge feminist achievment.


So here's to ya, Camille. You Betcha and you're Darned Tootin', nobody deserves the October 8th Assy McGee Award® more than you.

Your concern about the foreign-policy world-view of liberal Democrats is certainly justified. The university culture at Columbia and Harvard through which Obama passed has been drenched in a reflexive anti-Americanism for several decades. Armchair blame-America-first leftism is the default mode. Disdain for the military is rampant, and conservative voices are rarely heard.

and

Yes, both Todd and Sarah Palin, whom most people in the U.S. and abroad had never even heard of until six weeks ago, have emerged as powerful new symbols of a revived contemporary feminism. That the macho Todd, with his champion athleticism and working-class cred, can so amiably cradle babies and care for children is a huge step forward in American sexual symbolism.

and

And where is all that lurid sexual fantasy coming from? When I watch Sarah Palin, I don't think sex -- I think Amazon warrior! I admire her competitive spirit and her exuberant vitality, which borders on the supernormal.

and

People who can't see how smart Palin is are trapped in their own narrow parochialism -- the tedious, hackneyed forms of their upper-middle-class syntax and vocabulary.

That's right. But, Friends: These are only teasers. Follow the link to get the full ridiculousness.

Assy McGee Award®, 9/23/08: Hugh Hewitt

It's pretty ridiculous to name anyone for this Award, given the scope of possibilities. So Harrogate invites others to throw in their own choices. But Harrogate selects Hewitt, a GOP Think-Tanker pushing hard for the Congress to follow Bush's "lead" on the Economic problems, and whose recent blog entry just took the word "Spin" to a whole 'nother level. It is important that Situationers acquaint themselves with this Spin, however, because Bank On It (pun intended): What ye see on going to the link, WILL be the GOP Talking Points about the Debate or No Debate Controversy, tomorrow and Friday.

'Money' Snippet (Pun Intended). With a few Pieces of Commentary by Harrogate inserted in brackets:

These events should impact the presidential election in a profound way.

Today was Obama's Katrina moment [yes. Readers, ye read that correctly] and an example of great leadership by John McCain [that too]. This contrast was telling and will matter.

Obama's complaint about the debate postponement made him look exceptionally petty given his refusal to debate all summer long [because it was McCain's right to dictate terms and schedule]. Obama's reversal suggests he did not understand the seriousness of the moment and was pursuing a purely political approach to the crisis.

John McCain, by contrast, acted with speed and resolution [heh]. McCain did not wait to see which way the polls were trending and he did what he has often done over the years --demanding what he saw was necessary action and appealing for bipartisan support. I have opposed some of these calls in the past, but today's call was clearly the right thing to do.

What an extraordinary demonstration of the differences between these two nominees.

Gesh. Gesh. Gesh.

Assy McGee Award® for Wednesday, September 17th, 2008

As Matthew Yglesias notes, this is the death of irony.

Today's Assy McGee@ Award goes to Lynn Forester de Rothschild, a former Clinton supporter and fundraiser who recently endorsed John McCain on anti-elitism grounds:

"This is a hard decision for me personally because frankly I don’t like him,” she said of Obama in an interview with CNN’s Joe Johns. “I feel like he is an elitist. I feel like he has not given me reason to trust him.”

Translation: While I may not like Senator Obama, this is about class. And since my name is "de Rothschild" and not "Rothschild" or even "Roth," McCain gets my vote. And, well, McCain will not tax me as much as Obama will.

In visual form, here is the tax breakdown for "de Rothchild." This is not about elitism, is Lynn. Where are you on this chart?

Assy McGee Award®: Ann Althouse. Runner-Up: Carly Fiorina

Today's Assy McGee Award® goes to Ann Althouse, earned by this response to the new Obama ad that rightfully highlights the ever new depths of sleaze and cynicism to which John McCain has sunk. The Althouse post embeds the Ad, in case people would like to see that too. One thing Harrogate will give Dr. Althouse. She's got her talking points down pretty good. For the last several days Repugs have been defending McCain's sleaze and dishonor by calling Dems whiners. Althouse takes the baton seamlessly:

This ad strikes me as a big whine: Hey, no fair. Your ads work better than mine. Quit it. Or I'm telling

Meanwhile, the Runner-Up goes to Carly Fiorina, who accuses the SNL Palin/Clinton skit of . . . Wait For It . . . SEXISM.

SNL, asserted Fiorina while talking to Andrea "Too Many Balloons" Mitchell, was. Drumroll.

dismissive of the substance of Sarah Palin

UPDATE: Harrogate here would like to add that the SNL Skit did not deny there is substance to Palin. Au contraire (Harrogate and oxymoron got As in a Graduate Level French Class), SNL did a great job of pointing up the nature of Palin's substance. "Please, ask this one about dinosaurs" identified her red meat, extremist substance.

Assy McGee Award®,

Today's Assy McGee Award® goes to Big Tent Democrat over at TalkLeft.

Not only has Jeralyn's site been coopted by commenters only interested in:

A)Defending Sarah Palin, Inventing Sexism Charges Out of Nothing;
B)Bitching about the Primary; And
C)Harpily Chipping Away at the Only Candidate Standing Between John McCain and the Presidency

But she continues to be undermined by her co-contributor, Big Tent Democrat, for whom Harrogate's last shred of respect finally dissipated today. Increasingly, BTD has become the Head Cheerleader for those who want to keep the Primary Angst alive, those who feel the "pull" of Palin's ovaries, and then of course any number of Republicans who by now have likely infested the site only to exacerbate matters on an already explosive site.

But the coup de gras, the final straw as far as reasonable people will be concerned, was this post, in which BTD cites the new ABC/WaPo poll that tells us McCain is up by one point.

Then he quotes this:

White women have moved from 50-42 percent in Obama's favor before the conventions to 53-41 percent for McCain now, a 20-point shift in the margin that's one of the single biggest post-convention changes in voter preferences. The other, also to McCain's advantage, is in the battleground Midwest, where he's moved from a 19-point deficit to a 7-point edge.

Then the most deserving recipient of this Award in its long and vaunted history actually wrote the following:

In essence, Obama opened the door by not picking Hillary Clinton and McCain walked through it. McCain's Palin gamble clearly has worked. He is in the game. And he would not have been if he had not chosen Palin. And McCain would not have chosen Palin if Obama had picked Clinton.

There are so many things wrong with him, and the gaggle that you will see chiming in. Jeralyn Merritt is in the process of seeing the blog she worked so hard to build in the name of civil liberties, turn into a Testament to the Absolute Ignorance of Every Person Who Still Has the Audacity To Say That The Personal Is Political. Every Person Who Would Defend Identity Politics, At This Point, Is Pretty Much Dead To Harrogate.

Seriously. Our entire country is on the verge of getting corncobbed. While everyone was jumping up and down celebrating the Historicity of the Primary. Oh My God a Black Man and a White Woman!!!! Yes, while everyone was tearing up over that, the Writing Was On the Wall at that very moment. Harrogate has seen the enemy and it is us.

And Big Tent Democrat is as good a representative of the Us Harrogate is talking about, as it gets.

To quote Eric Cartman, Harrogate is seriously.