RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — Once the word “transvaginal” became a big joke on “Saturday Night Live” and “The Daily Show With Jon Stewart,” it wasn’t long before Virginia’s conservative Republicans realized they had overreached on abortion.

Gov. Bob McDonnell and GOP state lawmakers Wednesday abandoned a bill requiring women to undergo an intrusive type of sonogram before an abortion — an abrupt reversal that demonstrated the power of political satire and illustrated again how combustible the issue of women’s reproductive health has become over the past few weeks.

“You never want to get on the wrong side of popular culture,” said Steve Jarding, a professor at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government and a Democratic consultant who has run campaigns in Virginia. He added: “When people are laughing at you, you know you’ve gone too far.”

First of all, conservatives’ entire reason for existence is to be on the wrong side of pop culture. Everything they do, from slamming “liberal Hollywood values” to their state and national legislative efforts, is because conservatism by its very definition is a knee-jerk reaction to pop culture. Every single thing the culture has embraced — being educated, protecting the environment, providing for the needy, birth control fer crissakes — has in recent years been labeled elitist, liberal, and therefore, bad. American conservatives have valiantly fought against pop culture since it was invented, since the first parent railed against that evil rock and roll music, the PTA held its first book barbecue, and the first school principal initiated a dress code.

But I do agree that mockery works and words have power. I really believe what sunk the Virginia ultrasound legislation was the word “transvaginal.” The word “vagina,” as Eve Ensler well knows, is a cultural sand pit. It’s a veritable, um, booby trap of icky associations and images of the nasty. So no, it’s not that Jon Stewart and Saturday Night Live mocked Virginia conservatives: let’s face it, those folks have been mocking conservatives for years. No, it’s that they did so by screaming the word “TRANSVAGINAL” at the top of their lungs.

And here is how we win, liberals. The left is not nearly as good at political linguistics as is the right; we don’t have a Frank Luntz. So listen to Southern Beale: Attach the word “vagina” to anything conservatives want to do and I guarantee they will run for the hills like the scared little babies they are. It’s not a war on women’s reproductive freedom, it’s a war on VAGINAS. You’re not defunding Planned Parenthood, you’re threatening VAGINAS. And hell, why stop there? It’s not Social Security, it’s VAGINA Security. Global Vagina Warming. National Vagina Security. Why the hell not.

Years ago someone in the lefty blogosphere coined the phrase “SCARY VAGINA” — it might have been Atrios, heck he’s the source of pretty much every blog meme we have. It’s a euphemism for politicians’ fear of women in power, and it ironically started as an attack on Democrats who were too afraid of the abortion issue to stand up for women’s reproductive rights. But it grew to encompass conservatives when they developed Hillary Clinton Derangement Syndrome.

So now I ask you this: who’s afraid of Vagina Wolf? Democrats have learned a powerful lesson here: stop worrying and love the vagina. Because Republicans haven’t, and they won’t.

• A ban on sales of single-use plastic bottles is back in place at Grand Canyon National Park. The ban was approved in 2010 but was reversed when Coca-Cola, makers of Dasani bottled water and a major donor to the National Parks Foundation, had a hissy fit. Cue public outrage over corporate influence at the expense of our national parks and voila! Coca-Cola is told to stuff it. The ban goes into effect March 10.

• Maryland’s state senate has approved same-sex marriage, and the governor is expected to sign the bill. Wow, that’s how many states now?

• Scam operator Goldline Inc., the gold company made famous for sticking by Glenn Beck’s failed Fox News show when no one else would, has been forced to refund $4.5 million to the customers it defrauded.

• Having been thoroughly humiliated on its state mandated rape mandatory ultrasound bill, the Virginia state senate has effectively killed the state’s fetal personhood bill.

Meanwhile, the ultrasound bill still stinks, but at least Virginia women won’t have to undergo state-mandated rape before getting an abortion.

• A New York state judge has ruled that towns can ban fracking and oil drilling, even if the state doesn’t.

• Those “zombie voters” in South Carolina who supposedly voted in the Republican primary? It’s official: they don’t exist.

• Solar grid parity — the point at which solar power is as cost-effective or even cheaper than buying power from the grid — is coming far sooner than anyone expected. According to a new study, grid parity is here in places like California and Hawaii and will arrive in Germany in 2013.

• The Charleston (WV) Gazette has endorsed a single-payer health plan. Yes, the issue is still alive.

• Ohio repeals its anti-pit bull law .

• President Obama broke ground on the Smithsonian’s newest facility, the National Museum of African American History and Culture. The museum is slated to open in 2015.

• Nearly two dozen Catholic nuns have filed an amicus brief in the Supreme Court supporting the Affordable Care Act.

• An industrial enzyme manufacturer has developed an enzyme which can pull more ethanol from the cellulose in biowaste.

• Men might not be going extinct after all, say researchers challenging the theory of Y chromosome decay. Yay. You’re saved. {eyeroll}

• The Defense Of Marriage Act has been ruled unconstitutional by a Northern California district judge. The Obama Administration has already said it would not defend the law in court.

• New York is looking to ban sales of shark fin.

• Honduran President Porfirio Lobo has pardoned convicted murderer Marco Antonio Bonillo after he saved hundreds of inmates from a prison fire that killed 360 people.

• The Obama Administration is shutting down the flawed 287(g) immigration enforcement program.

• A third indictment has been filed related to the 2010 Upper Big Branch mine disaster which killed 29 West Virginia coal miners. This one is against mine superintendent Gary May, the most senior mine employee to be indicted. Observers cite this latest action as evidence that prosecutors are closing in on officials with mine owner Massey Energy, too.

• Kentucky’s state legislature will vote on a statewide anti-discrimination bill that includes sexual orientation.

• They’re not gonna take it: More than 300,000 organic farmers are suing Monsanto, claiming their GMO plants have contaminated their crops. This is a nice bit of turnabout; Monsanto has sued more than 100 farmers for copyright infringement after its seeds have infiltrated the fields of non-Monsanto farmers.

• More Americans are walking or biking to work: the number of people using this alternate transportation is up 57% since 2000.

• Jesse Furman has been confirmed to sit on the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, ending the GOP’s five-month-long filibuster of his nomination.

• Cincinnati is poised to become America’s largest city powered entirely by renewable energy.

• Shirley Sherrod’s defamation lawsuit against Andrew Breitbart has survived a motion to dismiss. Sherrod, a former U.S. Dept. of Agriculture employee, was the victim of one of Breitbart’s famous smear campaigns, in which a doctored video made it appear she was confessing to discriminating against white farmers in her capacity as the USDA’s Georgia State Director of Rural Development. She was forced to resign in the immediate aftermath.

Good News, Tennessee Edition:

• Employment at Nissan USA’s Smyrna, TN plant is expected to double over the next year and a half as production of EV batteries and the Nissan Leaf is added to the line:

Nissan said 1,000 jobs would be filled over the next year to staff a second shift on the plant’s truck line to assemble the JX, the first of which was shown Monday, and a redesigned Nissan Pathfinder crossover that comes later this year.

In addition, about 1,300 workers will be hired to make lithium-ion batteries for the Nissan Leaf electric car and to add Leaf production to the Smyrna plant in early 2013, the company said earlier. The plant currently employs 3,500 workers.

The battery facility is adjacent to the assembly plant and is nearing completion.

• Three Nashville restaurants have been nominated for James Beard awards. Happy to say I’ve eaten at two of them.

In related news:

• In response to a Georgia bill further limiting women’s access to abortion, Georgia Democrats propose a state ban on vasectomies. And I like their reasoning:

“It is patently unfair that men can avoid unwanted fatherhood by presuming that their judgment over such matters is more valid than the judgment of the General Assembly, while women’s ability to decide is constantly up for debate throughout the United States.”

• House Democrats objected to the name Republicans gave their bill banning the non-existent practice of selective abortions based on race or gender. Those Republicans, always banning shit that doesn’t exist! Instead of the “Susan B. Anthony and Frederick Douglass Prenatal Non-discrimination Act of 2011,” Democrats had their own suggestions (warning: link is to right-wing CNS News): the “Ronald Reagan Impose Your Beliefs on a Woman’s Womb Act” or the “Tea Party Determines What Rights a Woman Has Act.”

Republicans have made a mockery of our politics, thanks to their ridiculous war on women’s reproductive rights. And they call us the party of the nanny state? They’re the ones trying to control what everyone else is doing! Here’s a thought: instead of mock legislation designed to make a point, how about we pass a law saying no one can tell a another person what they can do with their own body? I know, it will never happen. I’m such a dreamer.

“In the Netherlands, people wear different bracelets if they are elderly. And the bracelet is: ‘Do not euthanize me.’ Because they have voluntary euthanasia in the Netherlands but half of the people who are euthanized — ten percent of all deaths in the Netherlands — half of those people are euthanized involuntarily at hospitals because they are older and sick. And so elderly people in the Netherlands don’t go to the hospital. They go to another country, because they are afraid, because of budget purposes, they will not come out of that hospital if they go in there with sickness.”

Euthanasia bracelets? Ten percent of all deaths in the Netherlands are from euthanasia? Fifty percent of all elderly in that country are put to death involuntarily? Do these statistics make sense to anyone? Where the hell does he get this stuff? Predictably, we are the laughing stock of the Netherlands now. Thanks a lot, asshole.

I’ll tell you where he gets it. This is the kind of nonsense that lands in your e-mail box with a huge list of FW: names. Hey, conservatives: think about what you’re doing, okay? Before you unthinkingly hit the “send” key on that fact-free bullshit your cousin’s best friend got from her sister-in-law’s former Bible study teacher, think about what you’re reading. Stop a moment and consider: do you want this coming out of Rick Santorum’s mouth? Because there’s a very good chance that this is where it will end up. And that means people who aren’t brain dead are going to hear it, and someone might actually check the facts, and then the rest of us will point and laugh, and your favorite candidate’s chances for the presidency go down in flames.

From the WaPo:

Nevertheless, the statistics show it is still a relatively uncommon form of death. In 2010, the number of euthanasia cases reported to one of five special commissions was 3,136, according to their annual report. This was a 19 percent increase over 2009, but “this amounts to 2.3 percent of all 136,058 deaths in the Netherlands in 2010,” said Carla Bundy, spokeswoman for the Dutch embassy in Washington.

At the time of the annual report, the commissions had been able to reach conclusions in 2,667 euthanasia notifications reported to the agency and found only nine in which “the physician had not acted in accordance with the due care criteria,” the annual report said. More than 80 percent of the patients were suffering from cancer; almost 80 percent died at home.

A 2005 study by the New England Journal of Medicine found only a minimal number of the cases — 0.4 percent — in which there was an ending of life without explicit request by the patient. The study concluded the rate had actually been cut in half since the euthanasia law was passed.

These statistics were so at odds with Santorum’s claims that we wondered how he could have thought that 50 percent of the elderly were put to death involuntarily (or that 10 percent of all deaths in Holland were from euthanasia.) Spokesmen for Santorum did not respond to a query, but the best we can tell, he is grossly misinterpreting the results of a 1991 survey known as the Remmelink Report, which was influential in crafting the 2001 law.

And those bracelets? The article quotes Dutch officials saying they don’t exist. They can only conclude that Santorum was talking about living wills, which they do have in the Netherlands and which we also have here in the States.

So, where does this shit come from? I’ll tell you: right wing organizations that have the word “family” in their name. Phony Christian groups located in the hinterlands of Louisiana or Kansas or Georgia, who claim to love the 10 Commandments but keep forgetting about that ninth one (look it up if you don’t know). The Patriot Depot, a massive money-making machine spreading misinformation and lies to the gullible. These folks make some shit up and put it in an e-mail or direct mail piece because the more outrageous and salacious, the more likely some poor sucker will shake the change out of their wallet. These groups are the worst sort of grifters, unworthy of the trust their followers have placed in them. But when nobody bothers to call them on it, the lies just spread like a poison gas around the populace. Until they end up in the mouth of a politician like Michele Bachmann or Sarah Palin or Rick Santorum, of course. Then we all get to point and laugh.

So conservatives, think before you send. You never know where this nonsense will end up.

According to the news media, gas prices are at record highs — for February! — and this somehow is cause for panic because even though gas prices have been higher — in August 2008! — it means that they’re gonna be higher in May 2012 … just because!

I mean, good grief. If the news media is pressing the panic button, it must be because they’re tired of talking about vaginas and birth control pills. The funniest thing is watching Newt Gingrich remind everyone what the price of gas was when he was Speaker of the House, which was back in the last century. He then tells us what the price of gas was on Obama’s inauguration day, completely skipping over the roller coaster Bush years, including the record highs of 2008. Yeah, I know Republicans wish the Bush years never happened, join the club! But sorry dude, you can’t.

Nothing angers me more than the malfeasance that is our news media’s coverage of the gas price issue. Most of the time they’ll just shove a microphone in the face of some poor schlub trying to make it into work in the morning and record people complaining about something we’ve always complained about, since forever. Good grief, I remember people complaining about $1 a gallon gasoline, and I’m not that old.

It’s as if the news media has decided to not even bother and explain the issue. It’s just too hard, the poor dears know we idiot Americans can’t possibly comprehend gas prices rising due to things like Iran, China, Greece and increased demand from a stronger economy. So much easier to spread panic, I guess. Why don’t folks like Charlie Rose and Brian Williams actually inform the public? Instead, I watched Charlie Rose this morning let Newt blather on about stuff that has no effect on gas prices whatsoever without doing his fucking job and actually conducting an interview. You know, back in my day an interview involved two people, one asking questions and one answering them. This morning, Rose just basically turned on Newt’s mic, then went to the bathroom with his newspaper and cup of coffee.

As I wrote back in December, America is actually exporting more refined oil product than it’s importing these days. For the first time since 1949. How this makes President Obama anti-domestic energy, I have no idea.

These are the facts but you sure don’t hear the TV newsbots mentioning that. Gas prices are high right now because of global geopolitical conditions that U.S. consumers have very little control over and a strengthening economy which has increased demand. There is nothing magical about this being the month of February, nor is there any guarantee that these conditions will exist in May or June. There is no voodoo surrounding the time of year when gas prices have risen. I remember one Memorial Day weekend when they actually went down.

Here’s a nice little chart showing gas prices in the U.S.:

Every time the roller coaster edges up, the news media pushes the panic button. Frankly, I’m sick of it. It’s lazy, irresponsible, and does not inform the public. Instead, it fosters ignorance and partisanship, because it allows Republican talking points to take hold.

Instead of inciting panic, the news media should be spreading accurate information about why gas prices behave the way they do. That way an informed public could come together and actually agree on some kind of national energy policy enabling the country to weather these inevitable ups and downs over which we have little control.

Here’s an idea from Time’s Bryan Walsh:

In fact, it’s not the price of gas the President should focus on — it’s the effect high gas prices can have on the economy. A more energy-efficient economy — from gas mileage on up — is naturally more resilient to high energy prices. That’s one area the President can help shape — and it’s an area President Obama has found quiet success. The White House has pushed through measures that will mandate significant increases in the Corporate Average Fuel Economy rules, which means in the future, American drivers will be better protected against the next big hike in gas prices. And that’s not something one hears often from the Republican presidential field.

We’ll never agree on that more energy-efficient economy, though, because all the new media does is spread the false information that increased drilling somehow leads to lower gas prices at home. It isn’t now, it hasn’t in the past, nor will it in the future.

Two years ago I stumbled across the film, which I’d long since forgotten, and posted the Bob Roberts trailer and some old reviews. It goes without saying that Tim Robbins was extraordinarily prescient when he wrote and directed it. As I wrote at the time, I remembered seeing the film in the theater and thinking, “Nah, too over the top! Too out there! Revolutionary War costumes? Hilarious!” And hello modern-day Tea Party.

This year marks the film’s 20th anniversary. I would hope it would be re-released on DVD with a little bit of hoo-hah, though I don’t know if there are any plans to do so. But there should be. It really shows how extreme the modern day Republican Party has become.

A conservative explains why right-wingers have no compassion.

This kind of blanket, armchair psychoanalysis annoys me, but the article is worth a read.

———————————

Alabama State Senator Shadrack McGill, Republican (of course), at a prayer breakfast two weeks ago, tells us God wants teachers to be underpaid:

“It’s a Biblical principle. If you double a teacher’s pay scale, you’ll attract people who aren’t called to teach.”

WTF? Where in the Bible is that? Perhaps that’s some 11th commandment, Thou Shalt Not Pay Teachers What They Are Worth. Forget about all the talent driven away from the teaching profession because people simply can’t afford it. Especially those raising kids of their own.

Wow.

I think I’ve given up trying to understand the Republican mind. This morning on Face The Nation, Rick Santorum officially came out against amniocentesis, saying its only purpose is to convince women to abort. So really, this is where we are: your modern pro-life position is to be against contraception which prevents unwanted pregnancy, against amniocentesis, against using tax money to feed hungry children because that limits “freedom,” and against paying teachers a decent salary.

This is how warped and twisted the pro-life position has become. And it was entirely predictable. I’ve said it before, but conservative politics has been on a collision course with its religion for years, a trajectory that really accelerated during the free-wheeling Bush years. Now the two have collided in some really obvious ways, and religious conservatives are forced to admit that either their politics is wrong or their religion is. No shocker which one they’ve picked.

Get A Job, Kid

Ah, the party of moral values! Gotta love these good, Christian folk. Proving once again that Tennessee Republicans are not compassionate conservatives but rather conservative with their compassion, I bring you the aptly-named Kevin Kookogey, chair of the Williamson County Republican Party, coming out against the school breakfast program:

“This is not a complicated issue,” he said. “It is not the role of government to feed people. Government exists to protect and defend our God-given rights. Government fails when it usurps these bounds. One only need look at the hundreds of billions of dollars wasted by the Department of Education since its formation in 1980 with no improvement in student achievement. … Our founders understood this, which is why they expressly determined that education should be the province of states, local government, and families.”

Got that? It’s your God-given right to starve! And have your kids starve! No soup for you! That gnawing in your stomach is freedom!

This is positively Dickensian. Some 3,840 children qualify for the program. Guess they just need to show some more personal responsibility, right?

Oh, but it gets better:

Mindy McAlindon, first vice chair with the Williamson County Republican Party, agrees with Kookogey.

“It’s not the government’s job to feed students. It’s our job to provide for ourselves,” the Franklin home-school mom said. “The government is deciding where our money goes. And we should be deciding where our money goes.”

Do you people even know what “the government” is? It’s people, you morons. It’s you and the people you elect to represent you locally, in the state capitol, and in Washington, D.C. It’s not some building up on a hill somewhere, some inanimate thing. You decide where your money goes by electing representatives to “the government.” So go find some folks who agree with you that children should starve, that it serves the country to have thousands of kids start out in life on the wrong foot because they were too hungry to succeed in school. Go elect people who believe personal responsibility trumps social responsibility. If you’ve been unable to do that it means you’re in the minority and your crackpot ideas are not mainstream. Majority rules. Suck it up.

Ah, but this is life inside the gated community. Williamson County is one of the wealthiest counties in the entire country, and remains the wealthiest in Tennessee. If everything is good for you and your friends, why worry about anyone else? Of course, even in the land of plenty, there is poverty:

According to the most recent census data, poverty is on the rise in Williamson County.

More than 5 percent of school-aged children in the county school district and almost 15 percent of the students in the Franklin Special School District were living in poverty in 2010.

Clearly these people are just lazy, getting fat sucking on the taxpayer teat. Which begs the question: if welfare benefits are so generous, why is there any poverty at all? Oh well, don’t worry your pretty little minds about the hungry children in your community — or for that matter, the 14 million of them all across America.

Maybe the TNGOP would like to put all these hungry kids in Titans Stadium and watch them fight to the death over a loaf of bread? I wouldn’t put it past them.

• MSNBC makes it official: Pat Buchanan has been dropped, after publication of his latest racist screed. One question: what the hell took them so long?

• The U.S. is leading a group of countries which includes Canada, Mexico, and Sweden in a program reducing emissions of climate change pollutants.

• Noting that “Minnesotans do not want their laws written by the lobbyists of big corporations,” Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton, a Democrat, vetoed a series of ALEC-written bills, including “tort reform.” Too bad Tennessee got the ALEC disease last year; our idiot governor thinks having lobbyists write our legislation is positively brilliant.

• Trader Joe’s signed a fair food agreement with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, capping a long campaign by the Florida tomato pickers against the supermarket chain.

• Chicago mayor Rahm Emmanuel has vowed to back a same-sex marriage bill in Illinois.

• The US Navy has named a ship after Congresswoman Gabby Giffords.

• Minnesota’s largest school district has dumped its “neutral” policy regarding sexual orientation which was blamed for bullying of gay teens. There was only one dissenting vote. The policy had prompted lawsuits and opposition from teachers who said it …

…prevented them from holding effective discussions to reduce bullying against students who are gay or perceived to be gay.

Wonder if Stacey Campfield is listening? I’m guessing not.

• A new species of lizard has been discovered in Peru’s Andes Mountains.

• The Republic of the Congo has expanded Nouabalé-Ndoki National Park to protect vulnerable “naive” chimpanzees.

• Apple has asked the Fair Labor Assn., a group which investigates sweat shops, to inspect its factories in China, including those owned by Foxconn.

• New Jersey’s state legislature has approved gay marriage, though Governor Sandwiches has threatened to veto it.

• A French farmer successfully sued Monsanto for pesticide poisoning, bolstering France’s effort to cut its pesticide use 50% by 2018. France is the EU’s largest agricultural producer.

Good News, Tennessee Edition:

• Gov. Haslam has dropped his hare-brained idea to lift restrictions on class size at public K-12 schools.

• Christian bookstore chain LifeWay Christian Resources, owned by the Southern Baptist Convention, has refused to yank new “gender inclusive” translations of the NIV Bible from store shelves. Last year the convention voted to have the new translation removed from LifeWay stores, but LifeWay trustees disagreed that the edition should be censored.