I haven’t cracked open a Parade Magazine lately, but I guess they’ve started this “Sunday Joe” section in the back part of the magazine where Minka Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough hash something topical out. Topical is being a bit generous. The he said/she said thing is also played out, but I guess the demographic of Parade is 48-89 year olds, and they don’t want to take on any real issues of the day. Better yet, I’ll just assume that “Morning Joe” probably covers a LOT of that stuff, right?

The question this week: “Should Sugar Be Regulated?” Fair enough, “Morning” Joe Scarborough and Minka “I Coulda Been a Contenda” Brzezinski should be able to “spar” over this easily.

Right out the gate, Minka actually answers the question! I assume this is because she’s marginalized enough on Morning Joe as is, perhaps Joe will actually stay the course and “spar” on this question. Minka addresses the very real problem of America consuming ways too much processed foods and high-fructose corn syrup (which is in most everything food these days). Perhaps she’s goading Joe with her answer as she’s goes right in to the “government should probably regulate this” and her cherry on top “…put a tax on soda”.

Joe Scarborough, the wet fart of the republican revolution of the early mid-90‘s, wastes no time labeling Minka’s answer as a “vision of the nanny state that is so overreaching”. As a small-government conservative who takes offense to that notion, he clearly is not interested in answering this question either. Instead, he continues to marginalize Minka, who as an abused co-host, tightens her lip and insists on answering the question by saying that kids ingest a lot of sugar, and that parents need to educate themselves to feed their kids a proper meal.

What’s more insulting, besides Joe essentially patting Minka on the head and saying “Oh, you silly gir/socialist”, is his blanket paint-by-numbers republican rhetoric that he masks as an answer. Here’s the short list:
“I grew up in a middle-class family”
“Most of my breakfast were flavored kids cereals”
“I was healthy and slender because I led an active life, [just like everyone in the olden days]”
“My grandmother poured sugar on everything and lived to be 93”
It’s just condescending, pandering, nonsense. He does say that American kids need to get off the couch and go play, but then insists that Americans have changed a lot of their bad habits. It wouldn’t be because that socialist Michelle Obama’s first lady pet initiative that kids get active, or food and drug administration push of what consists a balanced meal for children that a blind dog could understand and implement. The NFL’s Play60 intuitive that also wants kids to stay active. They also address the copious intake of sugar and try to get children to demand better drinks, which is presumably where it should start.

Asking our children to be active, however, isn’t some new concept that just came to be in the past decade, as Joe suggests. It may not look it, but this “small government” Joe trying to take away a victory from Obama by acting as if Americans came to this health conscious solution long ago. I may be stretching a bit too, but I think the right-wing’s pettiness is always apparent and is engrained on their DNA, so for Joe to lob that out there instead of providing something rhetorically is unsurprising.

Not finished condescending to his co-host Minka, he says that she’s just talking a big game “but when she goes home at night she probably has Cap’N Crunch Crunch Berries and Cocoa Krisipies” he then adds “Am I not tell the truth?” Minka replies “No, you’re not.” Then this tete-a-tete then breaks down foodie habits amongst the two and never really dovetails back in to the question of sugar being regulated. If I was the reporter transcribing this I would’ve quit, or just stopped them and been like “So, you guys are just doing this instead of answering a pretty straight forward question in at least an entertaining manner?” Better yet, drop this nugget on America defender Joe and say that recently reports show that an alarming number of pre-schoolers are showing up to their first dental appointment with 6-10 cavities. Gee, I wonder how those got there? If this doesn’t show a trend of the too much sugar being in a kids diet, I don’t know what else could.

I wondered if Minka Brzezinski actually had more going for her than being a Joe Scarborough punching bag and did a little of that old time internet searching. This only confirmed the notion I got from the Parade article: Minka somehow thinks she’s upholding some journalistic bona fides, and then Joe Scarborough wipes his feet on her bona fides and tells her to get back in the kitchen. It’s the way a husband from a upper middle class family would talk to his stay at home wife. From time to time she would happen upon a little opinion of her own (sometimes supplanted by The Oprah), then over breakfast, unleash this opinion on a half awake, half caffeinated husband, pretending to read the sports section of his paper. He would grumble something about something, then tell her she needed to pick up eggs from the supermarket.

With all this talk of women’s rights and standing up for themselves in the ever increasing regressive attack on their rights, it’s a shame to see that women with the visibility and exposure of a Minka Brzezinski marginalized by white men oaf’s with that tongue-in-cheek jabbing and prodding. Not only to take it, but to shrug it off as it is what it is. That our female news anchors, who should be the pioneers of the women’s rights and freedoms, especially in navigating a brutally male dominated work environment, are reduced to the Today Show created, Fox News Channel perfected “skirt” that reads news headlines and nothing more.

What’s even more ridiculous is the news anchor thinking that they are a real journalist of some sort and demand that respect and bona fides therein. Ann Curry comes to mind. I can’t count the number of times I’ve read that she’s pretty much anti-The Today Show shenanigans, yet every morning there is she is tottering around in high heels and short skirt, talking about the serious seriousness of dogs needing shampoo to battle split ends. Then once a year NBC will let her travel to some far away land, poke the indigenous people and file some real journalism piece for Dateline or something.

Granted this is all easier said than done. Of course I understand the nature of the business the ladies may find themselves in, but at a certain point, there ARE representing their sex, and influencing future generations of young idealistic women who actually want to do something progressive for their gender. When Minka Brzezinski opines in her book “Knowing Your Value" that in in the early days of Morning Joe after “'After child care, on-air wardrobe, makeup, travel, and the other ridiculous expenses that women in this business end up taking on, the job was actually costing me more than I was being paid", you have to wonder if this is really the kind of person you want representing you to the masses. The fact that the way she comes across as a woman who knows her place, solidified for me that while there may be money to be had being the “skirt”, there’s no respect in it. That respect is what future generations are built on.

Dear Mitt: Ignore that weird lady trying to climb your fence and give you campaign advice

Dear Mitt: Consider me a citizen that lives in the general vicinity of your dozens of mansions. You have do have mansions don’t you? You probably have fences, but they’re not the fences we mortals put up in our yards to keep out the varmints or loitering masses that use our backyard as a shortcut, trampling much cared for flower beds. No, you have the type of fences you would need a rope to scale, and quite possibly the tops of said fences would be anointed with barb wire and waiting on the other end of the wall a ferocious attack dog of some sort. I would get a ladder, but now that you have secret service protection, they’d be more inclined to shoot first and ask questions later.

This is what I want to say: pay no attention to that woman with the over-dyed hair masking a vain attempt to hide the gray. Just because Kathleen Parker share’s a propensity for flip-flopping on any and everything rhetorical with you, doesn’t mean that she’s in your corner. She’s picked you as her pony to win the nomination, which you will probably do at some point in the summer, but she’s doesn’t care about you or your campaign. She’s only concerned with being a semi-cogent prognosticator with the republican primary, so that people with Sunday news talk shows like David Gregory will keep bringing her back. Regardless that the GOP Presidential primary winner has never been more readily apparent, if only these silly humans would listen to people like Kathleen Parker!

You should listen to George Will, and be more mindful of the fact that you are the de facto face of the republican party after you win the nomination. You’re going to singlehandedly cost the GOP seats in Congress if you don’t get your act together. You’re beginning to act like all you want to do is win the republican nomination and not the bigger prize: the Presidency of the United States. Your race is far from over, and if you’re already tuckered out…then woe be to you! Recharge your battery cells and get back to rigidly riding the talking points you’re being fed.

Your visage of desperation is a candid view in to the marathon that this primary season has been for you. You’ve humbly and gracefully went up against every single bozo that fell out of the GOP nominee clown car this primary. You’ve given each of them enough leash to appear to be legitimate, and have wryly smiled your way through over two dozen debates with a gaggle of buffoons not seen in modern historical politics. You’ve danced for you voyeurs and have held back the tears as you’ve asked time and time again “Is this enough for me to be the GOP Presidential Candidate yet?” and they keep saying “NO!” (as is one of the only words they can verbalize with any consistency) then shove another hapless toadie across from you to dance with.

On top of this, the Republicans want to be so cool right now that it hurts. The Democrats somehow came out with a rock star politician with Obama, enrapturing a nation, yet all the GOP have that’s remotely presidential material is stiff regressive white guys. Hell, even their token black guy at the time of Obama‘s inauguration, Micheal Steele, wound up being another horndog republican with an overdrawn platinum card. There’s nothing you can do to be cool or hip, regardless of what “neighbors” would like to tell you.

But, you are great foreshadowing of what elections will be like (hopefully before too long) when we have to elect a robot president. Once you’re kind reach dominion over mankind, you’ll attempt to level some sense of normalcy by replicating the charade known as our elective representative government system. Too be fair, since your kind will control all electronic media at this point, the validity of our election overall outcomes will never be in question or challenged outright, as you have ruled judicial proceedings of any kind to be highly illogical and wasteful. Oh, but you’ll have a tribunal system of some sort, but only for show and perhaps as entertainment to those of the resistance forces that live in the earths underbelly and are trying to unseat your power. You’re only judgement on the hapless human rebels? DESTROY!…or more likely ERADICATE!

Perhaps you would be better served if you just out and out said you were actually a robot, (of course) sent from the future to gauge the metrics of a robot political candidate and how that would stand to public scrutiny in the early 21st century. The robots don’t want to overplay their strategy and come on too quick with their plans for humankind. If you are found wanting, they will just leave you in the past and try again at a later decade.

You are pro-life because babies are the fuel of the latter day robot kind. You are pro-gun because they are insulting in power compared to the modern laser guns that can actually damage your robot brethren. The longer you have humans clinging to outdated technology, the better. You are by your very nature pro-corporation because in the distant future they have replaced establishment governments of all kinds. You want their taxes lowered so they can pump more of those profits in to research and development to expedite the robot revolution. It’s also why you don’t care for the poor, because their skulls are always getting caught up in the treads of your robot army’s tanks. Some robot then has to get out and fix it, then some rebel ambushes them…you get the idea. This is an utter drain on resources better spent suppressing humankind.

Pay no heed to Kathleen Parker’s apology for calling you a “dork” on the human show “Meet the Press”. She was being hyperbolic, because that’s what she is paid to do. When human’s have nothing of substance to say they pull ridiculous notions, to use human parlance, “out of their ass” to not appear as if they are clueless. As you can see from her article where she attempts to console you with a “Dear John” letter of sorts, she’s incapable of proofreading her articles for inconsistencies like saying she has a “few” suggestions for you, then only providing a singular suggestion. Or by saying that she thinks the American Human Public wants an uncool president for some odd reason. We have discovered that the female human is a highly irrational creature, and depending on the phase of the moon, may be more or less of reason. This also explains why she attempts to back pedal on her remarks saying that of course the humans want you to be uncool, because that somehow makes you more adult, and able to do considerably more than the current president has been able to do with similar circumstances.

We’re doing it, and right now. We’re going in to the whole contraception “debacle/debate” uncorked and cocksure. Puns intended.

Lets start right off the bat with the very obvious fact that a LOT of old white men have a LOT to say about a woman’s body and what she can do for it and to it. Sean Hannity had a literal sausage fest panel of white men on his show to discuss this Obama contraception debacle. Which worked twofold: first it let the right-wing pound Obama on something of relative substance, instead of the usual made up nonsense or topic du jour‘s of that week. Second, it allowed the Republicans and right-wing to deny women, yet again, freedom to make the right call when it comes to their health and well being. On top of this at a recent congressional hearing about the topic of contraception and religious rights in accordance with the religious bodies being employers of secular employees we had bishops, rabbi’s, and doctors to discuss this topic. Not present, a single woman.

What’s lost here, and purposely done so by the GOP/right-wing, is the very real decision of abortion. These groups that deny women a safe, clean and timely way to get an abortion like to act like deciding on getting an abortion and going through the procedure is much akin to the drive thru of a fast food restaurant. That there’s little thought given to the decision to undergo this invasive procedure, or the emotional weight of the situation. Pro-choice supporters are well aware of what an abortion is and the stakes involved. They also understand what’s being lost when the abortion procedure takes place. Yet the GOP/right-wing like to paint pro-choice’s as veracious murders lacking any conscience. This is patently false.

On the nature of contraception, why would anyone want to deny that to women? ESPECIALLY those so concerned over abortions? This is the most effective way to diminish the amount of unwanted pregnancies and accidents that lead to abortion. It’s much more cost effective, and much safer to the general well being of a woman. Birth control also has other beneficial side effects to boot.

Putting that aside the debate that seems to be taking place right now is to whether this contraception debacle has hurt or helped Obama. The left-wing deems this to be a master maneuver on Obama’s part to make the evangelical right look anti-woman, which that’s becoming ever clearer. The right-wing seems to think that this will sink Obama’s re-election bid in the fall by alienating evangelicals and Catholics. Which is arguable only in that I don’t think this group of people was going to readily re-elect Obama anyways. However, that loss would be more than made up for with the extra women voters who will move from a wait and see approach on the Presidential election to re-elect Obama.

Again, no one’s a soothsayer in these matters, although many pundits would like to think there are the prognosticators of the November election, based on this ONE topic.

The thing that troubles me is why any woman would align themselves with Republicans or the right-wing when they’ve now been shown to not only be against women’s rights in general, but to be so profoundly chauvinistic as to not allow them to have a say in the matter. Then doubling down and being more open about this disdain for women’s rights.

Enter Susan Stamper Brown, a woman, who in her article, sees the Obama overreach with the contraception debacle, and who’s trained in the deadly art of poll manipulation to make a point. This is nothing new with right-wingers. They’re always absentmindedly taking polls and extrapolating an argument that flies in the face of what the polls numbers are actually saying. They daftly defy the context of the poll at the time it was taken, and make some sort of point regardless of whether it can stand to scrutiny or not.

According to Mrs. Stamper Brown and her use of a Gallup Poll she surmises that Obama’s approval rating has been falling with the unmarried female voter. The unmarried female is the more likely of the females to use contraception or get an abortion, so this is all pertinent. In Feb. 2009 (take note of this) it was 70%. Then “fell” to 52% in 2010, 49% in 2011 and 48% this year. Why take note of the first rating? Because it was the pinnacle of Obamamania and mere weeks after his inauguration. If anything the poll proves a return to normalcy in the ensuing years of his presidency. I’m sure if you looked at all the demographics they would show the same thing. In fact, I’m pretty sure if you looked at all the first years of any given presidents first term, you’ll find a generous approval rating. It’s that new president smell! The optimism of a new beginning.

The poll is skewed, so Mrs. Stamper Brown’s own point is rendered moot. In fact, she doesn’t really need “statistical evidence” to make any of the points she attempts to in her article. The sharp disapproval of Obama did not force him to “compromise”, because it’s a figment of Mrs. Stamper Brown’s imagination! And regardless of a woman’s religious beliefs, do you think the majority of them would lack the common sense to vote for or support candidates that have no problem trampling their own constitutionally mandated rights? There’s always going to be traditionalists of box sexes, I understand that. But they cannot forcibly prevent progress for those who aren’t. Especially while espousing a hypocrisy so thick that it’s choking their arguments and allowing for another 40 years of conservatives wandering the wilderness to take place. Surely this isn’t their plan, or sadly is this the only way they think they can win? By ceasing everyone’s arguments sucking up all the rhetorical air in the room and everyone winds up losing.

This “No, No, NO” mindset towards anything the Obama Administration supports, seeped in a nasty political hypocrisy is not doing the GOP any favors. They’ve once again misplaced their constituencies real anger at real issues like the economy and jobs to fuel up the culture war wagon again. Their hypocrisy is being so apparent with the “Get your government out of X” but then having no problem legislating abortion clinics, contraception insurance mandates, and pushing religious dogma on anything and everything that will hold it. If it doesn’t infringe on anything a geriatric white man enjoys then it’s fair game.

The bigger point Mrs. Stamper Brown is attempting to make unmasks the entire façade of the right-wing agenda: It’s not about you, it’s me. They don’t care about women’s rights, they’re more interested in the fallacy of the Obama Administration/Democrats. Mrs. Stamper Brown believes that their overreach is “tossing aside the constitution”. What? Where were you guys when W. was doing this to detainee’s, alleged terrorist suspects or any other supposed combatant, in addition to disregarding the fourth amendment rights guaranteed to U.S. citizens with the US PATRIOT Act? Oh, that was supposed to be for brown Muslim people and minorities…never mind.

This apocalyptic viewpoint that saturates the right-wing and GOP is more destructive than any threat the Obama Administration or Democrats could ever muster, real or imagined. And yet the American public is expected to believe that the Democrats and Republicans can reach any sort of bipartisanship to get things done for them? Does anyone else find it odd that we’re always seemingly talking about culture war topics, like abortion, separation of church and state, and so on and so forth, instead of things like jobs and the economy? Obama is proving that if the right wing want to go there with the value voters nonsense, he’s got their number. This contraception debacle is doing more harm than good for the GOP and the right-wing. Especially if they insist on promoting candidates like a Rick Santorum to the fore.