Yes, I'm Alive

even though it hasn't seemed like it lately. It's been kind of hit or miss, and I think I'm a little burned out. Here's a round-up of things I've been skating over recently that I decided to call attention to.

Melissa McEwen says all that needs to be said about Rick Santorum and his "pro-life" philosophy. I think this comment pretty much sums it up:

And he's worried about the double victimization of a fucking blastocyst.

It's probably a good thing for Rand Paul that Santorum is no longer in the Senate, otherwise he'd have real competition for "Stupidest Sitting Senator." I doubt that Santorum could even manage to fake it for any length of time.

Michele Bachmann won the Iowa Straw Poll.

And your point is? (Even Joe Scarborough has that figured out.)

Here is another one of those ponderous, self-absorbed, New Left "my agenda is the only one that counts" posts at Bilerico. I was going to leave a comment, but when I reread it I realized that there is so much wrong on so many levels there that I didn't even know where to start, except maybe with "Take your head out of your butt and look around you."

The Iowa Values Voters Bus Tour is a huge flop. This is the brain-child of a coalition of far-right Christianist groups who obviously didn't get the message from the abject failure of NOM's marriage bus tour last year. What is that line about trying the same thing over and over and expecting a different result?

Mitt Romney wants to privatize unemployment insurance. Really. Truly. I thought this bit was choice -- from the right-wing Mercatus Center on Unemployment Insurance Savings Accounts:

UISA eliminates the perverse incentives of publicly provided benefits. Workers must finance their own unemployment, providing an incentive to avoid job loss and increase the job search effort during unemployment.

"An incentive to avoid job loss" -- do you suppose someone actually got paid for coming up with that nonsense?

And inevitably, we have a gaggle of New York town clerks whose religious beliefs forbid them from performing their duties. Timothy Kincaid has an excellent commentary. (And have you ever noticed how all of a sudden, oaths of office don't count?)

That's all the crazy I can deal with this morning.