Tag: Iowa
Iowa Lawmakers Seek to Punish Judges for Gay Marriage Ruling
If the justices are going to behave like legislators, they ought to receive lawmakers’ pay.
— Iowa state Rep. Larry Sheets (R), member of the group of Iowa Republican lawmakers that has attached an amendment to a judicial branch budget bill that would reduce the salaries of the four remaining justices who were part of the groundbreaking case to legalize same-sex marriage in the state, the Sioux City Journal reports. Their salaries would be reduced from about $163,000 annually to $25,000, the amount legislators are paid.</h2>
Pay to Play: After Meat Industry Donation, Tea Party Rep. Steve King Defends Pink Slime
I’m on the phone today and throughout the weekend and into last week trying to establish a congressional hearing before the Ag Committee for Beef Products, Incorporated, so that we can put into the congressional record the nutritional value and the safety and the tastiness of their product which is an enhancement to hamburger. I’m working with Governor Branstad on that. At this point, there will be a decision made today I think on whether we’re able to get a hearing.
– Rep. Steve King, GOPT-Iowa, after taking donations from meat industry trade associations and meat producers, promising to have a hearing in Congress on the benefits of pink slime, which he calls “lean finely textured beef.”
Rick Perry: Gay, Gay, Gay
The blowback from the hate-filled ad targeting Iowa’s Christian bigot voters that Rick Perry released this week has been pretty hilarious.
It has spawned all sorts of parodies, including the video above, as well as a Tumblr site and a series of Photoshop jobs in which gay icons like Tinky Winky, the late Rev. Jerry Falwell’s favorite Teletubby, are superimposed behind Perry.
And speaking of gay icons, here is a Dept. of There Are No Accidents alert: In the ad, Perry is costumed in a jacket just like the one worn by Heath Ledger in “Brokeback Mountain.”
But the blowback hasn’t been all fun and games for Rick Perry. On Wednesday, Tony Fabrizio, team Perry’s pollster and strategist, was outed on Twitter — “twouted?” — by Jimmy LaSalvia and Chris Barron, prominent members of GOProud, a Stockholm-syndrome support group for gay Republicans:
Bachmann Reminds Student That Gay Men Can Marry, As Long As They Marry Women – And She Should Know
From the first moment he burst onto the public stage with his jazzy hands, high-pitched feminine voice and sibilant s’es, Marcus Bachmann has registered at about an 11 on a scale of one to 10 on gaydars across the nation.
Here’s the rule, and you can take this to the bank: Heterosexuals who are secure about their own sexuality are not obsessed with homosexuality. People who are happily straight are apathetic about the mechanics of gay sex. They do not make it their life mission to suppress gay rights. They don’t spend every waking hour figuring out new ways to oppress gay people, and they never send their families out to picket funerals with signs that say, for example, “God Hates Fags.” And, especially, they don’t try to “cure” homosexuality with “pray away the gay” schemes like Bachmann’s.
Now, in the latest gaffe in her presidential campaign, Marcus’ wife, Michele, appears to have spilled the beans about their marriage. At a town hall in Waverly, Iowa, Rep. Bachmann was questioned about marriage equality by Jane Schmidt, a high school student:
JANE SCHMIDT: Then, why can’t same-sex couples get married?
BACHMANN: They can get married, but they abide by the same law as everyone else. They can marry a man if they’re a woman. Or they can marry a woman if they’re a man.
Hey, it worked for her, right?
Partial Transcript:
Marcus Bachmann Tries to Prove He is 100% Heterosexual
It seems Michele Bachmann’s husband Marcus has heard the speculation about his sexuality and is determined to prove that he is 100 percent heterosexual. Over the weekend in Iowa, first he elbowed and shoved Don Lemon, an openly gay CNN anchor. Now comes this photo showing him exchanging spit with a political supporter.
And speaking of the Bachmann’s oral fixations on display in Iowa this weekend, there’s this bizarre but hilarious, almost NSFW photo of his wife Michele enjoying a footlong hotdog.
The Line: The GOP Debate in Iowa
- Andrew Sullivan, the Dish at the Daily Beast: “The winners tonight were the Fox interviewers, Baier and Wallace, who pulled no punches in this battle and asked some very tart and tough questions of the various candidates. I think Bachmann is the current front-runner in Iowa and the debate tonight will cement her status. T-Paw was better; Romney came across as even shiftier than usual; Huntsman let his nerves get the better of him; Ron Paul’s freshness has waned; Herman Cain was hopeless; Gingrich was very very angry; and Santorum is so exercized about Iran he even wandered into a defense of gays! Awesome.”
- Kevin Drum at Mother Jones: “I thought tonight’s debate was much closer than the last one. I didn’t really see any clear winners or losers … I’m obviously not the target audience for these folks, so it hardly matters what I thought about them. Still, what’s so striking about this group is that aside from Ron Paul there’s just hardly any real daylight between them. The questioners tried mightily to provoke some arguments, and they did manage to get a few small ones going over relative minutia, but for the most part they’re still just trying to out-tea party each other.”
- David Weigel at Slate: “It wasn’t the stiffest of competitions, but this was the best, most clarifying debate between the Republican candidates.”On Bachmann’s performance: “The best thing that happened to her was the question about whether she’d be ‘submissive’ to her husband if she was president. The boos lasted for an uncomfortably long time; she gamely, sarcastically thanked Byron York for the question. It was yet another moment for her to prove that the media treats her unfairly. And since it was the only question on social issues that was directed to her, she missed, one more time, a chance to respond to the damaging ‘ex-gay clinic’ story.”
- The Caucus at the New York Times: “As they tried to blame President Obama for the nation’s lowered credit rating, the Republican presidential candidates who squared off Thursday night in Iowa made several misleading, incomplete or simply false claims…Rep. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota repeated her assertion that ‘we should not have increased the debt ceiling .. In the last two months, I was leading on the issue of not increasing the debt ceiling,’ she said. ‘That turned out to be the right answer.’ The ratings agency that lowered the credit rating, Standard & Poor’s …lamented in its report on the downgrade that ‘the statutory debt ceiling and the threat of default have become political bargaining chips in the debate over fiscal policy.’ It was Republicans in Congress who made it a bargaining chip.
- Politifact: “Bachmann said raising the debt ceiling gave Obama a “blank check.” PolitiFact Virginia checked that when Eric Cantor said it about a debt ceiling plan from Harry Reid and found it False.”
- Tina Korbe at Hot Air: “In general, I prefer to reward action over inaction and I respect the willingness of these candidates to “put themselves out there” tonight, but I have to agree with the cliche: Rick Perry was the real winner tonight.”
- Ed Morrissey also at Hot Air: “I tweeted that [‘Rick Perry was the real winner tonight’] as the debate ended, Tina, and Chuck Todd followed it by predicting that sentiment would be the trite, cliche tweet of the night — but I think it was true to some extent. As the gloves came off between Pawlenty and Bachmann, then Santorum and Paul, and all night between Newt Gingrich and the same Fox News that employs him, it seemed that the entire debate ran off the rails.”
