First Cuppa Coffee – March 16, 2012: Conspiracies, Lies and More Lies Edition

From the War on Women Battlefront…  The conspiracists of the right have been working overtime, looking for the elusive connection between Georgetown Law Student Sandra Fluke and the inner workings of the Obama machine. The thinking goes that, if they can find the smoking gun, all will be forgiven for Rush’s characterization of her as a slut and a prostitute. And looky, looky at what they have found: First Degree Jewishness.  Her boyfriend (Adam Mutterperl) is a Jew. Here’s the original copy from teabagger extraordinaire Brookes Baine:

Adam Mutterperl is the son of one of the most well-connected leftist Jewish families on the East Coast (add the West Coast to that, apparently), with ties to neo-Marxist Brandeis University as decades old donors… and whose father, Bill Mutterperl, worked directly for Paul Volcker, one of Obama’s pals, advisors, and Keynesian “stimulus” bill architects. In addition to the Mutterperl’s extensive history within the Jewish socialist activist/political world, and their generational wealth, they’re still doing what they can to help the 99%.

 Inconvenient facts trump made up memes…  Although the GOP’s theology wing has tried their best to characterize this Made-for-Fox-News controversy over birth control as an attack on religious freedom in America, the public isn’t buying this batch of snake oil. The esteemed Public Religion Research Institution asked a random sample of over a thousand adults whether religious liberty was under attack in the United States, and whether government-mandated birth control coverage was part of that threat. And the American public said, “Huh?” A solid majority (56%) did not perceive that there was any threat to religious freedom in the United States; a mere 6% of those who perceived a threat cited the contraception mandate issue.

Texas takes on Washington, Perry still in the race for VEEP… Texas Governor Rock Perry has made up his own spin on the Planned Parenthood issue: he’s refusing any Federal Funding that might conceivable mingle with Planned Parenthood. The upshot of this cowardly move on his part is that an estimated 130,000 poor women who are unfortunate enough to be living in Texas will be will lose access to cancer screenings, well-woman exams and contraception.

Getting Sweet on marriage equality… Ice Cream maker Ben and Jerry’s has announced that they’ll be renaming one of their standard flavors in support of marriage equality in England. Henceforth their Apple Pie Flavor will be dubbed “Apple-y Ever After” to raise awareness for same sex marriage.

Not-so-sweet on marriage equality…  We don’t think that Mayoral Candidate Carl DeMaio will be serving any Ben and Jerry’s flavors at any of his events.  After all, now that he’s made his deal with the devil by aligning his campaign with anti-gay social conservatives in the state GOP in return for cash and favors to be named later, we’re pretty sure that the whole “gay thing” will be filed under “do not speak of this” by the DeMaio campaign.  Major kudos to LGBT Weekly for calling Carl out on his hypocrisy,  noting that many of the legislative moves that he’s using to attack candidate Nathan Fletcher for not being conservative enough were in fact anti-gay measures hoisted before the State legislature by social conservatives looking to improve their status with homophobic voters. And, of course, then there’s all the money he’s collecting from former donors to anti-gay marriage initiatives in California.

Mark the date (July 12^th) on your calendars…  Now that the old guard of the entertainment industry has been frustrated by negative public reaction to their “reform the internet” proposals, they’re trying another tack. Thursday, July 12^th is the date when the nation’s largest ISPs will all voluntarily implement a new anti-piracy plan that will engage network operators in the largest digital spying scheme in history, and see some users’ bandwidth completely cut off until they sign an agreement saying they will not download copyrighted materials. The deal was brokered by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), and coordinated by the Obama Administration.

When did you stop beating your….?  Understanding the battle for the internet (or freedom as some of us like to call it) is a complicated matter. If you listen to the industry matrons on this subject, you’ll be led to believe that hard working performers are being denied royalties by evil-doing anarchists bent of destroying capitalism.  This is totally not true, but the way the argument is being framed (by the people who are really stealing the money!) makes it difficult to understand the truth of the matter. You’re being asked to answer a question in a manner that makes any response other than the one the recording industry would like you to make seem wrong, with a Capital “W”.  As in “When did you stop beating your wife?”.  So read this article—the best I’ve seen so far—and understand why so many artists, writers and musicians have aligned themselves in opposition to the old world entertainment industry.