Jerkoff of the Week - Paul Broun

You know what chaps my ass?

Well, yeah, a lot of things actually.

But today it's certain Conservative members of Congress who seem to think the Second Coming would be facilitated if only all the rest of us baby killing, illegal immigrant smuggling, gay loving, family value haytin', Jeebus rejecting, Constitution thumping, science believing, bunny squeezin', immoral, unethical, liberal leaning, non-English speaking offspring of the devil would just jolly well fuck right off to Canada.

Meet Paul Broun, US Congressional Representative from Georgia's 10th District. Former Marine, Navy Medical Officer, doctor, and epitome of everything I detest about the current batch of jackasses who hijacked the GOP when the rest of us weren't looking.

A couple of quotes from from his website:

As a young man, I had a strong desire to serve in the military. The day that I became a U.S. Marine was one of the proudest days of my life. Later, I also served as a Navy medical officer. As a Marine, I took an oath to defend the United States. Keeping that oath is a sacred obligation (Note: Apparently, he didn't take the same oath when he became a Naval officer). This particular statement says a lot about Broun and his selective use of facts and his perception of history. See, as a Marine and as a Naval Officer, his job was to defend the United States - but his oath was to support and defend the Constitution of the United States. Notice how that little distinction seems to have slipped his mind?

I work overtime in Congress to make sure that we honor our covenant with those who have served in the Armed Forces. As your Congressman, I work to make sure that veterans and their families receive every benefit that has been promised. Strangely, however, a check of the congressional record shows that he has almost no voting record regarding any bill before the house involving the military or veterans or their families - well other than to vote 'no' on mortgage relief, 'yes' on continuing the war ad infinitum, and 'yes' towards requiring a permanent law diverting a minimum of 4% of GDP to defense. As to working overtime, well, the record shows he's big on voting for early adjournment of the meetings.

...I pledged that the very first legislation that I would author and introduce would define life as beginning at fertilization. I kept that pledge with HR 4157, The Sanctity of Human Life Act. He did introduce HR4157, the bill is in the House Judiciary committee at the moment. This also an insight into the mind of Broun, he intends to legislate the definition of human life. Once he's got that defined as at conception, ... well you can figure out the rest for yourself.

All of our rights come from God, not from government. Our Founding Fathers understood this. They understood that the role of government, is to recognize and preserve our God-given, inalienable rights. Therefore, they wrote the Second Amendment. Uh? I'm not even going to touch this one.

America was founded upon the Christian principles contained in the Word of God. We must stop radical judges from legislating from the bench, destroying revered American religious traditions and religious symbols. Getting some insight into Mr. Brown yet? And apparently the fact that in addition to Christian texts, Jefferson and the framers of the Constitution also referred to the Koran and a vast number of secular works is something that Broun just completely missed.

And my personal favorite: Behind every good man is a strong woman. Ah ha, ah hahaha! Ha! That's right, bitch, God says get your barefooted ass behind me. (Question: does this mean behind every bad man there's a weak woman? Bitches, been causin' problems for men since those shenanigans in the garden with that apple).

Broun is one of those people who thinks that everybody should share his vision of white English speaking conservative Christian America - you know the neat little Southern town where the doctors make house calls, men toil in righteous defense of the country, housewives trade recipes over white picket fences and have dinner on the table when their weary husbands come home. There's a Baptist church on every corner and all the funny looking people either live in California or sing hymns contentedly while picking the fucking cotton.

Now normally I'd just ignore this idiot, the world is full of them, but Broun is also one of those people who, when they can't bend America as a whole to their version of morality and good Christian White People Ethics, looks around for a captive population to force into their pinched little worldview.

And true to form, he's settled on the military.

"Allowing the sale of pornography on military bases has harmed military men and women by: escalating the number of violent, sexual crimes; feeding a base addiction; eroding the family as the primary building block of society; and denigrating the moral standing of our troops both here and abroad," so says Representative Broun. He has therefore introduced legislation that would close a loophole in the current law that allows the sale of some sexually explicit material on military bases by lowering the threshold required to deem material "sexually explicit."

Now before anybody gets spun up over where I'm going with this and my apparent defense of pornography, let me say personally, Meh, I don't much care. It's out there, it's always been out there, and it's always going to be out there. Romans painted porn on their walls 2500 years ago, I've seen it on a wall in a Pompeii villa - and it was porn, not art, believe me. Asian cultures have a long, long tradition of pornographic media. So have Americans, it's been around since before George Eastman and his band of chemists came up with self-developing film. And with the advent of the Internet and digital photography - well, let's just say that porn is here to stay. I personally don't have much use for it, and I do my best to protect my kid from it. I think that we need to make dammed sure those engaged in it's making are there of their own free will and are of legal age. And I think we need to hunt down and prosecute those who engage in the creation of illicit material such as kiddie porn. But, if you're an adult and you want to look at legally produced pictures of air-brushed, botoxed, silicone injected Barbie and Ken dolls frolicking around the Playboy mansion, be my guest. If you subscribe to the 900-series channels from your local cable provider, fine by me (though I really wish GCI would sanitize the titles of those channels on their menu - I really would rather not have my eleven year old son see Big Butt College Girls Take IT in the Pooper when he's flipping through the menu looking for The Suite Life of Zack and Cody, I don't subscribe and I wish it wouldn't appear on my menu. Just Saying).

Back to Broun. Now see, the bill he's introduced would classify not only magazines with pictures of nekkid people as pornography, but anything Broun considers racy. Magazines like, oh, Maxim and FHM. I've read a few Maxims out there at sea, and while I consider the content a bit puerile, I really can't see how they are pornography. Sure, there's 'sex tips' for men in each issue, that's true. Ever read the cover of a Cosmo, or Women's Health while standing in line at the Commissary or Base Exchange? But I guess if it's 10 tips for 'Satisfying Your Man' it's not porn as far as Broun is concerned (and now you know why Broun likes a good woman behind him, eh heh heh).

And as far as Penthouse and Playboy are concerned. Please. There are Gap advertisements in the Christian Science Monitor that are more provocative. Seriously, carry this far enough and Broun and his idiot supporters will have every DVD rated higher than PG-13 removed from the exchanges too. How far does this go? Are we going ban tobacco sales and alcohol? Thong underwear? Makeup (If I remember correctly, in biblical times only whores wore lipstick - as an advertisement of their particular specialty). Really, where does this end?

Here's an idea, let's say that if you are old enough to swear your oath, put on a uniform, and be deployed to Green Zone for 18 months we'll just assume that you're an adult and therefore have the same rights and access to public media as every other citizen in the United States. And while we're at it, let's also say that if a member of the US Government says in public: "...the sale of pornography on military bases has harmed military men and women by escalating the number of violent, sexual crimes; feeding a base addiction; eroding the family as the primary building block of society; and denigrating the moral standing of our troops both here and abroad, he'll have to prove it. Conclusively prove - using independently verified data compiled using solid statistical science and validated data collection methods - that members of the military have been harmed, that the sale of Maxim and FHM have directly caused the escalation of violent sexual crimes, that members of the military are suffering from a 'base addiction,' and that the families as a fundamental unit of society at large have been demonstratively 'eroded.' And I'd like a specific set of metrics that precisely define 'harmed,' 'base addiction,' and 'eroded' in the context of the statement. Thanks.

As to denigrating the moral standing of our troops, well, I'm not sure I understand exactly what that means. Seriously, in all candor, we kill people for a living. If we're not killing people, we're training to kill people. We train to kill other people by stabbing, shooting, bludgeoning, fire and blast and by choking the life out of them with our bare hands. We blow shit up, whole countries sometimes. If we're not blowing shit up, we're training to blow shit up. We sit in holes in the ground or in the water, on top of weapons of unimaginable power, prepared to vaporize ten billion people and lay waste to entire continents. That's war, and that's what we do and what we are trained for. Every day we slog through ruined cities and burned out buildings, we step over corpses of dead women and bloated children and brush futilely at the flies and the stink of putrefaction rotting in the jungle damp or the desert sun. We're not the Boy Scouts or the Peace Corps. We drink and swear and smoke and sometimes look at dirty pictures and you wouldn't want us around your dinner parties. We raise hell and live our lives, because tomorrow we're going back out into the meat grinder again, and some of us aren't coming home. Is that moral? Would the people we're killing respect us more if we hadn't read a copy of Penthouse last night? I don't know and I don't much care, but it's a fact and a reality and either you find rough and tough shitkickers to defend you, or you better starting teaching your kids the enemy's language and customs.

Frankly, I'm more than a little leery of accepting a Congressmen's definition of morality here. Really, Broun is a good smug self-righteous Christian, he really ought to read that bit in the bible about the mote, eyes, and the beam and then take a good look around Capital Hill at his fellow Republicans. I'd suggest he start with Larry Craig, Mark Foley, Dennis Hastert, and well, he could probably just pick republicans at random. He's worried about morals in America? He might start with his friends.

Truly, Paul Broun, you are indeed a complete jerkoff.

(Final Note: from examination of my statistics page, I find that 99% of Google and Yahoo search engine hits for the word 'jerkoff' contain additional terms which indicate the searches are for gay porn. The fact that Representative Paul Broun will now appear in those searches as a result of this post gives me more than a touch of evil glee. Thank you, and good night).