Summit of All Fears

Rachel started us off with highlights from the Values Voter Summit 2009, and wow, does it look like a humdinger.

In case you were wondering which values you should be voting for (Spoilers!), it’s gays bad, czars bad, and independent women scary and bad unless they are hot enough to be former minor beauty queens or on Fox News.

What makes a true beauty queen is inner beauty. And apparently in Carrie Prejean’s world what makes inner beauty is a sense of entitlement that would make Marie Antoinette pull you aside and ask you to take it down a notch.

Ms. Prejean is also doing that trendy thing where prejudiced people try to grab the mantle of victimhood and claim that they are discriminated against when people aren’t “tolerant” of them spouting their intolerance all over the place.

It’s like they learned the superficial lesson that it’s bad to be a bigot, but have managed to completely gloss over the bigger lesson of what exactly a bigot is.

Anyway, Rachel openly mocks her in this clip. Enjoy.

Dear Carrie Prejean’s Publicity Agency: You might want to mention to your client that extolling your own “courage and bravery” is bad form.

Also, I keep hearing that conservatism is about personal responsibility. Why hasn’t Prejean taken responsibility for the fact that, politics aside, her answer stank on ice? She didn’t give any reasons for her belief, and her lead-in was so confusing that at first I thought she was trying to say that gay marriage wasn’t for her, but she was glad others were getting the choice.

Why has she never, not once, addressed the possibility that Miss North Carolina USA simply kicked her ass and won fair and square? Nice sportsmanship, Sneerface.

One More Thing:

You know who else Values Voters don’t like? Reporters. Way to get weird and paranoid, kids.

Going South

Speaking of Values Voters, Rachel revisited her story from earlier in the week pointing out that South Carolina’s Family Values candidates don’t seem to care about your health if you’re not rich and no longer a fetus.

Rachel welcomed the terrific Eugene Robinson from The Washington Post to talk about whether some old attitudes about race and poverty might have something to do with the state’s depressing health statistics.

Ms. Information

Rachel reported that a new political party is in control in Japan for the first time since 1955. The new Justice Minister is against the death penalty, and since she’s the one who has to sign off on executions, it looks like they won’t be having any for a while.

Rachel noted that this makes us the only industrialized nation that will still be executing prisoners, in addition to being the only industrialized nation that doesn’t offer health care to its citizens.

Come visit the USA! It’s like one giant coast-to-coast Thunderdome!

Rachel also gave us an intriguing account of the new political horserace between Republican Governors Tim Pawlenty (Minnesota) and Bobby Jindal (Louisiana).

They’re both trying to look like tough leaders, which apparently means it’s a race to the bottom of the base.

Both previously took strong stands against taking the Federal stimulus money before Santaing it out all over their states.

Recently Pawlenty has forbidden his state to give any money to ACORN, which already wasn’t happening, but now it’s really extra not happening. Jindal, not to be outdone, signed an executive order to stop the ACORN money that his state wasn’t giving out, which makes it extra super-duper not happening.

I am really looking forward to seeing this slapfight continue. C’mon fellas! Who’s going to be the first to implement tough penalties for breaking the law of gravity? And somebody nard up and demand an end to funding those state unicorn preserves!

Raising L

Hey! Looks like the libruls are no longer gelatin-based!

Jane Hamsher of firedoglake.com joined Rachel to talk about working towards real health care reform by scaring the bejeezus out of the conservadems.

Enjoy that doghouse you’re in, Blue Dogs! You earned it.

I think it’s interesting that the blunder that Jane Hamsher points out – supporting the conservadems with the mistaken idea that they’d fall in line with the rest of the party – is essentially the same one the Big Tent republicans made when the fiscal conservatives started courting the hard-line morals conservatives.

And now thinking conservatives seem to have been left flat-footed while the Republicans who are screaming about secession and bad, scary gays have taken over. We should maybe learn from that.

Political Football

You may not be aware of this since everybody’s been so quiet about it, but football season has started!

Rachel and staff decided to check out OpenSecrets.org to see which NFL teams may be breaking your heart off the field as well as on.

Sports savant (and TRMS producer) Bill Wolff stopped by to break the bad news and introduce you to a disco fight song that will make you hate your ears.

You have been warned.