Sunday, February 12, 2012

This is the worst thing

There is an amazing bevy of conservative commentators in the United States who say really messed up stuff. So it's really something when I come across something that is so horrible, so shockingly callous, as to leave me truly stunned.

Liz Trotta, from Fox News (where else), has really set a new standard. The executive summary of her comments is that women in the United States military should expect to get raped by their fellow soldiers, and spending money on trying to prevent these rapes is the epitome of government waste. If that upsets you as much as it should, be warned, video and quotes to follow:


TROTTA: ...just a few weeks ago, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta commented on a new Pentagon report on sexual abuse in the military. I think they have actually discovered there is a difference between men and women. And the sexual abuse report says that there has been, since 2006, a 64% increase in violent sexual assaults. Now, what did they expect? These people are in close contact, the whole airing of this issue has never been done by Congress, it's strictly been a question of pressure from the feminist.

And the feminists have also directed them, really, to spend a lot of money. They have sexual counselors all over the place, victims' advocates, sexual response coordinators. Let me just read something to you from McClatchy Newspapers about how much this position on extreme feminism is costing us. "The budget for the Defense Department's Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Office leapt from $5 million in fiscal 2005 to more than $23 million in fiscal 2010. Total Defense Department spending on sexual assault prevention and related efforts now exceeds $113 million annually." That's from McClatchy Newspapers.

So, you have this whole bureaucracy upon bureaucracy being built up with all kinds of levels of people to support women in the military who are now being raped too much.

SHAWN: Well, many would say that they need to be protected, and there are these sexual programs, abuse programs, are necessary --

TROTTA: That's funny, I thought the mission of the Army, and the Navy, and four services was to defend and protect us, not the people who were fighting the war.
It's hard to muster any kind of response to this. After calming down slightly, and trying to imagine a place where this kind of 'commentary' needs any response at all, I would think that if one was upset about needing to spend millions to prevent sexual assault within our military that person would be upset that people are getting raped and harassed in the first place.

Also, Fox News is a joke. The next time anyone tries to suggest that it's anything anyone should ever watch I'm going to send them this clip.

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