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The founding pastor of a Washington state megachurch on Sunday told female parishioners that God wanted them to submit to their husbands and that they shouldn't be a "nag," likening them to Chinese water torture.

In in a Sunday sermon, Mars Hill Church Pastor Mark Driscoll said that people often misunderstood the Bible's teachings on what it meant for a wife to "submit" to her husband.

"Number one, it does not mean that the wife is less valuable, intelligent, or competent," he explained. "Number two, this does not mean that men, in general, are to be ruling over women in general. It doesn’t mean that. We’re not talking about gender issues; we’re talking about marriage issues."

"This does mean that a wife sets a pattern for others to respect her husband," Driscoll opined. "If the wife disrespects the husband in front of his coworkers, will they respect the husband? No. No. Women who publicly disrespect their husbands encourage others to disrespect their husbands. And this doesn’t mean you don’t disagree with your husband but you do so respectfully, privately."

The pastor added that women who disrespected their husband in front of others put men in a "lose-lose scenario" because "if he doesn’t argue back, he’s being weak."

"Men with men, it’s not like this. You disrespect me, we can talk about that, right? We can actually have a bit of a debate about that."

Driscoll went on to talk about how the book of Proverbs described "certain kinds of women."

"They’re quarrelsome. They’re a nag," he said. "And some women -- you’re a nag. You’re disrespectful. You’re quarrelsome. Being married to you is like a life sentence, and the guy’s just scratching on his wall every day."

"Proverbs talks about certain women—they’re like a dripping faucet. You ever tried to sleep with a dripping faucet? Plunk, plunk, plunk, plunk, plunk. It’s what we use to torture people who are prisoners of war. A wife is like that."

Driscoll concluded his discussion on submission by explaining that the husband-wife relationship was like a police officer writing a ticket to a driver.

"All right, if the police officer pulls you over, you can’t say, 'Hey, we’re equal and you have no right to write me a ticket. In fact, I’m writing you a ticket.' Actually, we’re now going to practice submission, right?"

"Ladies, to respect and submit is to be like Jesus," he advised. "You want to be like Jesus? That’s one of the ways that we learn to be like Jesus."

Earlier this year, Driscoll came under fire from fellow Christian pastors after he tweeted that President Barack Obama did not know God.

"Praying for our president, who today will place his hands on a Bible he does not believe to take an oath to a God he likely does not know," he wrote on inauguration day.

(h/t: Friendly Atheist)

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Conservative radio host Glenn Beck on Thursday blasted the Pentagon's decision to lift the ban on women serving in combat roles by warning that the enemies of the United States would not "cower in defeat because we have a female, Hispanic, Eskimo, dwarf crossdresser and some handi-capable, transgendered breast cancer survivor as a soldier on the front line."

"Nobody wants to be a pig, nobody wants to say the unpopular things, we just want to talk about the truth tonight," Beck explained at the top of his Thursday broadcast. "If a few feathers are ruffled, oh well."

"This is the dumbest idea I've ever heard," he continued. "The military is not designed to be beacon of equality, it's designed to defend the country in times of danger. And quite honestly, war is the act of killing each other. And to win, you have to kill people faster than the other team. That's what war is all about."

"The enemy is not going to cower in defeat because we have a female, Hispanic, Eskimo, dwarf cross dresser and some handicapable, transgendered breast cancer survivor as a soldier on the front line ready to unleash an attack of unparalleled diversity. Nope, that's not going to do it. You gotta kill them. That's how you make people cower in defeat."

Beck admitted there there were already many women serving on the front lines, "shooting, getting injured, getting blown up." But he insisted that combat was "a different ballgame."

"This is a disastrous idea that will not only weaken our military, but put women's lives at risk because they'll just lower the standards," he added. "What happens when we train our soldiers to become desensitized and ignore a woman's cry for help? Because that's what's happening. If you're on the battlefield and she's in trouble, you have to fight your natural instincts to make sure that everybody's treated exactly equal."

"We all know how excruciatingly difficult it is to see videos of a terrorist beheading one of our guys. What happens to our country when they start releasing tapes of them beheading our women, our sisters, our daughters? What happens when they start raping them?"

(h/t: Right Wing Watch)

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On this Sunday's This Week, guest host Martha Raddatz did a nice job of shooting down George Will's flawed arguments on lifting the ban on women in combat. We've had women out there putting their lives on the line for years now, and it's about time they were allowed the same opportunities and recognition as their male counterparts. That didn't stop Will from throwing the red herring out there: that it's a concern they won't be able to get someone physically larger than themselves off a battlefield. As Raddatz pointed out to him, there are women on the battlefield doing exactly that right now.

RADDATZ: And you've given me the perfect segue with Army and Marines to talk about what happened this week, lifting the ban on women in combat. There were all sorts of headlines this week lauding what happened, supporting what happened rather openly.

George Will, you think it's a good idea?

WILL: Well, it depends on how it's implemented.

RADDATZ: They say the physical standards will not change.

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As Diane already noted here, Pat Robertson really is a loathsome excuse for a human being and he proved it yet again when giving out some marital advice in response to a 17-year-old who called into the 700 Club to complain about his father spending too much time hogging the video games. This Wednesday, Stephen Colbert took Robertson apart for the episode as only he can.

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Republicans just can't seem to stop themselves from flinging about juvenile insults at every turn, can they? Anyone who looks like this guy, ought to keep his mouth shut about the way anyone else looks. Someone ought to tell wingnut "terror babies" Louie Gohmert that beauty is only skin deep, but that ugliness of his goes all the way to the bone.

Republican Congressman Insults Nancy Pelosi’s Appearance: ‘There’s No Facelift With John Boehner’:

An outspoken Republican congressman castigated House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi’s looks during a radio interview Friday.

Speaking with guest host Larry O’Connor on the Dennis Miller Show, Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) argued that House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) was functionally equivalent to Pelosi because both held one-on-one backroom negotiations with the president. Gohmert then went on to deride Pelosi’s appearance: “Well, let’s give him credit. There’s no facelift with John Boehner.”

O’CONNOR: So basically John Boehner became Nancy Pelosi without the charm?

GOHMERT: For the last two years. Well, let’s give him credit. There’s no facelift with John Boehner. He is who he is.

O’CONNOR: Oh!

As the author at Think Progress noted, it's not the only outlandish statement to come out of Gohmert's mouth. As we've documented here as well, the list is quite long.

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It seems John Boehner actually caved to the criticisms about House Republicans not appointing a single woman to chair any of their committees and gave one of them a consolation prize: Dems, Progressives Snicker As House GOP Finally Appoints Female Committee Chair :

After days of pressure from Republicans and Democrats alike, House Republican leaders finally put a woman in charge of a committee Friday afternoon. But if Speaker John Boehner and the rest of the House leadership thought choosing Rep. Candice Miller (R-MI) to lead the House administration committee — making her the sole female committee chair in the House — would put the issue to bed, they appear to have been mistaken.

Democrats and advocates for women in politics say Miller’s appointment feels like “tokenism” — and say the gender makeup of the House’s committee chairs will follow the GOP to 2014.

“I’m not sure which was worse: House Republicans refusing to have any women Chair a Legislative Committee or only appointing a woman to Chair the Congressional Housekeeping Committee,” said one Democratic official.

The Committee on House Administration oversees the running of the House as well as federal elections. Rep. Dan Lungren (R-CA), the current chair, lost his bid for reelection on Nov. 6. That meant the House GOP leaders had to fill his slot at the top of the committee.

Normally who chairs the administration committee in the House would only be news inside the Beltway. But by choosing Miller to take over, House Republican leaders appeared to critics to be trying to clean up the mess they made when the so-called “major” House committee chairs were announced this week. That list was all male, leading to criticism from women in the Republican caucus as well as Democrats. Female House Republicans publicly pushed Boehner to appoint a women to the remaining committee chair slots.

For a party trying hard to grow its appeal among women, the committee chair announcement was seen as an indication the GOP is not ready to change by critics on the left. Miller’s appointment has done nothing to quiet that view. Read on...

It's so nice to see them being in touch with how to react to those criticisms of waging a "war on women." I don't think they're doing themselves any favors by putting her in charge of a committee that she never served on until being named as chair either. It just reeks of desperation and obvious pandering a day too late for anyone to actually believe they care about diversity among their ranks.

I guess it wouldn't hurt if they decided to change their policies so that women in America actually wanted to vote for them and maybe run for office as well, but from their rhetoric and lack of introspection about their recent election losses, I don't expect that to change any time soon.

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After formerly comparing the drummed up "Benghazi-gate" to Watergate, and demanding that Ambassador Susan Rice go on television and apologize for her remarks, it seems John McCain is finally getting tired of making a fool of himself and is backing off of his criticism of Rice a bit.

Of course that doesn't mean he's done criticizing the administration or that he's just going to let this thing drop -- McCain: Obama’s The Problem, Not Ambassador Rice:

Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) said that the problem with the administration's response to the Benghazi attacks has more to do with President Obama than with UN Ambassador Susan Rice, during an appearance on "Fox News Sunday," even though congressional Republicans, including McCain, have gone after Rice in recent weeks.

McCain, who has said he would not vote for Rice if she is nominated to succeed Hillary Clinton as secretary of state, declined to reiterate that promise Sunday.

"Sure," McCain said to the question of whether Rice could do anything to change his mind about her. "She can give everyone the benefit of explaining their position and the actions that they took. I'll be glad to have the opportunity to discuss these issues with her."

Responding to a follow-up question on whether that means McCain is now open to voting for Rice if nominated, McCain replied: "I think she deserves the ability and the opportunity to explain herself and her position, just as she said. But she's not the problem. The problem is the president of the United States who in a debate with Mitt Romney said that he had said it was a terrorist attack…"

McCain was also asked about Rep. Jim Clyburn's remarks that McCain was using "racial code words" while attacking Rice. McCain shrugged the criticism off as something that just "goes with the territory" if your opponent can't win a political argument. Of course he wasn't going to get an ounce of push back on that from Chris Wallace.

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I've heard Lady-Mc-Cheney, Mary Matalin say a lot of ridiculous things in her defense of Mitt Romney, but this segment from Anderson Cooper's show on CNN this Thursday evening may have set a new low, even for Matalin's standards, which generally range from low to non-existent. Apparently labor unions, paying people minimum wage instead of slave wages and poverty programs that keep people from starving when times are tough are harming upward mobility in America.

And in this idiot's world, women being allowed to control their own reproductive health and having access to birth control is not one of the primary economic factors in most women's lives, but instead something that has no affect on whether they get "upward mobility opportunities" as well. Really astounding from someone who I assume was alive and cognizant during the last half a century or so and who has been around long enough to maybe remember the days when women were discriminated against because they might not be able to remain at a job, because heaven forbid they might end up pregnant.

Who needs misogynistic men around when you've got women like Matalin doing as much or more damage to her own gender as her male counterparts could ever hope to do.

As to the rest of the segment on CNN, I was glad to see The New York Times' Charles Blow call out Matalin for presuming to know what's best for African-American voters and the fact that you can't separate the issues she was discussing from the economic impact on the lives of average American workers, no matter what their race or gender.

Transcript via CNN below the fold.

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After looking at the horrid poll numbers after the last election, Republicans like Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal are trying their best to put a kinder, gentler face on the Republican brand and distance themselves from Romney's recent race baiting remarks, but no one should be fooled. Jindal might be talking a good game here, but he's no moderate.

Bobby Jindal Again Explodes Over ‘Insulting’ Romney Comments:

Bobby Jindal isn’t done excoriating Mitt Romney for attributing Obama’s win to the president’s offer of “free stuff” for Democratic voters. On Thursday, the Louisiana governor told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer that the former nominee was “completely unhelpful” in his remarks.

“This is not where the Republican party needs to go,” he said. “Look, If you want voters to like you, the first thing you’ve got to do is to like them first. And it’s certainly not helpful to tell voters that you think their votes were bought.”

In a reference to Romney’s “47 percent” video, Jindal added that Republicans needs to appeal to “100 percent of the electorate, not 53 percent.”

Romney complained in calls with donors this week that he had difficulty competing with Obama’s offer of “big gifts” to minorities, youth, and women such as expanded health care access and “amnesty for children of illegals.” Among leading Republicans, Jindal cast the first stone against Romney’s remarks on Wednesday and shows little sign of letting up now.

Jindal told Blitzer that the GOP couldn’t improve its standing by “insulting folks” who voted against them.

I'm not sure what they'd have to run on if you take away the sexism and overt racism and fearmongering. Your party is going to have to do a lot more than give the voters lip service before they take any of this seriously Bobby.

Full transcript below the fold.

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Republican Senate candidate Todd Akin (MO) on Saturday accused of his opponent, Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill, of creating big government policies and fetching them back to Missouri "like a dog."

"She goes to Washington, D.C., it’s a little bit like one of those dogs, 'fetch,'" Akin said at a fundraiser, according to audio obtained by PolicMo. "She goes to Washington, D.C., and gets all of these taxes and red tape and bureaucracy and executive orders and agencies, and brings all of this stuff and dumps it on us in Missouri."

"It seems to me that she’s got it just backwards. What we should be doing is taking the common sense we see in Missouri and taking that to Washington, D.C., and blessing them with more solutions instead of more problems."

Earlier this year, the Republican congressman offended female voters by asserting that women could not get pregnant by "legitimate rape." He later compounded problems by insisting that McCaskill had not appeared “ladylike” during their latest debate.

“I think we have a very clear path to victory, and apparently Claire McCaskill thinks we do, too, because she was very aggressive at the debate, which was quite different than it was when she ran against Jim Talent,” Akin explained, according to the Kansas City Star. “She had a confidence and was much more ladylike [in 2006], but in the debate on Friday, she came out swinging, and I think that’s because she feels threatened."