Christine O’Donnell’s imaginary witchcraft

Slactivist:

The oddest thing to me about Republican Senate candidate Christine O’Donnell’s “I Was A Teenage Witch” claims is that so much of the reaction has accepted her claim that such a thing might be possible.

It is not. Her claims of “dabbling” in what she called “witchcraft” are not true. The supposed witchcraft she describes is not something that exists. Such stories of bloody altars and Satanic covens are common and they are false. All of them. That is a matter of established fact.

The supposed witchery O’Donnell describes is simply the stuff of Satanic panic urban legends. Her descriptions come straight out of the fabrications of proven liar and con-man Mike Warnke. He made this stuff up. Her claims are about as credible as if she had said that she once conjured Bloody Mary by repeating her name three times in the bathroom mirror.

“I dabbled into witchcraft. I hung around people who were doing these things,” she said. This is not true. The wholly imaginary form of Satan-worshipping “witchcraft” in which O’Donnell claimed to have dabbled has never actually existed. You can’t dabble in things that don’t exist.

That Christine O’Donnell would repeat such well-established lies as facts — embellishing them with additional patently false claims of first-hand experience — is not surprising. Her entire political career has taken place within the strand of the evangelical Christian anti-abortion movement that is driven and shaped by this very same late-20th Century variant of the medieval blood libel. These imaginary Satanic baby killers form the core of her identity — they are the Other against whom she has always defined herself. They are the enemy in contrast to whom O’Donnell and her supporters are able to feel good and righteous and special. That these enemies do not, in fact,exist — that they have never, in fact, existed — only highlights the desperate insecurity of O’Donnell and her witch-hunting comrades.

There’s a lot more and it’s really interesting. Highly recommended.

Jimmy Fallon and Justin Timberlake bring you the history of rap

From last night’s show, I think. Imagine if you were sitting in the audience on the stage-right side, thinking, “Dang, if only I’d sat on the other side, I’d be dancing with Justin instead of Jimmy Fallon.”

Posted because a. it’s pretty cool, b. I’m tired and c. it’s raining outside. Not necessarily in that particular order, either.

New York Times Columnist Line of the Day

If you’re one of the four-or-so frequent readers of this here blog, chances are you also occasionally check out the New York Times op-ed page. You may even know the names: Thomas “Friedman’s Just Another Word For Nothing Left to Lose” Friedman, Gail “The Colander” Collins, Nicholas “The Dark Crystal” Kristof, &c. This is a daily feature dedicated to these folks: one line that is either awesome, funny, insightful, intelligent, ridiculous, or utterly divorced from reality.

Today’s is from Gail “The Colander” Collins, who in her column “Waiting for Somebody,” writes:

I’m still haunted by a debate I stumbled across in the Texas Legislature a decade ago in which conservatives repelled any attempt to impose accountability standards on the state’s charter schools, even after only 37 percent of the charter students passed state academic achievement tests, compared with 80 percent of the public schoolchildren. There’s something about an unfettered school that lifts the hearts of the Born Free crowd.

Poem of the Week: The Rain

The Rain

by Robert Creeley

Hump-Day Song of the Week: Money Ain’t A Thing by Jay-Z featuring Jermaine Dupri

Anybody have any idea whatever happened to Jermaine Dupri?

New York Times Columnist Line of the Day

If you’re one of the four-or-so frequent readers of this here blog, chances are you also occasionally check out the New York Times op-ed page. You may even know the names: Thomas “Friedman’s Just Another Word For Nothing Left to Lose” Friedman, Gail “The Colander” Collins, Nicholas “The Dark Crystal” Kristof, &c. This is a daily feature dedicated to these folks: one line that is either awesome, funny, insightful, intelligent, ridiculous, or utterly divorced from reality.

Today’s is from Thomas “Tommy Boy” Friedman, who in his column “The Tea Kettle Movement,” writes:

How can you take a movement seriously that says it wants to cut government spending by billions of dollars but won’t identify the specific defense programs, Social Security, Medicare or other services it’s ready to cut — let alone explain how this will make us more competitive and grow the economy?

Morning Constitutional – Wednesday, 30 September 2010

Good morning, folks. Lindsay’s back in rehab. Now, your morning constitutional:

Brussels and other cities across Europe today are hit by protests against austerity measures their governments have adopted in the wake of the great recession.

Senate Republicans yesterday blocked a bill that would have ended tax deductions for costs incurred when businesses move workers overseas, imposed a new tax on products that are made by foreign workers that were once made in the U.S., and offered a two-year tax holiday on jobs moved back to the U.S. from abroad.

A resolution to fund the government’s operations through December 3 is making slow progress through the Senate. However, while Republicans are so far cooperating, with the new fiscal year beginning on October 1, no funding resolution has yet been approved, and none of the 12 spending bills are even close to passage. Additionally, Sen. Mary Landrieu has a hold in place on the administration’s nominee for budget director Jacob Lew.

While the Senate doesn’t plan on voting on extensions to the Bush tax cuts until after the election, the House is considering a vote on extending them for families making under $250,000 beforehand, possibly by suspending the rules, which would require a 2/3 vote to pass.

At an event focused on the economy yesterday, President Obama was asked why he’s a Christian and abortion.

Absorbing lessons learned from this year’s massive oil spill, BP is creating a global safety division.

The Baltimore school district has struck a major deal with its teachers union to end the practice of linking teacher pay to years on employment and replace it with a system of rewarding skills and performance, bringing the city to the forefront of the education reform movement.

A superior court judge in Ontario has struck down several prostitution laws on the basis that they endanger prostitutes.

Wrestling legend Mick Foley on how Tori Amos changed his life.

Finally, a man and his…crocodile.

The Politics of Birth Control

Pop Quiz: Match the country with its government’s birth control news:

1) In Country A, the president pledges to provide birth control to poor couples who want it.

2) In Country B, the legislature hedges on making any commitments to providing low-cost birth control to women who want it, in the face of loud opposition from Catholic Bishops.

Ok, from the set-up of the question, you might already have guessed that Country B is the U.S. (come on, President Obama making pledges about birth control?  Sounds like something Candidate Obama might have said…)  The surprising part is that Country A is not some godless European nation, but instead the Philippines, whose population is (wait for it) 80% Catholic. 

Philippino President Benigno Aquino announced earlier this week that his government will provide birth control to poor couples to help curb the country’s high birth rate.  Predictably, the Catholic Bishops there aren’t pleased with this, and have said they will support planned protests in response to the announcement.  Perhaps less predictably, Aquino and co. seem uncowed by the furor.  Presidential spokesman Edwin Lacierda noted that Aquino had already stated his position during his campaign, and, reasonably enough, ”we believe that parents should be the one to decide on the size of their family, the manner and the method by which the planning should be done.”  Lacierda also addressed the Bishops’ denounciation: “We have been inviting [church leadership] to a dialogue…if they want us to explain the President’s position, we are more than willing to do so.”

Image via www.plannedparenthoodaction.org

Meanwhile, back in the uber-progressive United States, the extreme religious right has succeeded in making “contraception” almost as toxic a word as “abortion” when it comes to politics.  In a country where less than 1/4 of the population identify as Catholic (and of those, some significant percentage disagrees with the Church’s position on birth control), the Catholic Bishops still were able to heavily influence the legislature when it came to coverage of abortion in the health care reform debate.  And they didn’t stop there.  Heaven forbid women who can’t afford abortions (much less children) be able to obtain the means of preventing pregnancy in the first place.  No, that would be letting Women Who Sin get away with their sinful ways by NOT being forced to have babies they don’t want.  And being forced to have babies is what women who have sex deserve.

Or at least, that’s the only possible logic (twisted though it is) that I can come up with for opposing both abortion and all means of birth control.  Women’s rights groups pushed during the HCR debate to have birth control included in a list of preventive services to be offered without co-pays (ie, free to patients covered  by health insurance)– the idea being that these services cut costs in the long run because prevention is cheaper than treatment (or, in this case, unwanted children).  Obviously, free birth control would mean lots of ladies having guilt-free sex, and that clearly goes against the Bishops’ agenda.  But of course, saying that out loud would expose them for the mysogynists they are, so here’s what the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops say instead:

“Prescription contraceptives don’t prevent or screen for disease. Their purpose is to block the normal functioning of a healthy reproductive system. They prevent a person from being conceived or born.”

In their letter to HHS, the Bishops go on to cite questionable data linking birth control with various harmful side effects.  Nice double whammy there, Bishops: start with the purposeful misreading of the term “preventive,” and then jump right into the scare factor.  Clearly, no one is arguing that pregnancy is a disease; the argument in favor of BC as preventive service is that the use of contraceptives prevents an unwanted medical condition, which for many women pregnancy is.  RH Reality Check’s Robin Marty wonders whether the Bishops will “outmaneuver  and strong arm politicians into abandoning any promises to help women through health care reform?”  The Pollyanna in me wants to say no, but let’s get real.  It’s an election year.  Once it’s not an election year, there’ll be another excuse.  And meanwhile, the United States is regressing rather than progressing on women’s rights issues.  I’m all for progress in the Philippines, but it also showcases a pretty sad contrast when their politicians have more guts to stand up to their Bishops than ours do.

Atheists, agnostics, Jews and Mormons know more about religion than you do

CC photo by Flickr user ASurroca

The Pew Forum on Religion and Public life released a report today on America’s religious knowledge, and the findings were…pretty surprising?

Atheists and agnostics, Jews and Mormons are among the highest-scoring groups on a new survey of religious knowledge, outperforming evangelical Protestants, mainline Protestants and Catholics on questions about the core teachings, history and leading figures of major world religions.

On average, Americans correctly answer 16 of the 32 religious knowledge questions on the survey by the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life. Atheists and agnostics average 20.9 correct answers. Jews and Mormons do about as well, averaging 20.5 and 20.3 correct answers, respectively. Protestants as a whole average 16 correct answers; Catholics as a whole, 14.7. Atheists and agnostics, Jews and Mormons perform better than other groups on the survey even after controlling for differing levels of education.

There’s quite a bit of data to go through there if you’re interested. Kinda-sorta interesting as well is how well practictioners know their own sects:

More than four-in-ten Catholics in the United States (45%) do not know that their church teaches that the bread and wine used in Communion do not merely symbolize but actually become the body and blood of Christ. About half of Protestants (53%) cannot correctly identify Martin Luther as the person whose writings and actions inspired the Protestant Reformation, which made their religion a separate branch of Christianity. Roughly four-in-ten Jews (43%) do not recognize that Maimonides, one of the most venerated rabbis in history, was Jewish.

And, not surprising, is how little Americans know about Eastern faiths:

In addition, fewer than half of Americans (47%) know that the Dalai Lama is Buddhist. Fewer than four-in-ten (38%) correctly associate Vishnu and Shiva with Hinduism. And only about a quarter of all Americans (27%) correctly answer that most people in Indonesia – the country with the world’s largest Muslim population – are Muslims.

Moody’s “double agent” ratings: How the game is rigged

RJ Eskow:

Despite all the evidence, Moody’s is still treated as a credible player … and one that’s powerful enough to send a warning shot across the bow of the United States government. It threatened to downgrade the US government’s debt last March if more wasn’t done to reduce the government’s debt.

That’s the kind of rigged game we’re facing: One of the biggest sources of the government’s debt is the economic collapse. That collapse was enabled in large measure by the bad ratings issuing by rating franchises like Moody’s. Now Moody’s wants to hamstring the government’s ability to repair the damage it helped create. And it might. They’re that powerful, and the system is that rigged.

Great Moments in Campaign Advertising: Morning in America

“Prouder/Faster/Stronger” A Reagan/Bush ad from 1984 featuring the famous tag-line “It’s morning in America,” was one of the—if not the—most effective campaign advertisements in U.S. history. A simple message—things are better now than they were four years ago, so why change?—yet, thematically very interesting. “Morning” both symbolizes the disappearance of  the dark age of the 1970s, as well as the very real and non-symbolic message of people going to work.

IMDBish fun fact of the day: The ad was directed by John Pytka, whose brother Joe Pytka directed “Space Jam.”

Full text of the ad after the jump.

Continue reading »

New York Times Columnist Line of the Day

If you’re one of the four-or-so frequent readers of this here blog, chances are you also occasionally check out the New York Times op-ed page. You may even know the names: Thomas “Friedman’s Just Another Word For Nothing Left to Lose” Friedman, Gail “The Colander” Collins, Nicholas “The Dark Crystal” Kristof, &c. This is a daily feature dedicated to these folks: one line that is either awesome, funny, insightful, intelligent, ridiculous, or utterly divorced from reality.

Today’s is from David “Yawny-Pants” Brooks, who opines for California’s heydays in his column “Tom Joad Gave Up,” writing:

As jobs disappear, legislators are fixated on transgender rights and deals for lobbyists.

Because, yes, those are equivalent.

Morning Constitutional – Tuesday, 28 September 2010

Good morning, everybody. Anthony Bourdain is working on an ultra-violent food-themed graphic novel. Now, your morning constitutional:

South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint has pledged to hold up all legislation that has not already been cleared by both parties before the Senate until the election.

It’s widely expected that White House chief of staff Rahm Emmanuel will announce Friday that he will run for mayor of Chicago.

General David Petraeus, the top American commander in Afghanistan, said Monday that high-level Taliban leaders have reached out to President Hamid Karzai in hopes of beginning reconciliation talks that could begin the end of fighting.

New construction began at settlement sites in the West Bank just hours after after a 10-month moratorium on new building ended.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev fired Moscow mayor Yuri Luzhkov after the powerful mayor wrote an article criticizing Medvedev and calling for a return of stronger national leadership.

How China succeeds by behaving more like a multinational company than a superpower.

Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius brings it to the Wall Street Journal editorial board:

In the last two weeks, my department has been accused of “thuggery” (this editorial page) and “Soviet tyranny” (Newt Gingrich). What prompted these accusations? The fact that we told health-insurance companies that, as required by law, we will review large premium increases and identify those that are unreasonable.

There’s a long history of special interests using similar attacks to oppose change. In the mid-1960s, for example, some claimed Medicare would put our country on the path to socialism.

But what is really objectionable about these comments is not who they’re attacking, but what they’re defending.

The Internal Revenue Service announced that it will stop mailing out paper income tax return forms, for an annual savings of $10M a year.

Living in cities makes one healthier — Paper: Ancient urbanization predicts resistance to tuberculosis.

Jay-Z, Warren Buffett and Steve Forbes on success and giving back.

Finally, trained monkeys are guarding athletes at the Commonwealth Games in Dehli.

Florida and Gay Adoption Laws

Kudos to Florida’s Third District Court of Appeal, which last week overturned the state’s thirty-year-old blanket ban on gay adoption.  According to NYT, Florida was the last state in the country to have such a law, and Newly Progressive Gov. Charlie Crist came out in support of the decision, saying it was “a great day for children.”

Gill with one of his sons

It was an especially great day for plaintiff Martin Gill and the two boys (biological brothers) who he had been trying for years to adopt.  Ironically, the Florida Department of Children and Families (DCF) strongly urged Gill to take in the two boys as a foster parent– and yet it’s the DCF who’s now on the other side of the case, opposing gay adoption, and who might appeal it.

Gill, his partner, and the two boys make a great poster family for gay adoption.  The kids, only 4 years old and 4 months when they were taken in, were both in bad shape: both had physical problems, and the older boy wouldn’t speak to his new foster parents for a month after being taken in.  Now, says Gill, “I would say today they are two happy, healthy, normal kids.”  This turnaround is clearly due to Gill and his partner’s heroic efforts on behalf of the kind of children (older than infants, troubled, non-white) that many adoptive parents try to steer clear of.

Seems like a heartwarming family values story to me.  Of course, the so-called family values organizations don’t agree, protesting that gay adoption deprives children of either a mother or a father.  Never mind that abusive and/or negligent heterosexual parents are the ones who leave children to the mercies of the foster care system.  I would think that the fundies would see that allowing gay adoption furthers their quest to reduce the abortion rate: if children put up for adoption can all find welcoming homes, maybe more women will choose to carry pregnancies to term.  But wait, I’m trying to apply logic to the thinking of right-wing fundamentalists, and we know that never works.

Back to the upside.  I’m in the middle of reading The Kid, Dan Savage’s chronicle of adopting a son with his boyfriend.  The book came out in 1999, and I’m struck by what a different climate it was just 11 years ago in terms of gay rights.  Savage mentioned the Florida ban, and noted that the Christian right was pushing for similar bans in at least five other states.  And yet, in 2010, Florida became the last state to get rid of such a ban.  It’s pretty amazing to see change and progress occurring so relatively quickly.  Congratulations to Mr. Gill and to all the other prospective adoptive parents whose efforts to provide homes for kids who need them is now legal in their state.

New York Times Columnist Line of the Day

If you’re one of the four-or-so frequent readers of this here blog, chances are you also occasionally check out the New York Times op-ed page. You may even know the names: Thomas “Friedman’s Just Another Word For Nothing Left to Lose” Friedman, Gail “The Colander” Collins, Nicholas “The Dark Crystal” Kristof, &c. This is a daily feature dedicated to these folks: one line that is either awesome, funny, insightful, intelligent, ridiculous, or utterly divorced from reality. I hope you enjoy.

Today’s is from Roger “Life of the Party” Cohen, who in his Globalist column “The New American Normal,” writes:

But Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron and his Liberal Democrat partners have actually put bipartisanship to work — did any Republicans notice?