Original song: “Going Away”—-The Staple Singers Alas, it’s not on YouTube, but here’s another song by the group:
1) “Lovely Day”—-Bill Withers
2) “Diamonds and Pearls”—-Prince
3) “Please, Please, Please”—-James Brown
4) “Take A Letter Maria”—-R.B. Greaves
5) “If You Can Want”—-Smokey Robinson
6) “Just Kissed My Baby”—-The Meters
7) “River Deep, Mountain High”—-Ike & Tina Turner
8) “Hallelujah, I Love Her So”—-Ray Charles
9) “Stop In The Name Of Love”—-The Supremes
10) “Telephone”—-Eryka Badu
Here’s some morning entertainment—how did I miss this roundup from the Christian Anti-Defamation Commission? More wallowing victimhood by the self-proclaimed oppressed majority.
The Christian Anti-Defamation Commission (CADC) has prepared a Top Ten list of the most egregious acts of Christian Bashing in America for 2008. Every day in America serious Christians face increasing hostility at work, school, and in the culture because they stand for their faith and values.
"It is time for the Christian bashing to stop and for Christians to no longer be treated like second-class citizens," said Dr. Gary Cass, Chairman and CEO of CADC. "Anti-Christian bigotry is real and growing. Those who engage in it should be exposed and called to account."
INSTANCE #10: Jack Black Musical Video In a short video posted on FunnyorDie.com entitled, "Prop 8 The Musical," an all star cast of Hollywood celebrities perform a low budget musical farce that defames Christ, mocks Christians and distorts the teaching of the Bible. Jack Black played the lead role of Jesus.
INSTANCE #9: Bill Maher Gratuitously Attacks Pope Bill Maher, host of the HBO program Real Time, made light of the Pope during his recent visit and the tragic sexual abuse scandal. Maher said, "Now I know what you're thinking, Bill. You can't be saying that the Catholic Church is no better than this creepy (radical Mormon polygamist) Texas cult. For one thing, alter boys can't even get pregnant. But really, what tripped up the little cult on the prairie was that they only abused hundreds of kids, not thousands all over the world. Cults get raided; religions get parades… If you have a few hundred followers and you let some of them molest children, they call you a cult leader. If you have a billion, they call you Pope."
INSTANCE #8: ESPN Anchor Dana Jacobson's "F—- Jesus" Remark Speaking at an ESPN corporate event in Atlantic City, N.J., to honor ESPN Radio personalities Mike Greenberg and Mike Golic, Dana Jacobson let go with a steam of vulgar remarks; "F—- Notre Dame," "F—- Touchdown Jesus" and finally "F—- Jesus." Jacobson was suspended for a few days for the incident.
INSTANCE #7: Minnesota University Professor Desecrates Communion A Biology Professor from the University of Minnesota, Paul Zachary Myers, recently desecrated a consecrated communion wafer from a Catholic Mass. Meyer's has also asked people to steal the Eucharist for him in order that he might desecrate it and display it on his blog.
INSTANCE #6: Religulous the Movie Bill Maher released a very shallow, pseudo-intellectual documentary entitled Religulous. The movie did not cover any new intellectual ground. It simply raised the old attacks on the faith. Maher studiously avoided being fair and did not allow for legitimate Christian answers from any leading Christian intellectuals.
Did you know that comic books have a professional obligation to refrain from expressing political opinions, at least of the variety that could convince readers to vote for Democrats? Neither did I. But apparently, it’s supposed to be an earth-shaking scandal that Spiderman is paling around with Obama in one of the latest issues. Newsbuster told me so.
I for one think it’s an act of charity. The last thing your average comic book geek needs—-and I say this with full love, a comic book on my lap, and piles of them around my house—-is to dig way past the adorable geeky stage into the scary misogynist Republican geek stage, from someone who maybe strikes out on occasion to someone who radiates so much loathing and self-loathing that potential sex partners flinch and run away. If seeing Obama shaking hands with Spiderman can reach the eyeballs of enough geeks that they take a left turn into the rumpled-glasses-cute-indie geek arena and away from the anti-choice-“libertarian”-khakis-and-Limbaugh geek arena, then Spiderman has done its readers a great service. Your choice, crossroad geeks: Crush on Tina Fey, or crush on Ann Coulter.
I’m amused at the ever-growing list of media outlets that are not news outlets yet have, according to hysterical wingnuts, an obligation to either lean right (which is “fair”) or, if they can’t lean right, they have an obligation to pretend that their creators have all been struck so stupid that they can’t tell one candidate or side of an issue from another on a dare (which is “balanced”). This list of media outlets required to shut up or give equal or greater time to the looniest of right wing nuttery include:
I wish the headline was a joke, but thanks to an intrepid author at No Quarter, it’s not. At least, not that type of joke.
I was reading around in the blogosphere, and reading a lot of other blogs, especially ones attacking Larry for his comments about the disproportionate response by Israel (which labeled him anti-Semitic and got rather ugly and nasty) I found myself reading lots of hateful posts about PUMAS. Honestly, I was shocked. Now, having lived through the past year or two, blogging and commenting about my support for Hillary, and initial like, but growing dislike for all things Obama, I knew there was lots of anger towards Hillary supporters.
[...]
To bring Judaism into modern times, the last 2000 years, Jews rejected Jesus as the son of God, which was a major turning point in western history. Jesus was a major game changer in our history. The acceptance of Jesus changed things politically and religiously.
[...]
But, whatever the reason, they did not accept that Jesus was the savior. They didn’t believe or accept that he was The Chosen One, or sent down from God, as his son, and they have paid for their beliefs ever since.
But wasn’t that their right? To reject an idea or belief of someone else? To reject someone who claims to be the *chosen one* the *one we have been waiting for*? If you don’t believe that this one, is the one, is that not your right?
[...]
So, for all the haters who will want to jump on me, and say that I am comparing/putting on a level playing field, the hatred towards pumas to the persecution of Jews, calm down. I’m not.
But, I did garner a bit of understanding into what it must feel like, as a Jewish person (and I am talking about Jewish people as individuals, not as a country, and discussing their politics), to be a relative minority, that chose a belief different than the majority, and to be hated for that choice. And not just hated, but to be attacked, and to be wished extinct. Just for believing in something different.
Other groups who are persecuted like Jews (but not directly like them, because that would be offensive):
- Betamax and HD-DVD adopters.
- Fans of orange Mountain Dew.
- The remaining staffers of Gary Coleman for Governor.
- The cast and crew of Chicago Hope.
- The 1997 and 1998 Utah Jazz.
Oscar Grant, a black man from Oakland, was shot by BART police on New Year’s Day. And by “shot”, I mean “executed”. Video from the shooting is below the fold.
Robert Stacy McCain, who’s quickly becoming one of my favorite terrible people on the internet, has this to say about the ensuing massive anger and rioting resulting from this act.
Exactly what political message is sent by smashing storefront windows? What does that have to do with the transit police? And, while we’re at it, is it the policy of the transit police to gun down innocent civilians? Or do the rioters suppose that this shooting would be swept under the rug unless they smashed windows and burned cars?
BTW, why do they call them “protesters”? I’ve seen lots of protesters—they march around carrying signs and shouting slogans. People who smash windows are vandals, not protesters. There is a difference.
Let me be the first to say: Robert Stacy McCain, you are a terrible, ignorant human being. We could assume that this should be dealt with as any other purported accident would be, because as we all know, the entirety of American racial history was wiped clean when Obama was elected. Or we could deal with it in the light of hundreds of years of unequal justice shining down on a handcuffed man, held down by two police officers, being shot execution-style by another police officer who “forgot” which side had his gun and which side had his taser (no offense, but you’re carrying a fucking gun - you are always responsible for how and when you use it). There is an argument that this is an isolated incident, that the old era of people being systematically mistreated by the justice system is oh wait Alabama:
We hope, at least. Nancy Pelosi has declared that passing the Lilly Ledbetter Act is a major priority for the House, and that it will likely pass tomorrow. The act is a way to get around the Supreme Court’s use of a really strained technicality to invalidate discrimination claims filed by women who discover they’ve been getting paid less due to the irrelevant to job performance innie/outie status of their genitals. The Supreme Court claimed that Lily Ledbetter had missed the deadline to file because she failed to file her claim 6 months after her first paycheck. All reasonable people see this for what it is—-a strike against equal pay from a male-dominated court, using a strained technicality as an excuse. Ruth Bader Ginsburg rarely reads dissents from the bench, but she was so moved to anger by this frank bullshit that she had to for this case, and the dissent has a tad more sarcasm and anger than she’s used to employing.
The good news is that technicalities like the one the Supreme Court used can easily be addressed by Congress. The Ledbetter Act clarifies that the window to file a suit begins after the latest paycheck, not the first one, giving a woman time to find out that she’s being discriminated against in the first place.
In other economic news for women, I found from Kathy G pointed my attention to this petition to the Obama administration, requesting that any economic stimulus package should be written with care that women and minorities get their fair share of jobs. Linda Hirshman sounded the alarm early, pointing out that most of the jobs that Obama has been talking about in his discussions of this economic package are in industries that are male-dominated, sometimes with men outnumbering women more than 9 to 1. But there’s plenty of areas where economic investment could help rebuild this country and employ women, too, such as education and health care. I wrote a piece additionally pointing out that universal health care is just going to make our nursing shortage worse, and so it’s in the administration’s best interests to find ways to get more workers into nursing school now, even if you have to pay them some kind of salary so that they can make the transition without worrying about how they’re going to pay their bills in the meantime. Of course, we could also create teacher training programs that give wannabe teachers on-the-job training so that they can contribute and get paid while getting their certifications.
Thank god. The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force has released a comprehensive study that shows party, ideology, frequency of religious service attendance and age drove the vote on Proposition 8—not race.
The study finds that after taking into account the effect of religious service attendance, support for Proposition 8 among African Americans and Latinos was not significantly different than other groups. Through a precinct-by-precinct analysis and review of multiple other sources of data, the study also puts African-American support for Proposition 8 at no more than 59 percent, nowhere close to the 70 percent reported the night of the election. Finally, the study shows how support for marriage equality has grown substantially across almost all California demographic groups - except Republicans.
...“This study debunks the myth that African Americans overwhelmingly and disproportionately supported Proposition 8. But we clearly have work to do with, within and for African-American communities, particularly the black church,” said Andrea Shorter, director of And Marriage for All.
Scott Davenport, managing director of Freedom to Marry, added, “The way forward is to ratchet up support for courageous pro-equality leaders like Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.), NAACP Board Chairman Julian Bond and California NAACP State Conference President Alice Huffman, and build up the visibility and voices of LGBT African-American families, leaders and organizations.”
The study was written by Patrick J. Egan, Ph.D., assistant professor of politics and public policy at New York University, and Kenneth Sherrill, Ph.D., professor of political science at Hunter College, CUNY.
Interestingly, the one area the study could not analyze was level of education. However, the report slices and dices many categories and provides several tables, including this one that shows the fabled 70% CNN exit poll figure did not reflect the reality of the final numbers, particularly since black voters were a tiny slice of the total vote. That doesn’t mean there’s no work to do with that demo, but it’s good to have a reality check.
A study came out showing that virginity pledges are meaningless, and that any delay in the onset of sexual activity has more to do religious conservatism than it does with the pledges themselves, and that pledge takers are more likely to have riskier sex than non-pledge takers.
For some reason, William McGunn felt the need to repeat the first part verbatim, as evidence that the media is covering up (!) the real truth of these totally ineffective virginity pledges: they may not work, but they’re sort of indicative of something else that works, except that it causes kids to make really, really stupid decisions later on.
Let’s put this another way. The real headline from this study is this: “Religious Teens Differ Little in Sexual Behavior Whether or Not They Take a Pledge.”
Now, whatever the shock that might occasion at CBS or the Washington Post, it comes as no surprise to parents. Most parents appreciate that a pledge of virginity—a one-time event that might be made at an emotional moment in a teen’s life—is not some talisman that will magically shield their sons and daughters from the strong and normal desires that grow as they discover their sexuality. What these parents hope to do is direct these desires in a way that recognizes sex as a great gift, which in the right circumstances fosters genuine intimacy between a man and a woman and at its freest offers the possibility of new life.
Blah, blah, blah - kids who are already less likely to have premarital sex (although more likely to take risks when they do take the plunge) make meaningless pledges to reinforce what they were already going to do. The real question: do we start indoctrinating kids with heavily conservative religious ideals in order to prevent them from having sex too early? Well, no. The main reason being that after years of abstinence-only indoctrination, we can be pretty sure it doesn’t work. Teen pregnancy rates are up across the country, yet Rick Warren is somehow a millionaire and the Silver Ring Thing is on tour. ON TOUR, people!
Perhaps instead of gearing our entire system of sex ed towards a distinct religious minority made largely of upper middle-class white Christian conservatives we could, oh, I don’t know, not do that? We could approach the entire nation of under-18 potential sex-havers as uptight WASPs who’ll be persuaded by hamhanded references to knights and princesses and condoms that work like penis netting rather than prophylactics, but given that we aren’t all Those People, it would make a lot more sense to maybe switch it up. It always amazes me that people who approach everything else with a supreme reverence for federalism believe that we can talk an entire nation of horny teenagers out of having sex based on what scares Timmy and Tammy Whitebread of Anytown, U.S.A.
This is unacceptable—when schools cannot even provide for kids to go to the bathroom, it’s a nation in crisis. BTW, paper towel rolls, and trash bags are also in the plea letter. Earlier in the year, a letter went out asking for donations of pencils, pens, and Kleenex.
That really puts Barack Obama’s speech about the economy in perspective. Read excerpts of his remarks below the fold.
One of the blogs hosed when Soapblox was hacked was my pad, Pam’s House Blend. Soapblox.net is the host of almost all of the state-focused blogs. A few “rogue” progressive sites like mine are also in there and were affected. If you want to catch up on the day of disaster, here are a few diaries:
Also, see this DKos diary for the chronology and to see people trading notes during the panic. Most of the sites are up, we don’t know for how long, or what the future holds for the Soapblox platform. Needless to say, I have been working to download my archives (via client-side), once I saw that my site was back up, but I don’t have—and really need—a copy of the db itself that could be migrated in a disaster. Sigh.
I’m with Scott: Please, right wing nuts, let’s talk about Terri Schiavo. Even better if you can outdo yourself this time around and suggest that keeping a brain dead woman’s body alive against her stated wishes is more important than keeping thousands of American troops and Iraqi citizens alive. My main objection to reviving this debacle is that it will prolong the suffering of Michael Schiavo, and if any man has suffered enough, it’s him. Even though the hard right sees Terri Schiavo as the perfect woman, as if she was an overgrown fetus with her inability to speak or think, in reality she was, before her heart attack, exactly the sort of human being the hard right doesn’t think has a right to really live—-a thinking, breathing, feeling woman. Who probably had sex and liked it. Gasp! And we know from Michael Schiavo’s testimony that she had opinions. She only got the love of the hard right when all that was gone, which is a point worth pondering. It’s a real shame that she’ll be remembered as a vegetable because of their hard work, and not so much as a woman with a real personality and life. Makes me shudder to think they’d do to the rest of us, if they had a shot.
Anyway, why bring this up? Because the wingnutteria is trying to make hay out of the fact that Obama is appointing Michael Schiavo’s lawyer to the Department of Justice. Which is fucking stupid, because public opinion is mostly against the anti-choicers who want to meddle with your end of life decisions, especially if they can get the double whammy of screwing with someone’s private romantic life at the same time. (I have very little doubt that making sure that they crippled Michael Schiavo’s ability to move on with his life was part of the motivation of keeping Terri’s body alive.) It’s really unwise to remind the public time and time again that, for the right wing base, sticking your nose in other people’s business for no other reason than to make their lives as bleak and miserable as possible is priority number one. It’s clear that this entire strategy is part of the larger right wing “let’s make hay over every little thing with hopes that something sticks” strategy that may actually be self-defeating.
For instance, why do they give a shit if Roland Burris does or doesn’t get a seat? If you’d asked me a month ago that you’d have Pat Buchanan on TV lying his ass off in order to get a Democrat seated in the Senate, and a black man at that, I would have told you to lay off the PCP. It’s nakedly cynical for Republicans to root for Burris, because it’s clear that their thinking begins and ends with, “If the Senate Democrats want X, we must sell our daughters into slavery if that will prevent X from happening.” They’re ready to slide into the oppose-and-obstruct-at-all-costs mode.
I wonder if there’s a way for congressional Democrats to get the Republicans to the point where they’re grandstanding against bills that honor puppies and rainbows. Probably won’t go that far—-everyone congressperson worth her weight knows how to vote yes on a feel good bill, no matter how asinine. But surely there’s a way to exploit this oppose-and-obstruct tendency that’s clearly taken hold to the point where the wingnuts can’t even see their own self-interest anymore. Ideas?
Joe The Plumber is putting down his wrenches and picking up a reporter’s notebook.
The Ohio man who became a household name during the presidential campaign says he is heading to Israel as a war correspondent for the conservative Web site pjtv.com.
As a reminder of Joe the Plumber’s nuanced and considered views, you can either hit yourself in the face with a meat tenderizer or let your mind drift all the way back to this:
When the McCain supporter asked him if he believed “a vote for Obama is a vote for the death of Israel,” Mr. Wurzelbacher replied, “I’ll go ahead and agree with you on that.” He didn’t elaborate on how Mr. Obama, who has said his commitment to Israeli security is “nonnegotiable,” would be bad for the Jewish state.
I look forward to literal hours of embarrassing dispatches before Pajamas Media runs away from this like they set it on fire. I can just imagine the first interview:
Pajamas Media Special Correspondent Joe Wurzelbacher: So, is that a gun?
IDF Soldier: Yes, it is.
JW: Can I use it?
IDF: No.
JW: Please? I’ll only aim at Palestinians.
IDF: Uh…no. You should go now.
JW: Can I join you on your next mission? I brought my own grenades.
IDF: You’re walking around…in the middle of Israel…with your own grenades?
JW: Yeah! I used to be a plumber, see. Well, not really, I worked for a plumbing company, but I learned how to work with pipes and stuff, and so, you know…I just want to fight for the cause, really get in there and get my hands dirty…
IDF: You…have grenades. In the middle of this busy street. In front of me.
JW: ...I mean, I wanted to own the company, but that kind of got shot to shit when I started talking about how the dude running for President would kill Israel, and well, gosh, I just really love you guys, I’m totally babbling!
IDF: Do you want to meet more of my squadmates? They’d love to talk to you.
JW: I could hug you!
IDF: And I could shoot you, so I would advise you not to do that.
Did you know that comic books have a professional obligation to refrain from expressing political opinions, at least of the variety that could convince readers to vote for Democrats? Neither did I. But apparently, it’s supposed to be an earth-shaking scandal that Spiderman is paling around with Obama in one of the latest issues. 
We hope, at least. 
A study came out showing that 
Take a look at this: 