On the side of the investment bankers and plutocrats, of course!
That’s a sign that’s gone up in Minneapolis. You want healthcare? You’re going to hell, you covetous sinner. You don’t think the obscenely rich ought to keep every penny they’ve got? You’re going to hell for that, too, Communist.
I guess it should be no surprise. Since the Bible says only 144,000 will go to heaven, he’s always been on the side of the 0.002%.
Arkansas schools are promoting abstinence-only sex education, through a program called “The Real Deal”. Like all abstinence-only programs, it’s foundation is in morality (their byline is “abstinence builds character”, which isn’t true, unless you mistake sanctimonious prudery for character) and lies — they announce statistics on their main page that claim that their abstinence programs reduce sexual activity by 30-40%, although they don’t bother to give us a source for those numbers, and all the other evidence available says that abstinence-only fails in comparison to comprehensive sex education.
On their site, they do cite a general source, WebMD. Let’s see what what WebMD has to say about abstinence-only sex ed, shall we?
Students who took part in sexual abstinence programs were just as likely to have intercourse as those who did not. And, those who attended the classes reported having similar numbers of sexual partners to those who did not attend the classes. Mathematica also found out that the average age of having the first intercourse was the same for both groups – just a little less than 15 years old.
Four different abstinence-only programs were examined from around the USA. Students were about eleven when they participated in these programs in 1999. They were surveyed again in late 2005 and early 2006 when they were about 16.
They found that about half of the abstinence-only students had experienced intercourse and about half of the control group (having no program) had also. The 2,057 students were from Miami, Milwaukee, Powhatan, VA and Clarksdale, MS – with both urban and rural settings represented.
The site also touts True Love Waits, a page created by LifeWay Christian Resources, providing “Biblical solutions for life”, which is owned by the Southern Baptist Convention…which reveals the real motivation behind this organization. Has anyone ever seen a genuinely secular abstinence-only program? They all seem to be driven by a conservative social agenda that wants to police children’s thoughts and behaviors, and force them to conform to a failed and obsolete biblical model of culture. At best, they strain to strip the program of any appearance of faith-based thinking (does that remind anyone else of Intelligent Design creationism?), but they can’t hide the fundamentalist/absolutist foundation of their ideas.
They’re also ludicrously stupid. Look at what some Arkansas parents discovered that “The Real Deal” had their kids signing: a card promising to conform. My favorite part is the expiration date.
My wedding night was 31 years ago. Woo hoo! Alcohol, illegal drugs, pornography, and sex outside of marriage, here I come!
The only real deal for sex ed is comprehensive sex education, which also encourages restraint and good sense, but gives accurate information about how to prevent pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases. Anything less is encouraging ignorance, and we’ve got the example of a few thousand years of Christianity to show what a mess that makes of people’s lives.
Youth today. Sometimes they do great things.
A teenage girl in a high school group called Youth in Government uses her fancy new tweeting phone to exercise her constitutionally-protected right to call a governor a butthead. (Or, to be more specific, to say that he “sucked” and to create the hashtag #heblowsalot.) Her perceptive abilities proved accurate, when said Gov. Sam Brownback reveals that he uses taxpayer dollars to gather evidence that teenagers are making fun of him on Twitter, and to use that evidence to get them in trouble at school. Because the butthead quotient in this story wasn’t high enough already, the school responded to Brownback’s sniveling about adolescents with political opinions by attempting to force the teenage girl in question to write a letter of apology to Gov. Brownback. The teenager in question, Emma Sullivan, 18, responded by demonstrating her superior understanding of the basic principles of democracy by refusing, and instead causing the easily perturbed governor even more consternation by asking for a sit-down meeting to ask direct questions of the governor, furthering demonstrating no doubt to him that everything started to go wrong with this country when they let women have the vote.
Although, really, this kind of blows my mind. Here’s what oily, stupid Republicans do with their state resources.
Brownback’s office, which monitors social media for postings containing the governor’s name, saw Sullivan’s post and contacted the Youth in Government program.
Sullivan received a scolding at school and was ordered to send Brownback an apology letter. She said Prinicipal Karl R. Krawitz even suggested talking points for the letter she was supposed to turn in Monday.
While we’re all laughing at Governor Crybaby, you might also take a moment to write (politely!) to Principal Krawitz and let him know that his craven obedience to a ridiculous, anti-democratic order from Brownback makes him a lapdog and toady. Praise your students when they show initiative, and demonstrate that they understand free speech far better than you do!
Brownback has blinked. That’ll teach him a lesson: never play chicken with a teenager. Those youngsters think they’re immortal.
My day is done. I’ve read the one quote that makes me happy, so now I can buckle down to grading. It’s from Ai Weiwei, the artist and dissenter the Chinese government would love to silence.
My definition of art has always been the same. It is about freedom of expression, a new way of communication. It is never about exhibiting in museums or about hanging it on the wall. Art should live in the heart of the people. Ordinary people should have the same ability to understand art as anybody else. I don’t think art is elite or mysterious. I don’t think anybody can separate art from politics. The intention to separate art from politics is itself a very political intention. I definitely know people who are shameless enough to give up basic values. I see this kind of art, and when I see it I feel ashamed. In China they treat art as some form of decoration, a self-indulgence. It is pretending to be art. It looks like art. It sells like art. But it is really a piece of shit.
There’s more about his politics: China keeps trying to control the free expression of the people on the internet by shutting it down. They argue that they’re better than they were in the days of the Cultural Revolution — which is setting the bar rather low, I think — but it’s still a restrictive police state.
I’d argue that the US is better than China, but still, especially considering the record of the last few weeks, is likewise a police state.
Hey, I think I recognize Dim!
Isn’t it wonderful that they’re so flush that they can start spending buckets of money on frivolities and casual whims for the school system? No shortage of teachers, the teachers all well-paid and satisfied, the schools all well-supplied, and such a surplus that the government can publish and send out a special little present to every school.
The Times Educational Supplement is reporting this morning that the Prime Minister is planning to send a King James Bible to every school in the country, complete with a foreword by Michael Gove, the Education Minister.
Mr Gove is quoted as saying that the King James Bible was the most important book written in the English language. “It‘s a thing of beauty, and it‘s also an incredibly important historical artefact. It has helped shape and define the English language and is one of the keystones of our shared culture. And it is a work that has had international significance.”
Man, I wish the American educational system was so well-funded that we could start dumping random books on school libraries like that.
Although…aren’t there plenty of other books of historical and literary significance that could benefit the schools a little more? I suspect that the Christian schoolchildren already have access to copies of the Bible, and the non-Christian ones aren’t going to be very interested.
Oh, hey, what am I saying? I’m sure the government has already provided all the schools with all the science books and history books and literature and art and other such wonderfully useful works, so I shouldn’t cavil at them generously adding one more text to the bounty, right?
I’ve heard of the Scoville scale, which measures the potency of spicy peppers. Those boring green bell peppers get a 0; habaneros get a score of 350,000.
The stuff those UC Davis police officers so casually hosed into the faces of peacefully demonstrating students? between 2,000,000 and 5,300,000 Scoville units.
But we’ve taken to calling it pepper spray, I think, because that makes it sound so much more benign than it really is, like something just a grade or so above what we might mix up in a home kitchen. The description hints maybe at that eye-stinging effect that the cook occasionally experiences when making something like a jalapeno-based salsa, a little burn, nothing too serious.
Until you look it up on the Scoville scale and remember, as toxicologists love to point out, that the dose makes the poison. That we’re not talking about cookery but a potent blast of chemistry. So that if OC spray is the U.S. police response of choice – and certainly, it’s been used with dismaying enthusiasm during the Occupy protests nationwide, as documented in this excellent Atlantic roundup – it may be time to demand a more serious look at the risks involved.
Their goal is to cause intense pain. Where has the police gotten this bizarre idea that somehow inducing agony in protesters is somehow humane or reasonable?
(Also on FtB)
After watching this video of the events at UC Davis, I can only conclude that the police are cowards and thugs. THe only lesson they’re teaching is that we can’t trust them, and they’re not on the people’s side.
There is something worse, though. Ann Coulter has weighed in on the OWS movement, and she has an answer for UC Davis:
Remember the lesson from my book: It just took a few shootings at Kent State to shut that down for good.
Without any hint that the irony registered, she also made this comment.
I guess it’s fun to destroy stuff. As they found out during the French Revolution, it’s lots of fun to just start randomly murdering people – this is the way it always is with mobs.
Coulter is the one advocating random murder. She is a creature beyond the pale: I would hope the media would finally see the light and ostracize her, but I don’t expect it to happen. Especially in a Breitbartian world where eliminationist rhetoric is something to be giggled over.
(via Charles Pierce)
(NOTE: As is usual when I mention Coulter, if you can’t focus on the hate and stupidity in her words, and instead dump a load of sexist, misogynist comments here, I will delete your words and in extreme cases will ban you.)
It’s got to be rough, becoming the villain in a Joe Hill protest song. Think of it; years from now, they’ll have a grandchild on a knee, telling them stories of their glory days when they served their civic duties by hosing pregnant teenagers and 84-year-old women with pepper spray, and it’s going to be hard to spin that as courageous work. They were dangerous, you know, great vicious brutes with slender limbs or fragile hearts, all mad-eyed and tainted with idealism, and somebody had to play the role of faceless uniformed thug and beat the proles down.
Here’s to Dorli Rainey, 84 and still fighting with the tears streaming down her cheeks.
I think this does call for a Joe Hill song.
There are women of many descriptions
In this queer world, as everyone knows,
Some are living in beautiful mansions,
And are wearing the finest of clothes.
There are blue blooded queens and princesses,
Who have charms made of diamonds and pearl;
But the only and thoroughbred lady
Is the Rebel Girl.That’s the Rebel Girl, That’s the Rebel Girl.
To the working class she’s a precious pearl.
She brings courage, pride and joy
To the fighting Rebel Boy
We’ve had girls before, but we need some more
In the Industrial Workers of the World.
For it’s great to fight for freedom
With a Rebel Girl.Yes, her hands may be harden’d from labor
And her dress may not be very fine;
But a heart in her bosom is beating
That is true to her class and her kind.
And the grafters in terror are trembling
When her spite and defiance she’ll hurl.
For the only and thoroughbred lady
Is the Rebel Girl.That’s the Rebel Girl, That’s the Rebel Girl.
To the working class she’s a precious pearl.
She brings courage, pride and joy
To the fighting Rebel Boy
We’ve had girls before, but we need some more
In the Industrial Workers of the World.
For it’s great to fight for freedom
With a Rebel Girl.
We all know that comic book artist Frank Miller is an arrogant macho jerkwad, but I didn’t know the magnitude of his jerkwadiness. He’s written an angry diatribe against the Occupy Wall Street movement.
The “Occupy” movement, whether displaying itself on Wall Street or in the streets of Oakland (which has, with unspeakable cowardice, embraced it) is anything but an exercise of our blessed First Amendment. “Occupy” is nothing but a pack of louts, thieves, and rapists, an unruly mob, fed by Woodstock-era nostalgia and putrid false righteousness. These clowns can do nothing but harm America.
And then he gets really cranky.
Apparently, us liberals are hurting America, because we’ve got a war to fight against al-Quaeda and Islamicism, and we need to get out of the way so the investment bankers can fight it for us. I guess wrecking the economy was all part of a secret plan to defeat terrorism.
Anyway, ol’ Frank lives in a cartoon fantasy world where violence solves everything, and all it takes to solve a problem is a bigger gun and the will to use it indiscriminately, which I think we all could have learned from his graphic novels and movies without reading his blog. And now that we’ve read his blog, we don’t need to pay for his commercial products anymore! Miller’s simple-mindedness stands exposed even further.
Which is funny if you think about it. Could anyone take 300 seriously? I giggled through it all — it was hysterically campy, all macho homoeroticism energetically portrayed with a complete lack of awareness of how over-the-top it all was. It fervently espoused an elitist right-wing view of the world, where only kings ruled divinely and the peons were all slaughtered off-stage.
David Brin has sallied forth to smite the lunacy. He takes an interesting approach: he discredits Miller’s authority on history by utterly demolishing the pseudo-history of 300. It seems hardly worth doing — didn’t we already know that 300 was a great goofy ahistorical joke? — but there’s a nice analogy to be drawn. The contempt Miller shows for the 99% protesting American economic inequality is paralleled in the contempt he shows for everyone other than royalty and professional killers in his work.
Frank Miller rails against effete, pansy-boy militias of amateur, citizen soldiers. But funny thing, none of his Spartan characters ever mentions those events, just a decade earlier! How bakers, potters and poets from Athens – after vanquishing one giant invading army, then ran 26 miles in full armor to face down a second Persian horde and sent it packing, a feat of endurance that gave its name to the modern marathon race. A feat that goes unmatched today. Especially by Spartans.
That Athenian triumph deserves a movie! And believe me, it weighed heavily on the real life Leonidas, ten years later. “300″ author Frank Miller portrays the Spartans’ preening arrogance in the best possible light, as a kind of endearing tribal machismo. Miller never hints at the underlying reason for Leonidas’s rant, a deep current of smoldering shame over how Sparta sat out Marathon, leaving it to Athenian amateurs, like the playwright Aeschelus, to save all of Greece. The “shopkeepers” whom Leonidas outrageously and ungratefully despises in the film.
It just goes to show you can’t trust a fascist thug to recognize reality.
By the way, is it required for comic book artists to be crazy, or does it just help? (Uh-oh, I know Melissa Kaercher…what dark secrets lurk beneath her superficially normal (OK, mostly normal) personality?)
