View from the Loft

Demons in the candy!

Via Pharyngula, a warning about Halloween candy:

In a column on the Christian Broadcasting Network’s Web site, writer Kimberly Daniels asserts that “demons” sneak into bags of Halloween candy at grocery stores.

“[M]ost of the candy sold during this season has been dedicated and prayed over by witches,” Daniels wrote. “I do not buy candy during the Halloween season. Curses are sent through the tricks and treats of the innocent whether they get it by going door to door or by purchasing it from the local grocery store. The demons cannot tell the difference.”

She goes on:

Halloween is much more than a holiday filled with fun and tricks or treats,” she wrote. “It is a time for the gathering of evil that masquerades behind the fictitious characters of Dracula, werewolves, mummies and witches on brooms. The truth is that these demons that have been presented as scary cartoons actually exist. I have prayed for witches who are addicted to drinking blood and howling at the moon.”

Man, talk about nutjobs! The "gathering of evil," eh? All I remember is good times taking the kids around the neighborhood, often with an adult beverage in hand, and lots of warm feelings as neighbors clucked over the little ones, chatted amiably, and maybe had a scarecrow or some such on the front porch. Never realized that there were demons in the candy ...

Have we reached peak wingnuttery?

That's the question DougJ over at Balloon Juice asks about this piece of "fine art." Go on, click over. It features Jesus (his head surrounded by a golden glow, naturally) holding a copy of the Constitution. If you roll your cursor over the various figures, a block of text pops up to explain the meaning of the symbols.

A humble farmer is called "truly the backbone of America." Yeah. How about telling the truth about the likes of Archer Daniels Midland? A Supreme Court justice "hides his face in shame" because of "some of the court decisions that have done great damage to our country." Not coincidentally, he's sitting right next to a pregnant woman "who is saying to herself, 'I want to keep my baby.'" There's subtlety for ya!

There are historical figures galore, soldiers, etc. There's a liberal reporter and a "Mr. Hollywood" who ... well, you know the drill. Naturally, there's a college professor holding a copy of Origin of Species that symbolizes "the liberal left's control of our educational system."

On and on it goes, glorifying war, worshipping the likes of Reagan, giving us the Main Street folks the right likes to fantasize about, and so on.

It's really, really bad. I mean, it's hilarious, but the "art" is really, really, really bad.

Wow. Jesus brought us the Constitution! Who knew? That will probably get the Conservapedia nutjobs in an uproar--those involved in rewriting the Bible so it's more conservative--since there are some pretty liberal notions in that pesky Bill of Rights I'm sure they'd also like to edit.

UPDATE: Treat yourself to the spoof as well.

Behold teh stupid

Okay, about a month ago I responded to a Facebook poll, comment, or something (I don't even remember now) about mass drug testing, and came out against it.

I received an email from someone whose screen name, at least, is Darlene Mesa:

If you aren't taking drugs, what do you care if you get tested or not?

Since this person was apparently not too savvy on the Constitution, nor too terribly concerned with Constitutional rights, I attempted to enlighten her.

That's like saying, "If you have nothing to hide, why do you care if the cops search your house/car/computer?" I have a right to privacy, that's why, and a right not to be searched without cause. That's what living in a democracy is supposed to be about. You know? The Constitution and all? The prohibition against being searched without due cause? For some strange reason, I just have a thing against being treated like I live in a dictatorship. Odd, that, eh?

But I guess the difference between living in a police state and living in a democracy was just too much to wrap her mind around. She came back today with this:

Like I said, if there is nothing to hide...why worry? If you give someone reason to think they have to drug test you or search your possesions, than that is on you. You obviously are on something.

See the mindset? If I don't agree that unlimited police search and seizure is A-OK, then it's because I am "on something." It doesn't enter what passes for her mind that I might have a principled stand against police-state tactics. Not to mention that she assumes that any kind of drug test or search can only occur if I "give someone reason to think they have to drug test [me] or search [my] possessions."

 

How fucking naive can you be??

 

It's "on me" if the cops do an illegal search of me or my possessions? Sorry, babe. We do have that little piece of paper, shredded though it is, that does guarantee us certain rights. One of which is the right not to be searched without due cause.

 

I wrote back with my usual restraint:

Nope. Have never taken illegal drugs in my life (I do like wine, though). It's the principle of the thing, dearie. And the principle is that there has to be a reason for a search -- OMG, it's even in the Constitution!! Have you ever read that document? We as citizens have a right not to be hassled by the police without due cause. That's what is supposed to make us a democracy, as opposed to a police state. In a democracy, people have actual rights.

By your reasoning, any asshole cop could come into my house at any time to search for anything, and I shouldn't care a bit about having someone violate my privacy as long as I had nothing to hide. Fuck that shit! I have a right to a private life unviolated by the police as long as there is no due cause.

It's very telling that you think a principled stand against police state tactics indicates a drug problem. Jesus H Christ on a popsicle stick. Educate yourself.

Actually, now that I think about it, I probably have ingested illegal substances at some point in my life ... I don't count pot, though. (What reasonable person does?)

 

I just can't stand that excuse for police-state tactics: "What do you care if you have nothing to hide?" I'll tell you--at some point people who have done nothing wrong but militate against state power are targets of the police, FBI, or whatever, and the only thing keeping us from mass arrests and state coercion is the Constitution. Not that I have much faith in our current Supreme Court to keep the Constitution viable.

 

Just another day in Amerika.

We're doomed

Teabagger rally.

On old white guys' fear of Sotomayor

Word.

8 incidents in 4 1/2 months

Please read Sara Robinson's post on the domestic terrorist acts that have occurred since Obama's inauguration: eight episodes in four and a half months:

For the record: This is not business as usual. True, there have always been occasional events, usually dismissed by the corporate media as "isolated incidents," the work of "lone wolf shooters" acting for reasons all their own. But you have to go back a long, long way in American history before you come to a place where you find incidents like this happening an average of once every two weeks. And the chattering classes are finally beginning to realize what those of us who've been faithfully watching the right wing for years have been telling them for a long while now: there's nothing isolated about any of this.

In fact, this is exactly how full-scale terrorism begins.

What she's most worried about is "where this kind of thing historically leads," and she lists five areas of special concern.

Just. Go. Read.

ADDENDUM: Also see her "The Far Right's First 100 Days: Shifting Into Overdrive."

'Nuff said

Sigh.

Is anybody really surprised by this?

As many of us have long suspected, those who spout off about morality, "family values," the virtue of eschewing masturbation, etc., are not the pure spiritual beings they would have us believe them to be (link):

A new nationwide study (pdf) of anonymised credit-card receipts from a major online adult entertainment provider finds little variation in consumption between states.

"When it comes to adult entertainment, it seems people are more the same than different," says Benjamin Edelman at Harvard Business School.

However, there are some trends to be seen in the data. Those states that do consume the most porn tend to be more conservative and religious than states with lower levels of consumption, the study finds.

"Some of the people who are most outraged turn out to be consumers of the very things they claimed to be outraged by," Edelman says.

Utah was the biggest consumer of on-line porn. Hah!

A few more interesting observations from the study:

• Eight of the top 10 pornography consuming states gave their electoral votes to John McCain in last year's presidential election – Florida and Hawaii were the exceptions. While six out of the lowest 10 favoured Barack Obama.

• Residents of 27 states that passed laws banning gay marriages boasted 11% more porn subscribers than states that don't explicitly restrict gay marriage.

• States where a majority of residents agreed with the statement "I have old-fashioned values about family and marriage," bought 3.6 more subscriptions per thousand people than states where a majority disagreed. A similar difference emerged for the statement "AIDS might be God's punishment for immoral sexual behaviour."

I'd feel rather sad about the sexual repression this suggests, but I really can't spare any sympathy for these hypocrites. They condemn the very actions they themselves engage in, and not only in terms of on-line porn as investigated by this study. Look at the behavior of closeted gays in the GOP and among its allies: Larry Craig, Ted Haggard, Mark Foley, and more--people who condemn homosexuality, who fight the very idea of equal rights for gays, yet who themselves engage in homosexual behavior. Out-of-wedlock pregnancies and divorce rates are also higher in these more religious, conservative states.

How do these people succeed in deluding themselves about their moral superiority over the rest of us fallen, sinful beings? How do they deal with the cognitive dissonance?

Beats me. I don't care how much porn they view, how many kids they have outside marriage, how many divorces they have, whether they're gay or straight, whether they live together without the formality of marriage, or any of that. All I ask is that they return the favor and keep their noses and their laws out of MY personal life and decisions. But that, apparently, is something the religious right is not willing to do, even if, when it comes to sexual matters, they have to lie, deny, and ignore their everyday reality.

They just can't help themselves

Wingnuts, that is, when it comes to lying.

E-mail from the dark side

A friend recently sent me an e-mail forwarded to him by a right-winger he knows. Unsurprisingly, it included a brazen lie. If you receive this e-mail, here's your antidote. Beware of anything the right wing claims is true, and set the record straight if you can.

The e-mail begins:

 Remember Lee Iacocca, the VP at Ford credited with the
 birth of the Mustang, the man who rescued Chrysler,
 Corporation from their death throes, and the owner of the
 famous quote 'Lead, follow, or get out of the way'?
 Well, he's back! He has a new book, and here are some
 excerpts.

Indeed, Mr. Iacocca does have a recently published book, Where Have All the Leaders Gone? An excerpt was printed in 2007; you can read it here. The book is a scathing critique of the lack of leaders in America, from government to industry. He's completely unsparing of George W. Bush, as you can see from this:

On September 11, 2001, we needed a strong leader more than any other time in our history. We needed a steady hand to guide us out of the ashes. Where was George Bush? He was reading a story about a pet goat to kids in Florida when he heard about the attacks. He kept sitting there for twenty minutes with a baffled look on his face. It's all on tape. You can see it for yourself. Then, instead of taking the quickest route back to Washington and immediately going on the air to reassure the panicked people of this country, he decided it wasn't safe to return to the White House. He basically went into hiding for the day—and he told Vice President Dick Cheney to stay put in his bunker. We were all frozen in front of our TVs, scared out of our wits, waiting for our leaders to tell us that we were going to be okay, and there was nobody home. It took Bush a couple of days to get his bearings and devise the right photo op at Ground Zero.

Here is what appears in the e-mail message (some of this paragraph is taken from succeeding paragraphs of the original and is made to seem as though no elision has taken place):

On September 11, 2001, we needed a strong leader more than
any other time in our history. We needed a steady hand to
guide us out of the ashes. A Hell of a Mess. So here's
where we stand. We're immersed in a bloody war with no
plan for winning and no plan for leaving. We're running
the biggest deficit in the history of the country. We're
losing the manufacturing edge to Asia , while our once-great
Companies are all moving offshore. We're getting
slaughtered by health care costs. Gas prices are
skyrocketing, and nobody in power has a coherent energy
policy. Our schools are the worst in the world. Our borders
are like sieves. The middle class is being squeezed ! every
which way. These are times that cry out for leadership.

Notice anything missing after "guide us out of the ashes"?

But that's not enough for the right-wingers. No, they have to put words in Iacocca's mouth by adding the following onto the end of that paragraph. The following was not written by Iacocca and did not appear in the book or excerpt:

These are times that cry out for leadership and
we are getting ready to put the most Liberal Senator in the
U. S. Senate in as our next President because we want to be
fair and elect someone just because of his race. We
don't have time to be fair, we need a strong leader.

Earlier in the e-mail message, Iacocca's words are once again padded with what the righties wish he had said. Here's the original:

Leaders are made, not born. Leadership is forged in times of crisis. It's easy to sit there with your feet up on the desk and talk theory. Or send someone else's kids off to war when you've never seen a battlefield yourself. It's another thing to lead when your world comes tumbling down.

Here's what appears in the e-mail:

Leaders are made, not born. Leadership is forged in times
of crisis. It's easy to sit there with your feet up on
the desk and talk theory. Or send someone else's kids
off to war when you've never seen a battlefield
yourself. It's another thing to lead when your world
comes tumbling down. George Bush, Dick Chaney and who is
this Bozo coming up next? One of the most Liberal Idiots in
the U. S. Senate and he is talking about disarming America.
I can't believe the American people are seeing what
he is about to do to this country. May God have mercy on us
all.

(All misspellings, atrocities of capitalization, etc. appear in the e-mail message.)

A brief visit to Snopes.com confirmed my immediate suspicion, as I had read parts of the real excerpt some time previously. I sent out an e-mail to the whole list, pointing out that the whole thing was a lie.

The only reply I received was from the friend who had forwarded it to me in the first place, and who probably did it to let me know what was circulating in the non-reality-based world. Not one other person to whom I replied acknowledged the correction or even sent an angry missive in return.

What a surprise.