Conservatives say stupid shit

[The Lone Ranger]

According to Media Matters, CNN and MSNBC spent roughly an hour each covering the Dugger controversy, from May 21 - May 24.

Fox "News" spent ... less than 90 seconds.

Can't have loyal Fox viewers learning anything unflattering about prominent Conservative activists, now can we? Much less the many prominent Republican politicians whom Josh Dugger has publicly supported.


After all, some might begin to scent a whiff of hypocrisy -- what with how Josh Dugger publicly stated that he believed those guilty of incest or child molestation should be put to death, after learning that his son had molested his daughters. And we can't have our loyal sheep viewers learning about that, now can we?


The late, lamented Molly Ivins once pointed out that what you don't see on the news is every bit as informative as what you do see on the news. This seems like an excellent illustration of that point. [And also why, according to several polls, regular Fox "News" viewers are some of the least-informed (and most mis-informed) of American citizens.]

[The Lone Ranger]

Originally Posted by SR71

Santorum Says Pope Francis, Who Has a Masters in Chemistry, Should 'Leave the Science to the Scientists' | Alternet

Well I can certainly agree with that. I wouldn't want to get my science info from politicians, say, or my mechanic, for example.

Hmm ...

Originally Posted by Rick Santorum

"[T]he idea that man, through the production of CO2 — which is a trace gas in the atmosphere, and the man-made part of that trace gas is itself a trace gas — is somehow responsible for climate change is, I think, just patently absurd when you consider all the other factors.”

Originally Posted by Rick Santorum

"What we should be teaching are the problems and holes and I think there are legitimate problems and holes in the theory of evolution."

I presume that Santorum will be publicly retracting these and similar statements any day now, right?


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Right?

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On the other hand, he did say this, so not everything that comes out of his mouth is utter BS:

Originally Posted by Rick Santorum

"We [Conservatives] will never have the elite smart people on our side."

[BrotherMan]

You got it all backwards Mr The Lone Ranger. See, the Duggars and what happens in their private home is nobody's business but their own. It's simply too unsavory to talk about that kind of thing, see? It's a private matter and all us lousy librals clucking our tongues at this purely family matter - which, btw, has been settled already by all concerned parties - is just lascivious big government just wanting to get it's camel's nose under our tents.

[Megatron]

Oh god, please don't make me talk about this horrible shit.

[LadyShea]

Originally Posted by Dragar

"For too long, we have been a passively tolerant society, saying to our citizens: as long as you obey the law, we will leave you alone."

Thanks, Prime Minister David Cameron. That's real comforting.

What was he talking about?

[Stephen Maturin]

It looks like he made the statement in connection with proposed "anti-terrorism" legislation that makes the USA PATRIOT Act look downright libertarian by comparison.

[BrotherMan]

Quick! Nobody tell Santorum that there are allowable levels of arsenic, cyanide, mercury and other terribly deadly chemicals in drinking water. He might get the idea that it's okay so long as it's just "trace" amounts.

[Pan Narrans]

Originally Posted by Dragar

"For too long, we have been a passively tolerant society, saying to our citizens: as long as you obey the law, we will leave you alone."

Thanks, Prime Minister David Cameron. That's real comforting.

Supervillains quoting David Cameron

[Watser?]

Originally Posted by LadyShea

What was he talking about?

Muslims of course.

[Nullifidian]

Originally Posted by Dragar

"For too long, we have been a passively tolerant society, saying to our citizens: as long as you obey the law, we will leave you alone."

Admirably expressed! You have to respect the power of concision that David Cameron displays. It's not every politician who can announce that he's doing away with both the presumption of innocence and the rule of law in a single sentence. The first because if being innocent affords you no more rights than being guilty does, it erases the distinction between guilt and innocence entirely, and the second because if obeying the law does not protect you from government interference, then the government will punish you outside the law based on nothing more than its inscrutable whims.

Apparently, the Tories wanted to give Magna Carta a funeral for its 800th anniversary.

[ImGod]

Originally Posted by Nullifidian

Admirably expressed! You have to respect the power of concision that David Cameron displays. It's not every politician who can announce that he's doing away with both the presumption of innocence and the rule of law in a single sentence. The first because if being innocent affords you no more rights than being guilty does, it erases the distinction between guilt and innocence entirely, and the second because if obeying the law does not protect you from government interference, then the government will punish you outside the law based on nothing more than its inscrutable whims.

Apparently, the Tories wanted to give Magna Carta a funeral for its 800th anniversary.

Give the Queen her ability to lop off heads on a whim and be done with this democracy experiment gone wrong.

[Zehava]

Originally Posted by Pan Narrans

Supervillains quoting David Cameron

@ Bane

[Dragar]

Originally Posted by LadyShea

What was he talking about?

For some reason - and I'm not sure how this happened - Cameron (or his script writer) has decided that the law is not enough, and instead the government should be poking around instilling values (or, presumably, trying to get rid of ones they don't like).

Frankly I think the quote is more chilling when you return it into appropriate context.

[BrotherMan]

This Cosmo article p much sums up all of my feelings on the Duggars.

"They've been victimized more by what has happened in these last couple weeks than they were 12 years ago," Michelle Duggar told Megyn Kelly about her daughters, "because they honestly they didn't even understand or know that anything had happened until after the fact when they were told about it. In our hearts before God, we haven't been keeping secrets. We have been protecting those who honestly should be protected. And now what's happened is they've been victimized."

Now, Michelle says, the Duggar daughters have been victimized — not when their brother was sneaking into their bedrooms to molest them or when he was molesting them on the couch or when their parents never actually got him professional help. It's now that the story is public. And surely this is awful and traumatizing for them. Surely they do feel victimized.

But who put them on TV in the first place? Who turned them into public figures? Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar invited cameras into their home to put their family in the public eye, both so they could make money and so they could spread their religious beliefs (evangelism is part of the requirements of their religion, and what better way to spread the word than a television show beamed into households across the country). They believe their way of living — the woman at home and subservient to her husband, girls not pursuing higher education, forgoing contraception, and having as many children as God gives you even if it kills you — is not just right for them, but the only righteous, acceptable, moral way to live. They presented themselves as living examples of a particularly strict, misogynist, and retrograde sexual morality. They made their many children into minor celebrities. They wanted the public to be interested in them, because that interest meant cash and it meant influence.

They did that knowing their own family's history. They sold a narrative of sexual restriction as noble, of sexuality as shameful, knowing their daughters were sexual abuse victims and that being publicly identified as such would be, to use their word, "devastating."

They did that. That was a choice. The tabloid media may have also behaved poorly, but if the Duggars were just another big family in Arkansas, no one in the national media would have cared.

People from all backgrounds, religions, and walks of life do terrible things. It's not the Duggar parents' fault that their son molested their daughters. Nor would Josh or the rest of the family have been served by throwing him in jail — juvenile offenders often can straighten out with the right professional help, and incarcerating kids is a bad solution. It's even understandable, although certainly not commendable, that the Duggar parents, confused and upset and loving all their children, didn't take their child to the police immediately and instead tried to deal with the matter themselves. No one is perfect, and parents can be particularly imperfect when it comes to their own children's bad acts.

But what the Duggars did instead, in seeking out a Christian friend instead of a real counselor, in raising sexual abuse victims to believe that being sexually touched makes you about as valuable as a broken bicycle or a cup of spit, in exposing their entire family to the exact kind of vulture tabloid obsession that accompanies reality TV shows? That was a series of cruel, craven, greedy choices. That borders on abuse.

When Kelly asked the Duggar parents about TLC potentially canceling their show, Jim Bob responded, "I don't know if the rest of our family should be punished for the act of one of our children."

And, at least the 10 or so comments I read were not terrible.

Originally Posted by Johelen

There are two things I found extremely disturbing about the interview.

One: how fully and inexhaustibly the parents failed Josh - and through him, their daughters. Josh came to them crying, knowing he was wrong, BEGGING them to help him. They did nothing. He came to them again. The did nothing. It took three times before they heard their child asking for help. If they had acted from the beginning by removing him from the home and sending him for help, this story would have been entirely different.

Two: Jim Bob assertion that when talking to other families they were told the same things, or worse, had happened in their families as well. That is absolutely chilling. And since everyone they know is just like them, we can surmise that their strict, puritanical, misogynistic culture has created a breeding ground for sexual assault, molestation, and even rape. It's terrifying that one family would know MULTIPLE other families that had experienced molestation and incest within their families as well. The sad thing is that JB didn't even understand how damning and telling his "defense" even was.

[The Lone Ranger]

I am shocked ... shocked, I tell you ... over the suggestion that in families where it's taught that a female's principle role in life is to serve as a subservient receptacle for their husband's sperm, sexual abuse is common.

[Dingfod]

And you claim to be a biologist.

[lisarea]

My sister called today and we were talking about the conservative family values, and she has exactly the same reaction to that stuff that I do: Sexual violence isn't necessarily a conservative family value in itself, but it is the natural and inevitable consequence.

So we were just reminiscing about old family stories and things we saw (but didn't directly experience because our parents were progressive, worldly sinners with no family values). Like the story our mom told of the girl in her conservative farming community who "went into the woods with a bunch of older boys" and was subsequently given a lobotomy to cure her of her nymphomania. And of her best friend who was shunned and effectively disappeared after her mother died and she had to take over the wifely duties. And hell, the reason our grandparents were even there is that they eloped as teenagers because that was the only way to get our grandmother away from her stepfather who was abusing her.

And then, when we were kids, we were always supposed to avoid 'dirty old men,' which is what they called pedophiles in the good old days, and there was this group of boys who would hang out in the park and assault girls in broad daylight, and nobody knew or cared except all the girls in the neighborhood. (And one of my sister's friends was related somehow to the two main predators, who also molested her regularly when she was a pre-teen.) And this I didn't know but I believe her: In elementary school, a girl in her class was raped during recess by a very disturbed boy who'd been held back a couple of years, right in front of everyone. Afterward, both the victim and the rapist disappeared, and she said the teachers acted like nothing had happened after that.

The point being that this stuff was extremely normal up until very recently. When people talk about the 'good old days' and 'traditional family values,' sexual predation and other violence has always been a part of that. You just didn't hear about it much because people just let it happen. I don't doubt that the Duggars could be regressive and sheltered enough that they still think this is just a normal thing that happens in every family. It probably does happen in all the families they know.

I tell people about that stuff whenever I get a chance, and most seem to think I am crazy, but I'm not going to stop talking about it. I suspect that most people who get nostalgic and have idealized notions about 'the good old days' are just hearkening back to their childhood, before they knew understood how things really were, but some of them, like the Duggars and like all those conservative family values politicians, know exactly what it entails, and they are OK with it.

But everyone who talks about that stuff should have to hear those stories and all the other ones like them.

[BrotherMan]

The issue is way more complicated than any one article can examine. Especially short ones. Entire courses of psychology, sociology, anthropology and other -ologies would have to convene to get a better handle on what it is, where it comes from and how it happens. It's not just a conservative issue, no matter what a lot of people are wagging their tongues about. Sexual predation is nearly omnipresent in society. Poor people, rich people, dumb people, smart people, conservative and liberal - it exists in every strata of society.

It comes to light and is terrifying and hypocritical in religious circles because they are supposed to be the good people, chosen and enlightened by something beyond our own base nature. One of the most disturbing nights in church was one night during testimonials, several women talked about how they were abused. I don't recall specifics but there were combinations of physical and emotional, and though not directly stated, some sexual abuse. I want to say that their stories accounted for 40% of the tales that night.

The evil of molestation is bad enough but when you pile on with lying and hiding to protect your personal power things only get worse, especially when everything comes to light. Just like what happened with the end of the era at Penn State. Just like what happens with the Catholic church. Lying and hiding about a thing, whatever it may be, only makes things worse. If they had gotten Josh real help, if they had segregated their family somehow this would not be the big fat ugly national story that it is.

[Ymir's blood]

Originally Posted by BrotherMan

The issue is way more complicated than any one article can examine.

The Internets don't work that way, bort.

[BrotherMan]

[ImGod]

The only thing more fitting for the Duggar woe is me story would be if Josh Duggar's mentor was Dennis Hastert.

You need to learn the proper way to bury your secrets from the "moral minority" early if you're going to be a rising star in right wing politics.

Take your picture with all the powerful people in the party and someone starts wondering who you are. Get on TV and then start trying to influence politics and people start digging where it looks like something was buried.

[The Lone Ranger]

This article makes a number of worthwhile points.


As an aside, I think she has a point about how fervent belief can be very selfish, and can make you insensitive to the suffering of those who aren't part of the fold. One of the reasons I left the church when I was young was because I was appalled at how gleeful the minister and my Sunday School teachers were when they told us about how those of us who were "God's chosen" would get to enjoy eternal bliss while those who weren't God's chosen would be tortured for all eternity.

Even as a child, it seemed to me that this was a monstrously cruel God they were praising and worshipping.

[Dingfod]

Originally Posted by ImGod

The only thing more fitting for the Duggar woe is me story would be if Josh Duggar's mentor was Dennis Hastert.

You need to learn the proper way to bury your secrets from the "moral minority" early if you're going to be a rising star in right wing politics.

Take your picture with all the powerful people in the party and someone starts wondering who you are. Get on TV and then start trying to influence politics and people start digging where it looks like something was buried.

Speaking of Duggars, DHS called the cops on them after they refused to let DHS reps check on a child they were seeking to talk with.

[The Man]

Conservative columnist wishes Chicago would have its very own Katrina. (More here, here, and here). I'm kind of surprised someone was actually stupid enough to voice this Shock Doctrine/Travis Bickle stuff out loud.

Naturally, the expected notpology has already been issued.

Edit: from the comments at LGM, a list of some of the many factual errors in the editorial:

-She lauds Paul Vallas for the great job he did fixing NOLA schools. Know where Vallas had previously been head of schools? Yup, under Daley, he headed up CPS.
-No mention of the fact that CPS already IS doing all kinds of privatizing, and as Scott mentioned RE NOLA, there’s no solid evidence that the privatizing has done a damn thing good in Chicago. But to pretend that charters and privatizing are something not already rampant in Chicago is ridiculous.
-Is it Randian utopianism or Soviet utopianism to assume that in a 300+ year old city you would “design a school system.” That assumption is a great piece of evidence for the argument that the people who call themselves “conservatives” are anything but, they’re crazed radicals.
-No mention that the previous head of CPS, Barbara Byrd Bennett, just got forced out because she’s under investigation for no-bid contracts for private companies doing work for CPS, in particular the company for which she recently worked.
-Finally, it’s kind of hilarious that in looking for an anti-machine, anti-corruption counter-example to Chicago, anyone would look at one of the most notoriously corrupt places in North America, New Orleans, Louisiana.
-Oh, another thing: the CPS already isn’t democratic. There hasn’t been an elected school board in Chicago forever; it was replaced during the younger Daley’s administration, iirc quite a long time ago, like early or mid nineties.

[BrotherMan]

Prayer Works Y'all.

JACKSON, Miss. (WJTV) – Jackson Mayor Tony Yarber is addressing the city’s infrastructure problem on Twitter.

He tweeted “Yes….I believe we can pray potholes away. Moses prayed and a sea opened up. #iseeya #itrustHim #prayerworks”.

This is not the first time the Jackson mayor has talked about the city’s issues on the social media site.