So how was your weekend?

Oh, pretty good. Thanks for asking.

Friday evening and Saturday we went to the Candler Park Music Fest. One of the great things about living in Atlanta is lots of free music. Technically, we paid $10 for a wristband that guaranteed admission both days, otherwise we would have had to be one of the first to show up, but admission was technically free. Anyway, for $10 we saw The Infamous Stringdusteres, Leftover Salmon, Southern Culture on the Skids and 7 Handle Circus. If we had stuck around long enough, we could have caught Shoverls & Rope and Drive-By Truckers, too, but instead we went to one of Decatur's free concerts in the square and saw Jugtime Ragband.

It was too dark Saturday evening to get video of Leftover Salmon or Infamous Stringdusters, and by the time we got to Decatur, my phone was out of memory, so here are the two videos that came out okay:










And here is some video that someone else took of Jugtime Ragband, my new favorite band in Atlanta for the moment:




They've added a couple members since these videos were taken. At the show we saw, there was a trombonist, a backup vocalist and a guitarist added to the mix. If you get a chance, you should check 'em out. http://jugtimeragband.com/

Speaking of the Duggars. . .

I think this whole horrible molestation story is a pretty good argument for banning home-schooling.

Hear me out.

For one thing, there's no way to control what kind of crazy shit these people are teaching their kids.

Why do you think the Duggars home-schooled their kids? Because Michelle Duggar was such a gifted educator? I mean, even if she was, she's got a dozen or more school-aged children at any one time, all at different grade levels. She's trying to teach all of them while cooking for a small army battalion with a toddler around her ankles and an infant on her breast. Do you think any of those kids got any sort of a decent education?

Not that a decent education is really the goal. Especially for the girls. What are the odds that any of those girls learns more than the basic arithmetic needed to treble a recipe meant for a normal family and enough language skills to get through the Bible?

And, look, if they're just being poorly educated, that's not necessarily the end of the world. If they grow up believing that the world is a few thousand years old, the sun revolves around the earth, and Jesus rode on a dinosaur, that just means none of them are going to have a career in the sciences. And what are the odds that that was going to happen anyway? No real harm done.

But in the last several days, we've been seeing some of the more horrific parts of the home-school curriculum the Duggars and other like-minded families have been using.





Maybe scientific ignorance is fairly harmless, but teaching young girls that they brought sexual molestation onto themselves by failing to dress modestly enough - that is criminal.

Look at # 6: IF the abused was not at fault. Because most of the time, according to this mindset, obviously it's the fault of the victim. So, according to this curriculum, maybe being molested isn't so bad, because God compensates for the abuse with "spiritual power." You know, IF you weren't at fault, which you probably were, what with not wearing a burqa around your brother, Lolita! And point #8 pretty strongly implies that, given a choice, it's better to have been sexually assaulted, because otherwise God wouldn't have given you this spiritual gift because apparently the god they worship is a pretty sick bastard.

And this brings me back to my original question. Why do people like the Duggars homeschool their kids? Not because they think they'll do a better job than a real school, but because it's the best way to keep them from being exposed to the outside world.

If the Duggar daughters had been sent to an actual school, there might have been a teacher, or counselor or school nurse that they could have told about the abuse and the authorities could have been notified (the real authorities, not a family friend who happens to be a state trooper and has a thing for child pornography) and they could have put a stop to it.

To be clear, I'm not saying that the Duggars made the decision to home-school with the idea that should their son molest their daughter(s) this would help keep them from reporting the abuse. But this is an unintended consequence of keeping their children isolated from the modern world. I'm sure that the intent is to keep the children from being "led astray" by a teacher who mentions Darwin, or a classmate who smokes cigarettes, or a friend who tells them that it's not actually normal to be beaten with a rod by your parents.

And yes, I'm sure that there are many perfectly good parents who homeschool their kids for perfectly legitimate reasons. But too bad. Send your fucking kid to school. A real school.  Because even though you may be giving your kids a legitimate education,. there's no way to know that. There's no way of knowing who is home-schooling because they're over-indulgent new-age dorks who think that their special snowflake kids should be able to choose what they want to learn about even if that means going to look at dinosaur skeletons every damn day, or if you're the kind of psycho nut that's teaching your kids shit like this:

Josh Duggar molested his sisters and his parents covered it up.

Ok, I don't have a son or a daughter, so I can't really say what I would do in that situation. I assume it would be a very hard thing to turn your son over to the police. But whatever solution I came up with, it would definitely not end with my molester son under the same roof with my daughters. Maybe military school? I don't know.
But I do think that it's very telling that Jim Bob and Michelle felt it more important to protect their son, the molester than to protect their daughters who were being molested.That pretty much sums up what value they place on people who are female.

It's also very telling that right-wingers feel the need to defend Josh Duggar, the molester, and his parents who covered it up. Even in this horrific a situation, they just can't say "okay, this time one of our guys is the bad guy." They can't ever admit that they might possibly be wrong about anything.

Take, for instance, this headline:

The Duggars Aren’t Hypocrites. Progressives Are.

Right, they can't possibly be in the wrong, because we've already declared them to be the good guys. The fault must somehow lie in "progressives," the designated villains.

By now you’ve probably heard that Josh Duggar — oldest son in the “19 Kids and Counting” family — did some very bad things a long time ago. Apparently, when he was 14, Josh fondled several young girls, including a number of his younger sisters.

So already we're downplaying this. "Apparently," "a long time ago," "Some very bad things." Makes it sound like maybe it's not all that serious. A more accurate description might be something along the lines of "13 years ago, Josh Duggar committed a series of sexual assaults against young girls, including his own sisters.' And also, the sexual assaults committed 13 years ago are the only ones we know about, but one has to assume that there are more which have occurred more recently, as being a child molester is not something one grows out of.

After admitting to these acts, his parents presented the situation to their church’s leadership, and Josh was sent to a family friend in Little Rock where he spent several months doing physical labor. 

In other word, his parents covered up his crimes and protected him from any punishment. He got sent to do construction work, not break rocks in the hot sun.

 The behavior stopped there, and Josh has been upfront about it to anyone who actually needs to know this information.

Really? He's been "upfront" about his his history of sex crimes? And yet managed to keep the information from the public for 13 years? Really? Also, we're just supposed to take his word for it that "the 'behavior' stopped there?"

Don't worry, he swears he's given up burglary! 

Also, the "behavior" is sexual assault. That's a bit more than misbehaving.

According to his wife, he confessed his past sins to her well before they were married.

Dear, before we marry, I have a confession to make.
Oh, darling, nothing you could say would make me love you any less!
Okay, um, I committed a series of sexual assaults on young girls including my own sisters.
Oh, thank God, I was afraid you were going to say you're gay! Of course I'll still marry you, you silly incestuous child molester!

The family did not, however, announce these details to the world, mostly because there was no conceivable reason to. 

No conceivable reason to? No conceivable. . . How about to let people with young daughters know to keep them the hell away from their degenerate son? That might be a conceivable reason. Or maybe, when you're on tv putting yopurself up as paragons of godly living, to maybe say,"hey, you know we might not be the best example to follow, seeing as how we raised an incestuous sex offender.?"

there was no conceivable reason to. That is, until someone leaked it to a tabloid, and the whole “scandal” exploded all over the media yesterday.

Oh my Gawd! You're actually going to put "scandal" in quotes? Like a series of sexual assaults isn't really a scandal? Molesting your own sisters, that's a tempest in a teapot if ever I've heard one.
Are you fucking serious?

The backlash has been severe.
Not because Josh’s actions were terrible — though they were, of course — but because the Duggars are a prominent Christian family who regularly speak out on contentious social issues like gay marriage. They are roundly despised for their beliefs, their outspoken nature, and for the parents’ decision to have 19 kids. Progressive trolls have been anxiously waiting for a chance to burn them down and dance on their ashes, and now they’ve finally been given the opportunity.

Oh, I get it now! Josh, the molester, and his parents, the molestation enablers, are the real victims here. Of course, it's all so clear now! People aren't angry about this guy getting away with committing a series of sexual assaults, they're just looking for an excuse to criticize this weirdo cult good Christian family!

Josh Duggar has already lost his job, been publicly shamed, and had his name permanently sullied by these revelations, but critics are not satisfied.

Oh my God, this guy has suffered enough! His name has been sullied. Sullied! What more do you want? Do you want him to do jail time just for committing horrible crimes? You know he lost his job, right? Isn't that punishment enough?

Speaking of hypocrites, I’m going to be very frank with you: I simply don’t believe most progressives actually care that Josh Duggar touched his sisters when he was 14. I don’t believe they are upset about it, or that it offends them, or that they are morally troubled by it. I don’t believe them. I just don’t.

Jeezus Christ! If you have to go through these kind of mental gymnastics. If you have to work from the assumption that those on the other end of the political argument are absolute soulless monsters, I just think that is more a reflection on the weakness of your positions than anything else.

Then there's oily hypocritical con man Mike Huckabee:




Good people make mistakes.
Good people make mistakes.
Seriously.

Molesting young girls is the action of a "good person" who made a "mistake."

Aren't Republicans supposed to be the party of personal responsibility. And the "tough on crime" party?
And "confessing his sins" and seeking help (in the form of a summer job with a family friend) is somehow reason enough to let off this sex offender scot-free?

And one last thing. I can't be the only one who shuddered when the first saw the Duggar cult family.



How can you look at that father and those kids and not assume that they live in a house of unspeakable horrors? My first thought was "terrible things are going on in that house." I didn't expect brother-on-sister sexual abuse, I figured on parent-led psychological and/or physical abuse, but it seemed obvious at first glance that something terrible was going on in that family.

Look at that dad! If you saw him walking down the street toward you, you'd pull your children close and cross to the other side. Through traffic.



Imagine how brainwashed these kids are. Especially the girls. Imagine growing up in a family where your only purpose in life, according to authority figures like your parents, your minister, etc, is to remain impossibly "pure" until it is time to become a baby factory. Imagine what they would have to put you through to keep you believing that! Actually, you don't  have to imagine. You can go to No Longer Quivering and read some of the horror stories of women who have escaped the "Quiverfull" movement.

Flashback Friday -- The Fall

A couple days ago Debra posted about Victoria Day, which is a holiday in Canada and probably England I think? Maybe Australia? Anyway, that made me think of The Fall's version of the cong "Victoria" which made me think about how long it had been since I'd listened to The Fall which sent me to the YouTube. Enjoy! Or don't. Some people hate them.

Teabagger changes his mind. No, really!

Remember Luis Lang?




 The guy whose incipient blindness was totally all Obama's fault?

Well, he seems to have maybe changed his mind.

Luis Lang, who is currently crowdfunding for medical expenses that he can’t afford because he didn’t sign up for insurance under Obamacare, has become a viral sensation. However, the 49-year-old South Carolina resident says he doesn’t want to be the poster child for the Republican Party’s opposition to health care reform anymore.

. . . he also said that, thanks in part to a flood of media attention that led him to learn more about health care policy, he doesn’t identify with the GOP anymore. “Now that I’m looking at what each party represents, my wife and I are both saying — hey, we’re not Republicans!”

It's amazing this sort of thing doesn't happen more often. It's a testament to the right's talent for obfuscating the issues and controlling the debate. They've managed to convince a large percentage of the electorate that Democrat = "Liberal" and "Liberal" = Bad.

A lot of liberal/progressive positions poll really well.
For instance :

75 percent of Americans support raising the federal minimum wage to $12.50 by 2020, including

• 92 percent of Democrats
• 73 percent of Independents
• 53 percent of Republicans

         (source)
A majority of Republicans favor raising the minimum wage. Yet they support a party who not only oppose raising the minimum wage, but isn't really sure we ought to have one at all.

45% of Republicans support universal background checks for all gun purchases. (Gallup) Yet they support a party that not only will never allow this to happen, they'd like to roll back what few restrictions still remain on gun ownership.

Why? Well, it's just one dope's opinion, but I assume it has to do with the fact that the right has so poisoned the word "liberal" that all they have to do is say that liberals support something or it's a liberal idea and the FOX Nation will instinctively be against it. Because they've spent the last 50 years or so painting anything "liberal" or progressive as "big evil government taking away your hard-earned money and giving it to the 'blah' people."

They did the same thing with the word "feminist." They've made it that a lot of women who support equal pay for equal work, a harassment-free  workplace, etc. as obvious no-brainer ideas will still say "oh, but I'm not a feminist, though!"
 

Carrie Underwood
"I wouldn't go so far as to say I am a feminist, that can come off as a negative connotation. But I am a strong female."

And the reason for that is because they've managed to give the word such a negative connotation.



I remember an old Bloom County strip where Steve Dallas asked his girlfriend how she defined "feminist" and she replied "fat, manless and hairy-legged." That's what they've done to what should be a completely positive word. A word that means someone who believes in gender equality they've managed to re-define as "man-hater" or "strident, humorless ball-buster." Or "sexless" or "slutty." which should be contradictory, but it doesn't matter. The point is, that they've poisoned the word. They're very good at this.

They've poisoned the word "environment" "environmentalist" "environmentalism," etc. What should mean "someone who cares about the air we breathe and the water we drink" has been re-defined as "someone who wants to destroy Free Enterprise to protect some endangered tapeworm or spotted newt or just because they hate capitalism or whatever.

I read recently that someone did a study and if you tell people that CFL or LED bulbs use less electricity and will therefore save you money on your utility bills, people are all for 'em. If you mention that using less electricity is good for the environment, they're much less enthused. Because they've been conditioned to think that anyone who cares about the environment, (ie the air we breathe and water we drink) is some sort of bleeding-heart, tree-hugging  hippie liberal and we all know that liberals are bad. We don't necessarily know why, but they're bad. Just suspiciously un-American or not completely masculine, or something.

So, anyway, back to Luis Lang.

He wasn't alone in his irrational fear and loathing of "Obamacare." Most polls have shown that people generally like all the various provisions of the Affordable Care Act, but a large percentage still oppose "Obamacare." Because it's associated with the "liberal" Barack Obama, who is not only a Democrat, but black! And yes, I know Obama is no liberal, but the right has successfully portrayed him as being just to the left of Gus Hall.

But Lang’s main complaint is the fact that the Supreme Court ruled that Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion should be optional, which has given Republican lawmakers the opportunity to refuse to implement the policy on the state level. That’s led to a coverage gap preventing millions of Americans from accessing affordable insurance whatsoever. Because Lang’s income has recently dried up, now that his deteriorating vision prevents him from working, he now falls into that gap.
“I put the blame on everyone — Republican and Democrat. But I do mainly blame Republicans for their pigheadedness,” Lang said. “They’re blocking policies that could help everyone. I’m in the situation I’m in because they chose not to expand Medicaid for political reasons. And I know I’m not the only one.”

So why is it that Luis Lang, who doesn't seem especially bright, could figure this out and so many others can't (or won't)?


Maybe it's because "Lang said he’s read almost every comment on his GoFundMe page." In other words, he actually got some information that didn't come out of the right-wing  noise machine. And used that new information to re-assess his viewpoint. Most people who live inside the FOX bubble will never do this. They will never have their assumptions challenged.  And as long as we keep saying things like "Well, I'm not a liberal, but. . ." or "I'm not a feminist, but. . ." they're going to keep winning the hearts and minds, well hearts, anyway, of a large swath of the public. And they're the swath that votes.