The Good News According to David Barton

Via RightWingWatch.org:

There’s a passage that I love in Romans 1 – I don’t love what the topic is – but it talks about homosexuality and it says that they will receive in their bodies the penalties of their behavior. And the Bible again, it’s right every time, and studies keep proving that and that’s why AIDS has been something they haven’t discovered a cure for or a vaccine for, because it’s the fastest self-mutating virus known to mankind. Every time they just about get a vaccine discovered for it, it transmutes into something new and they have to start over again. And that goes to what God says, hey you’re going to bear in your body the consequences of this homosexual behavior.

The same thing goes with abortion and now we’re getting studies, and these are somewhat negative studies, but they’re positive studies in that they prove that the Bible is right. So I want to read you the results of a couple of new studies that are out. Here’s a new study that out, now this is the second study that shows that women who have abortions double the risk of mental health problems … Now that’s not good news; the good news in this is God says “don’t kill unborn babies.”

Now, along the same thing, here’s another study, a new study now shows those who have abortions nearly triple the risk of breast cancer. It’s bad news, but it’s good news in the sense that it does show that the Bible is right. When God says don’t kill those unborn babies, there’s a reason. And He tells us in Deuteronomy 6:24 and Joshua 1:8, everything I tell you to do is for your good, for your benefit, so that you can prosper and you can have success. So when he tells us not to do this stuff, whether it’s homosexual behavior or whether its abortion, hey it’s for our benefit he tells us not to do it and now studies prove that to be true.

Now I haven’t seen the studies that serial liar, fantasy historian, raving lunatic David Barton is citing.  Honestly, based on his track record, I’m not sure if Mr. Barton has actually seen the studies he’s citing.  But I am willing to bet that the studies are either flawed, or he is reading into them what he wants to see.  Abortion does not increase the risk of breast cancer, at least according to every well done study I’ve seen.  (The claim that it does honestly doesn’t even make sense.)  As for the mental health problems quote, well once again, I haven’t seen the study, but at least this claim could make sense.  It’s not like certain groups of Christians spend their lives trying to make women who had or are considering having an abortion feel like murderers or anything.

David Barton says this is all “good news” because it proves the bible is true.  Even assuming that everything he says is true, (which once again, considering his track record is one hell of a leap of faith) all it proves is 1) that God really loves lesbians (have you seen their HIV infection rates?) and 2) God is a murdering fuck. (any idea how many pregnancies end through spontaneous abortion?)

Well, it proves one other thing.

David Barton is a fucking asshole.  But we already knew that.

Breaking News: GOP War on Women (and Children) 2012!!!

From the Daily Kos:

The House Republicans just did it, they voted to trade low student loan interest rates for childhood immunizations, and, of course, more War on Women by cutting women’s health. The vote was 215-195 despite a last minute threat from Club for Growth and Heritage, warning Republicans that voting to extend the lower interest rate at all will be counted against them. Thirty Republicans voted against, it, 13 Democrats for it.

Those breast and cervical cancer screenings, and immunizations, and HIV screenings, that’s all going to people who Republicans would prefer not to think about anyway.

The White House has issued a veto threat:

Unfortunately, rather than finding common ground on a way to pay for this critical policy, H.R. 4628 includes an attempt to repeal the Prevention and Public Health Fund, created to help prevent disease, detect it early, and manage conditions before they become severe.  Women, in particular, will benefit from this Prevention Fund, which would provide for hundreds of thousands of screenings for breast and cervical cancer.  This is a politically-motivated proposal and not the serious response that the problem facing America’s college students deserves. If the President is presented with H.R. 4628, his senior advisors would recommend that he veto the bill.

Sigh.

Yeah, that’s my entire fucking commentary on this.

Sigh.

Prisons: Making a Buck for Corporations Everywhere!

Ed Brayton from Dispatches from the Culture Wars highlights an article from Steve Fraser and Joshua Freeman on Salon.com:

Prisoners, whose ranks increasingly consist of those for whom the legitimate economy has found no use, now make up a virtual brigade within the reserve army of the unemployed whose ranks have ballooned along with the U.S. incarceration rate.  The Corrections Corporation of America and G4S (formerly Wackenhut), two prison privatizers, sell inmate labor at subminimum wages to Fortune 500 corporations like Chevron, Bank of America, AT&T and IBM.

These companies can, in most states, lease factories in prisons or prisoners to work on the outside.  All told, nearly a million prisoners are now making office furniture, working in call centers, fabricating body armor, taking hotel reservations, working in slaughterhouses or manufacturing textiles, shoes and clothing, while getting paid somewhere between 93 cents and $4.73 per day.

Rarely can you find workers so pliable, easy to control, stripped of political rights and subject to martial discipline at the first sign of recalcitrance — unless, that is, you traveled back to the 19th century when convict labor was commonplace nationwide.  Indeed, a sentence of “confinement at hard labor” was then the essence of the American penal system.

Normally, I’d use this space to comment on the article with my “insider” knowledge of the prison system.  However, this is one indignity I was spared, and Ed makes pretty much the exact comments I would have, only he write so much more eloquently:

This should be outlawed and replaced with a practical and just program for inmates. It would absolutely make sense to have various forms of work programs in prison, from apprenticeship programs to work study programs to qualify for professional certifications. But if they’re doing work, they should get paid a reasonable wage for it. That would allow them to save money to get themselves back on their feet when they’re released. And it would undoubtedly reduce recidivism rates for inmates to have a marketable skill when they get out.

But the current system is not set up to help the inmates improve themselves or leave a criminal life upon release; it’s designed to make a buck for corporations through virtual slave labor and to build a permanent criminal underclass to provide a never ending supply of bodies for that unjust machine.

Now go give Ed some traffic.

 

Shillin’ Like a Villain

Guess it’s time to appease my paymasters from BigPharma* once again.

I wonder if Jezebel gets their checks on time, because I still haven’t received one yet.  Anyway, have you heard of the hottest trend for babies this year?  It’s the fucking measles!

Are you a baby? Did your parents make the jerky decision not to vaccinate you? Well, then are you in for some fevery, itchy, rashtastic fun! Measles is back!

Thanks to modern medicine and mass immunization, by the year 2000, measles was considered all but eliminated from the US. But then along came Jenny McCarthy’s tinfoil hat theories that vaccines caused autism, and dick parents who assumed that other kids’ immunity would protect their kids and that vaccines were government mind control drugs made out of cancer proliferated.

And, as a result, 2011 clocked in the highest number of measles cases in the last 15 years. While 222 doesn’t sound like a big number, consider what happened in France, another country that, for all its good qualities, contains a large number of assholes who chose to forego vaccination. According to LiveScience, France experienced from 30 to 40 cases of measles from 2005 to 2007, about 1,000 cases in 2009, and about 15,000 cases in 2011. Last year, 30,000 people in mainland Europe came down with the measles.

The whooping cough has enjoyed an upswing in popularity thanks to non-vaccination; in Fraser Valley, British Colombia, about 250 people have come down with The Whoops, and in Wausau, Wisconsin, about 100 people have recently gotten sick. Whooping cough, like measles, can be deadly to babies and people with weakened immune systems.

Don’t be an asshole. Vaccinate your kids.

Parents?  Vaccines do not cause autism!  I don’t care what Jenny McCarthy’s “mommy instincts” or “google-fu” says, and I care even less what Donald Trump’s toupee thinks.

There, that should be good for a week or two.

*Note:  All comments about BigPharma paymasters is satire based on the number one response from anti-vaccine wackaloons when confronted by actual science.  My views on vaccines are based on science and evidence.  If any BigPharma company feels the need to cut me a check, by all means, get in touch.  It wouldn’t change my views, but it would definitely change my bank account.  And yes, that was also satire. *wink wink*  Get in touch.

Mitt Romney: Who Cares If He’s a Mormon, He’s an Asshole.

I’ve recently made a couple posts stating that I do not want Romney to lose based on his religion.  No matter how many issues I have with Mormonism (and there are quite a few, believe me) there is no religious test for office.  (To put it bluntly, every president we’ve ever had, with the notable exception of a few of our first presidents,  has believed in batshit insane things, who cares if Romney believes batshit insane things that are slightly different?)

But I do want him to lose.  Badly.  Mandate badly.  I’d be happier if it was Santorum nominated this year, so perhaps the GOP could finally move away from the far right at the end of the cycle, but still.  2 Supreme Court justices are probably at stake this cycle.  The base of the GOP has pushed a War on Women and economic policies that would be funny if they weren’t serious about them.  And Mitt Romney, quite frankly, is an asshole.  I am not a communist.  My political beliefs are socialist libertarian.  I believe in capitalism, although I have issues with unregulated capitalism and the belief that the market will solve all problems.  And Mitt Romney is a perfect example of the bad side of capitalism.  I’ll let the Rude Pundit explain:

Describing his successful business career at Bain & Company and Bain Capital last night after winning who the fuck cares which primaries, Mitt Romney said, “I became successful by helping start a business that grew from 10 people to hundreds of people.” That was actually Bain Capital, which he founded with other rich prickfaces. After once again listing the few companies we’ve heard of that were successes once Bain came in, Romney continued, “I’d tell you that not every business made it and there were good days and bad days, but every day was a lesson.”

“Huh,” the Rude Pundit thought. “I wonder which day or which business he was talking about.” Was it Georgetown Steel in South Carolina, which was gutted by Bain once it took over, with managers “replaced by people who knew nothing of steel,” with equipment upgrades avoided, with union benefits cut, which was fine for making the quick buck Bain wanted it to make so it could look better on paper and be sold, but not so good for making, you know, steel products, and Georgetown was driven into bankruptcy.

Or was it a bad day when a Bain-run corporation bought a paper plant in Marion, Indiana, in 1994 and immediately fired everyone who worked there and forced them to reapply for their jobs “at lower wages and a 50 percent cut in health-care benefits”? When the workers striked, Bain closed it down and shipped the jobs to Mexico. Was that a bad day or a good day? It’s hard to tell. Probably both, depending on where your paycheck was at the end of it.

Was it a bad day when Bain’s management, specifically Romney’s, created the financial situation that forced a Kansas City steel mill to close after 100 years in business, with 750 people losing their jobs and the pension fund shorted by $44 million? Or maybe ask the 1700 workers laid off from Dade International in Illinois after Bain took over?

The thing that President Obama needs to keep in mind about Mitt Romney is that he is a ruthless, amoral son of a bitch. Like Bain Capital, he makes promises that are lies when they get in the way of his greater good or his bottom line. With his polished smile and primped hair, Romney is one of the most outright depraved and evil sociopaths ever to run for office, and that’s including Richard Nixon and Pat Robertson.

Beware the man who presents himself as honorable when his actions have demonstrated nothing but disgrace.

 

Babies Are Tasty, Dammit!

From Jezebel comes further evidence of the disconnect between reality and the far right.

Just as zombies crave the delicious chewy flesh of the human brain, so too do pro-abortion rights people crave nothing more than to abort the shit out of every pregnancy. We’re like hormonal teenagers. We’ll abort anything that walks. All day we dream about abortion. At least, according to Mississippi Governor and personhood advocate Phil Bryant.

Got me.  Hell, not only do I keep a coat hanger in my backpack, but I refuse to wear condoms just on the off chance that I’d make a fetus to abort!

Snark aside, what did misogynist Mississippi Governor Phil Bryant say to elicit such furious sarcasm?

You would think that Barack Obama and all those on the left that love so much to talk about women’s health care would rush to support this bill, would just say, ‘absolutely we want the strongest health care, we want admissions privileges, we want that women that is going through that abortion for her life and safety to be paramount,’ well it should be the paramount of the child.

Even if you believe in abortion, the hypocrisy of the left that now tried to kill this bill, that says that I should have never signed it, the true hypocrisy is that their one mission in life is to abort children, is to kill children in the womb. It doesn’t really matter, they don’t care if the mother’s life is in jeopardy, that if something goes wrong that a doctor can’t admit them to a local hospital, that he’s not even board certified. We passed that bill and I think you’ll see other states follow and when that happens at least these fly-in abortionists are going to be regulated under the state laws of the Medical Procedures Act here in the state of Mississippi as they should be across the nation.

Dude, I’m an atheist!  How am I supposed to eat babies if they get aborted?  Enough snark from me, how about some more from Jezebel:

This guy is a governor. Of an entire state.

Thinking that pro-abortion rights is the same as being pro-abortion for everyone is like thinking that being pro-marriage equality is the same as wanting everyone to get gay married. Offering women in Mississippi access to choice will result in a healthier, happier, more economically solvent population. And will also result in millions in profits for those of us who have sunk all of our retirement money into The Secret Liberal Abortion Millionaires Fund.

Dammit, The Secret Liberal Abortion Millionaires Fund was supposed to be a secret!  Just like the abortion-plex was supposed to be our ace in the hole until those meddling pro-lifers proved they couldn’t tell satire from reality if their lives and souls depended upon it.

Perhaps the Only Way “Abstinence-Only” Could Ever Work

Tip of the hat to Jezebel for pointing this out.

 

Your “Wait….What?” of the Day

As I once again state that I really don’t want Romney to lose in November because he is Mormon.  I want him to lose because he is a serial flip-flopper with no spine who cares nothing about anyone but the mega rich.

From the ChristianNewsWire!

Keller, who has never told anyone who to or not to vote for and never endorses any political candidate said, “Christians have a real dilemma this November. It is like Satan flipping a two-headed coin with his head on both sides. How can anyone who claims to be a follower of Christ vote for our current President who in every word and deed has proven to be a true enemy of God on every major spiritual issue of the day. He has been a staunch advocate for the legalized slaughter of babies, promoted the radical homosexual agenda, and been a friend to the enemies of Israel.”

Keller went on, “The Republican choice will be a member of the satanic Mormon cult who will never have to say a word for his cult to take advantage of their ultimate goal since they were founded 200 years ago, and that is to gain mainstream acceptance, giving them all the ammunition they need to aggressively seek converts to their cults beliefs. Conservative estimates are that they will gain at least 1 million new converts, meaning a Romney election will help insure at least 1 million souls will burn in hell for all eternity! Any ‘Christian leader’ who supports Romney obviously cares more about politics than souls!!!”

Keller concluded, “For Christians to vote with a clear conscience, they will have to pray hard about ALL candidates for President, meaning looking at the third party candidates as well. In the end, as I shared last November a Romney/Obama match-up means that God has finally taken His hand of protection and blessing off of this nation for our gross sins and wickedness. The reality is, NO politician has the true answers this nation needs, since our true problems are spiritual and not political, and the only hope for the United States is to repent of our sins and turn back to God and Biblical Truth.”

Well, at least this Keller fellow is obviously an unhinged lunatic.  Not like anyone is going to pay any attention to him, amirite?

About Live Prayer: In 1999 Bill Keller launched LivePrayer.com. It has gone on to become the most successful online Christian ministry in the history of the internet. Each morning, Bill Keller’s Daily Devotional that he has written every morning for over 12 years is emailed to over 2.4 million subscribers worldwide.

Oh, for fucks sake….

Forbes Gets It: Prohibition Doesn’t Work

(A big hat tip to Ed Brayton at Dispatches from the Culture Wars for highlighting this article.)

Count Forbes magazine contributor, economist Art Carden as the latest voice of reason speaking out against the failure that is the War on Drugs.  On the eve of 4/20, he published a piece entitled “Let’s Be Blunt: It’s Time to End the Drug War.”  (Fair warning:  The article currently has a very annoying watch advertisement that repeats endlessly.  In my browser (firefox) the buttons to end or mute it do not work.)

Should drugs—especially marijuana—be legal? The answer is “yes.” Immediately. Without hesitation. Do not pass Go. Do not collect $200 seized in a civil asset forfeiture. The war on drugs has been a dismal failure. It’s high time to end prohibition. Even if you aren’t willing to go whole-hog and legalize all drugs, at the very least we should legalize marijuana.

For the sake of the argument, let’s go ahead and assume that everything you’ve heard about the dangers of drugs is completely true. That probably means that using drugs is a terrible idea. It doesn’t mean, however, that the drug war is a good idea.

Prohibition is a textbook example of a policy with negative unintended consequences. Literally: it’s an example in the textbook I use in my introductory economics classes (Cowen and Tabarrok, Modern Principles of Economics if you’re curious) and in the most popular introductory economics textbook in the world (by N. Gregory Mankiw).The demand curve for drugs is extremely inelastic, meaning that people don’t change their drug consumption very much in response to changes in prices. Therefore, vigorous enforcement means higher prices and higher revenues for drug dealers.

So the stricter the enforcement, the higher the profits.  Meanwhile, more and more citizens become “otherized” with drug conviction and prison sentences, forcing them into a permanent under class.

But doesn’t the War on Drugs take violent criminals off the streets?

People associate the drug trade with crime and violence; indeed, the newspapers occasionally feature stories about drug kingpins doing horrifying things to underlings and competitors. These aren’t caused by the drugs themselves but from the fact that they are illegal (which means the market is underground) and addictive (which means demanders aren’t very price sensitive).

Those same newspapers will also occasionally feature articles about how this or that major dealer has been taken down or about how this or that quantity of drugs was taken off the streets. Apparently we’re to take from this the idea that we’re going to “win” the war on drugs. Apparently. It’s alleged that this is only a step toward getting “Mister Big,” but even if the government gets “Mister Big,” it’s not going to matter. Apple didn’t disappear after Steve Jobs died. Getting “Mr. Big” won’t win the drug war. As I pointed out almost a year ago, economist and drug policy expert Jeffrey Miron estimates that we would have a lot less violence without a war on drugs.

At the recent Association of Private Enterprise Education conference, David Henderson from the Naval Postgraduate School pointed out the myriad ways in which government promises to make us safer in fact imperil our safety and security. The drug war is an obvious example: in the name of making us safer and protecting us from drugs, we are actually put in greater danger. Without meaning to, the drug warriors have turned American cities into war zones and eroded the very freedoms we hold dear.

I’ve been making these arguments for years now.  Every year of casualties from this misguided war wakes more and more people up.  Many in law enforcement have come to the same conclusion.  (See LEAP)

Albert Einstein is reported to have said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. By this definition, the drug war is insane. We are no safer, and we are certainly less free because of concerted efforts to wage war on drugs. It’s time to stop the insanity and end prohibition.

Cheers to Art Carden for speaking out, and to Forbes for giving him the soapbox.  Eventually perhaps, we can bring this insanity to a close.

Prison Fellowship: Shuffling the Numbers

As an ex-felon and an atheist, let me tell you that you never feel more alone in your lack of belief as you do in prison.  Let me stress that anecdotes do not equal evidence, but literally everyone I met in prison was religious.  I have no doubt that a good percentage of that religiosity was intended for the parole board, but a decent amount was sincere belief as well.  Religion was pushed as a way to turn your life around, and even though many prisoners will return to prison after release, very few want to return.

When I was in state prison, I was inmate leader of a therapeutic community for drug offenders.  I ran classes for other inmates discussing S.O.S, Rational Recovery, and SMART, non-religious alternatives to 12 step programs.  My classes were not popular, and one of the main complaints about my leadership of the community was my atheism, even though I rarely brought it up.  When you graduated the program, the other inmates each get to say something to you in front of the group, basically “good luck and I hope I never see you again” type of thing.  18 of the 25 members of the community used this time at my graduation to urge me to find Jesus.

I bring this up because of a post I found at The Atheist Experience this week.  Chuck Colson died this week.  Besides being a Watergate felon, Mr. Colson’s claim to fame has been his extreme Christian beliefs and his prison ministry.  I have no reason to doubt the sincerity of Mr. Colson’s born again experience.  I feel that his brand of evangelical Christianity has done much harm, but I do not doubt that he thought he was doing good.  One of his greatest “successes,” one that he spared no breath in highlighting at every opportunity, was the success of his Prison Fellowship.

What Colson claimed was that they studied the recidivism rates of prisoners who completed his ministry program and compared them with those who did not.  Recidivism means that within a certain amount of time after they were released from prison, they were reincarcerated for committing new crimes.  Colson always argued the study demonstrated that those who completed the program experienced a significantly decreased recidivism rate.

So if all you did was listen to Colson, his prison fellowship seemed like a rousing success.  Inmates who completed the program were less likely to return to prison, it says so right there, you can’t argue with the data.

Friends, you are about to see exactly how you can cook the data to show anything you want it to show.

What he didn’t tell you is that the standards for “completing” the program dramatically skew the numbers in his favor.  A person is only defined as a graduate if they stick with the program for a period of time, then are released from jail, and get a job after their release.  In other words, a person who sat in on the ministry classes for the required amount of time, left the program, and then couldn’t find a job, wouldn’t be considered to have completed a program.  Therefore, if they were arrested later, that would be counted as a win for Colson, because they didn’t do what they what they were supposed to, therefore this proves that failing to “complete” the program was correlated with their arrest.

But this is a total cheat.  If you simply removed the ministry from the equation, and only compared prisoners who got a job to those who didn’t get a job, obviously the employed prisoners would be far less likely to go back to jail.  They don’t need to steal stuff to get money!  So here we have Chuck Colson deliberately excluding the group most likely to go back to jail, and then giving his ministry credit for something that happens after they leave.  The study doesn’t even attempt to demonstrate that people who take the program are more likely to get jobs.

In fact, what the study showed when you looked at the raw numbers was that among prisoners who simply entered the program — including both graduates and “dropouts”, the recidivism rates were slightly higher than the control group that wasn’t involved at all.  Or to put it simply, if the program had not existed at all, it’s possible that fewer of them would have returned to jail.

Today’s lesson?  Anytime you are presented with a study that trumpets the effectiveness of a similar program, make sure you can actually see the data, and not just their interpretation of the data.  Especially studies relating to drug addiction and/or recidivism rates.  Believe me, I’ve seen internal AA data.  To call 12 step programs ineffective would be a gift.  Prison ministries rarely do any real good in the lives of inmates.

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