That's interesting...

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

Olympia Snowe Pt. 1

I don't know about this. As Jon Stewart points out, Olympia Snowe didn't write this book until she'd retired from Congress. Furthermore, she remains a Republican. So how much of this is just an attempt to excuse herself from what has happened to our country?

Remember, in 2009, when Mitch McConnell told Congressional Republicans that they would stonewall Barack Obama, that they would give him no legislative successes, that they would make sure he was a one-term president by refusing to go along with anything, our economy was in free fall.

These Republicans had crashed our economy - the world economy, in fact - and the collapse looked to have no bottom. Businessmen were beginning to panic. Investors were panicking. It was already the worst economic collapse since the Great Depression, with the potential to keep collapsing even further.

So what was these GOP leaders' number one concern? To make sure they did nothing to help matters. Indeed, to make sure they did everything they could to thwart Obama's attempts to halt the collapse and start the economy growing again. To give him no successes at all, no matter what.

At a time of huge peril for America and their fellow Americans, it was all about politics with them. They were terrified that Barack Obama would be another Franklin D. Roosevelt, a Democrat who came into office and fixed the disasters left by his Republican predecessor, dooming their party for the next generation.

Did Olympia Snowe quit the Republican Party then? Did she speak out publicly against Mitch McConnell? Did she stand up for America, or just go along with this unpatriotic plan?

Snowe says "the wheels came off so soon in the (Obama) Administration and with Congress." Note the passive voice? What she should have said is that the Republican Party deliberately removed those wheels, for their own political gain, at a time of great peril for our country (the worst economic collapse since the Great Depression, two ongoing wars, plus the 'war on terror,' and record-breaking budget deficits).

Instead, she calls that "surprising," when, as Stewart points out, she shouldn't have been surprised by that at all. Heck, they had a meeting where they decided to deliberately remove those 'wheels.' So how could she claim to have been surprised by the fact that the wheels actually came off?

That's why I can't respect Olympia Snowe. Yeah, she writes a self-serving book after leaving Congress. Big deal! Everyone does that. But she didn't stand up for America when it counted. And she still hasn't left the GOP or put the blame where it clearly belongs.

There's another thing here. She claims that we're the problem, that we haven't been vocal enough in communicating our wishes to our Congressmen. Maybe. But it seems to me that we were vocal as hell when it came to universal background checks for gun purchases. And we had 90% of Americans on our side, too. (90% when asked about the specific issue; less than that - those still a large majority - if it was linked to Obama's name, thanks to partisan politics.)

But one lobbyist for gun manufacturers managed to derail all that! That's not our fault, but the fault of the system.

OK, it is our fault, in a way, because we made the mistake, years ago, of electing Republican presidents who appointed right-wing extremists to the Supreme Court. And those extremists made a horrendously bad decision in Citizens United.

One more moderate Democrat on the court would have given us the opposite decision. One more moderate Democrat on the court in 2000 would have let Florida recount the votes in the presidential election, rather than appointing George W. Bush, the worst president in U.S. history. One more moderate Democrat on the court would have made the difference in many important cases.

And yes, we elected those Republicans who let the NRA dictate policy. This is our fault, in a collective sense. But given the situation we've got now, the immense stranglehold money has on our political system, it's naive, if not disingenuous, to blame the rest of us for not speaking up enough.

It's true, of course, that we need to speak up. Indeed, that's pretty much the only avenue for change we've got. And we need to VOTE. Democratic constituencies - progressives, young people, minorities - are notorious for being unreliable voters, especially in non-presidential elections. That's why we fill Congress with Republicans.

So yes, it is our fault, technically-speaking. But this is still a snow job from Snowe. She's trying to excuse her own party - and her own inaction - by shifting the blame to us. It would be bad enough if she apologized, now that her apology won't hurt her politically, but she won't even go that far.

I have no respect for this kind of thing.

___
PS. The second part of her interview is here.

Wednesday, May 15, 2013

A GOP empathy problem

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

An Empathy Problem

Funny, don't you think? I especially like how Jessica Williams points out how this Republican remains dogmatically ignorant when it comes to other issues. "Mostly, you're still not susceptible to reality." No kidding!

But just because he's had some slight insight into immigration - and make no mistake, that is admirable, for all she's making fun of him - he's now called "traitor" and, um, "excrement" by his fellow conservatives.

Oh, well. To tell the truth, I can't tell if he's really that clueless or just a good sport - probably both, I suspect. But it is funny.

Tuesday, May 14, 2013

To hell with the Men's Rights Movement

This is a follow-up to Steve Shives' "Five Stupid Things about the Men's Rights Movement," which I posted here a couple of weeks ago.

Now, that was part of his "Five Stupid Things" series, which has covered just about everything and everyone, including himself. I mean, the video wasn't at all unusual. He did one about atheists, too (and he is one).

But he's clearly pissed off today, and I understand it. Well, I said it before. As a man, I find the so-called men's rights movement horribly embarrassing. As far as I'm concerned, it's pretty much equivalent to the white supremacist movement, which also claims, often enough, to just be sticking up for white people against rampant discrimination.

And the whining about what pathetic victims we poor men are,... well, how can I not be embarrassed by that? Yeah, we suffer so much from domestic violence, don't we? And we're always being sexually assaulted by women. It's enough to make you cry like a... man, isn't it?

Anyway, I agree with Shives about all of this, including the part about radical feminists, who are clearly on the fringe of the feminist movement, while the men's rights movement is misogynistic at its core. Similarly, there have been, and still are, radicals in the black civil rights movement, but that doesn't mean the civil rights movement in general is equivalent to white supremacist groups.

Yes, I even understand the anger of radicals in the feminist and civil rights movements, though I don't usually agree with their tactics. But I don't understand the men's rights movement or white supremacists at all.

Honestly, they're just embarrassing. (And it's especially embarrassing to find, not just patriarchal religious fundamentalists, but even atheists arguing that kind of crap.)

The Falkland Islands wolf

(Paul D. Stewart/Naturepl.com)

Have you ever heard of the Falkland Islands wolf? (The image above is from a 1773 engraving.) I hadn't.

Apparently, it was a large predator discovered on the Falkland Islands when explorers first landed there, but the Falklands are so isolated they had no other native land mammal - not even rodents. So it was quite the mystery.

These canines ate seabirds, and they were completely unafraid of people. So, of course, they didn't last long. It's really a fascinating, if rather depressing, story.

From New Scientist:

With no natural enemies, the wolves were unafraid of humans. The crew of the Welfare easily captured one and kept it aboard for months until it jumped overboard in the South Seas, reportedly startled by the firing of a cannon. ...

Because of their fearlessness the wolves were regarded as vermin. In The Voyage of the Beagle, Darwin wrote: "They have been observed to enter a tent, and actually pull some meat from beneath the head of a sleeping seaman. The Gauchos also have frequently in the evening killed them, by holding out a piece of meat in one hand, and in the other a knife ready to stick them."

Darwin seemed to be the only person who understood the implications of this bloody relationship. "Within a very few years after these islands shall have become regularly settled, in all probability this fox will be classed with the dodo," he wrote. He himself contributed to the wolf's decline by bringing four specimens back to England.

During this era of exploration, the discovery of a new canid species was not in itself remarkable. They had turned up almost everywhere else, from the Arctic to the Sahara. But the Falklands were different. Isolated and remote, they belonged to ocean-going species such as penguins, albatrosses and seals. Until colonists arrived there were no land mammals whatsoever – except for the wolf.

The anomaly was not lost on Darwin. "As far as I am aware," he wrote, "there is no other instance in any part of the world, of so small a mass of broken land, distant from a continent, possessing so large a quadruped peculiar to itself."

According to this article, modern DNA testing indicates that the Falkland Islands wolf was closely related to an extinct fox-like animal which lived in South America. At the height of the last ice age, about 16,000 years ago, the oceans were lower, so there was just a narrow strait between the mainland and the Falkland Islands.

Apparently, most biologists think the ancestors of this wolf walked across when the strait was frozen over. Twenty kilometers of ice wouldn't be much for them, but would be a pretty effective barrier for rodents and other small animals. And there would be plenty of seabirds for food, even then.

This seems to be a pretty good explanation of the puzzle, if not guaranteed. But we can't expect guarantees in cases like this, can we? I still think it's fascinating.

But it's kind of depressing, too, that a harmless animal, completely unafraid of human beings, would be slaughtered like this. I was going to say "for no reason," and yeah, those sailors were killing them just for sport. But sheep ranchers wouldn't like to have any predators around, and I suppose their fur had some value.

But it is depressing that they'd slaughter all of them, completely unconcerned about destroying such a unique and interesting species.

Monday, May 13, 2013

Racist study targets Latinos

I just had to post this, given that, last week, I noted a Pew report showing that Hispanic high school graduates were attending college at a higher rate than white kids. Funny, huh?

But this kind of thing really isn't so funny. These racist IQ-based attacks - which aren't actually valid, not according to the experts - are nothing less than eugenics. But right-wingers like them, because if everything's genetic, then there's no reason to educate disadvantaged populations. Obviously, it's just God's will, right?

And, of course, the overwhelming majority of right-wingers are white, and who doesn't like to think they're just naturally smarter than everyone else?

But there's more to it than that, since Jason Richwine was the co-author of a recent, and very controversial, immigration report by the right-wing Heritage Foundation. That report wasn't about IQ, but was very much anti-immigrant, so this discovery of Richwine's dissertation is certainly pertinent.

Here's ThinkProgress:

The Heritage Foundation’s analysis of the economic consequences of immigration reform uses absurd methodology to come to conclusions entirely at odds with the organization’s own findings in 2006. Perhaps one explanation for this incoherence is that one of the paper’s coauthors, a new hire, opposes Hispanic immigration because he thinks Latinos are stupid.

Jason Richwine joined Heritage in 2010, after finishing his PhD in Public Policy in 2009. The Washington Post’s Dylan Matthews dug up Richwine’s dissertation, which was titled “IQ And Immigration.” In it, Richwine argues that Hispanics have and will always have lower IQs than whites. Matthews summarizes:

Richwine’s dissertation asserts that there are deep-set differentials in intelligence between races. While it’s clear he thinks it is partly due to genetics — ‘the totality of the evidence suggests a genetic component to group differences in IQ’ — he argues the most important thing is that the differences in group IQs are persistent, for whatever reason. He writes, ‘No one knows whether Hispanics will ever reach IQ parity with whites, but the prediction that new Hispanic immigrants will have low-IQ children and grandchildren is difficult to argue against.‘

... The study of race and intelligence has long been a problematic area for conservatives. In 1994, conservative pundit Charles Murray wrote a book called The Bell Curve, whose argument that blacks are on-average less intelligent than whites kicked off a critical firestorm. Conservatives since have generally defended Murray (who currently works at the American Enterprise Institute), occasionally citing him to get to some unsavory conclusions. Recently published research does not support the idea that there is an identifiably racial IQ gap, and the difficulty in defining “race” as a biological term makes it hard to pin down an appropriate methodology for studying the question in the first place.

Richwine is not the only author of the Heritage report with questionable views. Robert Rector, the paper’s lead author, was the source for then candidate Romney’s racially charged attack on President Obama’s welfare policy, and has spent his career dismissing the idea that poverty hurts people. On Tuesday, Rector admitted he hadn’t read the whole immigration bill before coauthoring his analysis of it with Richwine.

I just want to make a couple of points here. First, the whole issue of race-based IQ differences is nonsensical for any number of different reasons, starting with the fact that we don't really know what we're measuring.

Or how about the fact that the average IQ of any group is meaningless, since there are always variations within the group? (Your own 'race' may average anything at all, but what does that have to do with you?)

But the stupidest thing about it might be that any genetic effect on intelligence is already part of the equation. You can't do anything about that, even if you are limited genetically. We've already got what we've got (and that applies even when it comes to immigrants, since millions are already here).

On the other hand, the genetic contribution to your intelligence is, at best, only a contributing factor, so that doesn't indicate what intelligence you'll actually have. We already know of many environmental factors which affect intelligence quite strongly, both positively and negatively. So if we were actually concerned about having smart citizens, we could do something about it.

But that would take spending on social programs - early childhood education, nutrition, etc. - which these same right-wingers adamantly oppose. Therefore, it's abundantly clear that they're not actually concerned about raising our average IQ,... so, what's the whole point about these race-based IQ claims? They don't seem to make any sense at all, unless they're just being racist for racism's sake.

Are you concerned about IQ or not? If you are, let's do something about it. There's plenty we could do, though it will cost tax dollars (and there's nothing we can do about our genetic potential for intelligence, whether it's race-based or not). But are these right-wingers going to put their money where their mouth is? Let's see them put up or shut up.

The second thing I want to point out is that this is apparently the conservative response to hugely losing the Hispanic vote in last November's election. Remember the soul-searching Republicans were going to do? They just couldn't figure out why they were losing Latinos like this.

They knew why they'd already lost African Americans. Obviously, that's a result of their notorious 'Southern strategy' of deliberately wooing white racists. Well, Republicans, guess what? You've still got a party filled with white racists, and they don't like Hispanics any better than they like blacks.

And when your think tanks hire racists to create studies attacking immigration,... do you actually think that Hispanics are too dumb to notice? I think they're going to prove you wrong about that. (Maybe you should have noticed their rising college-enrollment numbers before trying something like this.)

Guns are not toys

Crazy, isn't it? It's hardly even news anymore when a child kills himself or someone else with a gun. (Last week, it was a two-year-old who shot himself with a pistol he was playing with.)

And now they're marketing guns as toys? Pink guns? Real guns? It's just insane. Guns aren't toys.

Saturday, May 11, 2013

I'm doing my part

(Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal)

Friday, May 10, 2013

The big tent of secularism

I've noted that, even in the atheist community, there's a backlash against women's rights. Atheism Plus gets a lot of criticism, too, and message boards are flooded with angry objections from the so-called 'men's rights movement.'

In a way, that's not surprising (though it's certainly depressing), because we atheists don't necessarily have anything in common but our disbelief in gods. We can be of any political persuasion, accept any economic theories, and even believe in woo, provided it's not religious. The definition of "atheist" is rather narrow, after all.

We're not even all atheists for the same reason. I'm an atheist because I'm a skeptic. But you don't have to be a skeptic to be an atheist, and some skeptics - not particularly good ones, I'd say - are theists. (Many more skeptics, atheists themselves, just think that it hurts the skepticism movement to be associated with atheism.)

Given all this, I'll note that there's been considerable criticism of the Women in Secularism conference next week. Again, I'm disappointed by that, but I'm no longer surprised.

However, I really like this column by Jim Underdown of the Center for Inquiry:

Should women be motivated to strengthen their specific secular position in our society? Hell yes! Or do what? Sit back and take it for another 1000 years? I wouldn’t…

Which brings me to a general response…

ANY large group who feels like they have a particular beef with religion (or pseudoscience, or other wacky beliefs) has a legitimate interest in addressing that problem as a group.

At CFI-L.A., we’ve hosted Black Skeptics, Spanish-speaking atheists, gay and lesbian humanists, and others who’ve had specific troubles in our society based on who they fundamentally are. And I say, welcome to our tent.

Ideally, our whole movement is a coalition of individuals and groups who all have an interest in promoting a secular and reason-based society. And if some of those groups want to get together to fine-tune their methods for dealing with and changing this uber-religious society we live in, more power to them.

How can we help?

We're not all going to agree on anything. So what? Even theists should have good reason to support the separation of church and state - and many do. So I'll eagerly work with them on the issues where we do agree.

Atheism Plus isn't atheism. It's atheism PLUS. You can disagree without getting all bent out of shape over it. In general, atheists do support women's rights (maybe because religions are so often in opposition?). In general, we tend to be socially progressive and economically liberal, but that certainly doesn't describe all of us.

But more to the point, different subgroups within atheism have their own particular concerns. We're a varied people, and we don't all face the same issues.

Among African Americans, black churches historically took a strong leadership role in civil rights issues, simply because Christian pastors were pretty much the only black leaders who were allowed to exist by white racists, and churches were pretty much the only place black people were allowed to gather in groups.

This history makes things more difficult for African American atheists. It's certainly not an issue I face, but it is an issue for some atheists.

As Underdown notes, women "have been getting screwed by religion since well before whatever fiction writer dreamt up the story of The Fall in Genesis." Yes. And our whole culture has been patriarchal, since Christianity was - and still is, to a large extent - patriarchal. Even those of us who are atheists grew up in that culture, and we tend to think of it as normal.

That's a particular issue for women, and the misogyny of many male atheists shows that it's an important one. Furthermore, focusing on women's issues in a conference like this doesn't imply that men aren't important or that we don't face problems in a religion-dominated world, too.

It isn't dismissing men to focus on women's issues sometimes, just like it isn't dismissing white people to focus on African American concerns sometimes, or dismissing straight people by focusing on LGBT issues sometimes. That's the whole point of a 'big tent' approach.

Underdown is right. We all have the same basic interests as atheists, as secularists. We shouldn't be angry when different groups of people focus on concerns specific to them. Instead, we should ask how we can help.

Thursday, May 9, 2013

A bold move on student loans

I love this woman! Sen. Elizabeth Warren has been asking the tough questions, thanks to her seat on the Senate Banking Committee (and again, I have to thank the Democratic Party for giving her that opportunity, despite her lack of seniority), and that's been wonderful!

But now? Her first bill proposes a really bold move on student loans - but one which is hard to oppose, don't you think? Why give the big banks such a benefit - pretty much a guaranteed profit - when we won't do the same for American students?

From TPM:

On July 1, without action from Congress, Stafford loan interest rates for some 7 million students are set to double from 3.4 percent to 6.8 percent.

Warren’s first-ever standalone legislation, introduced Wednesday, would prevent that hike and take the additional step of cutting the rate to 0.75 percent — the same rate that big banks are allowed to borrow at — for one year until Congress can achieve a more permanent fix.

“Our students are being crushed by debt,” Warren told TPM in an interview late Wednesday. ...

“The taxpayers are investing in the big banks,” Warren said. “I think the taxpayers should invest in our students. And so I just want the same great deal for both of them.” ...

A study this year by the Congressional Budget Office found that for every dollar the federal government offers in student loans, it makes 36 cents in profit. ...

In her floor speech unveiling the legislation Wednesday, she said that if no action is taken, “the federal government is going to charge students interest rates that are nine times higher than the rates for the biggest banks — the same banks that destroyed millions of jobs and nearly broke this economy. That isn’t right.”

She's correct. That isn't right. And it's high time we invested in our country again, invested in our children again, instead of these continual giveaways to the super-rich.

___
Since we're speaking of education, here's something else from TPM which I think is very interesting:

Hispanic high school graduates enrolled in college at a higher rate than whites for the first time ever, according to U.S. Census data analyzed by the Pew Research Center.

Sixty-nine percent of Hispanic graduates enrolled in college in fall of 2012, compared to 67 percent of white high school graduates who did so.

Is that going to blow some right-wing minds? We tend to hear Republicans complaining about Hispanics swelling welfare rolls or burdening social services, not that they're attending college at a higher rate than white kids.

Now, true, this study also notes that "Hispanic students are less likely to enroll in a four-year college, less likely to attend college full-time and less likely to finish their degree." And they might be less likely to graduate from high school in the first place. But Hispanics are not just migrant farm-workers, people! They're enrolling in college at a higher rate than whites!

That's impressive, given our history of bigotry and the lower average income of Hispanic Americans. Note that, while I'm not implying that "Hispanic" is equivalent to "immigrant," not at all, there are many first- and second-generation Americans in the Hispanic community, so this is doubly impressive.

Of course, I'd have to add that it's shameful to see the college rate of Americans of any ethnicity at less than 70% - this is the 21st Century, people! - but maybe Elizabeth Warren's bill will help with that. Let's not forget that China has more people in college than we have people.

Hmm,... I wonder how the bigots will react to this, if it gets much publicity. Well, I do enjoy seeing right-wing heads explode. After all, that's harmless entertainment. It's not as though they use their heads for anything.

Blasphemy riots: 'Offend me and I'll kill you'

I like how Cenk Uygur puts it:

"Think about how ridiculous this is. 'I'm so offended that anyone would say anything against my beliefs, that I'm going to do rioting that kills 20 people.' ... Well, you know what I'm offended by? The giant fires I'm looking at! The twenty people who were killed! Because you didn't want to have your feelings hurt!

"What are you so scared of? If you're so positive that your god is correct and that your religion is correct, why would you hide, why would you run, from a little debate? So somebody says you're wrong, and you say you're right,... you've got God on your side! What are you afraid of?

"You know that God is all-powerful, right? According to your texts, whether you're a Christian or a Jew or a Muslim. All-powerful. He's got heaven and hell. What are you going to do with your stupid riot that heaven and hell can't accomplish?

"But no, no, no, no, no, they're so insecure that they have to say, 'no, no, no, if anybody disagrees with us, violence,... and we're going to put them in jail.' In other words, you don't believe. You don't believe at all. If you believed, you'd have such great peace of mind. And you wouldn't have to worry what anybody said about Islam. ...

But the reality is that you don't believe. You don't think you're going to go to heaven, you don't think that guy's going to go to hell, and that's why you're so insecure. So that's why if anybody even whispers of saying something against Islam, or your interpretation of Islam, 'that's it, I'm rioting! Who do I murder? Who do I kill?'

Yeah, way to stand up for your religion. Yeah, that makes a ton of sense. No, that's the exact opposite of sense. It makes your religion look terrible, it makes you look ridiculous, it makes you look weak,... and not very bright."

Amen, brother!

As an atheist, here's how I look at it:

(Jesus and Mo)

I'm an atheist. Of course I see it like that! But why do you see it like that, too? If you're supposed to believe in that afterlife you claim exists, and that god you claim exists, then why would you threaten, why would you kill, why would you worry about nonbelievers at all?

Is your god so weak, so ineffective, that he can't punish us himself, if that's really what he wants to do? Aren't we supposedly going to be punished for eternity after we die? So why does your god need you to punish us now?

Furthermore, maybe you'll succeed in converting nonbelievers. Maybe your argument will finally make sense and we'll see the light. But that won't happen if we're dead, will it? So you've just denied your god another convert. How will he like that?

Cenk Uygur is right. You don't actually believe what you claim to believe. In fact, you know it's not true, don't you? But you desperately want to believe it, so you think if you can only silence everybody else, then maybe you'll finally succeed in believing it, yourself.

But that's not how it works. You'll still have those doubts, even if you succeed in killing everyone on Earth. You're the problem, not me.

Abstinence-only sex education teaches rape victims they're worthless, dirty, filthy

(Elizabeth Smart)

Remember Elizabeth Smart? Kidnapped from her home when she was just 14, forced into a polygamous 'marriage,' chained up and raped for nine months?

It was very good news when she was discovered and returned to her family, and, thankfully, it didn't take ten years or more, as it did with those three young women recently rescued in Cleveland (originally 14, 16, and 20 when they were abducted).

But there's better news than that, since Elizabeth Smart is really making something of her life, as she runs a foundation which helps educate children about sex crimes. And she knows what she's talking about, wouldn't you say?

From Think Progress:

She explained that some human trafficking victims don’t run away because they feel worthless after being raped, particularly if they have been raised in conservative cultures that push abstinence-only education and emphasize sexual purity:

Smart said she “felt so dirty and so filthy” after she was raped by her captor, and she understands why someone wouldn’t run “because of that alone.”

Smart spoke at a Johns Hopkins human trafficking forum, saying she was raised in a religious household and recalled a school teacher who spoke once about abstinence and compared sex to chewing gum.

“I thought, ‘Oh, my gosh, I’m that chewed up piece of gum, nobody re-chews a piece of gum, you throw it away.’ And that’s how easy it is to feel like you no longer have worth, you no longer have value,” Smart said. “Why would it even be worth screaming out? Why would it even make a difference if you are rescued? Your life still has no value.”

Now in her mid-twenties, Smart runs a foundation to help educate children about sexual crimes. She now believes that children should grow up learning that “you will always have value and nothing can change that.”

Social psychologists and sexual abuse counselors agree that comprehensive sex education can help prevent sexual crimes. Teaching children about their bodies gives them the tools to describe acts of abuse without feeling as embarrassed or uncomfortable, and it also helps elevate their self-confidence and sense of bodily autonomy. A shame-based approach to genitalia and sexuality, on the other hand, sends kids the message that they can’t discuss or ask questions about any of those issues.

There are a couple of things I want to add about this. The first is that many religious groups and right-wing political figures are still pushing a shame-based approach to sex education. They're still pushing abstinence-only sex education, despite abundant evidence that it doesn't work. Many even refuse to let their daughters get a vaccination which can protect them from cancer, just because sex is all about shame with them.

Well, here's one more reason to oppose that primitive, superstitious approach. If, the gods forbid, your daughter gets abducted, she needs to know that being a victim doesn't make her worthless. It's the rapist who's worthless, not the victim. It's the rapist who should feel intense shame, not the victim. Your daughters need to know that.

And they need to know that consensual sex isn't shameful to either party. It might not be the smart thing to do, depending on the circumstances, but it's not dirty, it's not filthy, it's not shameful. Teaching kids to be smart will be a whole lot more effective than teaching them to hate themselves.

But the other reason I wanted to post this is because it's good news, don't you think? Elizabeth Smart hasn't forgotten her ordeal, but she seems to be a real survivor, doesn't she? She's making something of her life. She can be very proud of that.

I read these news stories, and I'm always happy when abducted women are recovered alive,... but I can't actually be happy when I think of how they must have suffered. And I know that experiences like that don't just go away. Even Elizabeth Smart is famous for having been a victim. How would that make you feel?

But what does make me happy is to see her rise above that. She's using her personal experience, tragic as it was, to make the world a better place. She's 25 now, she's been to college, she got married, and she's running the Elizabeth Smart Foundation to help others.

That is good news, don't you think?

The big Benghazi on Bullshit Mountain

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

The Big Benghazi Theory

The Big Benghazi Theory - "If"

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c