7 Things @ 9 O’clock (10.15)

1. Blogging today may be slightly diminished because …

… and “non-drowsy formula” doesn’t seem to mean quite the same thing as “clear-headed” formula.

(Update: That’s meant to read “I Hab a Toad,” which is as close as I can come just now to pronouncing “I have a cold.”)

2. “Ted Cruz Dominates Republican Straw Poll” at the Values Voter summit. That’s a straw poll of Christian conservatives — the mostly white adherents of white evangelicalism. CBN’s David Brody is part of that crowd, and Brody says that for that crowd, Cruz is a “rock star.” Brody, you may recall, popularized the term “teavangelical” — as a badge of honor, not a pejorative. The tea party and the religious right are not identical, but if you make a Venn diagram showing one in blue and the other in yellow, you’ll be looking at a big green dot with a tiny corona on either side.

3. Russell Moore has succeeded Richard Land as the Southern Baptist’s chief public spokesperson. Admirers of his more media-savvy approach point to things like this — Moore tweeting from the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame ceremony that “Taylor Swift just won the songwriter/artist of the year award.” Happily, Moore did not jump up on the stage, saying, “Yo Taylor. I’m really happy for you, Ima let you finish, but Chris Tomlin had one of the best songs of all time …” (The real difference between Moore and Land, media-savvy-wise? Moore would probably get that joke.)

4. “Shutdown Leaves Maine’s Poor Without Heating Assistance as Winter Approaches.” It’s infuriating to me that LIHEAP isn’t massively well-funded. Democrats ought to love it because helping poor people is what makes our liberal bleeding-hearts go pitter-pat. And Republicans ought to love it because it’s money for energy companies. Poor people who can’t afford heat don’t end up writing checks for heating oil — checks that therefore cannot be cashed by oil and coal companies. Every dollar invested in LIHEAP is, ultimately, a dollar that goes to some big energy company. Yes, unfortunately, along the way those dollars pass through the hands of poor families, allowing them some small measure of comfort, health and security through the winter, and I know that rankles conservatives. But isn’t that a small price to pay for what is, ultimately, just exactly the kind of corporate subsidy their donors expect them to support?

5. Getting rid of Syria’s chemical weapons is a Good Thing. But Doctors Without Borders would also like to remind us that there’s a huge humanitarian crisis resulting from that country’s ongoing civil war. (This is hard to talk about, since we seem to have weirdly equated “stopping” a war with joining that war. The former would be a Good Thing. The latter would not.)

6. At Wide Open Ground, Lana Hope, who was raised in the Gothardite cult, offers an insightful bit of speculation about that movement’s rules for “modesty”:

I used to think [Gothardite] leaders wanted us to wear modest clothing, so we won’t be a stumbling block to men. I think that’s a cover up. I think they wanted us to look odd, so men wouldn’t find us. So we wouldn’t be asked on date, so we would marry a like-minded person, and so we would never discover the real world.

7. Opponents of women having health insurance that covers contraception costs are still threatening to resort to civil disobedience if women are not denied health insurance that covers contraception costs. They are also still failing to explain how this would be possible, since what they claim is an “unjust law” doesn’t actually require them to do anything or to stop doing anything.

7 things @ 9 o’clock (10.15)