{"id":17748,"date":"2013-09-13T08:59:28","date_gmt":"2013-09-13T12:59:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/?p=17748"},"modified":"2013-09-13T07:52:30","modified_gmt":"2013-09-13T11:52:30","slug":"7-things-9-oclock-9-13","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2013\/09\/13\/7-things-9-oclock-9-13\/","title":{"rendered":"7 things @ 9 o’clock (9.13)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

1.<\/strong> Friday the 13th: A Ghost Story<\/a>. Somewhere in America, tonight:<\/p>\n

Those who have witnessed it firsthand are, for obvious reasons, reluctant to talk about it. You\u2019ll never see them publicly recounting their tales in front of the cameras and the microphones. These are not stories they are eager to tell.<\/p>\n

But one hears whispers, rumors, stories told by the friends of friends. And those whispers, rumors and stories are too numerous and too eerily similar to be dismissed.<\/p>\n

Something<\/em>\u00a0is happening. Something, it seems, happens every Friday the 13th, just before midnight.<\/p>\n

The stories begin right around the turn of the 20th century, with the earliest reference I can find coming from August of 1897. \u2026<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

2.<\/strong> Florida<\/a>.\u00a0Florida<\/a>.\u00a0Florida<\/a>.\u00a0Florida<\/a>.\u00a0Florida<\/a>.\u00a0Florida<\/a>. Florida<\/a>.<\/p>\n

3.<\/strong> The Washington Post<\/em> reviews <\/a>I, Saul<\/a>,<\/em> by Jerry Jenkins and James McDonald, calling it a \u201cless-fun Da Vinci Code\u201d: \u201cPaul is indeed an intriguing character, but I, Saul<\/em> doesn\u2019t break new ground in terms of better understanding the historical figure. And it doesn\u2019t help that the 2,000-year-old characters talk (and pray) exactly like the present-day ones.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
It\u2019s Friday the 13th. It\u2019s not a dream.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

4.<\/strong> Religious liberty!<\/em><\/a> Feel the freedom.<\/p>\n

5.<\/strong> Most of what we drink here in America has added sugar. That\u2019s true not just of fizzy soda, but also of fruit juice. You can get the all-natural, no-sugar-added, fresh-squeezed, not-from-concentrate variety, but it costs twice as much.<\/p>\n

And but so, the working poor who get SNAP benefits (a.k.a. food stamps) don\u2019t have a separate set of healthier beverage options available to them than the rest of us. \u201cResearchers found that\u00a058 percent of all refreshment beverages purchased\u00a0by SNAP participants\u00a0were for sugar-sweetened beverages\u00a0such as regular soda, fruit drinks, and sports drinks.\u201d Is that more or less than the percentage of \u201crefreshment beverages\u201d purchased by non-participants? The researchers do not say. They\u2019re not interested in scolding the rest of us for our beverage choices \u2014 their condescension and resentment is focused exclusively on the working poor.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a terrific bit of \u201cresearch,\u201d too, since no matter what, we get to judge the poor, condemning them for whatever they drink. Do they buy the cheap stuff? Well, then, we\u2019ll wag our finger at them for consuming too many \u201csugar-sweetened beverages.\u201d Do they choose the more expensive healthy stuff? Well, then, we can sniff at those uppity poors fleecing the investment-class with their fresh juices and artisanal teas and Perrier.<\/p>\n

And then, if you work for The Hill,<\/em> you can take this research and lie to make it sound even worse<\/a> \u2014 twisting that 58 percent into something else entirely and reporting that \u201cmore than half of all SNAP benefits are used to buy sugary drinks.\u201d Turns out that 58 percent of beverage purchases works out to more like 3 percent of total SNAP money spent, but that doesn\u2019t matter to these folks. What matters is that they resent the poor and they\u2019re losing sleep over the possibility that some of the people they\u2019ve trapped in dead-end, $7.25\/hour jobs might still be pulling a fast one by occasionally quenching their thirst with something that tastes good. How dare<\/em> they?<\/p>\n

6.<\/strong>\u00a0Charles Koch is a jerk<\/a>. A complete knee-biter.<\/p>\n

7.<\/strong>\u00a0On NPR\u2019s \u201cFresh Air,\u201d Terry Gross interviews Barton Gellman<\/a> about the leaks by Edward Snowden and what we\u2019ve learned about the NSA.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a good overview of the story \u2014 where things stand and how we got there \u2014 without having to read around quite so much Glenn! Greenwald!<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s Friday the 13th, and it could be a long night for Donald Trump, or Rush Limbaugh, or George Zimmerman. The news from Florida is very Floridian. The Washington Post says Jerry Jenkins’ “I, Saul” is like “The Da Vinci Code,” but without the fun parts. Religious liberty means firing good teachers. Rich folks seething with resentment that poor people can afford soda. Charles Koch hates democracy. Barton Gellman provides a refreshingly Greenwald-less overview of the Snowden leaks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":141,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17748","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n7 things @ 9 o'clock (9.13)<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"It's Friday the 13th, and it could be a long night for Donald Trump, or Rush Limbaugh, or George Zimmerman. The news from Florida is very Floridian. The Washington Post says Jerry Jenkins' "I, Saul" is like "The Da Vinci Code," but without the fun parts. Religious liberty means firing good teachers. Rich folks seething with resentment that poor people can afford soda. Charles Koch hates democracy. 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Jesus loves Fred far more than Fred loves Jesus, but he at least has the decency to recognize the unfairness of that lopsided relationship and he has long wished that he were better at maybe kind of sort of doing something more to correct that some day. A Baptist, an amateur, a Gen-Xer, a Gemini and a Mets fan, Fred lives in Southeastern Pennsylvania with his wife and two teenage daughters. You can reach him via email at slacktivist at hotmail dot com.\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/author\/fredclark1\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"7 things @ 9 o'clock (9.13)","description":"It's Friday the 13th, and it could be a long night for Donald Trump, or Rush Limbaugh, or George Zimmerman. The news from Florida is very Floridian. The Washington Post says Jerry Jenkins' \"I, Saul\" is like \"The Da Vinci Code,\" but without the fun parts. Religious liberty means firing good teachers. 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A former managing editor of Prism magazine, Fred worked in the parachurch nonprofit world for a decade and then for a decade in the newspaper biz. He began blogging in 2002. In 2003 he began writing a review of the best-selling Left Behind series. Eight years later he still hasn\u2019t finished reviewing the second book of that series and the experience has left him a broken shell of a man. Fred knows the difference between the possessive \u201cits\u201d and the contraction \u201cit\u2019s,\u201d and he is acutely bothered when others mistakenly confuse the two, yet he himself just kind of instinctively types the apostrophe whether or not it belongs there. Some feel this is his greatest hypocrisy, but those who know him better know better. He\u2019s guilty of much greater hypocrisies. 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