E.W. Jackson is the Republican candidate for Virginia lieutenant governor, and he's a pretty interesting guy with a lot of opinions. Some of these opinions — especially on gays, like that they are "ikky" — have made him more famous than most candidates for lieutenant governor. On Wednesday, we learned that Jackson has some interesting ideas on a new topic: yoga. As The National Review's Betsy Woodruff reports, Jackson warns that yoga can put you at risk for satanic possession in his 2008 book, Ten Commandments to an Extraordinary Life: Making Your Dreams Come True.

"When one hears the word meditation, it conjures an image of Maharishi Yoga talking about finding a mantra and striving for nirvana... The purpose of such meditation is to empty oneself... [Satan] is happy to invade the empty vacuum of your soul and possess it. That is why people serve Satan without ever knowing it or deciding to, but no one can be a child of God without making a decision to surrender to him. Beware of systems of spirituality which tell you to empty yourself. You will end up filled with something you probably do not want."

RichmondPhilsFan wrote:I give you the Republican nominee for Lieutenant Governor of Virginia:

http://www.theatlanticwire.com/politics/2013/06/virginia-gop-candidate-ew-jackson-yoga-satan/65925/

E.W. Jackson is the Republican candidate for Virginia lieutenant governor, and he's a pretty interesting guy with a lot of opinions. Some of these opinions — especially on gays, like that they are "ikky" ...

RichmondPhilsFan wrote:

jerseyhoya wrote:Describing an objective reality in unoffensive language = sexist as hell?

By implying that a woman belongs in the home and that under no circumstances should a man stay at home, then yes.

But hey, I'm just an ignorant clod who clearly failed to thrive in society due to being raised by a single working mother, so what do I know?

The impact also varied dramatically according to class and whether the child was in a single-parent or two-parent household.

Children of middle-class and two-parent families were more likely to be affected negatively than those from working-class or single-parent families, according to the research.

Middle-class and upper-class youngsters suffer if their mothers return to work within their first three years. This was ‘significantly associated with decreases in formal measures of achievement’, it said.

[O]n a balance, positive effects are found of spending more time with children’s on breast feeding, child health, reducing behavioral problems and child mortality, and cognitive test scores (Berger, 2005, Ruhm, 2000, 2003).

The National Security Agency is currently collecting the telephone records of millions of US customers of Verizon, one of America's largest telecoms providers, under a top secret court order issued in April.

The order, a copy of which has been obtained by the Guardian, requires Verizon on an "ongoing, daily basis" to give the NSA information on all telephone calls in its systems, both within the US and between the US and other countries.

The document shows for the first time that under the Obama administration the communication records of millions of US citizens are being collected indiscriminately and in bulk – regardless of whether they are suspected of any wrongdoing.

Werthless wrote:
The actual research is mixed/inconclusive.

jerseyhoya wrote:Obama's gonna be so pissed at the Obama administration when he reads about this in the newspaper tomorrow.

pacino wrote:You must be so pissed at them doing the things you like

jerseyhoya wrote:

pacino wrote:sounds like bullshit to me. there's nothing that says working parents can't have perfectly terrifically smart kids. both sides of my family have had working women going back to the 40s...somehow we did it. it's just a 'punch the single mom' thing that he realized was too obviously that so he quickly retracted.

I guess I missed where he said it was impossible for children to succeed academically in a household with two working parents.

I'm sure there's work out there on this, and it strikes me that it would be a real mess trying to disentangle all the causal factors, but there being a parent at home with children leading to better education outcomes sounds pretty reasonable.

Werthless wrote:

RichmondPhilsFan wrote:

jerseyhoya wrote:Describing an objective reality in unoffensive language = sexist as hell?

By implying that a woman belongs in the home and that under no circumstances should a man stay at home, then yes.

But hey, I'm just an ignorant clod who clearly failed to thrive in society due to being raised by a single working mother, so what do I know?

Actually, I think I was given a big advantage by having a stay at home Mom who would give me a lot of attention through my development years. That's what having a parent at home means, in many cases: more attention on average than if one was in daycare, sharing attention with the other kids. As far as hypotheses go, it's not unreasonable, and only offensive if you're offended at the way he said it. And considering that it's women who entered the workforce in larger numbers over the last few decades, that is where the change has been. More women in the workforce, fewer mothers staying at home with their young children.

The actual research is mixed/inconclusive. Here are some that support the hypothesis put forth that is "sexist as hell."

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... -year.html

The impact also varied dramatically according to class and whether the child was in a single-parent or two-parent household.

Children of middle-class and two-parent families were more likely to be affected negatively than those from working-class or single-parent families, according to the research.

Middle-class and upper-class youngsters suffer if their mothers return to work within their first three years. This was ‘significantly associated with decreases in formal measures of achievement’, it said.

http://www.econ.yale.edu/seminars/labor ... 081031.pdf

[O]n a balance, positive effects are found of spending more time with children’s on breast feeding, child health, reducing behavioral problems and child mortality, and cognitive test scores (Berger, 2005, Ruhm, 2000, 2003).

jerseyhoya wrote:

pacino wrote:You must be so pissed at them doing the things you like

I like when people do things I like.

I'm not sure if this is something I like, but leaning no. The government's rationale in why they needed to cast such a broad net for information and how they're using it would matter. It's 'targeted' to some degree, limited to Verizon users, so maybe built off a piece of real intelligence. But seems insanely broad, and it was requested by the FBI, so you really want to know what's being shared and what's being used before saying it's good or bad. If we had some good intelligence that some terror cell was using Verizon somewhere in America and that was one of the only things we knew, I guess this might be helpful. Otherwise, this seems like overkill and, depending on how the info is being used, seriously problematic.

Regardless of my opinion of the action, it's another example of President Obama doing the sort of thing Senator Obama attacked President Bush for.