The Inquisition Tentacles Are Spreading.

I’ve written about Ralph Drollinger before. He’s one scary lunatic christian, and he wields way too much influence in the current regime. He’s crowing again, over all the “progress” he’s making. It’s as well to remember that Drollinger’s idea of progress is to bring back the inquisition or something like.

Ralph Drollinger, who runs fundamentalist Bible studies for dozens of members of Congress and President Trump’s Cabinet every week, said in a fundraising letter this month that his group “has been blessed by God with extraordinary growth beyond our wildest imaginings in foreign nations across the globe and most notably in former Soviet Bloc countries.”

[…]

We noted last fall that Drollinger is aggressively expanding his operations both at the local government level in the U.S. and in national capitals around the world. His April 4 letter includes some details about the latter:

In the last few months discipleship Bible studies have been established to Parliamentarians in Romania; Ukraine; Fiji; Papua New Guinea; and the Republic of Equatorial Guinea. A ministry is about to begin in Guatemala, and before fall, we expect work to be completed for ministries in the Central and South American nations of Peru; Ecuador; Brazil; Mexico; Uruguay; and Paraguay, as well as in the European city Riga, Latvia.

Work is current an ongoing with partners to establish discipleship Bible studies in Berlin and Bonne [sic]. We are enthusiastically pursuing an opportunity to plant a ministry in the European Union Parliament, a body of 600 Parliamentarians from 26 Western and Eastern European nations who meet two weeks every month in Brussels, Belgium and one week every month in Strasbourg, France.

We thought the Lord did not want us in the Middle East, but to our great surprise discussions are currently underway to establish a ministry in a Muslim majority nation in the Middle East.

[…]

Although Drollinger is quick to complain about news coverage he believes is unfair, his letter says a story published in a German newspaper helped attract new friends. And Capitol Ministries has been gushing about a recent BBC story that the group says “reached more than 1 million readers world-wide.”

I have no idea why people might find Drollinger favourable in any light, but even if you are one of the lucky people who lives in a happily secular nation, this should be worrying. Drollinger is naturally courting regressive governments, but there are always regressive asses in any government, and they are likely to listen to Drollinger. I fail to see the charm, and it’s beyond disturbing that Drollinger is not simply being dismissed. Just to give you an idea of what Drollinger wants to institute, as far as government is concerned:

Drollinger’s April 13 Bible study says it is a “disservice to the country” for public servants to “craft policy that is not somehow rooted in Scripture.” Here are some of the other theological and political positions Drollinger teaches public officials:

Drollinger likes to tell reporters that he doesn’t instruct public officials how to vote, but he makes it clear in his written Bible studies that, for example, Christian public servants are required to support the death penalty and oppose marriage equality.

Drollinger also has very specific views on the role of women: “there is a prohibition of female leadership in marriage, and female leadership in the church.” One of his Bible studies explains what he calls the “unambiguous” difference in responsibilities the Bible gives men and women, saying women’s “primary functions” include homemaking, home management, mothering, teaching younger women, displaying hospitality and dressing modestly.

There’s much more, RWW has the full story.

What Does A God Need With A Government?

Seems there’s a group, or organisation or something called Intercessors for America. So, a bunch of people praying, but praying apparently is not enough anymore, no. People need to vote, because Jehovah needs a government!

“You probably know the midterms are coming up,” Kubal said. “We believe God desires to align His watchmen alongside these candidates. Intercessory activism is not about mixing the role of the church with the role of government to create some form of spiritual nationalism, it is all about proper alignment between God’s people and government … God created government to punish the wrong and protect the right, [but] a government cannot know what is wrong or what is right without the church.”

Erm…so you’re not about mixing up church and government, you’re about mixing up people in the church and government, do I have that one right? Jehovah created government? Huh. Okay, just the Amerikkan version, or all governments? If it’s all governments, which one is best? Perhaps it’s just me, but I think you’re confusing the justice system with government.

“Intercessory activism is the correct alignment between God’s people bringing His values to our government,” Kubal added. “We are in a specific season where we can ask God to move greatly through the authority of our government. This is really important, this is kind of the crux of what I am talking about. In the past few years, we have prayed defensively for protection from our government, but now we are in a season to pray offensively to see great advances of the kingdom of God to be advanced through our government.”

I’ll give you credit for some grand bafflegab there, Mr. Kubal. So Jehovah has to work through the authority of the government? I guess bureaucratic red tape swallows everyone. Once again, I’m struck by the christian vision of a god, such a weak little critter, unable to do one damn thing on its own. From a christian point of view, there’s no fun at all in being a god, just another powerless being adrift on the seas of life. Tsk. I’ll be making offerings to all the art gods later this day, any one of which could whip Jehovah’s poor, powerless arse.

Kubal said that it is imperative that conservative Christians use the elections to connect with candidates with the goal of implementing “kingdom values through relationships to our government” and utilizing “the U.S. government to have His kingdom come, His will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”

Yeah, y’know, I’d think an all powerful god could push its agenda through without having to “utilize” anyone or anything. Interesting that you basically admit that all the intercessory crap is worthless.

The full mess is at RWW, with video.

And a bonus today, in the category of silliest damn prophecy ever: Prophecy: Paramedic Angels Dispatched.

U.S. Government Abuse: Manzanar to Guantánamo.

Clem Albers, “San Pedro, California, April 5, 1942” (courtesy National Archives and Records Administration).

Clem Albers, “San Pedro, California, April 5, 1942” (courtesy National Archives and Records Administration).

Edmund Clark, “Camp 1, isolation unit” from the series Guantanamo: If the Light Goes Out (2009) (© Edmund Clark).

Edmund Clark, “Camp 1, isolation unit” from the series Guantanamo: If the Light Goes Out (2009) (© Edmund Clark).

Edmund Clark, “Camp 6, Immediate Response Force equipment,” from the series Guantanamo: If the Light Goes Out (2009) (© Edmund Clark).

Edmund Clark, “Camp 6, Immediate Response Force equipment,” from the series Guantanamo: If the Light Goes Out (2009) (© Edmund Clark).

The exhibition Then They Came for Me: Incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II is what brought me to the International Center of Photography. After all, the wartime photos of Dorothea Lange, Ansel Adams, and Toyo Miyatake are much celebrated today, historical artifacts in themselves. But I felt compelled to stay for The Day the Music Died, British photographer Edmund Clark’s eight video, music, and photography installations on the post-9/11“War on Terror” around the globe.

The pairing of the two exhibitions invites viewers to search for parallels between US national security efforts more than 70 years ago and today: How does the forced relocation of virtually all ethnic Japanese people residing in the US during World War II resemble the dragnet of the current anti-terrorism apparatus around the globe? Both shows shed light on people, more that half a century apart, swept into detention by the US government without due process, in the name of national security. And the juxtaposition has become all the more timely since President Trump’s late January signing of an executive order to keep Guantánamo Bay’s prison open.

[…]

The exhibitions Then They Came for Me: Incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II and Edmund Clark: The Day the Music Died continue at the International Center of Photography (250 Bowery, Lower East Side, Manhattan) through May 6.

You can read and see much more about these terribly poignant photographs and their history at Hyperallergic.

Angel Armies vs Deep State. Or Something.

Dutch Sheets speaks at his Turnaround: Appeal to Heaven event at the Trump International Hotel in February 2018. (Screenshot via livestream).

Dutch Sheets speaks at his Turnaround: Appeal to Heaven event at the Trump International Hotel in February 2018. (Screenshot via livestream).

Oh, all the self-styled prophets are “prophesying” and praying. RWW has the full coverage, which is quite lengthy, here are some highlights:

A new era in American and human history began at the end of last week, according to self-described apostles and prophets who gathered on Thursday, Friday and Saturday at the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C. … Sheets said he had never seen such intense spiritual warfare over the nation, saying the battle was not about Trump but about “whether the devastation caused by 50 years of anti-Christian activity will be reversed or, God forbid, continue.” He said then, “The antichrist forces are almost rabid in their anger over the potential loss of progress.”

[…]

Now, according to conference leaders, it’s time for the church to move from pleading with God to ruling with him—and with Trump, who one speaker described as “the father of this nation.” A speaker from Northern Ireland, Rose Sambrook of Rhema Restoration Ministries, proudly claimed Trump as one of her own. “Your president is a Celt,” she said. “That’s why he’s wild!”  She said Trump has the “seeds of revival” in his DNA because his great aunts prayed for five months for revival to come to the island of Lewis decades ago.

[…]

Jacobs told attendees God had spoken to her at a Miami gathering of thousands of pastors from 60 nations, giving her the word “basta!”—Spanish for “enough!” “We’re here to say ‘basta’” she shouted at the Trump hotel, adding, “Enough of God’s people being attacked! Enough of the photographers and the bakers having to close their shops! Enough of our loss of our religious freedoms! Basta!”

Ummm, I thought everyone was supposed to hate immigrants and speak nothin’ but Amerikkan.

Tim Sheets, Dutch’s brother and apparently an expert on angels, led a prayer on Friday night that God would break “the collusion of hell in our government”:

And Lord, I hear you say tonight, ‘Disregard the fake collusion, and come against the real collusion, and the real colluder.’ We bind the kingdom of darkness and we ask that the strategy of our king and his angel princes that assist us now, would come against the collusion of darkness into our government, that would come against the collusion of darkness into our media, and in the name of Jesus we declare, this Ekklesia declares tonight, that the collusion of hell in its diabolical schemes, to those that are bent in iniquity, will be bound in Jesus name.

[…]

Dutch Sheets also prayed that Trump “would accomplish everything Almighty God sent you into that house to do, regardless of who likes it or who doesn’t.” He also predicted that Trump will have “a visitation from heaven” that gives him “an intimate knowledge of Jesus Christ.” Sheets had a warning for those who resist Trump or who want to turn the nation away from its Judeo-Christian roots:

You will fail! … The Ekklesia will take you out. The outpouring of Holy Spirit will take you out. Angels will take you out. You are no match for any of the above. You are no match for father, son, Holy Ghost, or his family or his angel armies. You are no match for his word. You are no match for his prophetic decrees …. So we push you back. And we say your finest hour has come and gone, and the church now rises to the place that he has called us to walk in …. We now rise up and I call that new order into the earth.

Gad, I’m queasy all over. I really have no problem with people who want to roll the clock back a couple of eras, but you can’t be doing it in the middle of an established society. Please, do some real estate shopping and go set up your little kingdom, far from the rest of us. It’s what Jehovah wants. Really.

RWW has the full story and video, all of which require a rather strong stomach.

Sunday Facepalm: All Ya Need Is Nice.

thirddrawerdown.com.

Star Parker, yet another conservative idiot, has decided on her defense of guns in the wake of the last school shooting. Those darn students weren’t nice enough to the shooter! We don’t need gun control or any sort of reform, no. What we need is niceness! We are all responsible for every dude walking around with a growing grudge, a tantrum, and a gun. You betcha. As to blaming the students:

“Well, not necessarily one individual student, but we can call for gun control if we want to as a nation, we can call for more federal laws if we want to as a nation, but usually when you’re faced with tragedy, you first check yourself,” Parker said. “We have forgotten how to just look inwardly. We’ve become such a nation of victims that we’ve forgotten to say, ‘Wait a minute, what could I have done?’”

[…]

“Well, perhaps said ‘hello,’ perhaps said ‘I’m sorry to hear your dad died,’” Parker said. “This is a very small community of people we’re talking about. This is not the responsibility of Washington, D.C., or the NRA. This is the responsibility of people that are closest to someone to be able to look them in the eye as an individual. So the challenge of this whole nation of victims is that now it’s not about us anymore, it’s about somebody else, our problems are somebody else’s fault. Well, no, actually, this is a very small community, someone must have saw his sadness, someone must have known his dad died.”

Ms. Parker didn’t listen to the students talking. Ms. Parker certainly didn’t listen to Ms. Emma Gonzalez, who pointed out, strongly, that they knew that kid. They knew what he was like. They knew his desire for violence, his propensity for cruelty. They did speak out, they tried to tell people, they tried to warn people, but no one listened well enough to what they had to say, and now a lot of kids are dead. Sometimes, reaching out to a person can make all the difference in the world, but simply being ‘nice’ isn’t enough to reach anyone. If you’re going to extend ‘nice’, it needs to go further than that; and there are people you can’t reach in any way. The shooter in this case was primed to go off for years, but it was ignored by everyone except the students. The students wanted to know why people like his neighbours ignored him wandering around with a fucking gun. How about you answer that one, Ms. Parker? I would have loved to see you walk up to a kid wandering about with a gun and be ‘nice’ to him.

[…]

“Well, they expelled him probably because he was acting out,” she said, “and he was acting out probably because he didn’t have any friends—you know, whoever sat next to him in class, they’d better not be the ones who are protesting out there today.”

They expelled him because he was a danger to others, you fucking idiot. Sitting next to someone in class does not make you friends, and friendship is not a one way street. Christ, I loathe conservatives.

The whole mess and video is at RWW. In other, depressing news, the Dominionists of the Theocalypse have descended on CPAC, all of them staying at the Trump Hotel to sing their praises to the Tiny Tyrant. You can read the whole sorry thing here.

Another NO: Religious Tax Exemption.

Focus on the Family has posted a tax return on its website that declares that it is a church, but has not filed the return with the government.

Focus on the Family has posted a tax return on its website that declares that it is a church, but has not filed the return with the government.

I’m just about to head out for chemo, but this caught my eye, and this should be a huge, furious NO NO NO – no more tax exemption for religious anything. Most ‘churches’ have more money than 10 gods combined, this is not something they need, especially when they constantly violate the rules of the exemption. The latest to join in the tax free haven religion provides is Focus on the Family, James Dobson’s little hate group.

…The IRS’s master database of tax-exempt organizations, last updated on February 13, also indicates that Focus is listed as a church that is not required to file a 990.

Focus on the Family declaring itself to be a church is puzzling. While the Colorado Springs-based organization has somewhat softened its image since it was led by the firebrand Dobson, it remains active in political debates and advocacy (even in a nominally nonpartisan way). A “social issues” section on the group’s website currently features information on a supposed threat to bathroom safety posed by transgender people thanks to LGBTQ activists fighting in politics, churches and popular culture, and contains an update on “cultural issues in the courts.” In June, Focus invited Vice President Mike Pence to speak at an event celebrating its 40th anniversary, where he promised the group it had an “unwavering ally” in President Trump.

Gail Harmon, an attorney who has advised nonprofits on tax law for more than 30 years, said that she had never before seen a nonprofit organization declare itself a church. “I just found it shocking,” she said.

“There’s nothing about them that meets the traditional definition of what a church is,” she said. “They don’t have a congregation, they don’t have the rites of various parts of a person’s life. There’s a whole system for what a church is.”…

You can read the whole thing at RWW.

Raising A Government For A Nonexistent God.

Capitol Ministries' February 13, 2018 fundraising dinner at the World Ag Expo.

Capitol Ministries’ February 13, 2018 fundraising dinner at the World Ag Expo.

Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue has joined Ralph Drollinger in his quest to raise the Jehovah government, not just here, but globally. Granted, this effort will go much further here in Amerikka than elsewhere, which is bad enough. It seems the department of agriculture has now turned into a giant “hey, cough up money for gawd! We have to get this religious reich going!”

All the conservative christian lunatics are in on this, stumping away god and guns and every other evil.

U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue and former Rep. Michele Bachmann were the featured speakers at a Tuesday evening fundraising dinner for Capitol Ministries, the group that sponsors weekly Bible studies for members of the House and Senate and President Donald Trump’s Cabinet. Also offering testimony on behalf of this “special type of ministry” was Rep. Jeff Denham, whose relationship with the group goes back to his days in the California legislature. The show was emceed by Frank Sontag, a Los Angeles-based Christian radio host who voices the audio versions of the written Bible studies that Capitol Ministries publishes every week.

Hundreds of people packed an event tent at the massive World Ag Expo in Tulare, California, the heart of the state’s agriculture industry, to hear Perdue, Bachmann and Capitol Ministries’ founder and leader Ralph Drollinger. Tulare is a reliably Republican area of the state, now represented in the U.S. Congress by Rep. Devin Nunes, a local boy from a farm family. At the event, tables were sponsored by wealthy farming families and an array of agriculture-related businesses, along with Bank of America and local branches of Wells Fargo.

[…]

Some sponsors may be supporters of Capitol Ministries’ mission of encouraging public officials to embrace conservative Christianity. Some may have bought tables based on personal and professional connections to Capitol Ministries board member and event host Rob Hilarides, who heads a dairy operation in the area. Some may appreciate Drollinger’s teachings that “God is a capitalist” and that because of excessive environmental regulations in the U.S., “the economic benefits God intends from private property ownership have been greatly diminished.” And some may have given to express support for the Trump administration’s rollbacks of regulations governing their industry.

Perdue told Capitol Ministries’ sponsors that he is “the beneficiary” of their “investment,” saying he hoped the Capitol Ministries fundraiser would become an annual event. Perdue talked about how God had guided his life and career moves, from the time God told him to give up his veterinary practice and go into agribusiness to his election as Georgia’s first Republican governor. Like Bachmann, Perdue gave an altar-call-like pitch for people to give their lives to God.

[…]

Drollinger is on a mission to recruit public officials at all levels of government to his conservative version of Christianity and his particular fundamentalist interpretation of the Bible. Part of Drollinger’s pitch for his ministry is that Religious Right groups have spent too much time lobbying public officials to change laws. Capitol Ministries focuses instead on “the most influential component in the legislative process: the people who make the decisions and create the statutes.”

Drollinger says he doesn’t lobby, but he does instruct public officials that the Bible mandates adherence to right-wing policy positions on a wide range of issues, including environmental regulation, the death penalty, abortion, LGBTQ equality and more. He says it is the government’s job to quell evil and punish sin. He teaches that care for the poor is meant to be a job for the family and church, not the government, and that entitlement programs have no “biblical authority.” And he says that once “righteous” people hold positions of power in government, they should hire only other “righteous” people.

Drollinger’s efforts should wake everyone up, they are terrifying, and unfortunately, effective. He has a great deal of influence on capitol hill, and like most christian lunatics, his views are that the way things were in Medieval age are splendid, and we should go right back there. He has no use whatsoever for christians who go all Jesus, or think things like compassion and care have a place in life:

Drollinger is not particularly open to other interpretations of scripture. He has called Roman Catholicism “one of the primary false religions in the world.” He has written that liberal Christians are “simpletons.” In a September 2017 Bible study, he wrote that the Social Gospel, a major strain of American Christianity in the 20th century, is a “perversion” or “corruption” of biblical teaching, and “not Christianity whatsoever.” As for Christians in Congress who do not share his conservative theology and right-wing politics, Drollinger wrote, “I believe the biggest deception on the Hill today is this: the religion of the Social Gospel proffers itself as being ‘Christian’ when it isn’t even close to being biblical.”

Last July, Drollinger warned public officials, “Do not be deceived by syncretistic ‘prayer breakfasts’: God only hears the prayers of leaders and citizens who are upright, who live righteously through faith in Jesus Christ.”

This is a man who is fully in favour of an inquisitorial government, in spite of his hate for the catholic church. He’s very much an inquisition and crusades kind of guy. The article at RWW is in-depth and link heavy, lots of important reading there. If liberal/moderate christians find such efforts to be repulsive, you have to stop being milquetoasts on the sideline, shaking your heads. You need to stand the fuck up, and put this effort down. Time to roar. Naturally, all us godless/religionless folk need to roar our faces off, too. This all starts with awareness, so go read, become aware, and start yelling.

The full article is at RWW.

Just Say No, Minnesota.

A fine example of christian “logic”.

Michele Bachmann is slithering back into the political scene. Maybe. Just say no, people. Michele was on Jim Bakker’s glurge-fest last week, saying she was considering running for Franken’s vacant seat:

Bachmann said that she has “had people contact me and urge me to run for that Senate seat” and that she is asking God if doing so in His will for her.

Bachmann said that she would be willing to run in order to take godly principles into the Senate but is concerned that she will be unfairly attacked by Washington insiders because “the swamp is so toxic.”

Uh huh. None of this is new, and it’s just amazing how you can sit there and opine on the toxicity of that Washington swamp, given that your hero was supposed to have cleaned that all up. Guess that wasn’t one of the miraculous “accomplishments” of the Tiny Tyrant.

“I trust in a big God,” Bachmann said, asserting that she “was supposed to run for president” in 2012 in order to make the the repeal of Obamacare the central issue of the Republican platform. “I feel like I was wildly successful … I didn’t win, but I moved the debate. So I didn’t shed a tear when I left the contest because I felt like, you know, I fulfilled the calling that God gave me.”

A “big god”. Right. I guess everything has to have a ‘big’ appended to it now. I wish this bit of idiocy would die. All I can think about now is Honeycomb Cereal…

Honeycomb’s big…yeah yeah yeah!
It’s not small…no no no!
Honeycomb’s got…a big big bite!
Big big (taste/crunch) in a big big bite!

That almost works if you use ‘god’ instead of Honeycomb. Oh look, Michele thinks she was single-handedly responsible for  the republican upset over healthcare! My my, some people might think that to be a tad arrogant. You didn’t move a thing, Michele. All anyone wanted was for you to shut the fuck up. Pretty sure people still want that.

“So the question is am I being called to do this now?” she added. “I don’t know.”

You don’t know? How is that possible? Your BIG god doesn’t have a BIG answer for you? Lazy slacker god. Or perhaps you aren’t praying enough, Michele. Go away and pray. Please.

Bakker eventually piped in to express his concern about the nasty nature of politics today, saying that “right now, they want to kill the president of the United States and if they could put a contract [out on Donald Trump]—which they probably already have—they would do so.”

Oh FFS, get off this theme already, Jim. It’s dead. Over. Gone. The stupid is too much to bear. You assign every possible evil to this nefarious ‘they’, ‘they’ get away with everything, but y’know, here in gun central, no one can get a contract going. Uh huh. At some point, you need to make an effort to be somewhat coherent, else you’ll even start losing the seriously gullible.

There’s video at RWW.

Ummm, what?

Fucking Idiot: “Why is the United States Post Office, which is losing many billions of dollars a year, while charging Amazon and others so little to deliver their packages, making Amazon richer and the Post Office dumber and poorer?” Trump asked on Twitter. “Should be charging MUCH MORE!”

The Idiot King is nattering on again, about post offices. Naturally, this had to do with something he saw on Fox News, but it had absolutely nothing to do with the actual ‘news’ segment. I’ll admit to being taken by surprise here, who in the fuckety fuck does not know how the postal system works? The stupid is eating us alive.

Via Raw Story.

2017: Rise of the Religious Reich.

President Trump hosts conservative leaders at the White House on September 25, 2017 (Photo: WhiteHouse.gov)

Right Wing Watch has a comprehensive timeline of the ascension of the religious reich into the current regime, and it’s a very ugly look at the coming Theocalypse, if these people get their way, which so far, they are. We do not need to be all concerned over the rise of AI. We do need to be concerned with the rise of the religious reich, and we need to be concerned with the rise of stupid.

Donald Trump wasn’t exactly the dream candidate of the Religious Right. Throughout the Republican primary contest, many in the social conservative movement urged voters to pick what one group of anti-choice activists called “anyone but Donald Trump.”

But once it became clear that Trump was going to win the GOP nomination, he started aggressively courting the evangelical Right, including holding a massive meeting for Religious Right leaders in New York that many cite as a turning point for their support. On the day of that meeting, Trump announced the formation of an evangelical advisory board that included Religious Right leaders including James Dobson and Michele Bachmann. Trump’s selection of Mike Pence as his running mate sealed the deal for many on the Religious Right. Trump’s “amen corner” of prosperity gospel preachers and domininionists eventually expanded to include the large share of Religious Right leaders, who offered various theological explanations for their embrace of a morally flawed candidate.

Once he was elected—with 80 percent of the white evangelical vote—Trump kept his evangelical advisory board intact and promised to give it unprecedented access to the White House. He stacked his Cabinet with friends of the Religious Right, including Tom Price at Health and Human Services, Betsy DeVos at Education and Ben Carson at Housing and Urban Development. Far-right pastor Ralph Drollingerworked with Trump’s transition team to set up weekly Bible studies for Trump’s Cabinet members. The conservative Heritage Foundation and Federalist Society vetted potential judicial nominees.

The White House continues to hold weekly calls with evangelical advisory board members. Conservative leaders also receive a weekly email from the White House compiling “highlights for—and requests for action from—the conservative world.” And Religious Right leaders report enjoying an open door with the Trump administration. Former Southern Baptist Convention official Richard Land told The New York Times that conservative evangelical leaders have a “regular, ongoing and continuing dialogue” with the administration.

The Family Research Council’s Tony Perkinssaid in August, “I’ve been to the White House I don’t know how many more times in the first six months this year than I was during the entire Bush administration.” The Susan B. Anthony List’s Marjorie Dannenfelser said she visited the White House seven times in Trump’s first 100 days in office. Penny Nance of Concerned Women for America said in September, “I’m told from people before me that even under George W. Bush, we didn’t have this kind of access. It certainly is unprecedented and we’re very grateful.” Land gushed about evangelicals having “unprecedented access” to the White House, adding that there “are more evangelicals in this administration as personnel than any administration in my lifetime.”

The timeline is extensive and heavily link rich, there’s enough reading for a day or two. It’s all recommended, because we are at one terrifying confluence here. The Year The Religious Right Moved Into The White House.

It’s Best to Lie! It’s Biblical!

Screengrab.

Coach Dave is teachin’ and preachin’ – about lying. Like lying for Jesus, lying for Jehovah is right good too.

Religious Right activist Dave Daubenmire said that Roy Moore has no obligation to tell the truth regarding multiple allegations that he pursued sexual relationships with teenage girls when he was in his 30s and that, in fact, it is better for him to lie about it if doing so will help to advance the kingdom of God.

Daubenmire, who has been an ardent Moore supporter for years and even interviewed Moore on his program back in 2013, likened Moore’s efforts to become a U.S. senator from Alabama to using misdirection in a football game, employing subterfuge during a military battle or hiding Jews from the Nazis, saying that deception and dishonesty in such endeavors is acceptable because doing so furthers a greater good.

Lying through your teeth about being a skeevy asshole with a taste for teenagers is not the same as strategy, sportsball or military, and it’s certainly not the same as hiding Jews from Nazis. The finely fucked up morals of a christian, right there. (Yeah, yeah, #notallchristians, but you all still aren’t standing up against these fanatical asses.)

“When I hear people say, ‘Well, Judge Moore is not worthy of the office if he’s lying about what he did,’ I want to grab ’em and I want to slap ’em upside the stinking head,” Daubenmire said. “Judge Moore is trying to infiltrate an ungodly system and the stakes in this campaign are so great for the cause of Christ and Judge Moore is being lambasted by the holier-than-thou Christians who think [the Bible] says we can never lie.”

Golly, such language! Tsk. Infiltrate? He’s running for senate, not trying to pass a super secret seal test or anything. Any idiot can run for the senate. You’d think there’d be requirements or something, but no. (You have to be 30 years old, been a citizen for at least nine years, and live in the state you wish to represent, that’s it. That would be why so many lying idiots.)

“It’s best to lie if it advances the kingdom of God,” Daubenmire stated. “There, I said it.”

Yes, you did, and thanks, Coach Dave, for having the spine to admit that, unlike most christians, who believe firmly in lying, but always deny that.

Via RWW, there’s video.

Sunday Facepalm.

© Marty Two Bulls.

© Marty Two Bulls.

A trio of youtube nazis, oh pardon, white nationalists, have decided to stop pretending they aren’t nazis. Ooops, white nationalists. My keyboard just keeps slipping. These three chuckleheads are not helping me out of a current case of Benderitis (kill all humans).

Faith Goldy, a former Rebel Media reporter who has grown ever closer to the alt-right, joined Red Ice host Lana Lokteff and 4chan YouTube muse Lauren Rose in a video uploaded yesterday to deliver full-throated endorsements of ethno-nationalism, a movement that seeks to promote white supremacy in Western nations.

…“Civic nationalism perpetuates that it’s OK to bring foreign people into your country as long as they’re a bunch of tolerant egalitarians. That’s how I see it personally. It doesn’t take anything else into consideration like religion, race, ethnic group. As long as you’re tolerant and have egalitarian values, that seems to be OK,” Rose said, going on to say that she, Goldy and Hargraves have recognized that “when you replace the founding stock of a nation, you replace the entire nation.”

Golly, what a group of geniuses we have here. A little further on, they talk about knowing history well. As you can see, their actual knowledge of history is quite impoverished. Okay, let’s pretend all the immigrants to Turtle Island are cattle. Or dogs, whatever. If you start with a specific stock, and breed from that stock, and continue breeding, you aren’t replacing the initial bloodline (stock). Now, if you let your stock die out, or kill them, and get something completely different, then yeah. Exactly how you’re applying this to Amerika, I’m not sure. There was one wave of immigrants after another, which resulted in a massive tangle of people from all over the place. Many of the people who emigrated here could not be described as ‘tolerant egalitarians’, and all manner of immigrants were treated like they were lower than shit on a shoe. It was a sort of bigotry free for all.

Later in the interview, Goldy claimed that civic nationalism was invented as “an answer to ethno-nationalism” and that she didn’t care “what anyone thinks about ethno-nationalism” because detractors of the white supremacist movement have “not properly studied history” and don’t realize that “ethno-nationalism was the greatest propeller of human history when determining the maker or breaker of empire of civilization. This is what rallies men and gets them moving.”

I can name three people who have not studied history at all, let alone properly: Faith, Lana, and Lauren. There is no one “empire of civilization”. Empires come, empires go. Eventually, all empires decline and fall. That’s a thing you can find when studying history. Propeller is quite the interesting word choice. Oh yes, the notion of “hey, let’s go conquer” has been a long held rally cry of sorts. Generally speaking, all the men who had to get moving in history had to do so under the orders of assorted royalty and the ruling classes. Mostly, they were cannon fodder, winning lands for people who could not give one hearty fuck about them. Some things just don’t change.

Goldy continued, “It is a natural tribal instinct for human communities to go with their own. So the question is, are we going to continue to work against nature and try to rise above it even though we’re 40, 50, 60 years into this experiment?”

:facepalm: Forty to sixty years? Seriously? Holy shit. So, this whole ‘civic nationalism’ has only been going on since 1957, has it? Yes, people have a tendency to gather together when in an immigration situation, because there’s comfort in people who come from the same place you do, share a culture and language. That does not mean that people don’t expand outwards, learning other languages, customs, and becoming a part of their adopted homeland. Y’know, if you have this stupid idea that people at large need to be kicked out, that means you too, because none of the Indigenous people who were already long here on Turtle Island ever invited any of you.

Lokteff went on to remark that she thought “it’s really funny that a lot of these civic nationalists that we hear popping up, that they claim to be more on the right side, it’s only white people talking like that. Sure, you might have a few blacks or Latinos in there, but it’s like a white ideal, you know? What’s going to happen when they’re a minority? Seriously.”

Gosh, you could, oh I don’t know, fucking deal with it. So terrified of losing your privilege and power. Tsk. I can’t speak for anyone else, but from my viewpoint, we aren’t going to be running out of white people anytime soon. All this fretting over nothing. Whipping up fear for no good reason.

Goldy said that middle-class white men are “literally committing suicide” because immigration policies have made those white men feel like “strangers in our own backyard.”

Uh huh. A lot of white men can’t seem to manage to kill themselves without first slaughtering as many people as possible. Perhaps if these fellas who feel like strangers in their own backyard could do something truly radical, like saying hi to their neighbours. Maybe have a barbecue or something, what with that being such a white dude tradition. Get to know people a bit. Might work wonders.

“Some of the white guys are kind of mad right now when they’re literally on the shit list. They’re last in line for schools, for loans, for jobs, for grants. They’re blamed for all the problems in the world. They can’t be in politics. I have a son. I don’t want him to grow up in that kind of world where he’s on the shit list and later on he’s a minority,” Lokteff said. “How do you think they’re going to be treated when that happens?”

Such fucking idiocy. If you could wave a wand, and turn everyone in Amerika whitey-white, white men would still moan, whine, and hate each other. That happens when you raise people up with the idea that everything and everyone on the planet belongs to them, that they are entitled. There are a whole lot of people who are last in line for schools, loans, jobs, and grants. The majority of them are not white, and not male. They aren’t exactly thrilled to always be on the shit list which all minorities are consigned to, and here again is the one true thing you fear: that you will be treated the way you treat others. Be nice if you figured out just why that scares you so damn much.

As you’re looking for someone to blame (as always) about no good jobs, etc., raise your eyes to the filthy rich. Raise your eyes to shit regime you ushered in.

Rose agreed that white men are the “most under-attack group right now” and claimed that liberals began importing immigrants from developing countries because it “ensures their power.”

Immigrants are people, you flaming doucheweasel, they aren’t products. No, liberals are not in business importing people. People who immigrate here do so because of various reasons, with one important factor: they want to do so.

She said “whites are going from this vast majority of our nation—the face, the founding stock of our countries—and are now going to become minorities in less than a century. And people think that this is going to all be OK because we’re all tolerant, right?”

The ‘face’ of our nation is due for a change, I’m good with it. And no, Ms. Rose, we are not all tolerant. You certainly aren’t. That said, I’m not a fan of tolerance. I prefer acceptance.

She continued, “I think we should take whites and we should move to a foreign nation and start voting as voters and voting for our own interests and then the government will start to benefit whites rather than the natives. And then when they start complaining that their new system is benefiting us and not the natives, we can call them privileged bigots.”

You have no idea how favourable I find this cunning plan. Although, I hesitate to inflict you assholes on any other nation; every one has enough problems of their own.

“There is still a white majority and I think that any sort of movement that we have going forward has to appeal to that majority, as Donald Trump did implicitly whether he wants to admit it or not, but he did,” Goldy said.

Yes, a white majority. Fancy that. Here’s hoping that most white people are not stupid, bigoted nazis like you.

Lokteff elaborated later in the interview, “We want the natives to be the majority. There will be some people that aren’t of that native stock, but they need to be a smaller percentage of the population, correct? Right?”

Goldy agreed, “For me, I put it very, very plainly. For me, just a simple majority. Let’s start there.”

:snort: You want natives to be the majority? Great! When are you all leaving? I’ll come to the airport and wave bye. You fucking hateful assholes are not. native. stock. You are not natives. You are fucking immigrants, the descendants of criminals, thieves, and genocidal maniacs. Also, all the people in this country who are not white, but their families have been here for generations upon generations? They are just as ‘native’ as you are, whether you like it or not. There isn’t enough fuck off in the universe for you all.

RWW has video, if you wish.