Sham and Stupidity.

We’ll start with the whole healthcare snarl, and the ongoing attempts at passing the Fuck You Care Plan. There are many obstacles to that vaunted repeal ‘n’ replace, a good many of them republicans, who are smart enough to realize that if they push for a repeal, their careers will be over. Easy enough to call just what will win in that scenario. Turns out, most politicians don’t, and didn’t want to do the repeal business, in spite of talking nonstop about it. A good many of them made noises about it, in order to secure elections, but they’d be happier if it all just faded away at this point. Byron York at The Washington Examiner has the full rundown.

Now, with a president who would sign an Obamacare repeal, there’s no way Republicans could get as many votes as last year.

“A pure repeal would get less than 200 votes,” said the second member quoted above. “It really is one of the biggest political shams in history — many of these members would not have been elected without promising repeal, and now they are wilting. Some are even complaining that [the Rep. Tom MacArthur amendment] pushes the bill too far right — even though is it far short of a full repeal.”

When repeal first failed last month, a number of commentators blamed the conservative House Freedom Caucus. In the days since, caucus members have made the case, convincingly, that they have shown an enormous amount of flexibility in trying to reach agreement with the Tuesday Group, made up of House GOP centrists.

Now, the centrists — a number of Republicans refer to them as “the mods,” for moderates — appear to be moving the goalposts, even as the conservatives offer concessions. Conservatives suspect the centrists were perfectly happy for conservatives to take the blame for killing the first bill, but now are showing their true colors by rejecting compromise on the second version. Whatever the circumstances, they don’t want to vote to repeal Obamacare.

The reason is fear. When the lawmaker said colleagues don’t want repeal “because of their district,” that was another way of saying the members are all representatives, and the voters they represent don’t want repeal. From The Hill on Thursday afternoon: “Many vulnerable Republicans are running scared. One moderate Republican was overheard in a House cafeteria this week telling an aide: ‘If I vote for this healthcare bill, it will be the end of my career.'”

Even among the more rabid contingent, King and Gohmert, et al., there’s an admission it most likely won’t happen. The Washington Examiner has the full story.

Moving on to another admission, about that stupid, fucking wall: “we know it’s dumb.”

The fact that few Republicans in the Capitol backed Trump’s strategy for the wall only strengthened Democrats’ resolve.

“Republicans in Congress don’t want the wall. And that is the most under-reported aspect of this whole skirmish,” said Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii). “Republicans in the leadership of both chambers actually hate that idea. They know it’s dumb.”

[…]

“The wall is broadly unpopular in the public. People would rather spend money on other priorities. And there’s unified Democratic opposition,” added Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.). “None of that changes in September.”

Politico has the full story.

One thing is more than clear: all the grass roots movements, all the protests, all the people demanding town halls, and showing up with questions? It’s working. Even the rethugs have gotten the message that in the current political climate, if you decide to ignore your constituents, your career isn’t going to flourish. Vive La Résistance!

Where Are The Jobs? Abroad.

Signs from Trump rally’s and from protests of Trump’s visit to Carrier Factory; CREDIT: Diana Ofosu.

Oh, all that talk of jobs. Of making America ‘great’. The supposed reason so many people voted for the Tiny Tyrant. It’s a right pity it was only talk, one huge lump of bullshit, which too many people were eager to eat. Think Progress has an in-depth look at the job bleed out. Recommended reading.

Jobs are still leaving the country

 

This is the very kind of job loss Trump repeatedly promised—on the campaign trail and from the Oval Office—would come to a full stop under his watch. “We’re just shipping company after company after company is leaving the country and leaving jobs behind. And I’m going to get it stopped,” he promised in early 2016.

“Believe me. Nobody’s leaving,” he said later in the year.

Not only would he stop the losses, he claimed, but he pledged to act immediately. “We are going to stop it day one,” he said. “A Trump administration will stop the jobs from leaving America… Promise.”

But so far, that promise is going unfulfilled. Haines and Vanacker aren’t the only ones waiting to see if their president will intervene to save their jobs.

Since Trump was sworn in on January 20, at least 11,934 American jobs have either been moved abroad or are in the process of leaving the country, according to Department of Labor data analyzed by Think Progress.

The 11,934 figure is gleaned from the DOL’s Trade Adjustment Assistance program and offers the best, most accurate baseline, though the actual number is almost certainly much higher. There is no accurate, complete dataset that tracks how many Americans are losing their jobs because they get shifted overseas. “Nobody has really been able to count the number of workers that have been affected by offshoring,” said Dan Marschall, director of the Working for America Institute at the AFL-CIO.

The lost jobs span geography and industry. Workers have been laid off from Maine to Florida, from Arizona to Wisconsin. While plenty are in industrial manufacturing, a range of other industries are represented: medicine, technology, even finance.

Think Progress has the full story, recommended reading.

And, as us reasonable people pointed out, time and time again, all those jobs good ol’ Americans refuse to do? They aren’t getting done.

Oh My, Randy Has A Cry.

Oh my. Prepare yourself for a treacly glurge overdose, because Rep. Randy Weber has one comin’ your way, all choked up and laced with tears, as well as a slight rewording of The Lord’s Prayer.

Modifying the Lord’s Prayer to declare that “thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth here in the halls of Congress,” Weber confessed the “sins our nation has been so emboldened to embark upon” and pleaded with God to forgive us.

“We have endeavored to try and kick your word out of public schools,” Weber said. “Father, we have endeavored to take the Bible out of classrooms, the Ten Commandments off the walls. Oh, Lord, forgive us. Father, we think we’re so smart, we have replaced your word and your precepts with drug-sniffing dogs, with metal detectors, with uniformed police officers in our schools. Oh, Lord, forgive us.”

Perhaps if you assholes were smart enough to legalize some drugs, and get serious about gun control, but yeah, real world solutions, those things aren’t good at all, no.

“Father, we have trampled on your holy institution of holy matrimony and tried to rewrite what it is and we’ve called it an alternate lifestyle,” Weber continued, his voice cracking. “Father, oh Father, please forgive us.”

:Sputters tea all over: Excuse me? Have you read the fucking bible? At all? Holy institution of holy matrimony my decidedly unsainted ass. This is barely dipping into the subject. There was a tremendous amount of fucking around in the bible, of all sorts.

“Lord, we have gone to killing the most innocent amongst us,” he wept. “Your servant Moses warned in Deuteronomy 19 for us to choose life so that we and all our descendants might live. Father, we’re killing our descendants and we’re calling it a choice. Oh, God in heaven, forgive us, please.”

Oh please. No one is killing your descendants, you silly asspimple. Whether or not I have descendants, and how many is none of your business. Once again, do you ever read the bible? Ever? In between public praying performances, perhaps? You should. I’ll help you out. I can help you out with Deuteronomy, too. You’ll have to pardon me if I simply raise an eyebrow over the thought of following the sociopath’s rule book. No thanks.

Via RWW.

Healthcare: A Congressional Exemption.

© nicolasjoseschirado, fotalia.

Rethuglicans are still hard at work, trying to figure out how to repeal the ACA, without working overly hard on the whole ‘replacement’ aspect. The more egregious parts of the repeal ‘n’ replace have kept some conservatives from getting on board, but Rep. Tom MacArthur (R-NJ) has come up with a cunning plan: we’ll exempt members of congress and their families! Now we can screw over all those peons and stay safe, yay! Disgusting asshole.

A new amendment to the Republican ObamaCare replacement bill exempts members of Congress and their staff from its effects.

The new changes to the bill would allow states to apply for waivers to repeal key ObamaCare provisions, such as the protection against people with pre-existing conditions being charged more and the requirement that insurers cover a range of health services, like prescription drugs and mental health.

The GOP amendment exempts members of Congress and their staffs to ensure that they will still be protected by those ObamaCare provisions.

The exemption was flagged by health law professor Tim Jost.

Democrats quickly jumped on the development, arguing that Republicans are willing to take away protections for the general public, but not themselves.

“The best evidence yet that the new GOP repeal plan is a disaster for people’s health care is that the GOP exempted Members of Congress from living under it,” said Leslie Dach, director of the Protect Our Care Campaign, one of the main groups fighting repeal.

The amendment is helping to woo some conservatives, who argue that the ObamaCare regulations are driving up premium costs, and note that high-risk pools would be able to fill the gap.

Via The Hill.

A Trump Tantrum and Government Shutdown.

Toddler Trump, by Sham.

Despite the Tiny Tyrant’s recent reversal on the importance of the first 100 days, he’s absolutely desperate for a “win” of some kind. For the most part, this involves another attempt at repealing the ACA, or failing that, trying to force congress to hand over forty billion dollars for the Grate Wall of Stupidity™.  More and more Americans are standing fast on not wanting the wall at all, and it’s not a remotely realistic “win” to push for, but Mulvaney is dangling an ACA concession, but only if all the money is handed over for the wall. Things were working, more or less, before Trump had to toss a late night wrench into the works, making everything all about his “wins” and nothing more. He has said “yeah, we want to keep government open”, but his actions don’t match that sentiment in any way. As usual, government in this case doesn’t mean jack shit if it doesn’t translate to “wins and approval” for the monstrous ego of Trump.

Trump’s instability has already caused a great deal of damage and irreparable harm; that harm keeps being extended with every rollback, all in the service of making the Tiny Tyrant feel like a big man. Now, he’s looking to toss anything into the cavernous maw of his always hungry ego, and if government shuts down, well who cares? I have no doubt that Trump would see that only as a bully tactic he could use, as that’s the current tactic, and the only one he possesses.

As the deadline for a spending bill looms, the Trump administration is reportedly throwing a monkey wrench into negotiations. The Trump administration is fighting for border wall funding or a crackdown on sanctuary cities, according to Politico, to give the president a victory during his first 100 days in office.

Desperate for a win, the administration is risking a government shutdown by insisting on funding the border wall. Congress has until April 28 to clear a spending bill — but negotiations between Republican and Democratic leaders in the House and Senate stalled over the last 24 hours after White House officials showed they wouldn’t move on funding the wall, Politico reported on Thursday evening.

A victory! The Tiny Tyrant must have a victory! Once again, language choice reveals a very nasty, unstable mindset. Think Progress has the full story, as does Politico.

Inaugural Donors: Phony Numbers and Front Groups.

Pablo Delcan; Jonathan Ernst/Reuters.

President Donald Trump smashed records this month with a reported $107 million dollar worth of donations to the “58th Presidential Inaugural Committee”—doubling the amount received in 2009 by former President Barack Obama. But a deep dive into Trump’s Federal Election Committee filing, spearheaded by the Huffington Post’s Christina Wilkie, presents evidence that a large number of donors used “phony records” or are “front groups.”

“Wow: Scores of donors to Trump’s inauguration are phony records or front groups. Help us did, spreadsheet is open! https://t.co/e7IVvIx8gB”

The look into all this fraud is being crowd-sourced, if you can help dig around a bit, do so!

Via Raw Story.

The Weekly White House Bible Study.

Photo via AP.

Evangelism everywhere, promoting a theocracy, with a firm footing in the white house.

…The schedule does not list who attended that session, but Ralph Drollinger, a right-wing pastor with a long history of ties to Perry and other Trump Administration officials, claims on his web site to be running weekly Bible sessions specially for the Trump Cabinet. He has praised the new administration for its power to “change the course of America in ways that are biblical.”

[…]

In a January radio interview, Drollinger praised then-senator Jeff Sessions, who “hungers and thirsts for the Scripture,” for his performance during his confirmation hearing, when he provided a Biblical justification for his draconian views on immigration. “I’ve had the distinct honor of teaching him on this subject, and many others,” Drollinger said. “There’s nothing more exciting, when you’re a Bible teacher, to see one of the guys you’re working with—to see him or her articulate something you’ve taught them when they’re under the gun.”

Vice President Mike Pence, HUD Secretary Ben Carson, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, Energy Secretary Rick Perry, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, CIA Director Mike Pompeo, nominee for Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue, HHS Secretary Tom Price, and Scott Pruitt, head of the Environmental Protection Agency, have all sponsored the Capitol Ministries Cabinet Bible study, according to literature put out by Capitol Ministries.

The Cabinet Bible study is the just newest piece of what Drollinger has described as a “para-church ministry” with a “target audience” of political members. In a September 2015 interview, Drollinger described his mission as creating a “factory” to mass-produce politicians like Michele Bachmann, who is on the Capitol Ministries board. “She thinks Biblically,” Drollinger said. “She doesn’t need a whole lot of time to figure out how to vote because she sees the world through a scriptural lens. We need more men and women like her in office.”

[…]

For an outside group to hold an event in a Congressional building, they must be sponsored by a senator or representative; dozens of Members of Congress sponsored Drollinger’s group, including Mike Pence, Mike Pompeo, Tom Price, and Sessions while they were all still on Capitol Hill. Rep. Mike Conaway, who recently took over the House Intelligence Committee’s investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election from Devin Nunes, is also a Capitol Ministries sponsor.

Now, Capitol Ministries holds three separate Bible Studies each week which it describes in its literature: one for Cabinet members (“7:00 am Wednesdays Mornings. Location Undisclosed. Light Refreshments Served.”); one for the Senate (“8:00 am Tuesdays, Rotating Offices of Senators. Hot Breakfast Served.”); and one for members of the House (“Capitol H324: Monday or Tuesday Evenings after First Votes Back. Dinner Served.”) In an interview in January, Drollinger described the House study as feeling like a truck stop and the Senate study feeling like a country club.

Everything in the article is highly disturbing and frightening. Recommended Reading. Fusion has the full story.

China, Russia Chasing U.S. Carrier.

USS Carl Vinson. (Jo Jung-ho/Yonhap via AP, File).

China and Russia aren’t too happy with the Tiny Tyrant’s tough toddler obsession with nuclear weapons, nor his increasing instability without a first thought, let alone a second. They have dispatched intelligence gathering ships to dog the U.S. Carrier. I’m grateful for their intervention, such as it is at this time. I have not been this scared of nuclear war since I was a child. As nuclear tensions de-escalated through much of my lifetime, I had hoped to make it through the rest of life without having to worry about being crispy crittered or dying a slow death in nuclear winter. Now we have a maniac in the white house who is nursing a 30 year obsession with nuclear weapons with an itchy trigger finger.

China and Russia have dispatched intelligence-gathering vessels from their navies to chase the USS Carl Vinson nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, which is heading toward waters near the Korean Peninsula, multiple sources of the Japanese government revealed to The Yomiuri Shimbun.

It appears that both countries aim to probe the movements of the United States, which is showing a stance of not excluding military action against North Korea. The Self-Defense Forces are strengthening warning and surveillance activities in the waters and airspace around the area, according to the sources.

The aircraft carrier strike group, composed of the Carl Vinson at its core with guided-missile destroyers and other vessels, is understood to be around the East China Sea and heading north toward waters near the Korean Peninsula.

China and Russia, which prioritize stability in the Korean Peninsula, showed concern over the tough U.S. stance, with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov saying the issue should be resolved peacefully through political and diplomatic efforts.

The dispatch of the intelligence-gathering vessels appears to be partly aimed at sending a warning signal to the United States.

Full story here.

The Internet Is Optional: “Nobody’s got to use the internet.”

Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (YouTube).

By golly, a representative of the Party of Very Old White Men has declared that the internet is optional! You don’t need that silly web thingy, no sir! The distance between these willfully ignorant, very old white men and reality continues to widen. They seem to think that you really don’t need net access at all, outside of email or finding delicious porn, so if you don’t like the stripping of privacy rights, well, you can go without.

In a town hall appearance held on Thursday, Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, R-Wis. defended his decision to vote to repeal the Broadband Consumer Privacy Rules passed by the FCC last October by arguing that “nobody’s got to use the internet.”

When a constituent attending the event in Wisconsin’s fifth district raised the issue that she has only one ISP available in her neighborhood and now has little recourse to protect her personal information from her internet provider, Sensenbrenner responded:

“You know, nobody’s got to use the internet….I don’t think it’s my job to tell you that you cannot get advertising through your information being sold. My job, I think, is to tell you that you have the opportunity to do it and then you take it upon yourself to make the choice.”

The congressman’s press office doubled down on this, responding to a tweet claiming Sensenbrenner said “not to use the internet” by stating, “Actually, he said that nobody has to use the internet. They have a choice.”

Sensenbrenner’s view contrasts with that of the United Nations, which has labeled internet access a basic human right, and with most trends that see more and more reliance on internet access to partake in other basic tasks, from completing school work to searching for employment.

As people in the tweet streams pointed out, people don’t have to use indoor plumbing, cars, electricity, or many other nifty modern things, but that would make life very difficult, and messy. Change happens, and if you’re a dinosaur who wants to sit in their swamp and sulk, have at it, but you should not be in position to legislate what other people can or cannot do, or what they can or cannot have. It’s damn near impossible to do anything without net access anymore, and someone who was in touch with reality would be aware of that one.

And no, I’m not going to apologize for being ageist. I am sick to death of old white men who think they rule the world, and how they see things is how it is. I’m hardly young myself, and I know not all older people are unrepentant dumbfucks, many of them are grand, ferociously intelligent people. Unfortunately, we seem to be short on them in what passes for U.S. government. I do want younger people in government. I want people who are not set in concrete and stuck in the 1950s. I also want lots of women and people of colour in government. It’s a dream.

Via Raw Story.

You Can Get An Ignorant Unpresident To Do Anything.

Jonathan Ernst | Reuters
U.S. Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Mick Mulvaney (R) listens as U.S. President Donald Trump meets with members of the Republican Study Committee at the White House in Washington, U.S. March 17, 2017.

John Harwood at CNBC has an enlightening interview with Mick Mulvaney, the person who is going to decide just how many programs and people can be screwed over by the regime.

MULVANEY: I’ll tell how I wrote it. And then you can decide for yourself. We looked at the speeches to try and figure out where he wanted to spend more money. And then we also had instructions not to add to the deficit. I laid to him the options that Mick Mulvaney would put on a piece of paper. And he looked at one and said, “What is that?” And I said, “Well, that’s a change to part of Social Security.” He said, “No. No.” He said, “I told people I wouldn’t change that when I ran. And I’m not going to change that. Take that off the list.” So I get a chance to be Mick Mulvaney. I get a chance to have those same principles. And I give ’em to the president, and he makes the final decisions.

HARWOOD: He over and over went to West Virginia, went to rural parts of Kentucky and Ohio, said, “I’m going to take care of you guys.” He didn’t say, “I’m going to get rid of the Appalachian Regional Commission.”

MULVANEY: Yeah, and my guess is he probably didn’t know what the Appalachian Regional Commission did. I was able to convince him, “Mr. President, this is not an efficient use of the taxpayer dollars. This is not the best way to help the people in West Virginia.” He goes, “Okay, that’s great. Is there a way to get those folks the money in a more efficient way?” And the answer is yes. And that’s what’s we’re going focus on doing.

“More efficient.” In the current regime, that equals nothing at all.

HARWOOD: How cognizant is he of the fact that many of the people who supported him would be hurt by cuts that you proposed in the budget?

MULVANEY: The president is certainly conscious of the people who voted for him, right. But he cares about more than just the Trump voters. So when you say you know, people that voted for him are hurt, that’s not the issue. He wants to know, “Are the folks in Appalachia, are the coal miners in West Virginia going to be better off under my presidency whether or not they voted for me?” He doesn’t care if they voted for him. I think what the president will tell you is, “The best thing I can do for those folks, whether or not they voted for me, is to figure out a way to get 3.5 percent economic growth.”

Well, there was a lot of Newspeak, translating to “nope, no one gives a shit about them, because hey, they aren’t the issue!”

HARWOOD: I’ve had interviews with Republicans from Paul Ryan to John Thune who have been making the case that, “We are going to persuade the president that we have to do something about entitlements.” How are you going to manage that?

MULVANEY: We’re working on it right now. He went through the list and said, “No, that’s Social Security. That violates my promise. Take that off. That’s Medicare. That violates my promise. Take that off.”

HARWOOD: Is Social Security Disability on that list?

MULVANEY: I don’t think we’ve settled yet. But I continue to look forward to talking to the president about ways to fix that program. Because that is one of the fastest growing programs that we have. It’s become effectively a long-term unemployment, permanent unemployment program.

Oh look, about the last social safety net, going to be shredded. There’s much more at CNBC, along with the requisite “oh hey, we all golf together, we’re great cronies, everyone is happy, happy, happy, no KAOS* regime at all, nope!

*My current image of the U.S. “Government”:

Conrad Siegfried, Head of KAOS, Get Smart.

Sunday Facepalm: The Problem with Syrian Kids.

When I posted about the illegal strike on Syria, I made a strong point about the Tiny Tyrant’s hypocrisy in claiming to care about Syrian children. He did not, and does not care about those children in the least. While campaigning, he compared Syrian people to venomous snakes, and Syrian people are high on his ban list. Nikki Haley has now come out and stated the real problem with those “beautiful babies” who happen to by Syrian – they come with parents. Oh my!

Following President Donald Trump’s military attack on Syria for the use of chemical weapons, CNN host Jake Tapper asked Haley why the administration was opposed to taking in refugees when “beautiful babies” were being “slaughtered.”

“Why not allow Syrian refugees who are children and maybe their mothers to come in after they’ve been vetted,” Tapper wondered.

Haley argued that President Trump “very much believes in the responsibility of keeping Americans safe.”

[…]

Tapper pressed: “But certainly you don’t think Syrian children pose a risk to the American people.”

“Well, Syrian children have to come with Syrian adults,” Haley replied. “And you don’t know, it’s hard to know based on the vetting process. And that’s unfortunate that we can’t find that out.”

[…]

“At the end of the day we need to remember that Syrians don’t want to live somewhere else. They want to be home. They want to be with their family. They want to be with their loved ones. And that’s the focus of why the airstrike happened this week.”

Right. An airstrike which did not do one fucking thing, outside of being a cynical ploy to shore up abysmal ratings, the only thing the Tiny Tyrant cares about. He certainly does not care about anyone’s children, outside of his own. I do imagine most people would prefer to stay in the land of their birth, however, war and climate change are making that impossible for way too many people. Since Little Donnie doesn’t want to actually help any of those brown babies with adults attached, perhaps he could go big picture, and focus on making a difference regarding climate. Oh, wait. Yes, he’s already done that one, hasn’t he? Rolled us right back by about 45, 50 years, hellbent on accelerating the nauseous mess uStates is about to become. Got it.

Via Raw Story.

Straight from the Golf Course, It’s Mr. Tweet!

The reason you don’t generally hit runways is that they are easy and inexpensive to quickly fix (fill in and top)!

That’s the Fucking Idiot’s amazing military logik! Well, he would know the dirty and cheap way to do something. I’m afraid the Tiny Tyrant isn’t doing so well anymore, the tweet stream is cynical, funny, and outraged. Lots of people tired to death of this moron. Not a whole lot of Trumpholes coming to the defense, either.

This also came up more than once in the tweet stream:

Pro-Trump super PAC @GreatAmericaPAC fundraising off missile strikes in Syria.

This Fucking Idiot is busy trying to funnel money into a 2020 campaign, while demonstrating that he can’t even manage to stay in the white house for one fucking weekend, let alone actually work.

Naturally, our ever Fawlty Dictator is busy sucking up all the taxpayer money while he plays at his private club, and is, once again, golfing.

Source: WaPo.

Think Progress has a lovely breakdown of just how much money the Fawlty Dictator has stolen to date, in order to spend every possible moment out of the white house, faffing about in Florida, busy sucking all those poor people dry, and golfing. Amazing he found a moment to tweet at all, ennit?

Christians Hating Christians, Progressive Equals Monstrous.

Janet Mefferd.

Janet Mefferd.

A story from Reuters has fired up the Religious Reich. The story has to do with the increasing political activism on the part of progressive Christians, who lean left rather than reich. They are all false prophets, false teachers, and generally horrible people all around. They twist the bible to pieces, oh my! That latter accusation based on taking the very few decent bits of the New Testament seriously, like be kind to the poor and so on. Turns out it’s quite monstrous to interpret “feed the poor” as “feed the poor”. Oh, and of course, blame is placed squarely on women. Seems that horrible progressive type Christianity has been infested with women, oh my!

On Thursday, the American Pastors Network’s Sam Rohrer, along with his guests Gary Dull and Dave Kistler, devoted their entire “Stand in the Gap” show to trashing the religious progressives highlighted in the Reuters story.

Rohrer was quite fond of his formulation that, unlike the Religious Right, the “religious left” is in fact “irreligiously wrong.”  Rohrer and his co-hosts were not shy about judging the progressive religious activists as “false prophets” and “false teachers” that the Bible warns against.

Dull said that progressives deny the “authority of scripture” and a “biblical worldview” and he offered one possible explanation:

I have found that a lot of the leaders and pastors, a lot of the pastors in this particular movement are ladies, and we believe as we look at the word of God in its true sense, that the word of God teaches us that ladies do not, well, they should not be in the pastorate.

Rohrer has previously said that having women in political leadership is a mark of God’s judgment upon a nation.

Oh that pesky “true sense”. It’s a pity there’s no such fucking thing when it comes to the Christian Book of Myths. It can be interpreted any way a person wants, which would be why there are so damn many types of Christianity. Most of them, however, do agree on the women leaders icky stance.

Kistler ticked off a list of issues motivating progressive activists—providing sanctuary for undocumented immigrants, protecting LGBTQ people, defending Obamacare, denouncing Trump’s proposed cuts in foreign aid—and decreed them “all leftist causes…that are very, very unbiblical in nature.” Kistler said flatly that it is not possible for a “Bible-believing Christian” or “genuine, true believer in Jesus Christ” to be part of the “religious left.”

Time to play No True Christian! They are right about all those things being unbiblical in nature, given that the bible is basically a long treatise on how to be a psychopath. There are decent bits sprinkled here and there in the New Testament, such as found in the slim Jefferson Bible. It should not be forgotten though, that the NT also has Jesus saying he is there to uphold every jot and tittle of the old laws. Of course, there follows a number of passages which refute Jesus’s statement, so we’re back to where we started, and the bible can mean anything you like, making it quite meaningless.

There’s more about Sam and his companions here. Moving on to the ferocious Janet Mefferd…

On her Tuesday “Janet Mefferd Live” show, Mefferd was quick to challenge the faith of progressive Christians included in the article. “These people are progressives,” she said. “They’re progressives! And for many of them progressivism is their religion. It’s not Christianity.”

No, it’s not filled with hate, so it can’t be Christianity! I didn’t listen to the soundcloud, but I’d bet there’s a serious amount of poison in her spitting out of “progressives!” Everyone should know that true Christianity is all about being a regressive, hateful asshole!

“The problem is when they start quoting scripture, it turns into something monstrous, and really, really, out-of-control not biblical,” Mefferd said, warning that progressive politics are “popping up” even in evangelical circles and among millennial evangelical Christians.

Oh no, someone leaked compassion into Christians, the horror of it all! Better get that nasty stuff out of there right now, it’s infectious.

Mefferd read from Jeff Jacoby’s March 23 guest column in the Boston Globe, entitled, “Deliver us from Scripture-citers,” in which Jacoby says biblical exhortations to feed the hungry and clothe the naked are “personal, not political.” Mefferd said of a recent letter from religious progressives that cited those verses, “They’re constantly taking the Bible and twisting it.  They twist it. They take it out of context.”

Whereas the Religious Reich, always looking for confirmation of their hatred and biases, would never ever twist scripture or take it out of context, no.

Mefferd also cited Kelly Monroe Kullberg, who has a record of rallying conservative Christians in opposition to progressive religious voices; a few years ago she organized Evangelicals for Biblical Immigration, which was meant to counter the Evangelical Immigration Table, and Christians for a Sustainable Economy, which criticized progressive Christians who argued against cuts to federal programs that serve the poor. Kullberg spearheaded  a group of more than 600 conservative Christians who last year called on progressive Christians to “repent” for “work that often advanced a destructive liberal political agenda.”

Well, here’s hoping Christians with a conscience and glimmerings of empathy win the day. I would ask Ms. Mefferd how she squares the regressive attitude towards women preachers/teachers with her mouthing off, but I’m sure I’d get sprayed by a mouthful of shit, so I’ll refrain.

Via RWW.