Terrorism Tourism.

A group of tourists take part in a two hour “boot camp” experience, at “Caliber 3 Israeli Counter Terror and Security Academy ” in the Gush Etzion settlement bloc south of Jerusalem in the occupied West Bank. It is part of a counter-terrorism “boot camp” organised by Caliber 3, a company set up by a colonel in the Israeli army reserves.
REUTERS/Nir Elias.

A tourist takes part in a two hour “boot camp” experience, at “Caliber 3 Israeli Counter Terror and Security Academy” in the Gush Etzion settlement bloc. Entrance to the gated compound in the Gush Etzion settlement bloc – built on land the Palestinians want for their own state – costs $115 for adults and $85 for children.
REUTERS/Nir Elias.

A tourist carries a poster as he takes part in a two hour “boot camp”. The aim of the mock scenario is to teach foreign visitors how to deal with an attack on a market.
REUTERS/Nir Elias.

An Israeli instructor speaks to children from overseas holding wooden cut-out rifles. Yasser Sobih, mayor of the nearby Palestinian town of al-Khader, condemned the Israeli venture. “The participation of tourists in training in these camps built on occupied Palestinian land means that they support the occupation and we ask them to stop it,” he told Reuters.
REUTERS/Nir Elias.

Here’s one stupid fucking idea. Unsurprisingly, the majority of tourists having themselves all kinds of fun at terrorist boot camp are Americans. Reuters has an extensive slideshow, and article about this particular bit of idiocy, catering to morons with superhero fantasies run amok in their heads.

Story.

Holy Laughter and Privy Secret Information.

Who are all these people? I can’t keep track of them.

Last week, President Trump met with a variety to right-wing pastors in the Oval Office, where the group laid hands upon him and were led in prayer by pastor Rodney Howard-Browne.

Howard-Browne, a pioneer of the Holy Laughter movement, posted a video late last week in which he explained that he had been moved to pray over Trump because he is privy to secret information about a “planned attack on our president.”

Uh huh.

“There is a planned attack on our president,” he said, “and that’s all I can tell you about right now; I know what I’m talking about, I’ve spoken to high-ranking people in the government and this is being planned by people that hate God, hate America, hate our president and we have to stop this, in Jesus name.”

Yes, yes. It’s a terribly privy, and of course, no one actually knows a damn thing except you. I imagine if “high-ranking” people in government knew anything about an actual plot of any kind, they would simply deal with it. Of course, given what ‘government’ has been reduced to these days, I suppose there would be much flapping of arms and denials, while no one did anything.

People that hate “god.” No. Again, let’s be god specific, please. The planet is littered with gods. So, people that hate Jehovah. Bad news, Rodney – the only people who might hate Jehovah are those who believe in it. People like myself, atheists, we know your psychopathic figment is simply that, a work of imagination. You don’t hate that which is not real. (And no, please do not make asinine comments about ‘hating’ fictional characters. That’s not genuine hate, it’s more of a sport.) People that hate America. Well, I can’t say I’m fond of your version of it, which is a fucking nightmare for all decent peoples. Hate our president. What president? We don’t have one at the moment. We have an engorged, malignant narcissist of an idiot sitting in the white house, weaving a web of fascism and nonsense, manufacturing hate by the truckload. I would love to go back to not caring one whit about Donny Trump, and being only marginally aware of him, if at all.

Howard-Browne stated that he is going to have the photo of the group praying over Trump posted in the prayer room at his church where, 24 hours a day, there will be a prayer warrior stationed “just for the purpose of praying over our president, that God would protect him, that the plan of the wicked would be cut off … that if the enemy digs a ditch [for the president], that he will fall into himself.”

Pray all you want. Indulge in hysterical laughter. Who the fuck cares? It won’t do a damn thing. Jehovah doing something about wicked people, right. Seems to me you’re flourishing just fine.

“Some of you might not understand that, you might think we’re crazy, but I tell you, if you knew what I knew, then you’d understand the urgency of the hour,” he said.

Right. There’s always some “urgency of the hour” with you people. You’ve been waiting on your big one for a couple thousand years now. Pardon my yawn. I don’t know what you supposedly have under your hat, but I don’t need to know, either. It’s all emptiness, whipping people up into a nonsense froth of fear, so you can shake their pockets out, and they’ll be grateful for it. Unfortunately, I don’t think you have the defense of insanity, all you assholes are greedy, cold, and calculating to the last penny. Fear is an easy business, easy as sex. They both sell.

“There is a fight on for the soul of the republic and God had raised President Donald Trump to be the trumpet that is going to sound in this hour …

The republic doesn’t have a soul. Neither does anything else. Trump as a Trumpet? :laughs: Out here in reality, all we’re getting is a stream of broken tweeting.

There are many traps being set all the time and already the Lord has averted many things just in the short time that he’s been in office. Let’s pray for him like never before. Maybe you didn’t vote for him, I don’t care; if you want to live a peaceful life, then pray.”

If I thought it would help, I’d pray to all the gods to have Donny drop dead in a timely manner, and we might possibly work our way back to that peace business. If any gods read this, and want to strike a deal, you know where I live.

Full article and video at Right Wing Watch.

Sunday Facepalm.

Healthcare? Who needs it, anyway? Jim Garlow thinks he has a most cunning plan – tax people, hand the money to churches, and they will do the healthcare! See, all taken care of, no problems.

According to Garlow, any government healthcare program is “doomed to fail” because the Constitution lists the “enumerated powers of what the government is allowed to do and can do, and one of them is not healthcare.” Instead, Garlow argued, the government ought to defer to the church on this issue because God “has already designed a format” for properly providing healthcare to a nation.

The “format” for healthcare that Garlow proposed has three tiers: the “government of personal responsibility, government of the family, and government of the church,” notably excluding “the civil government,” which he said has no role in providing healthcare.

Personal responsibility: not a government. Family: not a government. Church: not a government. The health of citizens is something every right thinking government tackles, because only idiots think that having citizens in poor health is a dandy idea.

“First of all,” Garlow argued, healthcare is “my own personal responsibility: I have to make decisions for my health. If I am not exercising properly, this is a terrible confession to make, if I am not properly exercising right now like I should, then I have to get that corrected it or I will pay a high price for it.”

Sure, we all have to try and do sensible things, but whether or not we do those sensible things, we should still have the right of healthcare. As much as idiots like yourself love to think that every little thing can be handled by exercise and diet, that’s not so. You can be the most conscientious person on the planet and still be slammed with any number of diseases. Then there are accidents. All the diets in the world won’t fix a broken back, or any other broken bits. Exercise and diet don’t confer immunity, and they don’t make you unbreakable. A lot of people will still have to deal with health issues in spite of doing all the healthy things – dropping all salt from your diet will certainly help on the high blood pressure front, but it won’t magically make it go away. Some people never exercise a day in their life and still live half of forever, and healthily and happily so. Other people can exercise every single day of their lives and still get nailed by one health problem after another. Some people can only take exercise if it’s a certain kind, and well regulated for their health concerns, such as people with asthma. And so on. It’s not a matter of “easy peasy, do this, and you’ll be fine.”

The next safety net should be the “family unit,” Garlow reasoned, because “I can take care of my children much better than Donald Trump can. He’s a good man, but he can’t take care of my kids.”

Fuck you and your “family unit”. You don’t think I’m a “family unit” because I don’t have children. You don’t think of queer people as a “family unit” whether they have children or not. And so on. Trump is not a good person, in any sense. This isn’t about someone waltzing in and doing a spot of babysitting, you dimwitted arsepimple. Lots of people, in spite of working their asses off, are stuck in a poverty loop, which requires correction from the ground up. That doesn’t get better because assholes like you want to sermonize about how they aren’t working hard enough. People should not have to deal with high rates of crime. People should not have to worry about every idiot in the country walking about waving guns. People should not have to deal with food deserts. People should be able to access and afford healthy foods. People should have the time to cook it. People should have the right to a good education for all. People should have a right to comprehensive healthcare.

The final resource for those in need of healthcare, Garlow suggested, ought to be the church because Christians are already commanded to care for the poor and the widows and the orphans: “If the church were freed up from the encroachment and the severe over-regulation in our culture and the severe over-taxation of our culture, the church could resume what it did very successfully” throughout history.

Really. Gosh, I don’t see armies of christians out in the streets, ministering to widows, orphans, or anyone else. Funny thing about healthcare, that comes with requirements. Being an asshole christian does not enable you to provide healthcare of any kind. “Encroachment and severe over regulation”? Of what fucking kind? Severe over taxation? :Snort: Churches are already tax exempt. That’s not even taxation, you dipshit, and you’re the one proposing taxing the populace at large so you can fill your fucking coffers even more. I note you don’t specify which churches. That one ought to lead to internecine fighting for the next several decades.

Garlow insisted that “the best medical care and welfare benefits can be done by the church” and should be funded through a “once every three years, ten-percent taxation on people” that would allocate money to “the faith communities.” According to Garlow, allowing the church to provide healthcare would “get rid of the freeloaders that abuse welfare.”

Ah. So you admit this isn’t about healthcare at all. You just don’t want any social safety nets for anyone, unless such things are in the hands of parsimonious christians with judgments trembling on their pursed lips.

In the anticipation that some might object to his unconstitutional conflation of church and state, Garlow insisted that his plan actually puts the church and state “in their proper lanes.”

The “church” can stay in it’s pitted backroad, where it can continue to be an obstacle to all progress, while it’s left behind by everything in the “proper lanes”.

Via RWW.

Lincoln’s Body Double.

John C. Calhoun print, 1852 Library of Congress/LC-DIG-pga-02499.

After Lincoln’s assassination, there was a dearth of “heroic-style” pictures of the president. So one portrait painter got creative. On a print of the late president, Thomas Hicks superimposed Lincoln’s head onto the body of John C. Calhoun—the virulent racist and slavery proponent who did not exactly see eye-to-eye with the 16th president.

Engraver A.H. Ritchie created the Calhoun print in 1852. The original included the words “strict constitution,” “free trade,” and “the sovereignty of the states” on the desk papers. But when it was altered to feature Lincoln instead, the words were changed to “constitution,” “union,” and “proclamation of freedom.”

Lincoln edited print Library of Congress/LC-DIG-pga-02353.

For a century, no one noticed. The famous photo was only recently revealed to have been faked.

Photojournalist Stefan Lorant was compiling photos of Lincoln for his book Lincoln, A Picture Story of His Life (first published in 1957, then revised in 1969) when he discovered something odd: in the Hicks print, Lincoln’s mole was on the wrong side of his face. After some investigation, he realized that Lincoln’s face in the print exactly matched his face in Brady’s five-dollar bill photo—except in the print Lincoln’s face was flipped, making Lincoln’s mole show up on the opposite side.

Apparently, Hicks hadn’t noticed this discrepancy when superimposing the picture onto Calhoun’s body.

You can read more about this and the other photographic manipulations done by Brady when it came to photographing Lincoln at Atlas Obscura.

Crushed By A Giant Bag of Drugs! Bad!

The Tiny Tyrant is talking again. Sad! Bad, too.

President Donald Trump said in an interview on Air Force One during the flight to France that his border wall with Mexico won’t just be solar powered, it’ll be transparent so that people don’t get crushed when drug dealers throw “large sacks of drugs” over the wall.

[…]

“One of the things you need with the wall is transparency,” said Trump. “You have to be able to see through it in other words, if you can’t see through that wall — so it could be a steel wall with openings, but you have to have openings because you have to see what’s on the other side.”

Why does the president believe you need to be able to see through the border wall? To avoid getting crushed by giant sacks of drugs being thrown in from Mexico, of course.

“As horrible as it sounds, when they throw the large sacks of drugs over, and if you have people on the other side of the wall, you don’t see them — they hit you on the head with 60 pounds of stuff? It’s over. As crazy as that sounds, you need transparency through that wall. But we have some incredible designs.”

I thought “the wall” was supposed to stop all those bad hombres with the evil weed, yeah? Doesn’t seem to be much point, if you can just walk up and heave big bags of drugs capable of crushing someone over the side. Will there be lines of trebuchets, perhaps? What’s to stop people being heaved over the great transparency?

Apparently, some of the details are that the wall will be 55 feet tall. You have to have one hell of an arm to be pitching gigantic bags of drugs over the side. Right.

You can see some choice responses here.

Kellyanne’s Flash Cards.

More like flash paper, really.

Senior White House adviser Kellyanne Conway on Wednesday deployed two small flash cards to make the case that there has been no collusion between the Trump administration and Russia … “yet”.

Speaking to Fox News host Sean Hannity, Conway said she was using the cards “to help all the people at home” understand the significance of revelations that Donald Trump Jr agreed to meet a Russian lawyer, after being told the lawyer would provide damaging information about Hillary Clinton because the Russian government was supporting his father’s presidential campaign.

At the end of her interview with Hannity, Conway held up her first placard, which read: “conclusion, collusion”.

Conway crossed out the word collusion and explained: “What’s the conclusion? Collusion? No. We don’t have that yet.”

She then held up a second card, which read “Illusion, delusion”, and said: “I just thought we’d have some fun with words.”

I have fun with words all the time, words are wonderful. That said, I’m something of a stickler for using them correctly. Unfortunately, Ms. Conway doesn’t allow herself to be bothered by that overly much.

Defending the Trump administration, Conway told Hannity the media talks “more about Russia than America”.

The cards, she said, were like Sesame Street’s “Word of the Day”, a reference to the children’s TV show which features a segment in which Elmo and occasionally other muppets, such as the hapless Grover, explain the meaning of words such as vote, stumble and canteen.

I have Word Wednesday every week. What I do, and what Sesame Street does, is to provide nifty things like definitions of those words. That’s not at all what Ms. Conway was doing. She was attempting to switch one word for another in blatant propaganda style.

Conway later tweeted a link to an article about her segment and said: “Apologies to the humorless.”

I’m not humorless, Ms. Conway. I find often find you quite funny, but not in any way you meant.

But by Thursday morning, inevitably, her appearance had become a meme:

Scott Kerr: Kellyanne Conway did the worst version Bob Dylan’s “Subterranean Homesick Blues”

You can see additional responses at The Guardian.

America On Its Baby Hobby Horse.

Lance Wallnau is at it again. Does the man ever shut up? This time, he has the explanation for all that Russia stuff, and America is being too whiny, and sucking its thumb too much.

“Do you know why Russia made it a point to interfere with our election?” Wallnau asked. “Because Putin was incensed that Hillary Clinton, during the Obama administration, had utilized organizations in the West to plant operations in Moscow for the pro-democracy movement because—get this—the Democrats want the LGBT social agenda to be embraced and Russia won’t get on board with it.”

“Putin is virulently anti-homosexual, same-sex marriage,” he continued. “The Democrat progressives targeted Putin for regime change, so we put money and organizations into Russia for pro-democracy and Putin did a massive crackdown on it, kicked them all out … and then went on the offensive and decided to let Hillary experience what it’s like to have your political system meddled with by a foreign power.”

This business of assigning all these amazing actions to one woman is getting past tiring. I suppose it’s just beyond all reason to think that gay people in Russia might have some passing interest in having full human rights, and other little things, like not being murdered. Yes, Putin is about as homophobic as one can get, but he’s one person. He is not all of Russia, and he certainly does not speak for every person in Russia. Naturally, this has jack shit to do with anything. Trump is convenient puppet, a moron who is easily influenced. Anyone who was looking for an idiot puppet would have chosen him, he has no capacity when it comes to thinking for himself. The man is a dictator’s wet dream, as far as puppets go.

“America has to get off its little baby hobby horse here, sucking its thumb, being all offended,” Wallnau said, “because we did it to [Putin] and that’s why he did it to us. So America is guilty of this stuff too.”

Oooh, well that’s telling America. You wouldn’t be calling your listeners snowflakes, would you?

Via Right Wing Watch, there’s video.

Net Neutrality: A Foreshadowing.

Screencap via GIPHY.

Sites across the web today devote their digital real estate to protecting net neutrality, the Federal Communications Commission regulations that ensure every website can be accessed at equal speed and convenience. If you’ve visited Reddit, Amazon, Twitter, Facebook, Google, or Netflix, you may have read that these Obama-era regulations preventing Internet Service Providers (ISPs) from charging extra for faster web connections are in danger, thanks, in part, to FCC chief Ajit Pai. The principle behind these regulations is that the internet, like water and electricity, is a utility that everyone should have equal access to. Without the internet, it’s nearly impossible to participate in modern society.

So, for a glimpse into the future of a net without neutrality, we’ve gathered 10 infuriating loading screen GIFs from artists like Alex Apostolides and Nikita Liskov. Spoiler: they never end. For more details on how net neutrality works and the specific threat facing it today, click here. But to feel the pain of a future without it, simply scroll on down.

And it is painful, believe me. I get enough of this painful already with Verizon, it does not need to be worse, but that’s what we all have to look forward to, unfortunately.

To learn how you can help protect net neutrality, click here.

There’s more at The Creators Project.

So That’s Why Prayer Doesn’t Work.

Once again, noise is being made about prayer. The right kind of prayer, prayed by the right kind of christians.

Ralph Drollinger, the minister who leads regular prayer and Bible study meetings with members of President Trump’s cabinet and members of Congress, says in his written Bible study guide for this month, “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.”

Drollinger’s claim is reminiscent of a notorious 1980 declaration by the then-head of the Southern Baptist Convention Bailey Smith, who told a Religious Right political gathering that it was “interesting” to him that political gatherings would “have a Protestant to pray and a Catholic to pray and then you have a Jew to pray.” Added Smith, “With all due respect to those dear people, my friend, God almighty does not hear the prayer of a Jew. For how in the world can God hear the prayer of a man who says that Jesus Christ is not the true Messiah?”

I remember that nonsense from 1980, because as the statement spread, Reagan was expected to make an impromptu ruling on it, by issuing his opinion on whether or not prayers by Jews were heard by Jehovah. Ronnie went with yes, they were heard.

Getting back to Drollinger’s current statement:

Scripture is clear; those who are at enmity with Him—who passively or actively reject the Son of God—their prayers are worthless and go unheard. And the State suffers for want of His blessing. The righteous leader is a man of potent prayer.

Obviously, there aren’t many christians who are righteous enough, because there’s zero evidence of any kind that prayer works. Of course, I’m sure it would help if the entity you directed your prayers to existed.

CBN reported in April that Drollinger started working during the transition to set up White House Bible studies, noting that “sponsors include Vice President Pence; Secretaries Betsy DeVos, Ben Carson, Sonny Perdue, Rick Perry, Tom Price and Jeff Sessions; EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt and CIA Director Mike Pompeo.” Drollinger’s most recent Bible study guide lists more than 50 members of Congress as sponsors, along with Oklahoma Governor Mary Fallin and Arkansas Lieutenant Governor Tim Griffin.

I suppose it’s good to know who the seriously venomous ones are, but this is hardly news. It does show just how deep the infection runs, and how far we are on the road to utter ruin.

Drollinger’s comments about prayer were part of a discussion of separation of church and state. He says that while the Bible supports institutional separation—no state Church—it does not support “influential” separation. This month’s Bible study is all about the church’s obligation to develop righteous governmental leaders. He is dismissive of Christian groups that focus on lobbying for specific policies, rather than winning politicians’ souls or replacing them with people who are “strong in Christ Public Servants.”

And, he writes, public officials have a special obligation to make sure the nation has “God-fearing righteous judges,” not ones who support abortion or “make up rights for the unrighteous”:

It is only through righteous lawmakers and law enforcers that a society can have any semblance of justice.  Justice stems from righteous, God-fearing individuals who are grown into such by the discipleship priorities of the Church in a composite nation of co-abiding Institutions of Church and State.

There we have it. We must not have judges who abide by the law, no. We must have asshole christians who assume they have the right to rule over everyone else. What if someone’s god is Odin? How about Isis? Or Hekate? Or Tiamat? Or, or, or. All much older gods than Jehovah, and going by the stories, considerably more powerful. Do we get to have an all gods cage match?

Once a righteous person is in power, he says, they have the obligation to hire only righteous employees, and not to “compromise biblical absolutes in his policies or interactions with others.”

And to place all others into convenient slavery, I’d bet.

This past April, Brendan O’Connor at Fusion published an in-depth look at Drollinger and his Capitol Ministries. O’Connor reported that Drollinger had proclaimed Catholicism to be “the world’s largest false religion” and “that female legislators who continue working after having children are sinners, and that homosexuality is an ‘abomination.’” A bit more:

He has also written that social welfare programs are un-Christian. “It is safe to say that God is a Capitalist,” Drollinger once wrote, “not a Communist.” 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.” …

Drollinger also argues that climate change is impossible because God promised after The Flood never to do anything like that again. Drollinger preaches against “radical environmentalism” and that to believe that human activity could have devastating impact on the environment is not just mistaken, but the result of godless pride: “To think that man can alter the earth’s ecosystem—when God remains omniscient, omnipresent and omnipotent in the current affairs of mankind—is to more than subtly espouse an ultra-hubristic, secular worldview relative to the supremacy and importance of man,” Drollinger wrote recently. “It follows that we can all rest assured and wholly rely on God’s aforementioned promises pertaining to His ability and willingness to sustain our world’s ecosystem.”

No, that’s not what Jehovah promised. He promised to not have a temper tantrum and kill off most the world’s population by flood. Naturally, that didn’t stop him drowning mass amounts of people, you just need to flip right into Exodus for that one. That “promise” didn’t have jack shit to do with climate in any way, shape, or form, and also ignores that Jehovah’s “promises” aren’t worth spit in a storm. What happened to that bit about “being good stewards of the earth”? As for altering the various ecosystems on the earth, yes, we’ve been busy doing that since we showed up and started doing all the smart ape stuff. Right now, my state is suffering a severe drought. You’d have to be damn stupid to not notice such things, and how radical and rapid such changes have been. Now, it likely won’t be all that long before Drollinger drops dead, so he won’t be here to see the very worst effects of climate change. What we are seeing now is already very bad, but it’s nothing compared to what it will be in a comparatively short time span. So, there’s zero thought towards future generations, in spite of all that supposed hatred of abortion. Once again, that points to the truth of that matter: it is never about future generations, it is never about children, real or potential. It’s about stomping all over women. Christians just can’t stand the idea of women not being firmly under a thumb.

Make no mistake here: it is righteousness that exalts a nation! Therefore the priority of evangelism is the key to a great nation more so than anything else! You need to get this through your head my friends: Evangelism is the germination of righteousness! We need today to convert Public Servants who are lost without Christ!

Oh, I’m making no mistake. I recognize assholes with a vast need for power so they can hurt others. It’s a pity and a shame there are so many of them in what passes for government.

The complete article is at Right Wing Watch, and it’s damn depressing as well as infuriating.

“Trump’s crackdown on satanic pedophile and child sacrifice cults…”

Sacrifice of Isaac, Caravaggio.

Mark Taylor is a former firefighter who styles himself a prophet. I had not heard of him before today, but that’s not surprising as self-styled prophets are popping out of the woodwork everywhere these days. I get the feeling that Mr. Taylor is attempting to rival Alex Jones.

“Divine justice is being poured out right now,” Taylor said. “3,000 elite pedophiles have been arrested since the inauguration, but that’s not a whole lot of common knowledge, people don’t understand that because they’ve had a 100 percent media blackout on it.”

Oh yes, a media blackout, but you know all about it! That’s how these things work when you just dream them up. I’m getting pretty damn tired of all this “divine justice” which is conveniently invisible, with no discernible effect on our particular plane of reality. If that all mighty Jehovah is real and hanging about someplace, let him show hisself already.

Taylor said that thousands of well-known, high-ranking figures have been arrested in recent months as part of Trump’s crackdown on satanic pedophile and child sacrifice cults, but we are not hearing anything about it because Trump is keeping it all under wraps.

Ah. I’d think that if well-known, high-ranking people went suddenly missing in large numbers, someone would notice. There would, at the very least, be rampant speculation.

“The Clintons are going to go down, Obama is going to go down, they’re all going to go down,” Taylor said. “Time is up for those who are corrupt … God is very serious when He says He is going to clean house. Everybody keeps asking, ‘When is it going to start, when is it going to start?’

This body is not asking that at all. Corruption. That happens to be a frequently used category on Affinity, always used whenever there’s a post about the Tiny Tyrant and/or his hench ants, the rethuglicans and the other filthy rich. Y’know, those financially elite people. It’s of interest to me how on the conservative side, elite has been twisted about to mean knowledgeable/educated for the most part. The decades long move towards obscurantism has gathered great speed, and conservatives of all stripes are doing whatever they can to make education not only a very bad thing, but to strip most peoples’ ability to obtain any. Trump is held up by idiots everywhere as non-elite, using their very own definition. And, in the sense of dumber than dirt, they are correct. In the actual sense, of course, they are wrong. Mr. Taylor seems to be yet another who is using elite incorrectly, and obviously derides anyone who has an education, and uses it, oh, to speak in full sentences which are coherent. Awful stuff like that.

It’s already started, it’s just they’re not saying anything. And the other thing you have to understand, with Trump being ten places ahead of everybody else, he’s not going to tip his hat as to what he’s doing.”

:Tries to not choke on tea: Goodness. The Tiny Tyrant is ten paces ahead of everyone else? Okay, I’m just going to be gobsmacked here. It seems to me that Trump has a very difficult time keeping pace with anyone else.

“You’re just going to wake up one morning and Hillary Clinton is going to be in jail,” he said, “[and] it will be a sign to the United States that that spirit called Jezebel has been locked up and the key thrown away.”

Oh for fuck’s sake. Can this tiring business not be dropped already? There’s no such spirit as Jezebel, and I’m getting pretty sick and fucking tired of women being blamed for every damn thing ever. Ms. Clinton won’t be jailed, she’s not hosting any spirits, and she’s not the most evil thing since Eve, either. What an idiot.

Via Right Wing Watch, where there’s video, if you’re feeling like you need to be mean to yourself.

No Worries, “God” Will Heal All Diseases.

Jehovah Drowns People For No Good Reason. Gustave Doré.

Gordon Klingenschmitt is having another rant, this time about Planned Parenthood, what else. If Planned Parenthood is killed off, well then Jehovah will be all happy, and heal all diseases. He uses a passage from Exodus for this reasoning:

15:26 And said, If thou wilt diligently hearken to the voice of the LORD thy God, and wilt do that which is right in his sight, and wilt give ear to his commandments, and keep all his statutes, I will put none of these diseases upon thee, which I have brought upon the Egyptians: for I am the LORD that healeth thee.

I’ve always had a particular loathing for the story of the Egyptians in Exodus, it’s a stark illustration of the psychopathic nature of Jehovah. When I was a child, I never could get past the “hardening of the heart” business. It was clear to me, even at a young age that this was a particularly nasty, sleazy cheat. As Steve Wells points out*:

So Moses rounded up all three million or so Israelites, their flocks, herds, cattle, unleavened bread, and all the silver, gold, and clothes that they could steal from the Egyptians and left town.  [See Exodus 12.34-38] And everything would have ended happily ever after, too, if God could have resisted the temptation to harden the Pharaoh’s heart a few more times. You see, the Pharaoh’s heart was just too damned soft to suit God. So he set about hardening it a bit more. (He had to harden it 8 times to pull off his last killing.) (14.4, 14.8, 14.17-18.)

Now, there is a bit more about medical care in the bible, which Gordon has conveniently neglected:

16:12 And Asa in the thirty and ninth year of his reign was diseased in his feet, until his disease was exceeding great: yet in his disease he sought not to the LORD, but to the physicians.

16:13 And Asa slept with his fathers, and died in the one and fortieth year of his reign.

See? Don’t go to doctors, ever! Doctors are awful, and you’ll die. You just need to pray, have faith, or touch the right religious leader’s hankie. There’s nothing at all about Planned Parenthood, or idiots who think terminating a pregnancy is the same as infanticide.

Part of Gordon’s little rant here:

“You know what the solution to America’s healthcare crisis is?” Klingenschmitt asked. “Obey the Ten Commandments, stop funding abortion, stop funding child killing and God will heal your diseases, America. The supernatural blessing of healing is available if we stop working with the demonic spirit of murder.”

Klingenschmitt proclaimed that if America were to repent for the sin of abortion, then “we would receive [God’s] healing and wouldn’t need to rely on socialist healthcare.”

The problem there, Gordon, is that I don’t believe in your psychopathic god, and I don’t care one whit about that evil creature, who is the obvious villain in every story. So, even if we were to pretend Jehovah existed, that would make me one of the Egyptians in his eyes, so I wouldn’t come in for that wondrous healing of all diseases. It would be lovely if you fucking idiots could figure out that not everyone in this mess of a country are christian, and that many of us have zero interest in becoming one.

*I receive no monies from Amazon.

Via Right Wing Watch.

The Hunt for Bannon le Napoleon.

A new profile on Steve Bannon published yesterday by New York Magazine reveals that the White House Chief Strategist and former executive chair of Breitbart News was gifted his own version of Jacques-Louis David’s famous portrait, The Emperor Napoleon in His Study at the Tuileries (1812), by British Politician and known Trump supporter, Nigel Farage.

David painted two versions of this famed neoclassical painting. One currently hangs in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, and the other is at Versailles. The hunt is now on to find an image of Bannon’s version. Green took to Twitter to call onWashington Post reporter and CNN contributor David Fahrenthold to help him find a copy of this masterpiece. Fahrenthold posted a tweet challenging his 434,000 followers to find the painting and Green offered a free copy of his new book, Devil’s Bargain: Steve Bannon, Donald Trump, and the Storming of the Presidency. News of Bannon’s portrait is spreading like wildfire across Twitter, with imaginative Photoshopped versions coming in every hour.

Via The Creators Project.

Gosh, I’m shocked.

Steven Mnuchin testifies before a Senate Finance Committee confirmation hearing on his nomination to be Treasury secretary in Washington, U.S., January 19, 2017. REUTERS/Joshua Roberts.

The Trump administration is not considering a plan to raise taxes on the wealthiest Americans in order to pay for tax breaks for the middle class, U.S. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin said on Sunday.

Speaking on ABC’s “This Week,” Mnuchin said the administration plans to release its tax plan in early September and is aiming for a vote on Congress on it by the end of this year.

Gee, I am so not surprised. Is anyone surprised that filthy rich assholes are not planning to pay one cent more than they are forced to do? I am seriously surprised than anyone might so much as surmise that the regime would consider raising taxes on the rich. Guillotines keep intruding on my thoughts whenever they center on the Regime show…

Via Raw Story.