Trump-Russia Ties Confirmed.

CREDIT: AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta.

CREDIT: AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta.

FBI Director James Comey opened Monday’s House Intelligence Committee hearing with a big reveal: The FBI is, in fact, investigating Russia’s interference with the 2016 presidential election, including links between the Trump campaign and Russian government and any coordination between the two.

Naturally, this led to the appearance of a rabid Mr. Tweet again. The multiple tweets can be seen at Think Progress and Raw Story. A certain sense of weariness sets in when I once again glance at the manic ravings of Mr. Tweet, but I can’t help but notice just how stuck the Tiny Tyrant is, like a skipping needle on a glaring scratch. Without fail, he always regresses back to the election, the one moment where he felt competent. He continues to bring up Ms. Clinton, like a superannuated revivalist preacher, terrified of letting go of one thing he knows will whip up a froth among his faithful. In the same manner, he drags back the old bone of the electoral college, desperately trying to remind people of his big “win”.

Then, of course, there’s the old “Fake! Fake I say!”, this time over a CNN poll, which points to plummeting approval ratings. Mr. Tweet scorns CNN, while patting the head of FOX, seeming to be blissfully unaware of a FOX poll which also showed a tremendously decreasing amount of confidence and approval in the Tiny Tyrant. Oops. The Tiny Tyrant demonstrates his own lack of relevance, by continually parroting the recent past, unable to move on, and unwilling to face the realities of being a despot who does something other than tweet and continually take 3 million dollar weekends.

This directly contradicts statements made both by President Trump himself as well as his administration. Monday morning — likely in anticipation of Comey’s hearing — Trump tweeted that any insinuation of collusion between him and Russia is “FAKE NEWS” and that Democrats simply invented the scandal. He nevertheless insisted that the leakers responsible for that information getting out should be investigated.

Oh yes, that too. What is becoming yet another old, old song, “Leaker!” Perhaps, given the rumours about the Tiny Tyrant’s obsession with having people leak on the beds of his enemies, he should attempt to find a different word. Unfortunately for him, people will talk, that’s one of those things people do.

In the wake of Comey’s confirmation of the investigation, it remains to be seen if the congressional Republicans defending Trump will continue to insist that the FBI should be investigating the leaks of the classified information that raise these concerns, but not the concerns themselves.

Think Progress has the full story. For a quick rundown:

 

The Poisonous Glee of Paul Ryan.

Another one heads to President Trump’s desk. This legislation allows states to have drug testing to receive federal unemployment benefits.

Another one heads to President Trump’s desk. This legislation allows states to have drug testing to receive federal unemployment benefits.

Last year, President Obama’s Department of Labor issued a regulation restricting the number of unemployment insurance beneficiaries that would be subject to drug testing. The move infuriated Republicans like Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker who had made such a program a centerpiece of his agenda.

Despite their vows to eliminate wasteful government spending, the Congressional Republicans and President Donald Trump are now poised to overturn that rule — despite significant evidence that similar drug testing regimes cost a lot more than they save.

In February, the House of Representatives passed House Joint Resolution 42  — nearly along party lines — disapproving the regulation. Because such rules are not subject to filibuster, the Senate approved the same last week on Friday 51–48, strictly along party lines. The Trump administration has indicated it “strongly supports” the effort, making it very likely the bill will be signed very soon.

A smiling Ryan could barely contain his glee, tweeting out a picture of himself signing the House version of the resolution, alongside its author, Rep. Kevin Brady (R-TX).

That crushing sensation? Oh, that’s the federal thumb of the regime over your head, about to come down. All that constant talk about getting “government” out of peoples’ lives. Hmmm, what happened to that not so brave sentiment? It seems to be limited to removing healthcare. Unfortunately, people are still refusing to see and understand what is happening to them, and amazingly enough, there’s still a great deal of blind trust in the Tiny Tyrant, “oh, he wouldn’t do anything bad!” Even people who do understand simply sigh and have another beer. (That’s explained in the AJC link.)

Many states — including Ryan and Walker’s home state of Wisconsin —  have adopted rules in recent years to require beneficiaries of Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) to be screened for drug use. ThinkProgress published examinations of the 2014 and 2015 data provided by each state with those rules and found that the states paid millions of dollars to implement the testing and combined to find only hundreds of positive tests.

[…]

TANF is a federal welfare program through which the states provide aid to their poorest citizens. Unemployment is an insurance program; employers are required to pay-in to it for their employees during the time they are employed. Now, in Wisconsin and other states that followed its lead, people will have to endure drug screening just to get access to their own insurance benefits.

Emphasis mine. Right. A massive waste of money, to no point at all, outside of punishing people for not being wealthy. Now, there’s going to be an even bigger waste of money! But it’s not some kind of commie socialist plot, like healthcare, so I guess it’s all okay. Yep, everything is grand behind the Gold Curtain.

Via Think Progress.

“No One Is Safe.”

Hassan Aden -- via Facebook.

Hassan Aden — via Facebook.

Writing on Facebook on Saturday, retired cop Hassan Aden said he was returning from Paris where he helped his mother celebrate her 80th birthday when he was singled out and pulled from line by a customs official at John F. Kennedy International Airport who asked, “Are you traveling alone? Let’s take a walk.”

“I was taken to a back office which looked to be a re-purposed storage facility with three desks and signs stating, ‘Remain seated at all times’ and ‘Use of telephones strictly prohibited’—my first sign that this was not a voluntary situation and, in fact, a detention,” Aden wrote. ” By this point I had informed CBP Officer Chow, the one that initially detained me, that I was a retired police chief and a career police officer AND a US citizen—he stated that he had no control over the circumstance and that it didn’t matter what my occupation was.”

According to Aden after handing his passport over he was told that someone was using his name and that he had had to be cleared “so that I could gain passage into the United States… my own country!!!”

Aden said that he was not allowed to leave or contact his family at the same time an official told him he wasn’t being detained.

“He had the audacity to tell me I was not being detained. His ignorance of the law and the Fourth Amendment should disqualify him from being able to wear a CBP badge—but maybe fear and detention is the new mission of the CBP and the Constitution is a mere suggestion,” he wrote. “I certainly was not free to leave.

[…]

“I spent nearly 30 years serving the public in law enforcement. I interface with high level U.S. Department of Justice and Federal Court officials almost daily,” he wrote. “Prior to this administration, I frequently attended meetings at the White House and advised on national police policy reforms. All that to say, if this can happen to me, it can happen to anyone with attributes that can be ‘profiled.’ No one is safe from this type of unlawful government intrusion.”

I’m a little torn here. What happened to Mr. Aden was not, in any way, right. Just another instance of the police state. Mr. Aden, unlike many people being caught up in the nets of the current police state, had considerable resources to call on. I’d say it’s a good thing for a cop to experience what it’s like, being in the clutches of such; that said, it’s not an experience I would wish on anyone. In the end, Mr. Aden was released, and reunited with his loved ones. That certainly cannot be said for scores and scores of people who are being picked up, detained, and wrenched away from their families and their lives. And no, please don’t point out that what happened to Mr. Aden was somehow in defense of stopping a terrorist; it wasn’t, and no, please don’t point out this is way different from the current “round ’em up and deport them!” business, it isn’t. It’s all one and the same thing: xenophobia, accompanied by the clang of The Gold Curtain™. America First, y’all.

Via Raw Story.

Send in the Clowns: Trumpholes Threaten Artist.

billboard_1489794435389_8990922_ver1.0

Karen Fiorito.

A billboard sign depicting President Donald Trump's face next to explosions and dollar signs created with typography imitating Nazi swastikas went up in downtown Phoenix ON March 17, 2017. (Photo: Johana Restrepo/The Republic).

A billboard sign depicting President Donald Trump’s face next to explosions and dollar signs created with typography imitating Nazi swastikas went up in downtown Phoenix ON March 17, 2017. (Photo: Johana Restrepo/The Republic).

A menacing Donald Trump is gazing down on Phoenix’s Grand Avenue.

The president is flanked by mushroom clouds and swastikas configured like dollar signs.

“I think a lot of people are feeling this way and I’m just trying to express what I think is on a lot of people’s minds these days,” the billboard’s artist, Karen Fiorito, said Friday in an interview from her California home.

“Something that really concerned us was this idea of a dictatorship where things were going in a certain direction.”

But look closely at the mushroom clouds and you’ll see clown faces. There’s a Russian flag on Trump’s lapel.

“I tried to put a little bit of humor in things that are really dark and hard to take,” Fiorito said.

The billboard art was commissioned by the billboard owner, Beatrice Moore, a longtime patron of the arts on Grand Avenue.

“Some of these issues are so important you can’t not speak out,” Moore said in an interview.

The Trump billboard went up Friday at 11th Avenue and Grand, to coincide with the start of the annual three-day Art Detour event in downtown Phoenix. Moore said it would remain up as long as Trump is president.

Ms. Fiorito is now receiving death threats, a now common bit of behaviour on the part of those who simply cannot cope with any forthright criticism. The first comment in Ms. Fiorito’s tweet about the billboard going up:

Robbie England 
@buddhacatpress disgusting California filth, putting up this shit in my town is unacceptable! It WILL come down!

Oooh, her town! I guess it isn’t at all the town of the woman who commissioned the piece. And as a native Californian, Ms. England, have a nice cuppa Shut the Fuck Up, you intolerant bigot.

The willful ignorance on display in the Tweetstream is overwhelming, too. There was one person thinking she made a great point by saying “Trump refused a salary! He gave it to charity!” There’s just one little problem with that one – the Tiny Tyrant did no such thing, and won’t answer any questions as just when that money is going to find its way to a supposed charity.

Bad News for Women, a la Trump.

Austin Ruse speaks at 2015 conference on sexual orientation and gender identity in international law.

Austin Ruse speaks at 2015 conference on sexual orientation and gender identity in international law.

The Trump administration this week named representatives from two intensely anti-choice and anti-LGBTQ groups, C-Fam and the Heritage Foundation, to be part of the official U.S. delegation to the session of the UN Commission on the Status of Women, which began on Monday and runs until March 24.

The State Department’s press release announcing the delegation calls the session “the most important annual meeting on women’s issues at the United Nations.” But just last week, in an email titled “Seven Days to War…Meet the Enemy, Learn Their Names,” C-Fam called it “one of the most dangerous meetings of the year.” On Monday morning, C-Fam sent out an email calling the session an “assault on life and family” and begging for money, portraying themselves as a “small and relatively weak” organization pitted against the “rich and powerful” forces such as the U.N. human rights office; now they are part of the official U.S. delegation.

C-Fam, formerly the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute, and its leader Austin Ruse are so committed to enshrining “traditional” ideologies about gender, marriage and family in international law that they have teamed up with many of the world’s most repressive regimes to carry out their fight at the U.N. The Heritage Foundation is at the heart of a massive Religious Right coalition pushing to give business owners a broad legal right to discriminate against LGBT people and families as well as single parents based on their holding traditional religious views about gender, marriage and family.

As you can see from the wiki links, neither C-Fam or the Heritage Foundation are “small, relatively weak” organizations. They are both powerful, and they both have unfettered access to the Trump Regime, whereas previous administrations restrained them somewhat. The rise of the Religious Reich has been ongoing, but now is the time for alarm, because the current regime has no problem at all with crushing tank of Christian oppression running ramshod over everyone and everything they don’t like, and that’s a considerable list. The mere fact they have been designated representatives to such an important session is not good news. These people are anything but interested in the status of women and girls, outside of a determination to make sure all women and girls are ground well into the dirt, under the boot of patriarchy.

Trump’s massive expansion of the global gag rule already made it clear that his administration was willing to target some of the world’s most vulnerable people in order to meet the demands of his Religious Right base. Ruse recently complained about efforts by other nations and nonprofits to mitigate the harm of Trump’s policy on public health efforts in poor countries. The official appointments of C-Fam and Heritage effectively remove any lingering doubts about the Trump administration’s abandonment of what has been important U.S. advocacy for reproductive health and LGBTQ human rights around the world.

OutRight Action International, a human rights group active at the U.N., decried the appointments. “Fundamentalist notions about how women and girls should behave should never be the basis of advising or negotiating US foreign policy,” said Executive Director Jessica Stern in a statement. She also called it “a bad sign that two organizations that have tried to delegitimize the United Nations and human rights internationally now sit on the official US delegation.” Stern held out hope that even in the face of these appointments, the U.S. might be willing to support Commission on the Status of Women conclusions condemning discrimination.

Oh, I wouldn’t be holding my breath on that last. We are in dark days here, the Gilded age is back, and women don’t hold much of a place, as far as being considered full human beings, who are, in every way, the equal of men.

The delegation will be led by anti-choice U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley and her deputy Michele Sison. Joining them as Public Delegates will be Lisa Correnti, C-Fam’s executive vice president, and Grace Melton, Heritage Foundation associate for social issues at the U.N.

When it comes to social issues in regard to women, it’s quite plain where the Religious Reich is concerned: women belong under the thumb of a man, must be virginal until placed under said thumb, no, no contraception, absolutely no choice, because no autonomy, and certainly none of that queer business!

Via RWW.

Sunday Facepalm.

conservative-groups-new-song-wil

Today Eugene Delgaudio, a Religious Right activist and former Republican politician based in Virginia, today released a new music video, “A Justice Like Scalia,” in praise of President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch.

In the video, the “Confirm Gorsuch Ensemble” urged the Senate to confirm Gorsuch because he is, as Trump promised, a jurist in the mold of the late Antonin Scalia: “Oh Mamma Mia, another Scalia!”

It is sung to the tune of “Get Me To The Church On Time” and “How Do You Solve A Problem Like Maria?” and is just as good the original musical hits.

For the impaired, there’s considerable sarcasm in that last sentence. I, uh, I just have no words at all. Some laughter yes, but meaningful commentary? No. If you’re in the mood for a bit of self torture, here ya go:

Via RWW.

People Will Die, What’s New?

A man delivers heating oil to a house in Maine in 2015. CREDIT: AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty.

A man delivers heating oil to a house in Maine in 2015. CREDIT: AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty.

That’s a familiar scene. Living rural, I’m on propane for heating and cooking. Propane is expensive, very expensive. Most people who live rural have large tanks, which when full, might be able to see them through a winter. Depending on how harsh the winter might be, sometimes a tank will last, sometimes it won’t. We have two tanks, totally 1,500 gallons. We rarely have the full amount. Naturally, it’s cheaper to fill your tanks in the dead of Summer, but that won’t keep you all the way through to winter, especially in places like Maine, or nDakota. We’re still in Winter here. There have been times when there’s been no power; there have been times when there’s been a heating failure, and it’s not easy to cope when you don’t have heat. When you don’t have heat, you’re prone to doing unsafe things, like opening the oven, and cranking it up, stringing electric heaters everywhere, lighting candles, firing up kerosene heaters and so on. And in such cases, people often die. People also die of hypothermia, because yes, it gets that damn cold. Out here in rural land, USA, we’re a tad short on mansions. Houses tend to be old, and not terribly energy efficient, and subject to drafts. A lot of older people simply close off most of their house and live in one or two rooms come winter, as do a lot of people without a ton of money. Most of us rural types don’t have handy get aways in Florida, either.

The Tiny Tyrant is so unhinged from reality, it never crosses that atrophied pea brain of his that most people in this country are not wealthy, they don’t have mansions, they don’t have the wherewithal to con people in order to stuff their pockets, and get very concerned when faced with the choice of either starving to death or freezing to death. The same people who, while faced with such dire choices, are having their pockets picked clean by the fucking Tiny Tyrant, so he can hide out in his Florida Fucking Mansion near to every weekend. Over $3 Million every effing trip. This weekend marks the 5th weekend, and the 7th weekend spent flaking off to huge sums of money. The Monstrous Narcissist Evil which is Trump is happily planning to kill off the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP), which uses very little money in comparsion to say, the military budget, but is crucial in keeping people alive in not only brutal winters, but brutal summers as well. As Global Warming gets worse, also hastened by the The Monstrous Narcissist Evil Trump, both of these extremes will worsen, and without aid, even more people will die. Not that the thought of people dying ruffles Trump’s tiny, smooth brain.

“You’ve got a population that’s got very little money, not able to work because of their age or their health, and this is the way we keep them in their apartments and keep them safe,” said Wolfe.

“If you withdraw that, some of them will die. But that doesn’t seem too important to them at the moment,” he said.

“He doesn’t know anybody like that. They don’t belong to Trump’s club.”

And that last line sums it up. In the Tiny Tyrant’s world, people without money aren’t even on the radar. As far as Trump is concerned, they barely exist, and they certainly don’t matter. Not that it would make much difference if he was more aware, it still wouldn’t register. There isn’t any empathy in The Monstrous Narcissist Evil which is Trump. There is plenty of hypocrisy, though! There’s a mine full of it. If only hypocrisy were food, then everyone would have enough. The Tiny Tyrant is intent on killing off any and all programs which so much as hint of helping people, and won’t shut up about “slashing” the budget (while massively increasing the military money), while the money being spent out of taxpapyer’s pockets by the fucking evil asshole is overwhelming:

President Trump doesn’t want to spend federal dollars on after-school programs, meals for poor people, or heating assistance that helps keep folks alive.

But he has no problem wasting more than $3 million a pop to spend weekends at his private Mar-a-Lago club in Florida. Trump has already made four trips there since becoming president on January 20, and on Friday he confirmed he’s headed there this weekend for the fifth time.

[…]

Despite vowing during his campaign that he “would rarely leave the White House because there’s so much work to be done” and “would not be a president who took vacations” because “you don’t have time to take time off,” Trump has visited Trump-branded properties each of the past six weekends. That streak will hit seven when Trump lands at Mar-a-Lago later Friday.

In fact, Trump has spent time at Trump-branded property every weekend of his presidency other than the very first, when he created chaos throughout the country by signing a Muslim ban executive order that was later stayed by a federal court.

[…]

As Quartz reported on Friday, after this weekend, Trump will have already spent about $16.5 million on trips to Mar-a-Lago. For that amount, Meals on Wheels could feed 5,967 seniors for a year and after school programs could feed 114,583 children for a year.

Remember though, that starving seniors and children don’t matter! Nope.

On Thursday, Office of Management and Budget director Mick Mulvaney defended the draconian cuts included in the Trump administration’s proposed budget by arguing that the federal government can’t ask “a coal miner in West Virginia or a single mom in Detroit to pay for” programs like the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. But one wonders whether those struggling Americans would rather have public radio or dole out their share of the $3.3 million a self-proclaimed billionaire is spending each weekend to mingle with his ludicrously wealthy club members down in Florida.

Oh yes, of course, why a coal miner or a single mom are just your general dumbfucks who have absolutely no interest whatsoever in quality educational TV, or good quality radio broadcasts, oh no. Why, they are just stupid peons, they don’t think, or feel, or care about anything at all, no. Certainly, they’d have no interest in their children having access to good education and information, no sir. They are, however, supremely happy to have the food taken out of their mouths in order to support the Tiny Tyrant when he wanders off to play golf and collect those $200,000 dues from his “friends” at the club.

Via Think Progress: Ending home heating subsidies is a choice to let people die. Trump to spend 7th consecutive weekend at Trump-branded property, at enormous cost to taxpayers.

Mr. Tweet, Coward at Large.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel looks on as President Donald Trump accuses a German reporter of engaging in 'fake news.' (Screen cap).

German Chancellor Angela Merkel looks on as President Donald Trump accuses a German reporter of engaging in ‘fake news.’ (Screen cap).

Take a moment, and look at that screen cap, again. Most people have seen it, the look of “unfuckingbelievable” on Ms. Merkel’s face when Trump pulls his fake news clown act on a German reporter. I cherish that expression, because it’s a clear divider between adult / child. Unfortunately for us in uStates, we’re stuck with the terrible infant.

Naturally, having to limit his childish outbursts during the press conference, as soon as possible, unpresident Jekyll found a dark corner, and let the craven Mr. Tweet loose, to spew forth all the shit he knows he can’t get away with saying in person. He’s doing all this, by the way, from his hidey mansion in Florida, y’know, the place he swore up and down he wasn’t going to go. This makes his 5th weekend there, at a cost of over $3 million a trip, so all us taxpayers are on the hook for more than 16.5 million dollars for Jekyll & Tweet to play, all while his sputtering temper adds more instability to the world.

As is his custom on Saturday mornings when he is vacationing at his Mar-a-Lago resort, President Donald Trump jumped on Twitter to complain about something — this time taking shots at both the media and Germany.

Following a meeting and press conference with Chancellor Angela Merkel — where Trump refused to shake hands with the German leader and she gave him a dismissive glance when he brought up surveillance of both of them — Trump felt the need to set the record straight in typical Trump fashion on Twitter.

“Despite what you have heard from the FAKE NEWS, I had a GREAT meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel,” Trump began in his first tweet before getting to his latest complaint.

“Nevertheless, Germany owes vast sums of money to NATO & the United States must be paid more for the powerful, and very expensive, defense it provides to Germany!” he continued.

Despite what you have heard from the FAKE NEWS, I had a GREAT meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Nevertheless, Germany owes…

…vast sums of money to NATO & the United States must be paid more for the powerful, and very expensive, defense it provides to Germany!

:Drops head gently onto desk: No. Just No. It’s the weekend, I slept in, and I was feeling kind of good, and then … No. I’ll content myself with a “Hey, Donnie! Go Fuck Yourself!”

Via Raw Story.

Mesmerizing?

This well-known photograph was taken (extremely) shortly after the detonation of a nuclear device during Operation Tumbler-Snapper.

This well-known photograph was taken (extremely) shortly after the detonation of a nuclear device during Operation Tumbler-Snapper.

Ars Technica has an article up about recently declassified nuclear tests, which are now being plastered on youtube. I watched two of the videos, and realized I was physically pulled back, half turned away, in cringe mode. Yes, I can see where someone could find these mesmerizing, but I don’t, I just find them terrifying. I find every single thing about it terrifying – that we ever reached this point at all is a terror.

From 1945 until the practice was ended in 1963 with the Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, the US conducted 210 above-ground nuclear weapons tests. The majority of those took place at the Nevada National Security Site, then on remote Pacific atolls. Obviously, since the purpose of the tests was to understand this powerful new class of weapon, all of the tests were captured with multiple high-speed cameras (running at roughly 2,400 frames per second). And until now, many of those films have languished in classified vaults. But Greg Spriggs and his colleagues at Lawrence Livermore National Labs (LLNL) are rescuing and declassifying many of them, posting them on YouTube in the process.

The first 64 declassified films were uploaded this week, with footage from Operations Upshot-Knothole, Castle, Teapot, Plumbbob, Hardtack I, Hardtack II, and Dominic. And they’re utterly mesmerizing. In fact, they’re truly awesome, in the literal sense of the word.

No, I don’t find them awesome, either. They don’t fill me with awe, they fill me with dread. I find them disgraceful, discouraging, darkly dystopian, and we are now tottering on the edge of actual deployments, not tests. What I find even more dismal is that there will be too many people who will shout “oh cool, look at that, destroyed!” or some such, like cheering on destruction in a video game, rather than enough people who will take these for the warning they should be. And yes, I know there is a fascination to watching shock waves intersect and all, but these make me want to hide in a cave. Not that it would help.

Via Ars Technica.

Paul Ryan’s Fantasy Life.

CREDIT: AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite.

CREDIT: AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite.

Unfortunately, this is not as amusing as the rest of today’s posts. It’s not amusing at all. There’s no more hedging or obfuscation over The Fuck You Plan, Trump has been interviewed, and admitted it will aid rich people and fuck over the poor (and everyone else), and now Ryan is blathering away about just how long he has yearned to rip healthcare away from people. From where I sit, this isn’t fantasy, it’s an obsession, an evil one.

…And, if you were House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI), it was a time to dream about how, someday, you would take health care away from millions of poor people.

In a conversation with the National Review’s Rich Lowry on Friday, Ryan bragged about how conservatives now have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to take health coverage away from the most vulnerable Americans.

“So Medicaid,” Ryan told Lowry, “sending it back to the states, capping its growth rate. We’ve been dreaming of this since I’ve been around — since you and I were drinking at a keg. . . . I’ve been thinking about this stuff for a long time. We’re on the cusp of doing something we’ve long believed in.”

Ryan is 47 years old, which means that, if he started “drinking at a keg” early in his college career, he’s fantasized about all the poor people who could be stripped of health care for nearly three decades.

And he’s downright gleeful about finally being able to culminate his long standing obsession. Why? Why are these people voted in to government in the first place? I do not want to belong to a country in which its so-called leaders have long standing fantasies about fucking people over in the worst possible way, and spend their whole lives in pursuit of that fantasy. People like Ryan should be ashamed, and wondering just what in the fuck is wrong with them, but that never seems to happen.

Full story at Think Progress.

“RAW POWER! HARD RAW POWER GRRRRRR HISSS POW!”

CREDIT: 1600 Daily email.

CREDIT: 1600 Daily email.

This week, the White House began sending out an official email newsletter, “Your 1600 Daily,” to promote video clips of the president, pertinent news articles or endorsements, and other items of note happening that day.

On Friday, there was an odd inclusion at the bottom, where normally one can find friendly headlines from Fox News, Breitbart, or other conservative outlets that have become media safe harbors for the administration. One of the two featured articles was a parody piece titled “Trump’s budget makes perfect sense and will fix America, and I will tell you why,” written by Alexandra Petri, who writes satirical pieces for the Washington Post’s lighthearted ComPost blog.

[…]

ThinkProgress asked the White House press office if they were aware the article was a parody, and if so, why they selected it, but received no response by press time.

If this was a simple mistake, then the staff member who chose and approved the article’s inclusion on official White House communications did not read beyond the first paragraph, which makes abundantly clear that the headline is deeply sarcastic:

Some people are complaining that the budget proffered by the Trump administration, despite its wonderful macho-sounding name, is too vague and makes all sorts of cuts to needed programs in favor of increasing military spending by leaps and bounds. These people are wimps. Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney has called it a “hard power budget” which is, I think, the name of an exercise program where you eat only what you can catch, pump up your guns and then punch the impoverished in the face. This, conveniently, is also what the budget does.

The article concluded, “RAW POWER! HARD RAW POWER GRRRRRR HISSS POW!”

[…]

Other sections of the newsletter are anodyne White House agenda items that urge supporters to “get involved” or share important tweets “from President Trump,” promote “Oval Office highlights,” link to press room briefings, and detail Trump’s schedule.

Sometimes these links, always titled “News Reports,” are op-eds or letters to the editor by friendly voices or administration officials, or a straight news piece about a positive economic development or administration announcement. None of the other days of the “News Reports” section featured anything like Petri’s parody.

The links included in Tuesday’s newsletter, for example, are representative of Trump allies’ favorite outlets:

CREDIT: 1600 Daily email.

CREDIT: 1600 Daily email.

Wednesday was the second day in a row the newsletter linked to a Breitbart article about Obamacare. Other featured items include stories from Fox News, Townhall, Washington Post, Washington Examiner, Yahoo, and an endorsement of AHCA by the National Federation of Independent Businesses. On Thursday many mainstream outlets were cited, as well as the right-wing Heritage Foundation’s news site, called The Daily Signal.

Oh my. It seems this is amusement Friday, with some kind entity somewhere answering Voltaire’s Prayer. Full story at Think Progress.

“Red rover, red rover, call Milo over,”

LM

C. Ford.

Elsewhere in the wilds of the Religious Reich, Lance Wallnau has put a claim on Milo Yiannopoulos. How sweet it would be, if it weren’t a match made in a nightmare. It will be interesting to see if  Milo claws desperately onto to this, to try and once again claim his place as king of the shitlords or summat. I don’t see this as being a particularly comfortable union, but Wallnau has gone full court daft in his attempts to paint the rise of a great and wondrous theocracy, and Milo is, if anything, an opportunist. Considering Wallnau’s hatred of all queerness, I wonder if this can be taken as yet another sign of the desperation infesting the Religious Reich.

Last week, right-wing preacher Lance Wallnau appeared on the Charisma podcast with Steve Strang, where he claimed Alt-Right troll Milo Yiannopoulos for Jesus Christ and prophesied that he will one day be leading revivals on college campuses.

Wallnau said that he began listening to Yiannopoulos in the wake of the controversy regarding his comments condoning  pederasty and found him to be a brave truth-teller who “is exposing the tyranny and fascist spirit behind the progressive left.” Yiannopoulos is like “a prophetic fencer just scoring point after point,” Wallnau said, which is why the left is out to destroy him.

Uh, no, Lance.  As per usual, any destruction Milo suffered was a direct result of his own actions. I’m afraid the reasons to dislike Yiannopoulos are numerous – he’s a repugnant asshole who will do and say absolutely anything in order to gain attention. Yet another person with arrested development, much like the Tiny Tyrant. I can’t speak for the whole left, but this small slice of it has better things to do than plot ways to ‘destroy’ him.

But the left will not destroy him, Wallnau predicted, because Yiannopoulos is going to undergo a radical religious conversion and lead an army of millennial prophets who will take on the left.

Oh, well, this ought to be good. It will be like Marjoe Gortner all over again, with glitter!

“I’m claiming Milo in the name of Jesus for the Kingdom of God,” Wallnau declared. “Just like [Donald] Trump was an unlikely candidate for us as a deliverer in the presidency … God hid himself in Trump, I think God is hiding himself in Milo and I’m calling him out in Jesus’ name to salvation.”

That god of yours has been hiding for millenia, and now it has decided to hang out in the bowels of Trump & Yiannopoulos? Eeuuurgh.

“Red rover, red rover, call Milo over,” he continued. “The church doesn’t want people like him, but God wants him in the church. Father, we call for Milo in Jesus’ name. We call, Lord, that You will break every cycle of destruction, every spirit that is assigned to him to destroy, distort, to wound and to lock him up. We pray for shafts of light to come from heaven into his heart, divine encounters with the Gospel in unique and unusual ways, we pray for Jesus to be made manifest in his dreams.”

Red … rov oh gasp hahahahahahahahahaha…hahahahaha. Hee. :falls over laughing: Oh you have got to be kiddihahahahahahahahahahahahaha. Red fucking Rover? How can anyone take these clowns seriously? Yeah, fuck the rest of the prayer or whatever it is, I’m not getting past the Red Rover business.

Wallnau said that Yiannopoulos will be part of an “army of millennial young prophets who will expose the enemy” and prophesied that “Milo is going to be doing campus revivals in the future.”

If nothing else, that should be entertaining. Are you going to make Minister Milo shed his pearls? Via RWW.

The Gulliver Prophecy.

bobjones.org

bobjones.org

Here’s one I had never heard of, and it dates back to 2005. It’s being revived. This uh, prophecy is detailed at “The Prophetic Ministry & Resources of Bob & Bonnie Jones with Lyn Kost.” It’s actually yet another fevered dream, which is more akin to an acid trip than prophecy.

During last week’s POTUS Shield conference in Ohio, speakers made repeated references to a prophecy that Ohio would be the spark for the next Great Awakening, with some citing a “Gulliver” prophecy to explain the selection of cities for upcoming POTUS Shield events.

I’ve been getting the idea that the Potus Shield people are getting increasingly desperate, as the anticipated waves of glory washing over their chosen Trump hasn’t happened. Well, let’s take a trip with Gulliver.

The Gulliver prophecy explains why many believe that “God has set Ohio aside as a hub for His glory to go out from.” Here’s how it is described:

While in a conference in Cincinnati, Ohio Bob had a vision of a great man, who in the past had fallen asleep.  He was lying on his back, half-covered in dirt, and his name was Gulliver.  Little people from a place of little input had completely tied him down, and he was waking up from being asleep for the past 38 years.  We can also call him (Gulliver) the Body of Christ.  Bob saw that the head of this very large man was in Cleveland, Ohio, in a place called “Jacob’s field.”

The next thing Bob saw was a large, center pole of a tent coming up out of Columbus, Ohio. This was His heart. Powerful signs and wonders will come up out of Columbus, greater than we’ve ever seen before, that will look like a canopy over the region. Explosions of miracles and healings will be the hallmark of this city.

Cincinnati was the place where the reproduction organs were. Reproducing of the Kingdom will be evidenced here in priestly and kingly anointing.

The left hand of this large man was in Philadelphia, which had teaching and great love in it. The right hand extended west and came to rest in Indianapolis, Indiana. It began to flex, and the cords that were around it to keep it tied down, were beginning to snap off like rubber bands.

The left foot was in Charlotte, North Carolina, and there was a great television with it, so they televised the gospel all around the world. The right foot was in Nashville, Tennessee, where great faith is beginning to raise up.

This great man finally began to get up, breaking off all restraints and planting both of his feet in Atlanta, Georgia.

Bob said, “God means to take Ohio, then move over to Indianapolis and up into Illinois, crossing over into the east and finally standing completely upright in Atlanta.” The Lord told Bob that to take Atlanta would mean capturing the whole south.

What is it with these zealots and their very strange interpretations of literature? We recently had a mangling of Tolkien, and now this, uh, stew of weirdness. I can’t help but note that the giant penis and scrotum are mentioned – one thing Christians can never seem to do is pull their noses out of one crotch or another. In terms of poetic mangling, I think the explosions of miracles should have been placed in Cincinnati.

When you actually read the bible, whichever version, you never get the impression that Jehovah is terribly big on being knowledgeable, rather like those men who made up the stories, so I figure it wasn’t much a one for reading books. Oh, but perhaps movies are Jehovah’s bag, and this is why they so frequently end up being mangled into prophecy. Or perhaps it’s just a bunch of bullshit. I’ll opt for the latter.

This is not the Bob Jones who founded the famously racist fundamentalist university, but a guy who supposedly met the archangel Gabriel when he was seven years old and was given a mantle as a “Seer Prophet.”

Jones was removed from a Kansas City ministry in 1991 after admitting that he had used his “gifts” to manipulate women and engage in sexual misconduct, but that didn’t end his prophetic career.

No, of course it didn’t, what with that convenient get out of jail free card built into Christianity. I expect there weren’t any actual consequences at all. :Reads article: Nope, no actual consequence.

The prophets of POTUS Shield have clearly decided that the Gulliver prophecy was a divine revelation. There are plans for upcoming POTUS Shield events in Charlotte, which will be hosted by Joyner, as well as Nashville and Indianapolis. POTUS Shield will be partnering with Lou Engle to bring versions of his prayer rallies—branded as “The Call”—to Cleveland this summer and to Philadelphia on Labor Day weekend in 2018, which POTUS Shield leader Frank Amedia noted would be right before the mid-term elections.

Divine revelation. Someone makes up some very weird shit about Gulliver’s Travels, of all things, a work that Swift himself said was set to vex the world, not divert it. Obviously, the satire went completely over their heads, if someone actually read it, which is doubtful. Jones probably saw the Disney version, drank some suspect kool-aid, then had his ‘divine revelation.’ While it’s easy enough to dismiss this nonsense, the efforts of the Religious Reich to bring about a theocracy should not be dismissed. For all the silliness, we do need to pay attention.

RWW has the full story.