The Speech.

The Lakota people refer to warriors as “akicita” and still use this term while referring to veterans. The akicita lead the way toward the prayer site in the rain. (Photo: Thosh Collins)

The Lakota people refer to warriors as “akicita” and still use this term while referring to veterans. The akicita lead the way toward the prayer site in the rain. (Photo: Thosh Collins)

Trump’s toxic mess of a speech in Arizona. You can read the transcript of the speech. I just have one comment on one small section, for now:

These are valid concerns expressed by decent and patriotic citizens from all backgrounds, all over. We also have to be honest about the fact that not everyone who seeks to join our country will be able to successfully assimilate. Sometimes it’s just not going to work out. It’s our right, as a sovereign nation to chose [sic]  immigrants that we think are the likeliest to thrive and flourish and love us.

Now I know Trump has no love for Indians, he makes that clear at every opportunity. Here’s the thing, though, us Indians were declared sovereign nations some time ago, so how about if we choose the immigrants to this county that we think are the likeliest to thrive and flourish and love us? Seems about right to me.

Washington State Natives: No DAPL.

Indian Nations from the Pacific Northwest came to support the Standing Rock Sioux. Courtesy Gyasi Ross.

Indian Nations from the Pacific Northwest came to support the Standing Rock Sioux. Courtesy Gyasi Ross.

Standing Rock Sioux Chairman David Archambault II welcomed a delegation of eight Indian nations from Washington State on Tuesday August 30 who joined the growing opposition to the Dakota Access Pipeline that threatens the tribe’s water supply and sacred places on Oceti Sakowin Treaty lands.

The Yakama Nation, Swinomish Indian Tribal Community, Lummi Nation, Puyallup Tribe, Nisqually Indian Tribe, Suquamish Tribe, Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe and Hoh Tribe traveled with a large delegation from the Pacific Northwest with a sacred totem pole to demonstrate spiritual support. After a blessing at the Standing Rock camp near the river, the totem pole will be permanently raised at the Turtle Lodge on the Sagkeeng First Nation in Manitoba next week.

“Yakama is humbled and honored to stand beside our brothers and sisters of the Standing Rock Sioux. We’re observing a peaceful and prayerful gathering to move an entire country. We stand united in solidarity with the natural laws of this land, advocating for responsible decision making and honorable communications,” said Yakama Chairman JoDe Goudy.

“Together, we express to the U.S. government that now, more than ever, is the time to fulfill the trust obligations laid out within the treaties and historical interactions with the Native peoples of this land. Until such things come to pass, the spirit and voice of all peoples shall unite with Standing Rock. One voice, one heart, and one spirit to speak for those things that cannot speak for themselves.”

[…]

Swinomish Chairman Brian Cladoosby, who also serves as NCAI president, said, “We are a placed-based society. We live where our ancestors are buried. Our culture, laws, and values are tied to all that surrounds us, the place where our children’s future will be for years to come. We cannot ruin where our ancestors are buried and where our children will call home, uproot ourselves and move to another place. We cannot keep taking for granted the clean water, the salmon and buffalo, the roots and berries, and all that makes up the places that our First People have inhabited since time immemorial. Our futures are bound together.”

More than 150 tribes so far have sent resolutions and letters of support to show solidarity with the Standing Rock Sioux and the Seven Council Fires of the Lakota’s efforts to stop the pipeline.

“Words can’t express how thankful we are for all of the prayers, support, letters and donations we have received,” said Archambault. “It inspires us every day on our mission to protect this area for future generations and all who use it.

[…]

“I am here to stand with the Standing Rock people because my people are facing the same threats to bear the risk of development for the Puyallup Tribe,” said Councilman David Bean. “It’s an LNG terminal that will be built in the middle of our reservation and threaten our treaty protected resources.”

[…]

“Everyone has heard that this pipeline would be more than 1,100 miles long and would transport more than half a million barrels of crude oil every day across our lands,” said Cedric Good House, a traditional leader for the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe.

“What they don’t know are the irreplaceable sacred places across the landscape and the deep cultural and spiritual knowledge that is tied to them,” he said. “These are the places and the knowledge that make us who we are today as a tribe. I plan on telling my grandchildren about the time when tribes across the country stood up and fought for treaty, culture, and the future. And we fought for the future of safe drinking water for all Americans. No longer is the world watching us, the world is with us.”

Water protectors at Standing Rock. (Photo: Courtesy Steven Sitting Bear/Standing Rock Sioux Tribe).

Water protectors at Standing Rock. (Photo: Courtesy Steven Sitting Bear/Standing Rock Sioux Tribe).

Support Sacred Stone Camp. Legal Fund Help. Support Native Youth.  Sign the Petition. Sign urgent petition.

Dave Archambault Sr. has an excellent column up at ICTMN: Anti-DAPL: Are You a TRAITOR or PATRIOT? – Also, Navajo Nation Lends Support to Standing Rock Sioux Tribe Against Dakota Access.

Via ICTMN.

Trump’s America: Bully Nation.

Student activist protests hateful environment in schools (Screen capture).

Student activist protests hateful environment in schools (Screen capture).

An ad from progressive group Move On shows how around the country, nonwhite and Muslim students are getting bullied by racist whites who’ve been emboldened by the unvarnished racism of the Donald Trump campaign.

Titled “Our Kids,” the video shows excerpts from news stories in which black, Muslim and Latino schoolchildren across the U.S. have been threatened and harassed by their white peers.

In Oregon, vandals hung a banner aimed at Latino students that said “Build a wall” — a reference to Trump’s promise to build a wall along the Mexican border to keep Latino immigrants out of the country.

At a high school basketball game in Chicago, white students chanted “Trump! Trump! Trump!” at black and Latino players and their supporters.

As the 75-second video moves from incident to incident, an ugly picture emerges of what’s motivating Trump voters, no matter what the candidate and his TV surrogates say about “economic anxiety” and “outsider politics.”

“Donald Trump is endangering our kids,” the ad says, before cutting to footage of students describing their experiences.

This country is caught in a whirlpool of shit. This hatred has to stop. Please, share this, get this out everywhere, it’s an important message for all.

Via Raw Story.

Council for National Policy.

Stephen Bannon.

Stephen Bannon.

If you’re like me, you went “who?” Yet another nasty group of people, who revel in extremism, and one I had not heard of before. As it turns out, two Trump henchpersons have not only heard of it, they are part of it. How surprising, right?

According to an SPLC statement, Breitbart.com CEO Stephen Bannon and pollster Kellyanne Conway — hired as Trump 2016’s CEO and campaign manager, respectively — are members of the Council for National Policy (CNP), a highly secretive group that includes a roster of controversial white supremacists and rightwing agitators.

“The CNP is not controversial so much for the conservatives who dominate it — activists of the religious right and the so-called ‘culture wars,’ along with a smattering of wealthy financiers, Congressional operatives, right-wing consultants and Tea Party operatives — as for the many real extremists who are included,” wrote SPLC senior fellow Mark Potok.

The SPLC was able to obtain the CNP’s closely-guarded 2014 membership directory and found that it included “people like Michael Peroutka, a neo-Confederate who for years was on the board of the white supremacist League of the South; Jerome Corsi, a strident Obama ‘birther’ and the propagandist hit man responsible for the ‘Swift boating’ of John Kerry; Joseph Farah, who runs the wildly conspiracist “news” operation known as WorldNetDaily; Mat Staver, the Liberty Counsel leader who has worked to re-criminalize gay sex; Philip Zodhaites, another anti-gay activist who is charged with helping a self-described former lesbian who kidnapped her daughter from her former partner and fled the country; and a large number of other similar characters.”

Conway and Bannon’s names both appear on the CNP’s 2014 membership roster. The SPLC was unable to determine their current membership status.

The Center noted that the CNP has every right to keep its membership secret, but the membership roster opens a window on how purportedly moderate Republicans meet and network with right-wing extremists in formulating their policy agenda and crafting legislation.

The CNP roster of members includes “real extremists, people who regularly defame LGBT people with utter falsehoods, describe Latino immigrants as a dangerous group of rapists and disease-carriers, engage in the kind of wild-eyed conspiracy theorizing for which the John Birch Society is famous, and even suggest that certain people should be stoned to death in line with Old Testament law,” the SPLC said.

Well. That’s terrifying. These are the people the so-called not completely batshit repubs are networking with, and we are now living in interesting times, with the rise of white nationalism and open bigotry. I think I could have lived without this particular knowledge, but it’s best to as knowledgeable as possible these days.

Via Raw Story.

Bigot, Bigot, Bigot, Racism!

Former Missouri GOP head Ed Martin with Phyllis Schlafly (Facebook.com).

Former Missouri GOP head Ed Martin with Phyllis Schlafly (Facebook.com).

Holy moly, the bigotry just keeps piling up and up and up and up. There’s just no end to it all. First up, Ed Martin, who is a Tea Party person, who was assuring people at a rally that no, they weren’t bigots, and that’s it’s not racist in the least to hate Mexican people. Or Muslims. Or the whole variety of brown people.

Riverfront Times writer Danny Wicentowski attended the rally, which he described as a scene where “some 200 patriots who really, really hate Hillary Clinton listened to a succession of speeches delivered by a string of local conservative luminaries who also really, really hate Hillary Clinton.”

Before featured speaker Jim Hoft — also known as conservative blogger The Gateway Pundit aka “The Stupidest Man on the Internet” — took to the stage, former Missouri Republican Party director Ed Martin reassured the crowd that they’re not racist for hating Mexicans.

“Donald Trump is for Americans first,” Martin said of the Republican Party’s presidential nominee. “He’s for us first. It is not selfish to support, or to be for, your neighbor, as opposed to someone from another nation. And Mexico, Mexicans, that’s not a race. You’re not racist if you don’t like Mexicans. They’re from a nation.”

:Momentarily typeless: Wow. I don’t even want to know what he thinks about us Indians, because we’re nations too. I imagine in our case, he thinks differently about all that nation stuff.

He applied the same logic to Trump’s proposed ban on Muslim immigrants.

“If you don’t think Muslims are vetted enough because they blow things up, that’s not racist,” Martin said. “There’s white Muslims, black Muslims, green Muslims. This is not racism.”

Um. There are green Muslims? Where? There’s also this issue of Muslims in general “blowing things up”. There have been a lot of white men prone to “blowing things up” too, so are they going to be uber-vetted also?

On Monday, Martin released a statement to the St. Louis Dispatch newspaper attempting to walk back the racist remarks, saying that by “Mexicans” he actually meant “illegal immigrants.”

Honestly, it should be an automatic indictment of these people, that they have walk back just about every comment, because they can’t manage to think before they speak.

Next up, why it’s LePage again, and his feelings are hurt, yes they are!

Per Politico, LePage told reporters in Maine on Wednesday that he was deeply wounded when he heard a report that he’d been called a racist by Maine lawmaker Drew Gattine. Even though the report turned out to be false, LePage called Gattine and left a threatening voicemail last week where he called him a “c*cksucker” and a “son of a b*itch.”

But really, it’s LePage who is the victim here.

“I may not supposed to be that sensitive to these things, but I am,” LePage confessed. “I lose sleep over this, and it’s frustrating when you hear people talk about cheap political stunts to hurt their opponent and not do the right thing. Being called a racist was a horrible thing for me. It was enormously hurtful. It hurt my family.”

LePage then declared that he would never talk to the news media ever again as punishment for hurting his feelings.

“I will no longer speak to the press ever again after today,” LePage said. “And I’m serious. Everything will be put in writing. I am tired of being caught — the gotcha moments.”

I…I…uh, oh man. Here’s a thought, Mr. LePage, shut the fuck up. That would be best for everyone.

Rounding out the racism report, the NFL.

Professional football players who commit violent crimes almost always get a second chance in the NFL, provided that they can still play well.

However, it seems that many NFL executives are drawing a line against signing a player who doesn’t stand during the national anthem.

Bleacher Report’s Mike Freeman has talked with several NFL execs who said they wanted no part of having Colin Kaepernick on their teams, even though the athletic quarterback could still help a team in need of a player at the game’s most important position.

“I don’t want him anywhere near my team,” one front office exec told Freeman. “He’s a traitor.”

“He has no respect for our country,” said another. “F*ck that guy.”

“In my career, I have never seen a guy so hated by front office guys as Kaepernick,” said an NFL general manager.

Golly, and here I thought they were all about the money. Let’s see:

Defensive end Greg Hardy viciously assaulted his former girlfriend and left her covered in bruises. Despite this, he was welcomed with open arms by the Dallas Cowboys after serving his suspension.

Former Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice knocked out his wife Janay Palmer in an elevator in 2014, and his team still publicly praised him as a man of great character. In fact, the team even posted an article written by a Ravens PR bigwig that was titled “I Like Ray Rice.” The team only released Rice once video of the incident came to light.

Quarterback Michael Vick ran a brutal dog-fighting operation in which pitbulls were tortured and killed. He was nonetheless scooped up by the Philadelphia Eagles right after he finished serving his prison sentence.

Minnesota Vikings running back was indicted for whipping his four-year-old son with a tree branch, leaving his legs covered in slash wounds. Nonetheless, he was welcomed back as a hero the year after he served his suspension.

Wide receiver Donte Stallworth killed a pedestrian while driving under the influence of alcohol — that didn’t stop the Baltimore Ravens, Washington Redskins or New England Patriots from signing him after he served his time.

But Colin Kaepernick isn’t good enough to spit on. Interesting, ennit? The NFL has finally decided to get all moral and righteous, right up until another player does something terrible, then they’ll be back to supporting criminals again, I’m sure.

Dakota Access: Indigenous Round Up.

DAP

As the number of water protectors continues to burgeon on the banks of the Cannonball River in protest of the Dakota Access oil pipeline’s route across Standing Rock Sioux ancestral, treaty-protected lands, national media outlets are starting to pick up the story.

Both The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times have run pieces, and The New York Times published an op-ed by Standing Rock Sioux Tribe Chairman David Archambault II, as well as a detailed explanation of the issues. But Democracy Now! has been out in front with in-depth reports on more than one night. Last week we brought you the independent news show’s initial report.

Anchor Amy Goodman has since interviewed both Standing Rock Sioux Chairman David Archambault II and Ojibwe activist, journalist, author and sometime vice presidential candidate Winona LaDuke. Both reports aired last week, as support from Indian nations and people continued to grow to several thousand.

Watch Archambault and LaDuke below, and read the stories at Democracy Now!, including an August 30 report on the Black Lives Matter movement’s visit to the spirit camps..

Full Story.

[Read more…]

LePage: The Apology.

CREDIT: AP/MICHAEL DYWER.

CREDIT: AP/MICHAEL DYWER.

You didn’t think I was serious, did you? Okay, well LePage sorta kinda apologized, except not really. He’s sorry he made noises about stepping down.

All of this morning’s headlines focused on Maine Gov. Paul LePage apparently apologizing for an angry voice mail he left a state lawmaker, suggesting during a radio interview that he might even resign.

By the end of the day, the headlines were about LePage taking back the idea of quitting.

Lost in the political intrigue is that LePage didn’t apologize for using a gay slur. (He repeatedly called Rep. Drew Gattine a “cocksucker.”) He’s instead apologizing for losing his temper. LePage said he nearly couldn’t breathe after a reporter told him Gattine had said the governor is racist.

LePage also certainly isn’t apologizing for endorsing racial profiling. In a news conference Friday after LePage got caught leaving that short-of-breath, furious voice mail, the governor defended himself by saying “people of color” are “the enemy.”

[…]

LePage is aware that what he’s saying is considered racist, though he’s equally certain he’s not racist.

“Now they’re saying, ‘Well, you can’t do this,’ every day they’re saying, ‘You can’t do it because of the racially charged atmosphere in our country,’” he said. “But the same token is all lives matter. That’s the bottom line: All lives matter. And the majority of people dying are Mainers.”

Yes, yes, dying at the hands of those awful brown people from out of state. This, when he openly admits all the meth in Maine is being manufactured and dealt by white Mainers. But it’s the brown people’s fault, and no, he’s not racist, not one whit.

The governor issued a much less apologetic statement before his radio interview. In it, LePage acknowledged he’d purposely called Gattine “the worst word I could think of.” He didn’t apologize to LGBT people. He didn’t take back the proposal to racially profile people entering Maine.

“I make no apology for trying to end the drug epidemic that is ravaging our state,” he said. “Legislators like Gattine would rather be politically correct and protect ruthless drug dealers than work with me to stop this crisis that is killing five Mainers a week.”

The worst word you could think of was cocksucker? Really? Wow. I get the feeling LePage doesn’t think much of women, either. As for your crisis of five Mainers a week dying, perhaps you need to focus on more social programs which could help people when it comes to drugs. Are you working to make sure people have clean needles? Do you have needle drop off stations? Free clinics with counseling? Low cost rehab? Anything? Because just being a racist twit who wants an excuse to go homicidal on brown people is not going to help your problem, Gov.

The Advocate has the full story.

NC Pastor’s Job Plan for Black People.

CNN's Carol Costello speaks to Angela Rye and Thomas Rodgers (screen grab).

CNN’s Carol Costello speaks to Angela Rye and Thomas Rodgers (screen grab).

Apostle Thomas Rodgers, Sr. of Antioch Road to Glory International Ministries in North Carolina told CNN host Carol Costello that black Americans should receive “dual citizenship” so that they could find jobs in Africa.

“African-Americans are the only people in the world who do not seek dual citizenship,” Rodgers said. “That’s why Chicago gangs, California gangs, the Crips and the Bloods and Detroit in Michigan — we have gangs in the streets because blacks have no vision, they have no leadership.”

“You’ve also talked about building a road back to Africa,” Costello noted. “Can you explain that?”

Rodgers replied: “Matter of fact, where our ancestors came from, from the Indian Ocean all the way across the Atlantic Ocean, that’s 4,000 miles and we want to go back and help with the highways all the way across, to create jobs, train rails, pipelines, oil, petroleum. They create jobs for young people that can’t find jobs here, that the Democrats have not did.”

“I think it would give young people in prison [jobs] just like Great Britain did,” he opined.

Er…is he referencing what I think he’s referencing? Holy isht. No, no, that’s not a good idea. Nope.  You can read the rest of his, um, ideas here. There’s video, too.

35.

John F. Kennedy. Whitehouse.gov.

John F. Kennedy. Whitehouse.gov.

John Fitzgerald Kennedy often gets credit for serving as president during the Civil Rights Movement of the early 1960s, but the man beloved for championing African-American rights and working to eradicate poverty was assassinated before he could fulfill his promises to Native Americans.

Just 11 days before winning the 1960 election, Kennedy called for a “sharp break” from past Indian policies. That included termination policy, which severed tribes’ special relationships with the federal government, divided reservations into private ownership and sought to assimilate Indians into full citizenship.

Kennedy pledged to reverse termination policies, making a “specific promise of a positive program to improve the life of a neglected and disadvantaged group of our population,” he wrote in an October 28, 1960, letter to Oliver La Farge, president of the Association of American Indian Affairs.

“My administration would see to it that the Government of the United States discharges its moral obligation to our first Americans,” he wrote, promising better education and health care, access to federal housing programs, increased economic opportunity and “genuinely cooperative relations” between Indians and federal officials.

“Indians have heard fine words and promises long enough,” he wrote. “The program to which my party has pledged itself will be a program of deeds, not merely of words.

Yet Kennedy failed to live up to those words, said Thomas Clarkin, a history professor at San Antonio College and author of the 2001 book Federal Indian Policy in the Kennedy and Johnson Administrations. Kennedy, who was assassinated after serving 1,036 days in office, was a transitional president, bridging the gap between the termination policies of the 1950s and the more sympathetic Indian policies enacted during the ‘60s and ‘70s.

[Read more…]

I Saved More Black Lives Than Beyoncé! I Did!

Pop star Beyoncé Knowles at the Mtv Music Awards on Sunday Aug. 28, 2016 (Screen capture).

Pop star Beyoncé Knowles at the Mtv Music Awards on Sunday Aug. 28, 2016 (Screen capture).

Giuliani. Again. Someone needs to get this man distracted into doing something else. Please.

Former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani reacted angrily to pop star Beyoncé Knowles’ performance at Sunday night’s Mtv Video Music Awards, declaring that his anticrime policies have “saved more black lives” than any black performer.

Politico reported that the Republican mayor and longtime Donald Trump confidant appeared on Monday’s Fox and Friends to decry Knowles’ message and declare that he’s “saved more black lives” than any of the performers featured in the ceremony.

Knowles’ performance featured the group #MothersOfTheMovement — a group of women of color whose children have been killed by police — and stylized depictions of police violence.

“Her dancers were circling around her and one by one, they fell to the ground, and there were red lights underneath them. And that was supposed to symbolize cops killing black individuals,” said Fox and Friends co-host Ainsley Earhardt.

“You’re asking the wrong person,” Giuliani replied, “because I had five uncles who were police officers, two cousins who were, one who died in the line of duty. I ran the largest and best police department in the world, the New York City Police Department. And I saved more black lives than any of those people you saw on stage by reducing crime and particularly homicide by 75 percent.”

Y’know, rattling off how many cop relatives you have is irrelevant. I have a cop relative myself, and boy, did I ever hear stories. They weren’t good stories, either. Cops are people, with all their inherent flaws and biases. There are a whole lot of cops who are busy murdering Native People, Black People, and Hispanic people, along with assorted brown people, the key being brown. This cannot be denied, nor can it be denied that cops have been sanctioned to murder people of colour, as they sure as hell aren’t being punished for it in any way.

“Of which, of which maybe 4,000 or 5,000 were African-American young people who are alive today because of the policies I put in effect that weren’t in effect for 35 years. So if you’re going to do that, then you should symbolize why the police officers are in the neighborhoods and what are you going to go about it? To me it’s two easy answers: a much better education and good job, and what the heck have you done like in Baltimore, when they all stood in Baltimore,” Giuliani ranted.

I can’t speak for anyone else, but if I see cops in my neighbourhood, I run away. I don’t want anything to do with them. And please, don’t be pushing the “well, who are going to call if you’re in trouble?” My answer is I don’t know, but my first thought might not be cops.

He went on to attack politicians who stood in solidarity with demonstrators in Baltimore last year who were protesting the killing of Freddie Gray by Baltimore cops.

“I was sick when I saw all the politicians sitting, standing in Baltimore after the police situation and saying, nobody’s done anything for this community in 50 years,” he went on. “Well, that is a heck of a thing to say, because they’ve been in charge for 50 years. And they have failed the community. I didn’t fail Harlem. I turned Harlem around. I didn’t fail Bedford-Stuyvesant, I turned it around. Go there now. Go walk in Harlem. Then flash back to 25 years ago and go to Harlem before I was mayor, and one was a place where crime was rampant and no national stores and now there’s a thriving community in Harlem.”

I don’t live in NYC, but I hear things now and then, like about people being forced out of certain areas by hostile gentrification. They aren’t dancing in the streets, singing high hallelujahs to Giuliani.

Fox and Friends’ Brian Kilmeade opined that Knowles is sending the wrong message to the next generation of black youth, saying, “And Beyonce is an extremely popular and powerful performer, and when she does stuff like that, that message to the next generation is pretty indelible.”

“It’s a shame,” Giuliani replied. “It’s a shame.”

No. No, it’s not a shame, it’s the right damn thing. Just as Indians are standing up and saying no, the same with Black people everywhere. We have that right, and we’re more than a bit tired of our white colonial masters. Perhaps Giuliani has saved a whole lot of Black lives. Beyoncé is letting people know about injustice, about bigotry, and that yes, they have a voice, and a right to use it. I think that’s pretty important.

Via Raw Story.

Dakota Access Pipeline Protest: All We Want Is Clean Water.

Still Here. Still Standing. Support Sacred Stone Camp. Legal Fund Help. Support Native Youth.  Sign the Petition. Sign urgent petition. Dakota Access Pipeline Approval Disappoints by Dallas Goldtooth.

#Simon Moya-Smith. #NoDAPL. ICTMN.

Today’s favourite tweets:

Prophet Trump.

Image Credit: Lance Wallnau: God is raising up Trump as a Cyrus to destroy political correctness.

Image Credit: Lance Wallnau: God is raising up Trump as a Cyrus to destroy political correctness.

Trump’s Wall ‘Isn’t About Mexico,’ it’s About Biblical Prophecy, so sayeth one Lance Wallnau. I hear a chorus of “whos?” In honesty, I don’t know, I hadn’t heard of Mr. Wallnau until today. It seems he’s not a pastor, but a Seven Mountains Dominionist theologian, or so people say. His current attempt at convincing Christians to vote for Trump is that Trump is just like Cyrus in the bible, an unbeliever who was used by god.

Seven Mountains dominionism advocate Lance Wallnau has been one of t he most creative defenders of Donald Trump on the Religious Right, explaining that Trump has an “anointing” from God similar to that of King Cyrus, whom God used despite the fact that he was not a believer.

Wallnau continued explaining his spiritual defense of Trump in two recent podcasts with Charisma magazine founder Steve Strang, explaining that Trump has an “unappreciated prophetic gifting” and that the candidate’s calls to build a border wall are not about the border at all but about instigating a revival among American Christians.

Wallnau recalled that Cyrus issued a decree that “opened a gate in heaven” and led the way for spiritual revival in Jerusalem.

“He opened a gate, Stephen,” Wallnau said, “he opened a gate in heaven with proclamation so that all the prophecies and prayers that were stored up for Jerusalem could suddenly begin to be manifested, beginning with the House of God getting revived and continuing on through Darius and to Artaxerxes until Nehemiah, on the basis of Cyrus’ decree, petitioned to build the wall.”

“And then I started looking at, my gosh, there’s more prophetic dialogue on Trump than Christians realize,” he continued. “This whole thing about building a wall isn’t about Mexico, it’s about in the Bible, from my perspective, Nehemiah’s project was to restore the boundaries around that which had collapsed where God’s people were concerned.

“I think that in the Bible, building a wall has to do with like Proverbs 25, ‘a man without self-control is like a city without walls,’ it’s broken down. Our fiscal situation is broken down, our race relations are broken down, our definitions of sexuality and gender are broken down. I believe that if Trump is allowed to be president, there will be a release of that stored up potential that we’ve been praying, fasting and prophesying into for the past 20 years for revival in America.”

Wallnau went on to describe to Strang how “if God can anoint a secular individual, then they are operating in a sense with God’s wisdom and guidance on them.”

Trump, he said, “has a remarkable and uncelebrated, I think, or perhaps I should say unappreciated prophetic gifting.”

He recalled how Trump told conservative religious leaders at a recent meeting in New York that “leadership is about seeing the future,” something that he said Trump had demonstrated with his predictions about radical Islam, the national debt, the inner cities, terrorism in Belgium and the fact that “he saw the Brexit before it happened.”

Liberals say that Trump’s rhetoric is “dark and dystopian,” he said, but “in fact, he’s merely describing, like a Churchillian gift, what is on the horizon.”

So, there you have it. Trump is an anointed prophet of Churchill’s caliber. Yes indeedy. Via RRW.  There’s a bit more information about Wallnau’s nonsense here, but you’ll need a tanker full of salt, and some way to guard yourself from fatal eyerolls. The comments, while depressing, are an interesting insight as to how christians are handling this political mess.

Stephen King Responds.

stephen-king-800x430

Yesterday, I posted about the extraordinarily racist governor of Maine: “You Shoot the Enemy.” Guess Who the Enemy Is? – and Stephen King, a very famous Maine resident, has responded.

“Our governor, Paul LePage, is a bigot, a homophobe, and a racist. I think that about covers it,” King tweeted.

LePage made news this week for claiming that most drug dealers are black or Hispanic, and then calling a lawmaker who criticized his comments a “son-of-a-bitch socialist c*cksucker.” The incident provoked Maine’s largest newspaper to apologizing on behalf of the state for electing LePage.

It looks like LePage has pretty much the whole state cringing in embarrassment.

This is not the first time that King, who lives in Maine, has criticized his state’s Tea Party governor.

“One must admit LePage has elevated assholery to a level far past the extraordinary and into a rarified sphere that might be termed divine,” King said in January after LePage complained that urban drug dealers named “D-Money” were coming to Maine and impregnating “young, white girls.”

Then, in March, he said LePage was “full of the stuff that makes the grass grow green” for claiming he had moved out of the state to avoid taxes. “Tabby and I pay every cent of our Maine state income taxes, and are glad to do it,” King continued. “We feel, as Governor LePage apparently does not, that much is owed from those to whom much has been given. We see our taxes as a way of paying back the state that has given us so much. State taxes pay for state services. There’s just no way around it. Governor LePage needs to remember there ain’t no free lunch.”

It’s a genuine pity LePage will not be out of office until 2019. I think perhaps people of Maine should look to possible ways to boot LePage now.

Via Raw Story.