Human Flesh Eating Robots: You Will Conform!

Metropolis.

Metropolis.

At least this slice of Christian bugnuttery gave me an excuse to use an image from Fritz Lang’s brilliant Metropolis. The rest of this, oh, I barely have words. I did burst out laughing, but that can’t be the only reaction, because like it or not, there are a wealth of people who will believe this absolute shite. “The Robots are coming to get you!” It’s like the death panels of yore being given the Metropolis treatment.

Rabid conspiracy theorist and End Times radio host Rick Wiles dedicated his “TruNews” radio program yesterday to delivering an extended warning that the government will soon dispatch an army of flesh-eating robots to devour uncooperative human beings.

Wiles and Steve Quayle, who is a frequent guest on his program, spent nearly two hours discussing the existence of giants, the prevalence of cannibalism and the looming Tribulation, with Wiles at one point warning that “the hatred of Christians will become so great in the Last Days that people will be encouraged to kill and eat them.”

Oh gack. I have no respect or regard for Christianity, however, you may have all the reassurances in the world I have no interest in killing or eating people, regardless of belief. Where in the fuck do they get ideas like this? Yeah, I know, projection, but still, this is seriously screwed up. You honestly have nothing else to do, except sit around and dream up one insane fantasy after another?

To this end, Wiles cited a 2009 Wired magazine article that reported that a company was working on developing robots that could refuel themselves by ingesting biomass from the environment. Despite the fact that the company itself stated that the robots would rely on plant matter, Wiles remains convinced that they will in fact fuel themselves by feasting on human flesh.

Sigh. So, we’ve all seen those roving bands of supposedly vegetarian robots wandering around, right? No? Well, what about all those corpse eating robots you see on battlefields? No again. Tsk.

“Our military is developing an army of human flesh-eating robots,” Wiles warned. “If you do not conform to the requirements of this new society, they’re going to send a robot to your house to eat you for lunch. That may sound extremely radical, but that’s where they’re taking it. They will reduce the human population. You will conform!”

That sounds like an excellent reason to strip the military budget! Let’s get right on that one, okay? I thought the Religious Reich was in love with the military, and us lefty liberals against it. So, the military is going to turn on rabid neocons? I’d like to see that one. Or are us lefty liberal types going to take over, and send out the ravenous robots? I haven’t received any robots, no agenda, and no instructions.

No, it doesn’t sound extremely radical. It sounds like the plot of a book written by Vox Day. I’m all for a reduced population, but I think you have the flesh eating robots confused with the Borg, and the proper tagline is “resistance is futile.” Get it right, guys. I am reminded of a long ago SNL sketch:

Via RWW.

The Christian God: An Ideal Sociopath.

Oklahoma State Rep. George Faught (Facebook).

Oklahoma State Rep. George Faught (Facebook).

Christians. The more you know about them, the more certain you become that this barbaric and disgusting religion has no place at all in any society which deems itself civilised. Not that I’d go so far as to describe America as civilised, it isn’t, especially when you line it up next to actually civilised countries. However, the bloodthirsty, empathy-free hatred practiced by Christians, too many of them infesting the Regime, does not speak well, even in a nation more barbaric than most.

On Tuesday, the Oklahoma House met to discuss engrossment of its controversial House Bill-1549, which would prohibit anyone from seeking an abortion in the case of a genetic abnormality.

Oklahoma State Rep. Cory Williams (D) asked Rep. George Faught — who authored the bill — if rape is the “will of God.”

“Well, you know, if you read the Bible, there’s actually a couple circumstances where that happened,” Faught began. “The Lord uses all circumstances. I mean, you can go down that path, but it’s a reality unfortunately,” he said.

Williams followed up, asking if incest is the “will of God.”

“Same answer. Doesn’t deal with this bill,” Faught said. Williams argued that the questions matter to the legislation, given that Faught was unwilling to make exceptions in the case of rape or incest. “You are proffering a divine intervention as the reason why you won’t do that and so I think it is very important.”

Well, Faught is correct that the bible, an incredibly disgusting pastiche of tales, has rape and incest in it. More than just a couple of circumstances. There’s actually a fucktonne of rape in the bible, quite a lot of it is commanded by that ideal sociopath worshiped by Christians, Jehovah. Jehovah doesn’t have the slightest issue with rape, thinks it’s rather dandy. If you actually read the bible, which most Christians don’t, the sheer amount of rape in the bible is damn near overwhelming. Incest isn’t looked down on much, either. Of course it depends, many of the stories in the bible have more than one version, most of them contradictory. Jehovah didn’t think it was a bad thing to slaughter or sacrifice children, either. I suppose we should all count ourselves lucky none of the Christian sociopaths are trying to find a way to legislate that one.

 Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him.

But all the women children, that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves.

Numbers 31: 17, 18.

Nice, ennit? That’s said by that wonderful hero Moses, by the way.

“This body wants to know — and myself personally — whether you believe rape and incest are actually the will of God,” Williams questioned.

“It’s a great question to ask,” said Faught. “And, obviously if it happens in someone’s life, it may not be the best thing that ever happened, but — so you’re saying that God is not sovereign with every activity that happens in someone’s life and can’t use anything and everything in someone’s life and I disagree with that.”

If it’s such a great question to ask, why don’t you just come right out with an answer? Easy enough: yes. Because that’s what you mean, but you don’t want to come right out and say it. Even Christians know this shit is disgusting, repugnant, and barbaric, which is why the little dance all around the question. They know they are deliberately backward people, who find any reason to indulge in monstrous behaviour.

And yes, you know, I fully understand just how aghast many Christians would be at the thought of saying rape and incest is okey dokey and “God” approved, but when it comes right down to it, you aren’t aghast enough, because the question involved is a woman’s right to bodily autonomy, and that’s where most all Christians screech to a halt. “Well, I don’t think that rape and incest stuff is right, but abortion, well, that’s wrong, and…” So, in the end, some Christians might find it in themselves to be oh so charitable and provide a rape or incest exception, but still be just fine with grinding women into the dirt when it comes to viewing them as full human beings who have every right to make their own medical decisions.

So many Christians just love to rail against people of other religious beliefs, one in particular these days, and often cite their horrendous treatment of women. Ah, that special blindness. Why in the fuck would a Christian think they treat women any better? A pox on all of you.

Via Raw Story.

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.

“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.

Sunday Facepalm.

facepalm_estatua1

Today, we have the Compleat Batshit Sweepstakes! Who will win? Will it be Rick Wiles, Cindy Jacobs, Wayne Allen Root, or Lance Wallnau? This is also the S word alliteration contest: pick the winner: from Wallnau, we have sabotaging, sniping and snarling enemies, and from Wiles, we have a slithering cabal of seditious snakes. I think, on pure word performance, Wiles has to take the trophy on S alliteration. The overall winner in the Batshit stakes I will leave up to the reader.

We’ll start with the master of hyperbolic bullshit, Rick Wiles, who is on quite the tear over the Satanistic Cabal of Pedophile Baby Sacrificers. (Why Lucifer comes into this, I don’t know. Happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones. – Psalms 137.9).

Rick Wiles dedicated his radio program yesterday to warning that a secretive pedophile ring is working to destroy President Trump before he can expose their murderous global network.

Wiles said that Trump is “besieged by a slithering cabal of seditious snakes” who are attempting to carry out a coup against him at the behest of the “perpetual war and pedophilia party that has ruled America since they assassinated John F. Kennedy in 1963.”

Huh. I really think someone is confused, because conservatives have always been the ones in favour of war. Pedophilia too, actually. I did not listen to the broadcast, that’s simply asking too much, so I don’t know if he expounded on this “perpetual war and pedophilia party” business, or how they managed to assassinate Kennedy. It really is true, isn’t it, that conspiracies never die. They just get twisted about now and again.

They’re fighting like cornered animals to prevent their pedophile network from being exposed. … It’s about the darkest, most disgusting, vilest corruption you can imagine. And if the American people ever find out the truth about their politicians and their celebrities in Hollywood and their TV idols and their favorite TV anchormen and women, and they find out all these great famous people and they find out that they’re just child molesters—not only molesters, but child murderers, sacrificing children to Satan. When they find out, they will drag their bloody carcasses down Constitution Avenue in Washington, D.C., with meat hooks! They’ll have meat hooks in their carcasses.

Bloody carcasses! Meat hooks! Meat hooks in their carcasses! Jesus Fuck, the bloodthirstiness of some christians is truly frightening. At least you know where all the projection is coming from, although that’s not at all comforting. Honestly, I’d think that if such a cabal existed, and were descended from the amazing perpetual war and pedophilia party, they’d just quietly carry out another assassination, rather than attempt to ‘destroy’ the Tiny Tyrant, which I read here as discredit. No one at all has to work at discrediting the Tiny Tyrant or his regime, they are bumbling about, doing a fine job of that themselves. The full story is here, complete with soundcloud.

Up next, in the Seriously Eeeuuuuw! category, is Wayne Allen Root, with his praise of just how very much Trump loves business…

[Read more…]

The Rise of the ‘Traditionalist International’.

trump-putin

Right Wing Watch has in in-depth, disturbing look at the rise of Traditionalist International, or, the three way love affair going on between White Supremacists, the Religious Right, and Russia, or more specifically, Putin. From the Introduction:

Following the election of Donald Trump to the presidency, two American contingents appeared to stand ascendant in the U.S.: white nationalists and the Religious Right. The former, ideological descendants of the Ku Klux Klan and Jim Crow-era legislators, would like to return white supremacy to both state and federal law—or, barring that, break off part of the U.S. to form a white ethno-state wholesale. The latter, meanwhile, would allow Christian fundamentalism to become the U.S.’s de jure national religion, with attendant legislation targeting LGBT and minority religious communities alike. Both white nationalists and the Religious Right tossed vociferous support behind Trump’s candidacy during the recent presidential election, and both contingents thrilled at Trump’s unexpected victory, as well as the authoritarian bent he’s quickly brought to the executive branch.

However, Trump is not the sole leader that both of these cohorts vocally support. Indeed, for America’s white nationalists and for many within the Religious Right, there is only one country, and one leader, worth emulating. Rather than model their goals solely on a glorified Confederate past or lavish praise only on defeated fascist regimes in Europe, the figureheads of America’s far-right have found a new lodestar in Moscow.

From much later in the article:

While white nationalists continue to pile praise on Putin’s policies, so too has the U.S.’s Religious Right heaped approval on Moscow. Indeed, at some point over the past few years, Russia stopped being one of the primary importers of legislation inspired by the American Religious Right, and has instead begun exporting both rhetorical support and model legislation for social conservatives throughout the world. “We’ve seen an interesting crystallization in Putin’s third term of this kind of … nationalizing the culture wars—in part an American export—and then re-exporting them,” said Christopher Stroop, a postdoctoral scholar with the University of South Florida, who has researched Russia’s links with the American Religious Right. “Russia has begun explicitly branding itself as leader of the global right.”

As Stroop found, ties between Moscow and the U.S. Religious Right predate Putin’s presidency. In a 2016 article for Political Research Associates, Stroop traced the burgeoning links among “right-wing fellow travelers” in Russia and the U.S. to the initial days of post-Soviet independence.

Which president is the lion of Christianity, the defender of Christian values, the president that’s calling his nation back to embracing its identity as a nation founded on Christian values? Those, ladies and gentlemen, are quotes from Vladimir Putin, the president of Russia. -Bryan Fischer, Oct. 2013, praising Putin’s piety.

The whole article is well worth reading, even if it is barely palatable. Recommended Reading.

Imprecatory Mutterings Against Nazgul Judges.

Lou Engle speaking at POTUS Shield Heartbeat Ohio conference, March 10, 2017.

Lou Engle speaking at POTUS Shield Heartbeat Ohio conference, March 10, 2017.

A whole lot of Christians, and much of Christianity is ineffably daft, you only need to read the bible to confirm it, or listen to people like Lou Engle, who seems to have a bit of trouble differentiating between the book of myths and the Lord of the Rings series by Tolkien. Ah well, they’re close enough, right? If you don’t know, imprecatory prayer is a specific type of prayer – basically, it’s asking ol’ Jehovah to go full court psycho on someone you don’t like, or view as an enemy. Psalms is stuffed full of ugly, gruesome imprecatory prayers, like so:

Break their teeth, O God, in their mouth … let them be as cut in pieces. … The righteous shall rejoice when he seeth the vengeance: he shall wash his feet in the blood of the wicked. Psalm 58:6-10

Okay, onto the ineffable batshit daftness of Engle, who has set his sights on federal judges.

Dominionist Lou Engle, taking part in multi-day Ohio gathering of the Religious Right group POTUS Shield called on Friday for God to “sweep away” Supreme Court justices and federal judges who would uphold Roe v. Wade, suggesting that God could do so by converting them or killing them.

POTUS Shield is an operation launched by self-proclaimed apostles and prophets, many affiliated with the New Apostolic Reformation, to pray for the Trump administration. The group is holding a multi-day prayer rally at Frank Amedia’s Touch Heaven Ministries Church in Canfield, Ohio, this week. Amedia was a prominentsupporter of Donald Trump, who campaigned at a worship event alongside Amedia, and for a time served as the Trump campaign’s volunteer “liaison of Christian policy.” On Friday morning, Lou Engle took the microphone and began to talk about abortion and the federal courts.

Engle said that during a recent five-day fast, he had a dream about women gathering to hear the book of Esther taught. Someone in the dream said that there are two words in the book of Esther that mean “Nazgul,” which Engle stated is the name of “the Witch King” of the ringwraiths in the Lord of the Rings, the “most powerful being of darkness and death” who could be killed by no man, but who is defeated by the King’s daughter as she proclaimed, “I am no man.” Engle said the dream means that God is raising up an Esther movement of conservative women. “We decree it,” shouted Engle. “The voice of Esther is coming to take out the Nazgul, the principalities of witchcraft and death that demand bloodshed for the fueling of the agenda of darkness.”

My first thought is that perhaps a five day fast is a day or two too much for Mr. Engle. Not that I altogether believe he did one in the first place. A number of christians have interesting rules when it comes to fasting, rules which allow drinks other than water, and certain foodstuffs. That said, telling your congregants you did a five day fast lends some sort of holy credence to your declarations, no matter how utterly batshit they may be, and there’s a load of guano in that, uh, dream. It’s interesting how often references to Tolkien come up in christian batshittery, it’s easy to get the idea they’d love to co-opt it into the bible somehow. Okay, so, conservative anti-choice women are going to…what, start murdering judges, or medical personnel, or women who might be coming out of a clinic? Hard to tell exactly who they think is responsible for the ‘bloodshed’ (abortion) fueling the agenda of darkness.

It’s always an agenda to these people, everyone has an agenda except them.

“God sweep away the judges,” Engle prayed. “Sweep away the Nazgul, the Haman spirit of death. We decree, God, the sweeping of the Supreme Court.”

Oh. Judges it is, then! Odd, calling imprecation down on the Supreme Court, as most of the justices are conservatives asses. I guess it doesn’t matter, Jehovah had better curse someone, so why not them? Will Jehovah understand the desired target? I don’t recall there being a godly message wherein Jehovah talked about reading Tolkien. Oh, the Haman business? Haman is the antagonist in the Esther story.

As we noted earlier this week, Engle called for a three-day Esther Fast to protect Trump from witchcraft; he said women around the world are praying for the reversal of Roe v. Wade and asking God, “pull down these Hamans, remove ‘em, either—” and there he stopped mid-sentence to make a point to those who might be squeamish about his rhetoric:

There’s video at the main link.

I tell you, the church can’t be humanistic right now. I feel this in my spirit. We’re so concerned about these Hamans that we’re not concerned about the millions of babies! I say that we believe that Donald Trump, President Trump, is a Jehu as well as a Cyrus. And I’ve been praying, ‘remove the house of Ahab.’ “We need to begin to pray to sweep away the House of Ahab,” Engle said.

Jehovah commanded Jehu to perform a series of mass murders, killing all of Ahab’s relatives who had ever pissed against a wall.  2 Kings 9:6-8 / 2 Kings 10:30 / 2 Chronicles 22:7 – but, Jehovah also condemned the genocide: Hosea 1:4.

“We declare that you are the God of the reversal of Haman’s decrees,” he said. “We declare the reversal of the decree of ’73, Roe v Wade … We declare the reversal of Roe v. Wade. The powers of Nazgul, witchcraft and death are being reversed now over this nation.”

At this point, there’s a whole lot about Engle going on about how Jehovah destroyed the Politburo. After that, Engle and Amedia get back on track, talking in particular about Justice Sotomayer, who they seem to find particularly problematic:

It turns out that both Amedia and Engle have been praying specifically for Justice Sonia Sotomayor to have “an encounter with the living God” so “that she would see things from the mind of Christ, no longer from darkness, but from light, and that she would judge from light.” Engle, who said (wrongly) that Sotomayor’s name means “greater salvation,” prayed that God would “invade her with a dream” and return her to her Catholic roots. “Give us that soul, Lord,” he prayed.

At one point Engle said, “no one wants anybody to die” and that he prays that they get converted, but that when God starts to work he raises up kings and brings them down. Said Amedia, “He can haunt them in the middle of the night.” Amedia talked about his own dream, in which a broom went up one side of the Supreme Court and down the other, but this was not just a house-cleaning broom, but a broom “that brings destruction.”

“The Lord showed me the entire federal court system was getting shook and cleaned,” said Amedia, praising legislation designed to break up the 9th circuit–which he called a “fruitcake court”—and create a new circuit court whose judges Trump would get to appoint.

Amedia said there are 110 federal court vacancies on the federal courts, enough, Engle said, to create “the possibility of shifting the justice system for years.”

Right, they don’t want anyone to die, they are just praying that Jehovah kills them. There’s more blather, then the ending:

It’s not just judges who Engle thinks are asking for God’s judgment. Engle had a warning for “those who are funding anarchy.” God is slow to anger, Engle said, but when His time comes, He will “seize the initiative.”

So, not just judges. Everyone, be sure to listen for Jehovah knockin’ at your door. Sure it will happen right away. Or it might be a Ringwraith, who knows?

Via RWW.

The Dynamics of the Regime.

President Donald Trump greets visitors touring the White House in Washington, Tuesday, March 7, 2017. CREDIT: AP Photo/Evan Vucci.

President Donald Trump greets visitors touring the White House in Washington, Tuesday, March 7, 2017. CREDIT: AP Photo/Evan Vucci.

The Trump administration’s agenda has started to solidify a month and a half after his inauguration. ThinkProgress checked in with scholars on authoritarianism to see how that agenda it’s taking shape. For people who have devoted their lives to studying anti-democratic movements, recent White House actions are more disturbing than ever.

[…] Trump’s language has spread not just to the media, but to supporters in politics. Take a recent tweet from Rep. Steve King (R-IA) where he claimed leakers needed to be ‘purged’:

@RealDonaldTrump needs to purge Leftists from executive branch before disloyal, illegal & treasonist acts sink us.

Cas Mudde, an associate professor at the University of Georgia, and author of Populism, A Very Short Introduction: This is a great example of how the U.S. far right has become emboldened and more visible. Steve King has been a radical right voice in the U.S. House of Representatives for years and years. He started normalizing radical right politicians from Europe years ago, with Louis Gohmert and Michele Bachmann, meeting, among others, with [Dutch right-wing nationalist] Geert Wilders in 2015 and 2016, with [French right-wing nationalist] Marine Le Pen in 2016 and 2017, and with [German right-wing nationalist] Frauke Petry in 2016.

While the meetings were public, King seemed aware he was part of a fringe within the GOP that supported these parties. Now, as one can see in this tweet, King clearly feels Trump is on the same page. Like David Duke and other long-standing U.S. far right activists and politicians, they believe their time is now, and they call upon Trump to do what they have only dreamed off in the past decades. It again shows that Trump is not “alien” to the GOP. Not only does the majority of the GOP base support him, and most of his “controversial” policies, but many GOP members of Congress, particularly in the House, were always closer to him than to Paul Ryan or Mitch McConnell.

This goes for all the Religious Reich, right wing pundits, and far right conspiracy theorists, too. They finally have the audience they have craved, with a power to back it up. There might be a minor disagreement here or there, but they will continue to back the Regime in order to get things they have dreamed about for decades.

Berman: It’s one thing to say leakers are bad or government employees shouldn’t be leaking classified information, but these kinds of terms or concepts — purging, enemies — are very dangerous. Again it’s a sign of no longer seeing yourself as a national community engaged with fellow citizens, but in a zero sum struggle going on here — and people opposed to you are not just different politically but enemies. It makes democracy impossible to function and a social consensus impossible to achieve.

Trump’s power is in his rhetoric — and not just policy — which is incredibly divisive. He’s creating problems, and the rhetoric itself makes it impossible to do what democracy requires: compromise and consensus.

Ben Ghiat: The tone of King’s Tweet — get them before they can wreck us — conveys this cornered feeling — and what might transpire.

Trump’s policies are messages aimed at the people of the United States. They say what kind of country, society, and culture his administration wants.

This one sentence ^ is one that apologists for Trump supporters need to take on board, stat. Most Trump supporters are not dismayed, they are happy with the way things are going. They are filled with bile and rage, bloated with a sense of entitlement, and they want other people to suffer.

Berman: The revised ban … claims to be something that keeps terrorists out of the U.S., even though there is empirically no evidence that it does that. But it speaks to his base and says, “Look, I did what I promised.”

[On undocumented immigrants] Trump is saying, “I’m enforcing the law.” Which is technically true, but he’s doing it in a way that is speaking to his base and breaking up families, which is very, very cruel. He’s doubling down, and it’s very attractive to a lot of people. It’s very powerful for lots of people who think politicians make promises they don’t keep.

Yes. Yes, it is. Anyone who takes 10 minutes here or there to read comments following the slightest criticism of the Regime will see just how much Trump supporters are in love with this.

I think what’s most worrying to me is the divisiveness that Trump is using to whip up his base and solidify support among true believers. He’s not winning anybody on the other side, and this is really problematic. Rolling back Obamacare is bad and banning people is a bad thing. It’s not entirely different from what we expected from other conservatives, but it’s really proven to be way, way, way different than with other candidates. And way more dangerous for democracy is this rhetoric, alternative facts, and inability to reach compromises with the other side of aisle. It’s truly pernicious, and what he’s managed in a couple months is really frightening.

Ben Ghiat: The separation of families and the further empowerment of ICE are unnecessary, cruel, and intimidating — and that is exactly their point. Causing human suffering and demoralization was built into this administration and emphasized in Trump’s dark inaugural address. They also show allies their commitment to the agenda of state racism. I see the setting up of immigrants as targets to be deported as part of a racist population management scheme which has [Chief Strategist Steve] Bannon as its mastermind, but plenty of help from the GOP.

We really aren’t all that far from concentration camps. A lot of people on the left insist this is hyperbole, no, it wouldn’t ever get that bad, checks and balances, all that. Well, all that hasn’t worked at all so far, has it? A lot people on the left said it could never reach the point it has, insisting on their rose-coloured glasses. “It won’t come to that.” It has come to that, and it’s going to get worse.

Mudde: As should have been clear to anyone watching President Trump’s joint session speech, he hasn’t changed. Yes, he read a speech from the teleprompter without going on rants, but every time he talked about the need to come together and not divide the nation, he pointed his hand in the direction of the Democrats. Moreover, despite the pandering to congressional Republicans — in terms of deregulation and overturning Obama legislation, particularly Obamacare — let there be no mistake that this was a Bannon-[Stephen] Miller speech.

The only topic of discussion after the speech, at least for liberals, should have been VOICE, i.e. the new federal program for Victims of Immigrant Crime Enforcement that he announced. This is an incredible example of nativist politics, distinguishing victims not on the basis of the crime or damage they have suffered, but the ethnicity/legal status of the perpetrator. It obviously serves the purpose to identify “immigrants” — not just undocumented ones — with crime and crime with immigrants.

The fact that self-appointed liberal spokesmen like Van Jones and Bill Maher hailed this speech for its presidentialism shows just how shallow and self-centered their opposition is. He didn’t go after “us,” so it was a good speech. In other words, for me, the main story of the last week was not anything Trump did, but the deep desire among conservatives and liberals to normalize Trump.

The sheer amount of people intent on normalising Trump and the Regime is terrifying in and of itself. I understand the desire, the constant onslaught of corruption and evil is difficult to deal with. Heads get filled with anxiety and depression, shoulders hunched and knotted with the weight of stress. There comes a point where the desire to just sink into denial is overwhelmingly welcome. Regardless, we can’t afford ourselves the narcotic of normalisation, we must all stand, as firm and bright torches blazing in the dark, lighting the way we must go.

Full story at Think Progress.

Facts Be Damned. Oh, And Fuck Women.

White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon listens at right as President Donald Trump speaks during a meeting in the White House on January 31. CREDIT: AP Photo/Evan Vucci.

White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon listens at right as President Donald Trump speaks during a meeting in the White House on January 31. CREDIT: AP Photo/Evan Vucci.

One of the uglier aspects of the ‘new’ Muslim ban is a focus on ‘honor killings’, even though that’s not a massive problem here in uStates, but it’s a convenient thing to rail about when you’re attempting to incite a racial panic. Just how much the Regime does not care about victims of honor killings is highlighted by the fact that the Violence Against Women grants are going to be eliminated, even though roughly 1,500 women are murdered as a result of domestic violence per year. It should not be ignored that both Trump and Bannon have been accused of domestic violence. Nor should Trump’s attitude toward women in general, which is incredibly ugly. The reasoning behind the ban is nothing more than slimy white nationalism, and there isn’t all that much to cover the shit over, they simply don’t care. Well, that’s not quite fair. They do care about any possibility of having this ban legally overturned as well. As usual the problem does not just rest with the Regime’s legislation and executive orders. It also lies on the shoulders of all those Regime voters and supporters.

I am sick to death of people wringing their hands over these poor, poor Trumpians who start crying when the chickens come home to roost. No, I do not have sympathy for them, because they have none for anyone, they were firmly and flatly in favour of bigotry, hatred, and misogyny, and any of them who claim they weren’t, they are liars. Trump’s whole fucking campaign was nothing but a constant litany of bigotry, hatred, and misogyny, as well as a paen to the might of white, and a psalm sung to the filthy rich.

The whole excuse of “well, some of them just wanted to throw a brick at the establisment” is a fucking lie, too. One Big Lie. If those people truly wanted to buck the establishment, Trump would have been dumped and Sanders would have ended up in the white house, and we would be moving towards a properly socialized government. That would have been tossing a brick at the man. Voting for Trump? For fuck’s sake, how could you possibly get more establishment? The excuse of “they thought he was a good business man!” won’t wash either. Trump’s constant failures over the years were not a secret. His incompetency was out there for all to see, during the whole campaign. The regime voters chose to ignore it. The excuse of “oh hey jobs”? No, doesn’t wash either, because what all those white Trumpians meant by that was “stomp all over those brown peoples!”. They never have anything to say when you point out that they don’t want to work cleaning toilets and peoples’ houses.

No, no more fucking excuses. The assholes who voted in the regime who are now crying? They’re only crying because they weren’t supposed to get bitten on the arse. They wanted all those others to get fucked over. Anyroad, back to the fucked up, shit-caked ban…

President Trump’s second Muslim ban, signed on Monday, includes a provision directing the Department of Homeland Security to collect and make public “information regarding the number and types of gender-based violence against women, including so-called ‘honor killings,’ in the United States by foreign nationals.”

According to numbers from a Department of Justice-sponsored study conducted in 2014, there are less than 30 such “honor killings” in the country each year. The killings — which are “perceived by the perpetrator to be a way to restore honor to the family in the face of a perceived damage,” according to the report — are sometimes “motivated by a radical and dark interpretation of Islam,” as Fox News wrote in late 2015.

The inclusion of the “honor killings” provision in the new Muslim ban marks the second time in a week the Trump administration has outlined a plan to use federal resources “to whip up as much racial panic as possible,” as Matt Yglesias of Vox puts it. The first instance was Trump’s vow to create the Victims Of Immigration Crime Engagement office, or VOICE, during his speech to Congress last week, even though immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than native-born Americans.

In a similar vein, the number of “honor killings” in the U.S. stands in stark contrast to the roughly 1,500 women who are murdered as a result of domestic violence in a given year. But according to numerous reports, Trump’s budget proposal will eliminate the Department of Justice’s Violence Against Women grants. Those grants had a $480 million budget last year and funded 25 grant programs helping domestic violence victims, according to Mother Jones. Trump and chief strategist Steve Bannon have both been accused of domestic assault.

[…]

But the “honor killing” provision is just the latest example of Trump trying to portray Islam in a violent light. Despite the fact that a person in America is much more likely to be killed by a right-wing extremist than a Muslim terrorist, the Trump administration has signaled it wants a federal counter-terrorism program to stop focusing on violent white supremacists and any other extremist groups not comprised of Muslims. And after the Department of Homeland Security released a report last month undermining the administration’s core rationale for the Muslim ban  — “citizenship is unlikely to be a reliable indicator of potential terrorist activity,” it found — the administration tried to downplay the report.

“The president asked for an intelligence assessment,” the a senior administration official told the Wall Street Journal. “This is not the intelligence assessment the president asked for.”

Right. An accurate assessment is provided, but the Tiny Tyrant doesn’t want that, and neither does shadow tyrant Bannon. They want shit shoveled onto a platter, and shaped into the form of whatever they asked for, providing them with a basis for the regime.

Think Progress has the full story.

Also see: The mass deportation of African immigrants that isn’t getting media attention. Nobody noticed.

Sunday Facepalm.

MRMXm90e_400x400

Pennsylvania Republican state Rep. Rick Saccone held a rally in Harrisburg earlier this week where he announced that he intends to run for the U.S. Senate against Democratic Sen. Bob Casey Jr. next year.

If anyone could be said to be the very embodiment of evil, fanatical conservatism, it’s Saccone, who often drapes himself in American flag clothing, totes a bible, and is most seriously pro-gun. Now Saccone is claiming to be the very important representative of one ‘god’ to rule all.

In the radio interview, Saccone said that if Christians “don’t get involved in government, the government will get involved in you, and you won’t like the results. The government will run over you and you won’t have any say it. So Christians have to stand up and make sure that they have a say in their government and that they’re protecting their rights and our religious liberties which are being trampled on every day across this nation. If we don’t speak out, those liberties will be taken away. You can see it day after day, case after case.”

Right, much better to have our rights trampled by fanatical christians! It will be a more righteous kind of slavery, you’ll see!

“God has set out a plan for us,” he continued. “He wants godly men and women in all aspects of life. He wants people who will rule with the fear of God in them to rule over us. And if they don’t, then the evil side will take over and the government will control and run over the good people and so they have to stand up, that’s just part of it. If you don’t have good people in government, then you’ll have bad people in government—and when bad people are reigning over us, the people will not be happy.”

Well, you got part of that right. Yes, we have bad people in government, you would be one of them, dipshit. All those bad people in government do indeed make me unhappy, and that’s an understatement. There are no fucking gods, but if you want to delude yourself, fine. Keep your delusion to yourself, please. It has zero business intruding into my life, at any level. Decent people of Pennsylvania, I think you know what to do. Make sure this wannabe Sauron is smacked down, hard.

Via RWW.

Today we have a bonus near-fatal eyeroll, from Lance Wallnau, of course.

“A lot of us don’t watch the Academy Awards because it’s so irritating with the politics,” Wallnau said. “All night they’re bashing Trump, all night they set up this imaginary Donald Trump figure and beat him like a pinata. And then when it comes time for them to do the best picture, they screw it up, they have the wrong envelope. Hollywood evidently knows enough to lecture the president and the rest of the country on what the president’s policy should be, but they don’t know enough to find their own envelopes.”

“All night long they’re beating up on Donald Trump and the headlines the next day [are] how screwed up the Academy Awards was,” Wallnau continued. “I don’t know how long this grace is going to be on Donald Trump but, I’ll tell you what, there’s an anointing on that guy and God literally makes his enemies look foolish.”

This is what your puny god has? And you’re…bragging about that? Holy shit, dude, that’s flat out embarrassing. You should be having a chat with ol’ Jehovah, let it know that it really needs to step up its game.

Via RWW.

Religious Right Myths.

m9cppzs2vbod3be1

The myths of the Religious Right, they never, ever die, just keep being recycled in order to shore up claims of christian persecution.

Earlier this week, James Dobson interviewed Kelly Shackleford and Jeremy Dys of the First Liberty Institute about what they see as the vital need for President Trump to protect the religious liberty of Christians in this nation.

Dobson, Dys and Shackleford insisted that conservative Christians are under relentless attack in America and facing increasing persecution, so much so that now even five-year-old girls are being told they cannot pray before eating their lunch at school.

“The attacks are not just increasing, they’re increasing at an exponential level,” Shackleford asserted. “So we’re seeing a lot more attacks, [including] a little five-year-old girl we represented who was actually stopped from paying over her meal and told—quote—’It’s not good to pray in school’.”

“You’re not making that up,” Dobson responded, to which Shackleford replied that this was indeed one of the “real cases that are occurring all over the country.”

Later in the program, when Dys brought up the incident again, Dobson still couldn’t believe that “that’s a real story,” but Dys assured him that it was, saying that he was personally in the room when the young girl was asked to identify the teacher who allegedly told her that she was not allowed to pray because “it’s not good.”

“These are real stories,” Dys insisted.

Okay, everyone counted all the “really trulys” and “real stories!”, right? For sure, absolutely real, the truth, you know, because he was actually there, right there in the room!

If this story sounds familiar, that might be because we covered it back in 2014 after Fox News commentator Todd Starnes wrote about it in one of his columns while conveniently failing to mention that the young girl in question just so happened to be the daughter of the man who was the vice president of sales at the Christian publishing house that was publishing Starnes’ forthcoming book, that just so happened to be about how Christians in America were under attack.

As we noted back then, the school district launched an investigation into the allegations and concluded that there was “no proof whatsoever” that this young girl had ever been told to stop praying. The teacher identified by the student, according to the school, wasn’t even in the cafeteria at the time the event supposedly occurred:

School officials said Wednesday that they can’t find any evidence to suggest that a kindergartner was told not to pray in a Seminole County elementary lunchroom.

But the school district apologized anyway, and a lawyer for the girl’s parents said they are satisfied with the outcome.

“We found zero evidence an incident ever occurred,” said district spokesman Mike Lawrence. “There’s no proof whatsoever.”

…

As for the identified staffer, a school-district investigator has concluded that “there is no way possible that person was anywhere near the lunchroom” that kindergartners and first-graders use. In addition to the student and her family, the district has interviewed staffers, the accused adult and Gabriella’s classmates, Lawrence said.

If there’s one truth the Religious Right does demonstrate, repeatedly, it’s their absolute willingness to lie, because they know there are a whole bunch of smug assholes out there who are so desperate for power over others, they’ll promote whatever shit they are told to swallow.

Via RWW.