I can’t even talk about it, but I won’t shut up.

Screengrab.

Jim Bakker. Now whining and wailing about how he cannot, cannot I say, preach the gospel, no! I cannot, because if I do, they will kill me! Now I’m going to whine and moan and cry about not being able to talk or preach, because that makes all manner of sense!

The people who hate God, Bakker said, “have beat back all opposition, they have changed America” but have so far been unable to destroy the word of God.

“The warfare is against the God of heaven,” he said. “The God of Abraham, Issac, and Jacob.The God whose son is Jesus Christ. I’m serious. You have no idea. I can’t even talk about it because they will kill me. And I don’t care what you say, I know what I’m talking about. They’ve already threatened my life because they disagree with the Bible.”

There are self-proclaimed shitlords all over the ‘net who delight in threatening all kinds of people. I’ll admit, it’s difficult for me to imagine anyone taking you so seriously, but I guess you never know. I don’t disagree with the bible, it does a fine job of disagreeing with itself. I dismiss it as irrelevant. I don’t care if you have intense bible spanking sessions or whatnot, just keep it private, please. Of course you don’t care what anyone says, you know it all, and the nebulous “they” are out to get you. Right. I would think if someone was threatened, they might go dark for a while, but not Jim! He’s gonna go right on preaching about how he can’t preach!

Bakker said that the God-haters had just about gained total control of America until the election of President Trump, so now “they are trying to bring in millions of illegals … to build a new voting group” in order to seize control of government. Christians must therefore unite behind Trump, Bakker added, because his opponents “want to kill, they want to march, they want to burn, they want to break windows, they want to burn up cars.”

Oh, constant plaint of the white male: X is coming to get you! They’ll march, loot, burn, go after your white women…the white people reasoning to commit and justify horrific acts. I’ll cop to the wanting to march business, nothing wrong with protesting, which should not be a crime, and isn’t, in spite of all the old white men attempts to make it so. We would also dearly like for the political system to work correctly for once, and oust the Idiot King and his Henchasskisser. You? I don’t care about you at all, Jim. Well, your constant whinging does provide opportunities for delicious mockery now and then. I do think all you evangelical assholes need to kicked out of the current regime, as you never should have been allowed in in the first place.

I can’t be arsed to hate your psychogod, but I certainly don’t harbour any love for all its ugly followers, whose inner lives are fantasies about being the world inquisition. That’s why you’re always maundering on about how non-theists want to kill and persecute you, because you can’t imagine doing anything else yourselves, if you get the power you crave. You’re the ones who hate this life, because you’re preoccupied with your supposed pie-in-the-sky when you die belief.

“I think the biggest miracle is President Trump has lived almost a year as president of the United States,” Bakker said, which prompted his guest, Tom Horn, to declare that Trump “has accomplished more in one year than in the last 20 combined.”

Oh please. Yes, the Tiny Tyrant has set a record for most golf ever played by a prez in the first year ever. Yes, the Idiot King has set a record for the most fuckwitted and WTF moments, ever. He’s fucked up one thing after another. He’s embraced Nazis. He’s paving the way for a theocracy. Now outside of those things, please, point me to a concrete list of all his “accomplishments”.  I’ll wait.

Via RWW, where there’s playable video.

Ostrich.

One ostrich looks at a star in the margin while the other buries eggs in the sand with its beak.

Text Translation:

Of the ostrich There is an animal called assida which the Greeks call stratocamelon, but Latin-speakers strucio, the ostrich. It has wings but does not fly, and its feet are like those of the camel. When the time comes for it to lay eggs, it raises its eyes to the sky and looks to see if the star called Vergiliae, the Pleiades, has appeared, for it will not lay its eggs until that star has risen. When the ostrich sees the star, around the month of June, it digs in the ground, deposits its eggs in the hole it has made and covers them with sand. When it gets up from the hole, it immediately forgets the eggs and never returns to them. The effect of the calm, mild air seems to be that the sand in the summer heat hatches the eggs, bringing forth the chicks.

[Read more…]

2017: Rise of the Religious Reich.

President Trump hosts conservative leaders at the White House on September 25, 2017 (Photo: WhiteHouse.gov)

Right Wing Watch has a comprehensive timeline of the ascension of the religious reich into the current regime, and it’s a very ugly look at the coming Theocalypse, if these people get their way, which so far, they are. We do not need to be all concerned over the rise of AI. We do need to be concerned with the rise of the religious reich, and we need to be concerned with the rise of stupid.

Donald Trump wasn’t exactly the dream candidate of the Religious Right. Throughout the Republican primary contest, many in the social conservative movement urged voters to pick what one group of anti-choice activists called “anyone but Donald Trump.”

But once it became clear that Trump was going to win the GOP nomination, he started aggressively courting the evangelical Right, including holding a massive meeting for Religious Right leaders in New York that many cite as a turning point for their support. On the day of that meeting, Trump announced the formation of an evangelical advisory board that included Religious Right leaders including James Dobson and Michele Bachmann. Trump’s selection of Mike Pence as his running mate sealed the deal for many on the Religious Right. Trump’s “amen corner” of prosperity gospel preachers and domininionists eventually expanded to include the large share of Religious Right leaders, who offered various theological explanations for their embrace of a morally flawed candidate.

Once he was elected—with 80 percent of the white evangelical vote—Trump kept his evangelical advisory board intact and promised to give it unprecedented access to the White House. He stacked his Cabinet with friends of the Religious Right, including Tom Price at Health and Human Services, Betsy DeVos at Education and Ben Carson at Housing and Urban Development. Far-right pastor Ralph Drollingerworked with Trump’s transition team to set up weekly Bible studies for Trump’s Cabinet members. The conservative Heritage Foundation and Federalist Society vetted potential judicial nominees.

The White House continues to hold weekly calls with evangelical advisory board members. Conservative leaders also receive a weekly email from the White House compiling “highlights for—and requests for action from—the conservative world.” And Religious Right leaders report enjoying an open door with the Trump administration. Former Southern Baptist Convention official Richard Land told The New York Times that conservative evangelical leaders have a “regular, ongoing and continuing dialogue” with the administration.

The Family Research Council’s Tony Perkinssaid in August, “I’ve been to the White House I don’t know how many more times in the first six months this year than I was during the entire Bush administration.” The Susan B. Anthony List’s Marjorie Dannenfelser said she visited the White House seven times in Trump’s first 100 days in office. Penny Nance of Concerned Women for America said in September, “I’m told from people before me that even under George W. Bush, we didn’t have this kind of access. It certainly is unprecedented and we’re very grateful.” Land gushed about evangelicals having “unprecedented access” to the White House, adding that there “are more evangelicals in this administration as personnel than any administration in my lifetime.”

The timeline is extensive and heavily link rich, there’s enough reading for a day or two. It’s all recommended, because we are at one terrifying confluence here. The Year The Religious Right Moved Into The White House.

Star Wars: The Persecution of White Men!

It’s interesting, how certain factions always see something nefarious in any SW flick, rather than seeing the reality: same old movie, done a zillion times.

Stefan Molyneux, a video blogger popular among the far-right, told viewers this weekend that “Star Wars: The Last Jedi” contains a commentary about the persecution of white men and the failure of diversity.

In a video uploaded on Sunday, Molyneux claimed that the newest Star Wars film contains a hidden commentary about the plight of white men as Western countries diversify.

[…]

“Some of you are going to respond and say, ‘Are you sure that’s what the writers intended?’ and the only people who say that are people who aren’t themselves creative writers,” Molyneux said, going on to claim he wrote a short story when he was six and a novel when he was 11 years old. He began his explanation by comparing Luke Skywalker to white men he believes have been marginalized.

And I’m sure your family patted you on the head when you were six and eleven, and reassured you of your spectacular genius. That does not make you a creative writer. It doesn’t make you a writer of any kind. It does make you come across as something of an idiot.

He began his explanation by comparing Luke Skywalker to white men he believes have been marginalized.

“So Luke Skywalker has checked out of society—ha, isn’t that interesting? He’s a white male who’s checked out of society. And we see this all over the place with white males, right? I mean, they’re not happy. Neither is Luke Skywalker happy. He’s got this bitter, gristled, half-homeless kind of determination to survive another day but for no particular purpose other than to watch the slow extinguishing of his own possibilities and his own life,” Molyneux said. He went on to explain that he believed Luke Skywalker’s lack of children was reflective of “the demographic decline among the whites that is happening in Europe and in North America” and foretold a “quasi-extinction” of white people “in the not so distant future.”

A lot of people aren’t terribly happy. That goes across all societal lines. Again with the babies. Why in the hell is always about the [white] babies? Since the SW movies are always populated with mass amounts of people, it’s fair to assume someone is breeding.

Molyneux explained that when Luke Skywalker abandons the Jedi forces in the film, it reflects how white people have abandoned their culture.

“Whites are not allowed to have a history to be proud of, not allowed to have in-group preferences, the religion of the West must be burned—and this, of course, you see the tree and the Jedi texts get burned down and it’s the end of a lineage. It’s the end of a history. It is the end of culture,” Molyneux said.

Oh gods, not again. What culture? Please, point me to explicitly white culture. If you’re talking about confederate flags and remembering slavery fondly, then yes, that shit has to go. We had the war, it’s over. People at large figured out that yes, people who are not white are people. That’s a good thing. Ustates is now, and has been, a great dumping ground for all manner of peoples from all over the world. There’s no ‘white culture’ here. If you’re all that bent on pursuing it, head back to England. Or wherever it is you think your ‘white’ heritage lies.

The trouble is with white people, in particular, men, always being taught and told how amazingly special they are, why they are entitled to all things ever. You are so damn desperate to believe that, that you do seriously stupid shit like point out the short story you wrote when you were six years old. Outside of your particular heritage, which I’m sure has some sort of culture attached, you get American culture, which is just a fucking mess of pottage from numerous sources.

When Luke Skywalker appears in a battle scene and is targeted by opposing forces, it illustrates “the hatred directed at white males,” Molyneux said.

Okay, I haven’t seen the movie, because I don’t much care for the whole franchise, but this is plain old bullshit. I imagine any such scene was to highlight that “Hey, Skywalker, still a hero!” or somesuch.

He explained: “There’s a lot of frustration out in the world. This is why I talk about race and IQ, is that I want people to get along. I want people to understand and to have peace with the way that the world and its cultures are, because there’s this incredible frustration out there in the world that other cultures are just not able to reproduce the former successes of white male culture.”

Goodness, do you ever have that one backwards. There’s a lot of frustration on the part of white men who have never accomplished a fucking thing, but wanting everyone in the world to acknowledged that white dudes are the smartest, bestest ever at everything. Get the fuck over yourselves.

He continued to explain that the more diverse cast in the new Star Wars film was a reflection on the diversification of the Western world.

Molyneux said, “This increased diversity means decreased success. In fact, it’s just one disaster after another for the Rebels and I’m not really sure if diversity is such a strength. Why, now that the Star Wars universe is more diverse, do the Rebels keep losing? Well, because there’s kind of a truth in that.”

Yes, there’s a truth there, cupcake. It’s “we want to keep milking this cash cow until the next century at least.” Amazing you can’t figure that one out, what with you being a creative genius and all. The plot is ancient, and SW is a recycling plant: underdogs vs big evil powers.

Via RWW.