The War on Giftmas Begins.

The AFA (American Family Association) has already begun working on their annual  manufactured war on xmas.

This Christmas season I am asking our AFA family to stand for the Christian faith by wearing and sharing our new “Keep Christ in Christmas” wristband. These wristbands are great conversation starters. In fact, I want to send you a wristband absolutely free just for asking. We also invite you to order more wristbands (at discounted prices) to share with your friends and family or even your entire church. And since they are so inexpensive, you’ll want to give one to anyone who asks about them.

Oh, that FREE business, always comes with a catch, doesn’t it. It’s getting to be that it’s quite rare to find christians without a hand being held out for money.

You might ask why we think this is an important battle. Well, secular liberals in our nation are bent on minimizing and even removing any mention of Christianity from the public square. And no other time of the year reminds people of Jesus Christ and America’s Christian heritage more than the Christmas season. For this reason, politically correct forces want to use their influence to distance our culture from anything that would remind people of the Savior – even Christmas.

You can mention christianity all you want, I’m not obligated to listen. This is not a christian country, it’s a secular one. Or it’s supposed to be, anyway. Keep your religion out of government and publicly funded institutions, and I don’t really give a fuck what you blather on about. I’m also not interested in distancing anyone, while I am interested in being as inclusive as possible. Might be nice if you folks just spit out the truth of the matter – you want to be exclusive and divisive. Lovely holiday sentiments, I’m sure. Every year, people say ‘Merry Xmas’ to me, and I reply with a cheerful ‘Merry Giftmas’, which always gets a laugh. Most people aren’t terribly hung up about it, and exchange and express all manner of greetings with good cheer and acceptance. If there’s anything which defies the notion of a loving god, it’s christian assholes who invent nonsensical ‘wars’ and snarl at anyone who lets slip with a ‘happy holidays’, ‘season’s greetings’, or ‘merry solstice’. Truly, holiday greetings are no skin off your collective noses.

Every year, when this bullshit surfaces, it’s always explained, every.single.time. that good, bible believin’ christians shouldn’t be celebrating xmas anyway. Personally, I don’t care if you do, but when you’re celebrating the same commercial and traditional stuff (trees, decorations, gifts, Santa, all that) as everyone else, you hardly have the high road, y’know.

And as you request your free wristband or order more, please remember that your prayers and financial contributions keep AFA in the battle to restore Christian values in America.

Yes, I knew money was going to be mentioned again.

May God bless you and your family during this wonderful time of year as we celebrate the God who came to earth as a child.

No. Even if you want to posit that Jesus was real and all that, the little tyke wasn’t born in December, and not on the 25th. That was just the church co-opting other festivals and rites. You’re celebrating the Winter Solstice and Saturnalia. So Happy Solstice Celebrations to you!

Via AFA. There’s video, if you wish.

Sunday Facepalm.

Synonyms for rough language: obloquy, scurrility, vulgarity, revilement, abuse, invective, ribaldry, abusive language, reviling, scurrilousness.

Oh, there’s no end to the defenders of the Great Vulgarian™. This time around, it’s Mary Colbert, who makes the case for the Tiny Tyrant’s rough language.

Colbert said that Christians who oppose Trump because of his use of “rough language” must also “have a problem with Jesus because he spoke to the Pharisees and Sadducees and said, ‘You vipers, you snakes.’ He referred to Herod as a fox and then there is the account of the woman he called a dog. So if you want to find offense, you’ll find offense in anything.”

Oh look, someone in the bible isn’t consistent, what a shocker. Yes, Jesus was often an asshole, and easily irritated, to say the least. That shouldn’t make being an asshole an admirable thing. From Mark 7:

7:25 For a certain woman, whose young daughter had an unclean spirit, heard of him, and came and fell at his feet:
7:26 The woman was a Greek, a Syrophenician by nation; and she besought him that he would cast forth the devil out of her daughter.
7:27 But Jesus said unto her, Let the children first be filled: for it is not meet to take the children’s bread, and to cast it unto the dogs.
7:28 And she answered and said unto him, Yes, Lord: yet the dogs under the table eat of the children’s crumbs.
7:29 And he said unto her, For this saying go thy way; the devil is gone out of thy daughter.

That’s right shitty behaviour, but it’s also not “grab them by the pussy”, and it certainly doesn’t justify Trump in any way.

Colbert said that Trump “is a man of his word, he says what he means and he means what he says.

No. Just no. Trump is not a “man of his word” at all, in any fashion. He spews shit, turns right around and denies spewing shit, spews different shit, lather, rinse repeat. Trump is also quite well known for going back on his word when it comes to things like paying employees or his bills. Trump doesn’t mean what he says, he doesn’t have the slightest idea of what he means, he just brays, and if he thinks at all about what he said, it’s after he’s vomited words all over the place. As for “means what he says”, is that like the whole healthcare and wall business? Because he didn’t get very far with that nonsense, did he?

Well, what character does that imitate? Who is that? God. God says what He means and He means what He says, so I believe that God saw in the character of Donald Trump a fighter.”

:chokes on tea: Jehovah is one of the most awful, evil, psychopathic characters ever invented. The Tiny Tyrant is an awful, evil, amoral narcissist. Yeah, okay, it’s a good fit, but that doesn’t make it right. Trump is not ‘god’, and he’s not emperor, and he’s not specially chosen.

“The church has had its butt kicked for the last 100 years,” Colbert said, adding that God chose a brawler like Trump because He knew that America could not survive with a “mamsy-wamsy, love and peace kind of a president.”

The ‘church’ needs its collective arse kicked a whole lot more. Seems to me that uStates could really do with a mamsy-wamsy, love and peace kind of a president. A real president, one who knows how to do the job, and doesn’t think pursuing peace, inclusivity, and justice is stupid. I’d be good with that. I’d certainly be happier with that than a madman always eyeballing nukes.

The full story and video is at RWW.

Guess Me.

Guess Me, a curious collection of enigmas, charades, acting charades, double acrostics, conundrums, verbal puzzles, hieroglyphics, anagrams, etc. Compiled and arranged by Frederick D’Arros Planché; 1879; Pott, Young and co. in New York.

Illustrated by George Cruikshank among others, this example of good old-fashioned and wholesome entertainment offers a collection of enigmas, conundrums, acrostics, “decapitations”, and a series of incredibly tricky rebuses. The preface explains that an enigma can have many solutions whereas a conundrum only has one, and that “The essence of a good conundrum is to be found in its answer, which should be itself something of a pun, a puzzle, or an epigram, an inversion of the regular and ordinary meaning of the word.”

There are 631 conundrums:

A sample, click for full size:

Oh, these are awful, and quite wonderful, well, some of them. There’s quite a bit of casual racism and misogyny to be found, too. Via The Public Domain, or you can just click right over to the book.