Sentiment. Click for full size.
© C. Ford.
Affinity
Art, Fun, & Nonsense.
Sentiment. Click for full size.
© C. Ford.
Downy Woodpecker, click for full size.
© C. Ford.
Nazi Trump Logo, Tucker Viemeister.
There’s an article up at Christian Post which is surprisingly well balanced, with one sane scholar bringing the reality check, but we all know how little reality means to many christians. Some of them are all excited about…The Last Trump. You betcha.
Is Donald Trump specifically named in the New Testament prophecies about the end times? Some are speculating that the new U.S. president is “the last trump” that is mentioned in the Bible and that his geopolitical moves are heralding the end times.
Dr. Samuel Lamerson, professor of New Testament and president of Florida’s Knox Theological Seminary, told The Christian Post that such analysis is “ridiculous.”
“First of all, it only works in the English language. The New Testament was written in Greek. Second of all, it only works in the King James Version and some other older translations. Many other translations will have ‘trumpet’ instead of ‘trump,'” Lamerson explained.
Thank you, Dr. Lamerson! This isn’t stopping others from claiming Trump is biblical.
Historian David Montaigne, who has written End Times and 2019, Antichrist 2016-2019, and The Two Witnesses of Revelation, pointed to two Bible passages in an online post last year that refer to “trump:”
1 Thessalonians 4:16 reads: “For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first.”
I Corinthians 15:52 states: “Behold, I show you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.”
Montaigne noted that it is possible to look into such verses and explore what they might be saying about God’s plans concerning Trump.
“I am not suggesting that Donald Trump absolutely *IS* the last trump – but since the LAST TRUMP is one of the most clear and final signs in end times prophecy, can we overlook the possibility that a presidential candidate named Trump is being used as a sign by God?” he posed.
I’m not suggesting, no, not at all, I’m saying! Dr. Lamerson once again goes for the reality check:
“I think that often people forget that the book of Revelation was written 2,000 years ago,” he said. The notion that what the Scripture says applies to the shape of the political world today “is to totally misunderstand what exactly is going on there,” he added.
This never seems to stop christians at all, or even make them think. I have seen people on christian forums opine as to why America isn’t mentioned in the bible.
Other end times prophets have focused on the wider impact of Trump’s presidency so far, such as his criticism of the European Union, particularly when it comes to allowing millions of refugees to enter its territory.
Author and commentator Erika Grey, who analyzes Israel, the U.S., Russia, and other major players in geopolitics today and their role in biblical prophecy, has linked Trump’s opposition to the EU to factors that could bring about the end times.
[…]
“In end time Bible Prophecy we know that the EU is going to become the greatest most powerful world empire to have ever existed and it is going to be an economic powerhouse,” she wrote on her website.
“Despite BREXIT and Donald Trump in Bible Prophecy the EU is still going to move forward despite taking these bumps. With Donald Trump as president there is a new sheriff in town and the era of EU, US relations has come to an end, but with the new president will come a geopolitical shift and the EU will continue to move forward even to the surprise of some EU officials.”
One of the most disturbing things about christians is their ghoulish glee in their anticipation of total destruction, and people being tossed into a hell for all time. It’s truly disgusting, the complete lack of empathy, and the joy taken in judgment.
Full story at Christian Post.
Shutterstock.
I well remember the stigma of single parenthood back in the 1960s and 1970s. It was still a heavy stigma, and people had little regard or concern for single women raising a child/children. It was still considered to be highly shameful. Women who had the courage to be open single parents without made up stories about being widowed or what have you brought down societal scorn, but it’s thanks to those parents who had such courage that much of that stigma receded, although never completely eradicated. It took many generations to stop the open contempt of children deemed bastards. It really should not be needed to say that fostering judgmental biases which can impact children in the worst way is wrong, but it seems someone needs to inform Tennessee republicans that hanging “bastard” on a child is not at all okay.
A bill filed by a Tennessee Republican aims to make children born through artificial insemination illegitimate.
WMC reported that state House Representative Terry Lynn Weaver is sponsoring HB 1406 to repeal Tennessee current statute, TCA 68-3-306, which declares that children born through artificial insemination are the “legitimate” child of the mother’s husband.
The text of the new bill says it immediately “repeals statute that deems a child born to a married woman as a result of artificial insemination, with consent of the married woman’s husband, to be the legitimate child of the husband and wife.”
Last year, Weaver was one of 53 GOP lawmakers who got involved in a same-sex marriage divorce that dealt with the custody of a child born through artificial insemination. Weaver and the other lawmakers asserted that the lesbian wife of the child’s mother should not be considered a “legitimate” parent under the current statute.
Amazing, isn’t it, what republicans waste their time on. They could be doing good, but no, they find it much more important to fuck over parents and children. :snarl:
Via Raw Story.
A person shouts to Rep. Jason Chaffetz during his town hall meeting at Brighton High School on Thursday. CREDIT: AP Photo/Rick Bowmer.
The GOP is getting desperate in the face of their constituents, who will not stop protesting, showing up, and demanding answers. The reek of cowardly ordure emanating from repubs is overwhelming at this point, and they are saying the first thing that pops into their vacuous heads in an attempt to make everyone shut up and go away, including the resurrection of the infamous lie about death panels. Yep. There are two stories here, we’ll start with Utah, and Rep. Jason Chaffetz.
Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) says paid protesters were among the thousand-plus people who gave him a raucous, negative reception at a town hall in Salt Lake City on Thursday. The crowd chanted “shame!” and “do your job.”
It was “more of a paid attempt to bully and intimidate” than a reflection of the feelings of his constituents, Chaffetz told the Deseret News. … But reporters who were at the event and interviewed attendees say they found no evidence anybody was paid to be there.
No, they wouldn’t, because the “paid protesters” nonsense is nothing more than a lie, and attempt to justify stupid and harmful actions along with evading questions about said actions.
Utah state Rep. Marie Poulson (D-Cottonwood Heights) represents the area around the high school where the town hall was held. She told the Deseret News she believes almost all the protesters were local.
“I’ve heard some of my colleagues (at the Utah Legislature) say here today that they had shipped in liberals to give him a bad time,” she said. “I serve that area and I listen to their frustrations.”
Poulson said she’s heard from many people frustrated that Chaffetz, chair of the House Oversight Committee, has so far seemed unwilling to investigate President Trump’s conflicts of interests.
“I had so many get back to me and say, ‘We’ve been so upset by what Rep. Chaffetz is doing. We want him to investigate equally, with as much zeal as he did in the past, with this current administration,’” Poulson said, referring to Chaffetz’s dogged investigation into the 2012 attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi incident that occurred under then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s watch.
A whole lot of people are wondering what happened to all that violating the constitution, and why no one seems to be concerned about it, let alone doing something about it. The constitution has indeed been violated, to pieces, and the response from the rethugs? ****crickets****
Last Monday, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer said “protesting has become a profession now.”
No, it hasn’t. People still have their day jobs, if they are fortunate enough to be employed. All the protests are a sign of just how bad you are fucking up, and people are tired. They are also mad as hell, and not willing to take it anymore.
“They have every right to do that, don’t get me wrong, but I think that we need to call it what it is. It’s not these organic uprisings that we’ve seen through the last several decades — the Tea Party was a very organic movement — this has become a very paid, astroturf-type movement,” Spicer added, providing no evidence for his claims.
The Tea Party was organic because…? Oh right, delusional right wingers, who spent years flinging their shit all over the place in an effort to unseat a legally elected president. And yet, in the case of an illegally elected president, one who is an inexperienced, incompetent megalomaniac bent on destruction, the current grassroots movement is astroturf. Right. That is one of the stupidest things I have heard in a while, and that’s saying something, given the news every day.
Full story at Think Progress. Moving on to Rep. Gus Bilirakis and Bill Akins — chair of Pasco County, Florida’s Republican Party, who tried the “death panels!” defense, which did not work in any way.
Oh, how the mighty hath fallen. Going by the old testament, or the apocrypha, which was cut in the final edit, Jehovah was very much what one could call an interventionist god, even if that isn’t terribly accurate. Jehovah got bored a lot, and had many temper tantrums or warped whims, so any situation it bothered to intervene in was one it had caused in the first place. According to Todd Starnes, Jehovah has once again been busy with intervention:
“I would not discount the power of what Franklin Graham did,” Starnes said. “He did not endorse, but what he did do in 2016 was stage massive prayer gatherings at every single state capital in the country. And I believe that we experienced divine intervention last November and I believe that God was giving us a second chance. So we’ve been given a second chance and Christians, we’ve got to stand up and we’ve got to get it right.”
Huh. That’s not much in the godly intervention stakes, is it? Especially when the reality of the whole sorry mess is right there, plain to see. But no, it must be Jehovah, must! Well, even if you believed such nonsense, it’s quite the sad and sorry show for the god who ran rampant and drenched in blood in the old days. As the Tiny Dictator would say, Loser!
Going by Lance Wallnau, Jehovah is up to a slightly more impressive intervention, by making Trump an exorcist.
Wallnau said he knows the real reason that millions of people marched against the new president the day after the inauguration: Upon taking office, Trump evicted an evil spirit of witchcraft from the White House, causing that demonic spirit to go out into the general population.
“What I believe is happening is there was a deliverance of the nation from the spirit of witchcraft in the Oval Office,” he said. “The spirit of witchcraft was in the Oval Office, it was about to intensify to a higher level demon principality, and God came along with a wrecking ball [Trump] and shocked everyone, the church cried out for mercy and bam—God knocked that spirit out, and what you’re looking at is the manifestation of an enraged demon through the spirit.”
I have to admit, viewing Trump as a wrecking ball is accurate enough, just not in the way Wallnau meant.
Pat Buchanan is leaving Jehovah on the sidelines, perhaps realizing there’s no point to waiting on supposedly divine intervention, and is busy railing for Trump to break the judiciary for all the horrors they have inflicted on the States:
When politicians don black robes and seize powers they do not have, they should be called out for what they are – usurpers and petty tyrants. And if there is a cause upon which the populist right should unite, it is that elected representatives and executives make the laws and rule the nation. Not judges, and not justices.
Indeed, one of the mightiest forces that has birthed the new populism that imperils the establishment is that unelected justices like Warren and Brennan, and their progeny on the bench, have remade our country without the consent of the governed – and with never having been smacked down by Congress or the president.
Consider. Secularist justices de-Christianized our country. They invented new rights for vicious criminals as though criminal justice were a game. They tore our country apart with idiotic busing orders to achieve racial balance in public schools. They turned over centuries of tradition and hundreds of state, local and federal laws to discover that the rights to an abortion and same-sex marriage were there in Madison’s Constitution all along. We just couldn’t see them.
Goodness. No fuzziness about that agenda, mean, brutal, misogynistic, enshrined with bigotry.
Meanwhile, Trump’s White House should use the arrogant and incompetent conduct of these federal judges to make the case not only for creating a new Supreme Court, but for Congress to start using Article III, Section 2, of the Constitution – to restrict the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court, and to reclaim its stolen powers.
A clipping of the court’s wings is long overdue.
Okay, I’m in facepalm overload at this point. I hate to say, but Trump probably will try something like this, and there’s no god to help us if he does.
Steve Warburton is an artist in Australia, with a very interesting perspective. The work is evocative, and I find many of the pieces to be of an expansive nature – for me, they are pieces to ponder, not just savour, and allow all the different layers of associations to come up. There’s a distinct sense of dystopia in many of the pieces, but they are all the more beautiful in their poignancy, and the hope that we do not follow such paths to their inescapable conclusions. Definitely worth spending some time, going through the galleries!
I didn’t include much here, because the galleries are set up for viewing, not borrowing, so have a wander, expand your mind, and let your imagination take you on a trip. Steve Warburton.
Signe Baumane wants to make a new film, and the bits I’ve seen are captivating, to say the least. Watch the video, and if you have a bit of pocket change to send Signe’s way, that would be fantastic! Or just spread the word. Or both!
Charly sent photos of more of his mom’s (and his) work in knipling. Absolutely gorgeous doves! Charly says: These two doves were made in 2011. The first one is my mothers design. After she made it, I asked her if she could do another one with my design, and she did. My input included not only new outline, but I also suggested the use of different colours and different lace /knotting. The difference in style is quite apparent. The first dove is what would be called “traditional” style, because in this style are made laces, collars, doilies etc.
Pictures are behind glass, so I had to adjust colour saturation and levels to bring the colours out so the pictures look like the real fabric and not too grey. They are actually larger than life on screen, in reality they are only approximately 35 cm (14 inches) diagonally. For completeness’s sake I am also including the templates, I think you might find them interesting.
I definitely find them interesting! Click for full size.
© Charly, all rights reserved.
Blue Jays. Click for full size.
© C. Ford.
Oh, excellent! I particularly liked Orange like you, Trump’s name, and fire did it. :D
And in case you missed it, The Glorious Czech Republic:
People who have small animals know they have a special love for electrical cords. Chez Caine, there are always those rats who are looking to jack on. Part of setting up Athena (the new computing machine), is to deal with cord. For the very fine cord, which runs from the machine to the adapter is a favourite for jacking on. So, that part: slice open black aquarium tubing, place over the cord, secure with electrical tape. This impairs their ability to sense the current running through. For the rest, I cut lengths of cotton cloth, and wrap the cord, followed by a quick wrap of shiny wire, because rats are easily distracted by shiny metal, and will chew on that and forget about jacking on. Got Athena all fixed up, and Hades tested for me – yep, boring. That’s a good thing.
© C. Ford.
Open-mouthed awe here. Watch!
Etsuko Ichikawa is a Tokyo-born, Seattle-based artist who creates mesmerizing abstract “paintings” through the art of pyrography. Specifically, Ichikawa removes fiery, molten glass from a kiln as it glows at 2100° F, and then manipulates it over thick paper, leaving scorch marks and burns. The process is something akin to photography, in which light is recorded on film, capturing and eternalizing the immediacy of a moment.
Full story at Spoon & Tamago. WOW. I want to do that, unfortunately I don’t have the equipment, but who doesn’t like playing with fire?