GOP Fear.

Photo illustration by Sagmeister & Walsh. Set painters: Colossal Media.

Photo illustration by Sagmeister & Walsh. Set painters: Colossal Media.

The rethuglicans were floating on a wave of frenzied victory, assured in their ability to bend Trump to their will. They could finally institute all the terror, hatred and bigotry they wanted, and maybe finally get that theocracy, too. As well as the unfettered ability to be as corrupt as they wished. Unfortunately for them, the taste of fear is on their tongues.

Rather than the hoped-for collaborative new relationship between the White House and Congress, GOP officials complain that Trump is brushing aside their advice, failing to fully engage on drafting tough legislative packages on tax reform and Obamacare, and bypassing Congress by relying on executive actions, something they frequently complained about under President Barack Obama.

At the same time, Trump’s unilateral moves continue to blindside Republicans and direct the national focus toward topics many in the party would rather avoid, whether that’s how to pay for building the border wall with Mexico, warming ties with Russia, investigating false claims about voter fraud or, most recently, implementing sweeping new policies on refugees and visas.

Just about anyone could have told you that it’s not possible to control a narcissistic maniac with delusions of grandeur. It’s not as though any of that were some kind of secret, you all knew this well before hand, but you just couldn’t resist the chance to eat the country whole.

[Read more…]

Executive Order 9066.

FK

Today marks the birthday of Fred Korematsu, a man who never gave up his fight for justice, even though it was a fight he needed to pursue for decades. His bravery, his light, his dedication should light a fire in all of us, renewing our personal commitment to see justice done, and to protect, help, and fight for those being victimized. Too many Americans are more than content to let the ruinous and immoral past repeat itself, while remaining blissfully ignorant of history. Just a bit here, the full story is at Think Progress, and of course, at  http://www.korematsuinstitute.org/.

Here are six comments from Japanese Americans that have an important message for the Trump administration to learn from:

Fred Korematsu, 2004

No one should ever be locked away simply because they share the same race, ethnicity, or religion as a spy or terrorist. If that principle was not learned from the internment of Japanese Americans, then these are very dangerous times for our democracy.

George Takei, actor and civil rights leader, 2014

When I was a teenager, my father told me that our democracy is very fragile, but it is a true people’s democracy, both as strong and as great as the people can be, but it is also as fallible as people are. And that’s why good people have to be actively engaged in the process, sometimes holding democracy’s feet to the fire, in order to make it a better, truer democracy.

Rep. Mike Honda (D-CA), former congressman, 2015

Even after we were released, I, along with other Japanese-Americans, faced anti-Japanese slurs and insults in a post-World War II America. We developed a sense that somehow we had done something wrong. It was my father who helped me realize that our “crime” was simply being of Japanese ancestry. In a post-Pearl Harbor craze, this lineage was sufficient for the federal government to pass orders to detain and imprison an entire segment of American society — we were guilty solely by association.

Dr. Satsuki Ina, Professor Emeritus, California State University, Sacramento, 2015

I was born behind barbed wire 70 years ago in the Tule Lake Segregation Center, a maximum-security prison camp for Japanese-Americans in Northern California. My parents’ only crime was having the face of the enemy. They were never charged or convicted of a crime; yet they were forced to raise me in a prison camp when President Franklin Roosevelt signed a wartime executive order ultimately authorizing the incarceration of 120,000 people of Japanese descent. We were deemed a danger to the “national security” and incarcerated without due process of law.

Paul Ohtaki, businessman and journalist, 2008

People don’t believe this. If you go beyond — maybe a few states here — they don’t believe that the United States had a concentration camp! They don’t call it that. You can call it what you like, but they put people in who are entitled to every citizen right of anybody else. People don’t believe that!

Fumi Hayashi, Cutter Laboratories, 2006

When you see pictures of black men hanging from trees, and I don’t know how we can do things like that to each other. Sometimes I think if I were on the other side of the fence, would I go to Tanforan [a temporary incarceration camp to hold Japanese Americans] with a whole bunch of buckets and soap? Do I have that kind of something inside of me — that I would do something like that for other people? It’s a big question mark. I can’t say that I would, because I think it’s more comfortable to write a check or even worse, just do nothing.

Chizu Iiyama, activist, social worker and educator, 2009

I don’t have advice. I just say to learn from your own — to study and learn about your history; history of our government and history of all these things that happened. If you are a minority person, learn your history, so you’ll know again what happened in the past so you’ll be sure to deal with the present in a more enlightened way.

“I’m Smart.”

Trump-card-800x430

There’s a very interesting article up at Raw Story about Trump’s never ending insistence that he’s smart. So smart, super smart, bigly smart! It’s a low level annoyance, because it’s obviously not true, and as pointed out in the article, most people who are smart have no particular need to say so. That said, there are people who are, at least, technically smart, who seem to have a pathological need to parade that fact, and I’ve always found that to be nothing more than insecurity. When you’re a kid, it’s not fun being the egghead. Maybe that’s changed, I don’t know, but back in the day, you’d get ganged up on for being a smarty pants, so mostly you didn’t go around bragging or anything. Just tried to stay invisible in the corner, with your stack of books behind you. I don’t care about IQs, those are meaningless, and as for grades, well, those aren’t exactly a reliable indicator, either.

Smart is what you do with it. People who are curious, who read, and delight in a lifelong love of learning, that’s smart. People who are capable of thinking beyond all the tropes, clichés, stereotypes, and other bullshit, that’s smart. And so on. I love reading, I’ve had my nose in a book since always, and for me, people that read, I find them to be reassuring and comforting. And generally speaking, not only willing to think, but they love to think.

Trump doesn’t read. At all. That disturbed me no end when it first came out, and it still does. His compleat lack of a vocabulary disturbs the hell out of me too, I’ve often commented on the fact that he talks like a child. Bush Jr could barely string a sentence together, and he looks like a bloody rocket scientist next to Trump. “That’s the big stuff.” That’s what he says about major governmental decisions and policy. Anyone who is capable of thinking is left wondering “what does that mean?” Turns out, lately, what that means is “look what a big bully I am! Do what I say!” A stupid, unthinking, short-sighted bully, that’s our dictator. As the criticisms and doubt amp up, Big Bully Donny is going to get a whole lot worse. It’s barely been two weeks, and already…

Anyone who feels compelled to boast about how smart he is clearly suffers from a profound insecurity about his intelligence and accomplishments. In Trump’s case, he has good reason to have doubts.

Trump has the kind of street smarts (what he calls “gut instinct”) characteristic of con artists and hucksters, but his limited vocabulary, short attention span, ignorance of policy specifics, indifference to scientific evidence, and admitted aversion to reading raise questions about his intellectual abilities; his capacity to absorb and analyze information and ideas.

Many observers have noted that Trump has a difficult time expressing himself and speaking in complete sentences. A linguistic analysis by Politico found that Trump speaks at a fourth-grade level. A study by researchers at Carnegie-Mellon University compared last year’s Republican and Democratic presidential candidates in terms of their vocabulary and grammar. Trump scored at a fifth-grade level, the lowest of all the candidates.

Some might suspect this is not an intellectual shortcoming but instead Trump’s calculated way of communicating with a wide audience. But Tony Schwartz, who spent a great deal of time with the real estate developer while ghostwriting his book The Art of the Deal, noted that Trump has a very limited vocabulary.

Anyone who has ever bothered to skim what Trump supporters have to say, in letters, comments, tweets, what have you, there’s a noted similarity in smarts. And that’s frightening. You don’t need to be a bloody genius, but most people should at least want to be able to think, and to be able to parse things correctly, and have the means to communicate effectively.

The appeal to stupidity and ignorance is a dangerous one, and it has already proved to the be the match which set the fire.

The article is here.

Here’s a fine example of happy to be stupid and ignorant Americans:

“I feel that if a Muslim woman wants to move into this country, she needs to leave her towel home,” Bill explained. “Because the reason this country is here and safe today is because of Jesus Christ.”

It’s a hijab. Simple word, not at all hard to learn. It’s not a towel, it’s a head covering, much like those rags on your heads, oh, I mean hats. While you probably should always have your towel, that’s a universe thing, per Douglas Adams. That’s one of those book things.

He continued: “We were one nation under God. The Muslims are into Allah.

:Bangs head into wall: PLACEHOLDER. The word “god” is generic, it does not point to any particular god, that requires a name. It means ‘supreme being’. Allah means “god”, yep, ‘supreme being’. In point of fact, it happens to be the same fucking god, and I’m damn tired of pointing that out. Abrahamaic based religions: Judaism, Islam, Christianity. Same books, same god, different interpretations. And there was no “one nation under god” until genocidal assholes found their way to Turtle Island, and of course that sort of shit was reinforced during the cold war. For Chrissakes, learn something. If willfully stupid people are going to insist on being stupid, the least you could do is shut the fuck up. Try to read a book or something.

Oh, and what was our super genius president doing yesterday, as one crisis after another was unfolding? Having a private screening of Finding Dory.

CNN producer Kevin Liptak revealed on Sunday that the president’s family had chosen to screen Finding Dory, Pixar’s film about a cartoon fish who is torn apart from her family and placed in a public aquarium.

No words.

Iran Ban.

President Hassan Rouhani.

President Hassan Rouhani.

Iran said on Saturday it would stop U.S. citizens entering the country in retaliation to Washington’s visa ban against Tehran and six other majority-Muslim countries announced by new U.S. President Donald Trump.

“While respecting the American people and distinguishing between them and the hostile policies of the U.S. government, Iran will implement the principle of reciprocity until the offensive U.S. limitations against Iranian nationals are lifted,” a Foreign Ministry statement said.

“The restrictions against travel by Muslims to America… are an open affront against the Muslim world and the Iranian nation in particular and will be known as a great gift to extremists,” said the statement, carried by state media.

Look, a president with brains! It’s nice that Iran has a president who can easily recognize that the current xenophobic excess of uStates will indeed be a gift to extremists of all stripes. It would be really nice if uStates had a president who could think. Alas.

Earlier on Saturday, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said it was no time to build walls between nations and criticised steps towards cancelling world trade agreements, without naming Trump. … “Today is not the time to erect walls between nations. They have forgotten that the Berlin wall fell years ago,” Rouhani said in a speech carried live on Iranian state television.

I think it’s past time for world leaders to start naming Trump, loudly and clearly. The fucking asshole is a clear and present danger to the whole world, and yes, I know people choose their words with care because Trump is also a maniac who might just decide to let missiles fly in a fit a pique, and sensible people don’t want that, but eternal tip-toeing isn’t going to work, either. The Berlin wall has been on my mind ever since Trump started hollering about walls. FFS, that wasn’t all that long ago, what in the hell is wrong with people?

“Today is not the time to erect walls between nations. They have forgotten that the Berlin wall fell years ago,” Rouhani said in a speech carried live on Iranian state television.

“To annul world trade accords does not help their economy and does not serve the development and blooming of the world economy,” Rouhani told a tourism conference in Tehran. “This is the day for the world to get closer through trade.”

I agree. Unfortunately, we’re stuck with the wannabe god emperor idiot.

Rouhani, a pragmatist elected in 2013, thawed Iran’s relations with world powers after years of confrontation and engineered its 2015 deal with them under which it curbed its nuclear programme in exchange for relief from sanctions.

Oh, how nice it would be to have a sane and sensible person in office.

Full story here.

Up in Flames, So We Go…

Used with permission from the Islamic Center of Victoria.

Used with permission from the Islamic Center of Victoria.

A Texas mosque was set on fire just hours after Trump signed an executive order restricting migration from Muslim-majority countries.

The Islamic Center of Victoria was set on fire around 2 a.m. on Saturday, according to localreports.

Victoria Fire Marshal Tom Legler told the Victoria Advocate he had no theories about the cause of the fire, but he is seeking assistance from state and federal fire investigators.

[…]

On Sunday, the center plans to hold a public prayer service in the lawn to “pray for peace & safety for all.” The center said it will be rebuilt with love, and it has already started a GoFundMe fundraiser for financial support to do so.

[…]

Since the election in November, there has been an increase in hate crimes across the country. In the one month following the election, the Southern Poverty Law Center found over 1,000 reports of hate incidents. ThinkProgress is keeping a stricter record of targeted incidents, and we have still found almost 250 incidents of hate. A significant number of these are anti-Islam in nature.

The fire in Victoria comes just three weeks after an Islamic Center under construction in Austin was set on fire and destroyed.

The full story at Think Progress. I read this right after checking a conversation at Pharyngula, where people are still fiercely arguing against punching Nazis, and fully defending their right to speech, because talking about killing all black people, having a dreamy white state, or ethnic cleansing, well, it’s just talk, and that’s okay. Some people in that thread are still behaving as though ‘merica was still this great democracy, so it will be okay. No, it won’t be okay. There is no democracy, it’s gone. Oh, there’s still a partial skeleton of tattered and deliquescent bones, but they are falling fast. Nazism is being defended and normalised not just by all the Joe Q. Publics’, but liberals and lefties all over the place. We must be nice! We must be better! We must do this the right way! I have one thing to say to all that: Fuck No.

I am sick to death of this “we must be better” crap. I’m not better for refusing to stand up to nazis speechifying about the horrors of non-white, non-hetero people. I’m not better for turning my head away when I see someone targeted by nazis. I’m not better for defending the rights of nazis to talk about how wonderful nazism is, we just have to get rid of all those people. I will say this straight out: I am one hell of a fucktonne better than anyone who is being a handwringing milquetoast over the rights of fucking nazis. I will fight, openly, every inch of the way. I will not stand by along a road which will end up littered with bodies. I will not be complicit. I will not condone. I will shout down nazis at every opportunity. Fuck them. They do not have any right to speech as far as I’m concerned, because it’s all hate, and it’s incitement. A person in that thread stated that speech was not action. That’s not true. Of course speech is an action, it’s an attempt to communicate. Only an idiot would consider all speech benign. Speech, as wielded by nazis, is an incitement, an incitement to horrific actions.

We are past trouble here in the States. Everything you thought you knew, forget it. We are in a dark, lost age, and while this terrifies me personally, I refuse to shut my eyes to what is happening right in front of my face. I will stand, no matter how much I may tremble, and I will try to help and protect all those who are nothing more than fuel for the fire in the eyes of nazis and racists everywhere.

You’re Mad Because a Nazi Got Punched in the Face?

Sunday Facepalm.

632914834-4630

Trump’s little nazi, Bannon, is everywhere. I’m surprised Trump isn’t trying to clone him. Now it’s Nazi NSA.

Meanwhile, Trump signed a presidential memo directing the Pentagon to submit a plan within 30 days to defeat the Islamic State, an effort to make good on his campaign promise to more aggressively confront Islamist terrorism than his predecessor did. … As he signed his directive at his desk in the Oval Office, Trump said, “I think it’s going to be very successful. That’s big stuff.”

Jesus Fuck. I still can’t believe we have a president who talks like a toddler.

Counseling Trump in the effort will be Stephen K. Bannon, the White House chief strategist whose influence inside the administration is expanding far beyond politics. In a separate presidential memo, Trump reorganized the National Security Council to, along with other changes, give Bannon a regular seat on the principals committee — the meetings of the most senior national security officials, including the secretaries of defense and state.

That memo also states that the director of national intelligence and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff will sit on the principals committee only when the issues to be discussed pertain to their “responsibilities and expertise.” In the previous two administrations, both were included as regular attendees.

The White House thinks the changes will make the NSC more adaptive to modern threats. Trump said the changes would bring “a lot of efficiency and, I think, a lot of additional safety.”

The changes affirm the ascent of Bannon, the former executive chairman of Breitbart, a conservative website that is popular with white nationalists, who has emerged as Trump’s political consigliere and the keeper of the president’s populist flame.

I think it’s fairly clear who the new president actually is, and it’s not Trump. Trump is an easily manipulable puppet. The Nazis are here and in charge.

Full story at Washington Post.

Think Progress is also covering this unprecedented  move, noting that even that asshole Bush jr never went so far, and in fact, went to considerable trouble to keep Rove away from any and all NSA meetings. Let that one sink in a little.

And don’t forget about Bannon:

Bannon has a history of anti-Semitic, misogynistic, and bigoted comments, and has openly disparaged Jews and minorities and has called women “dykes.” Both the Klu Klux Klan and the American Nazi Party cheered his appointment to the White House. Bannon also reportedly had a major role in crafting key parts of Trump’s Muslim ban, including the fact that the ban also applies to people with lawful permanent residence.

Fuck Nones.

So. There’s an article up about the so-called rise of the irreligious, and how they might change the political landscape. My initial reaction on seeing the headline was a rather cynical hmmm. Ever since people got all excited about the wave of ‘nones’, it’s been my experience in interacting with them that they are remarkably wishy-washy. The thing they seem to be most intensely reluctant to discuss or be involved in, activism wise, is anything to do with religion or secularism. Oh, they don’t believe, but it’s not a big deal, right, live and let live, all that jazz or “I think most religious people are okay, it’s just not my thing” or or or or or. Yeah, great, catch ya later. They don’t want to be rude. They don’t want to be pushy. They don’t care enough, in any direction. For the most part, I’ve found them to be one big shrug. Disclaimer: This is not every single person who identifies as ‘none’. Most, but not all.

I’m reading the article. Nothing I don’t already know, keep reading. Then I get to a bit I didn’t know – most nones can’t be arsed to vote. They don’t care, and even worse, most of them are uninformed about the recent election, out of choice. Fucking idiots. Thanks for fascism, thanks ever so fucking much.

chart

The 2016 Presidential Election

Interest in the Election

Consistent with their lower rates of voter registration, religiously unaffiliated Americans express less interest in the 2016 election, compared to white Christian groups. Fewer than four in ten (37%) religiously unaffiliated Americans say they are following news about the 2016 election very closely. Three in ten (30%) say they are following it fairly closely, while more than one-third (34%) say they are following the election not too closely or not at all closely. In contrast, a majority (56%) of white evangelical Protestants say they are following the election very closely.

PRRI. Oh well, maybe when nuclear winter hits, they’ll organize a nice bonfire or something. Fuck’s sake.

Border House.

(photo by Chim Pom)

(photo by Chim Pom)

Japanese art collective Chim↑Pom, known for their provocative, politically-charged artwork, has built a tree house along the U.S.-Mexico border. It was built in a private backyard in Tijuana’s Colonia Libertad neighborhood and offers views of the border separating Mexico from the United States

Earlier this month the art collective tweeted out two pictures of the tree house being built. But now, as Carolina Miranda from the LA Times details, it’s been completed and is quite popular among the local kids. Chim↑Pom gained access to a private backyard simply by knocking on the owner’s door and asking for permission. The owner said yes.

The words “U.S.A. Visitor Center” are printed on the the tree house, which was built in response to President Trump’s dedication to build a wall along the border. But it was also built for Chim↑Pom member Ellie, who is currently barred from entering the United States after someone she was traveling with jokingly indicated on a customs form that he was involved in terrorist activities. (Note: Do not joke about terrorism with custom officials. They don’t think it’s funny). “Ellie can’t go into the U.S., so she sees it from here,” says Ryuta Ushiro, the group’s leader.

Spoon & Tamago has the full story.

Google Goes Conservative.

Eric Schmidt, the chairman of Alphabet, Google’s parent company, arriving at Trump Tower in January to meet with Donald J. Trump. Mr. Trump’s team is wary of Mr. Schmidt, who has been allied with Democrats and advised the Obama White House. Credit Kevin Hagen for The New York Times.

Eric Schmidt, the chairman of Alphabet, Google’s parent company, arriving at Trump Tower in January to meet with Donald J. Trump. Mr. Trump’s team is wary of Mr. Schmidt, who has been allied with Democrats and advised the Obama White House. Credit Kevin Hagen for The New York Times.

WASHINGTON — Few companies have been as intimately tied to the Democratic Party in recent years as Google. So now that Donald J. Trump is president, the giant company, in Silicon Valley parlance, is having to pivot.

The shift was evident a day after Congress began its new session this month. That evening, about 70 lawmakers, a majority of them Republicans, were feted at the stately Smithsonian Arts and Industries Building, where they clinked champagne and bourbon glasses and posed for selfies with the 600 guests assembled in their honor.

The event’s main host was not from the Republican establishment. Instead, the party was primarily financed and anchored by Google.

“We’ve partnered with Google on events before, but nothing like this party,” said Alex Skatell, a founder of The Independent Journal Review, a news start-up with a right-leaning millennial audience, which also helped host the event. “I’ve never heard of an event as big.”

The event was emblematic of an about-face by Google. Over the last eight years, the company was closely associated with former President Barack Obama. Google employees overwhelmingly supported Mr. Obama’s presidential campaigns and some later took roles in his administration. Eric Schmidt, the chairman of Alphabet, Google’s parent company, advised the Obama White House. And last year, Google employees gave $1.3 million to Hillary Clinton’s campaign to succeed Mr. Obama, compared with $26,000 to the Trump campaign, according to federal filings.

Now, the tech giant is scrambling to forge ties with Mr. Trump’s new administration and to strengthen its relationship with a Republican-dominated Congress. Most important, Google is trying to change the perception that it is a Democratic stronghold.

So terribly reassuring to see everyone rush to suck up. CNN has the full story.

“I sat under the glory spout and it just was coming out all day long on me.”

Rick Wiles.

Rick Wiles.

Rick Wiles has been orgasmic over Trump, and that psychopathic god of his, ecstatically going on about ooze and glory spouts. It’s kinda disturbing. I don’t care what Wiles does in private, but I don’t need to hear about it, either. In this latest outing, Wiles is comparing Trump to Samson, which I find quite amusing, because El Shaddai didn’t do well by Samson.

“Friends, listen to me,” he said. “God’s favor is on us. Please, please, please comprehend what is happening. It’s more than a political revolution. This is a spiritual revolution. God’s favor is shining on us. I can’t get out of my mind what Mario Murillo said Monday, ‘Grace is oozing out of Heaven.’ It’s just oozing towards us right now. I’m basking in it. I’m rolling around in it. I’m enjoying it.”

That’s nice. I’ll stay ooze free if you don’t mind.

I keep getting this picture that Donald Trump is like this Samson, who has been raised up by God to fight the Philistines and all the Philistines have now turned their attention away from the church, turned their attention away from attacking Christianity, and all of the Philistines are running to Washington to attack Samson. But Samson is strong enough for them. He’s been called. He’s been equipped for this battle. That is his job. That is his assignment. He’s going to beat them down. They will not be able to overtake him. He’s Samson. He was designed by God. He was created for this hour to fight these Philistines.

The story of Samson is an interesting one. Warped, seriously fucked up, but interesting. Once again, I highly recommend Drunk With Blood: God’s Killings in the Bible, by Steve Wells. If you don’t have the book, but would like the insightful commentary, head over to SAB, and note the commentary on the right side. Samson wasn’t a terribly smart guy, and you couldn’t give him any points at all for astuteness, even though his mum was knocked up by an angel while her husband was gone. Tsk. Samson is wandering about one day, sees a Philistine woman he likes the look of, and demands his parents procure her. They do, he’s pleased. Apparently at some point, they marry, there’s a week long party, an inexplicable riddle, Samson gets pissed, kills 30 people and steals their clothes so he doesn’t have to pay his buddies, then gives his wife to a companion and leaves. Some hero.

Then there’s a raft of super-nonsense. Samson decides he wants to go back and have sex with his wife (the one he gave away). Now the story is that her father gave her to someone else (women rarely have names in the bible), and offers her younger sister to Samson. He doesn’t want the sister, so he has a cunning plan to get sex with his wife: he’s gonna set the Philistines grain fields on fire. This wouldn’t be a problem for most people. Samson figures the best way to do this is to catch 300 foxes, tie their tails together, light them on fire, and set them loose in the grain fields. Genius! How in the fuck can people not be embarrassed by this shit? Anyway, the cunning plan didn’t work, Samson’s wife and father were burned to death by the pissed off Philistines. Golly, there’s just so much love and light in this How To Be A Psychopath book. Samson then slaughtered a bunch of Philistines. Then that glory spout thing happened, y’know, the spirit of the lord came upon him, and he grabbed that conveniently placed jawbone of an ass and killed 1,000 men. Yeah. As Steve Wells notes, it’s easier to believe stories like this if you don’t know they exist.

Then Samson goes to Gaza, has sex with a prostitute, ripped out the doors and gate posts of the city, carried them up a hill, and fell in love with Delilah. Delilah was paid to find out the magical source of Samson’s strength, y’know, find his wand or whatever. There’s a long, idiotic story about these attempts. Delilah finally gets it right, and cuts his hair. The Philistines nab Samson and gouge out his eyes. They also chained him up, and put him in a prison house. Then someone gets the bright idea to bring Samson out to entertain them. Naturally, Samson prayed to El Shaddai:

Now the house was full of…about three thousand men and women…And Samson called unto the LORD, and said, O Lord God…strengthen me…that I may be at once avenged of the Philistines for my two eyes…and he house fell upon the lords, and upon all the people that were therein. So the dead which he slew at this death were more than they which he slew in his life. Judges 16.27-30.

As Steve Wells notes, this was the first suicide terrorist act. It resulted in the deaths of 3,000 civilian men and women. God approved it, and gave Samson the strength to do it. Why in the hell christians still parade this idiotic story around, I don’t know. Samson was something of a dumbfuck, mostly interested in sex and getting out of paying his bets. He was a murderer and a thief. He wasn’t too kind to animals, either. Point being, there was no reason at all to hold him above the Philistines, who couldn’t really be any worse; at best they were pretty much the same. El Shaddai didn’t love Samson enough to enhance his thinking ability, or to magically give him his eyes back, or find a way for Samson to avenge himself without having to commit suicide. Somehow this awful story never manages to make the point that the situation Samson found himself in was his own doing. It has always baffled me that christians are so damn impressed with this story. It’s awful, and just one more story highlighting the fact that Jehovah is a bloodthirsty, stupid, psychopath.

If Trump is Samson of a latter day…yeah. Maybe the folks in charge of the Doomsday Clock should shave off that 30 seconds.

Wiles added that God is also blessing his radio ministry and that God’s glory has been flowing: “I didn’t get home until after 8 last night and I had some visitors in the house, they were waiting and everybody had already finished dinner and I came in and I was floating, I just said, ‘I’ve been sitting under the glory spout all day.’ That’s what I felt like. I sat under the glory spout and it just was coming out all day long on me.”

Eeuuw. If you happen to be one of those people blessing Wiles’s ministry, I beg of you, please, think. Give me five fucking minutes: think.

Via RRW.

ITMFA!

Dan Savage (MSNBC).

Dan Savage (MSNBC).

Savage announced that he’s launching Impeachthemotherfuckeralready.com, where like-minded people can buy merchandise to display their campaign shorthand.

“I didn’t think I’d see a worse president than George W. Bush in my lifetime,” Savage wrote. “But here we are. So I’m bringing back ITMFA buttons and adding T-shirts and, yes, red hats to the ITMFA collection.”

He also added that the money raised will be donated to the American Civil Liberties Union, Planned Parenthood, and the International Refugee Assistance Project.

“We’re in for a long and ugly four years, readers,” he continued. “Let’s raise some money for groups fighting Trump, let’s bring ITMFA back into our everyday vocabulary, and let’s remember that we—people who voted against Trump, people who want to see him out of office as quickly as possible, people who are appalled by this and this and this and this—are the majority.”

Costly, Wasteful, Harmful. Yeah, Trump.

Suspected undocumented immigrants are transferred out of the holding area after being processed at the Tucson Sector of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection headquarters CREDIT: AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin, File.

Suspected undocumented immigrants are transferred out of the holding area after being processed at the Tucson Sector of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection headquarters CREDIT: AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin, File.

Trump’s scarily close to insane fixation on immigration is going to be incredibly costly, and it should go without saying, highly harmful to all manner of peoples.

As part of a series of executive orders aimed at attacking immigrants and immigrant communities, President Donald Trump announced on Wednesday that going forward, his administration will order the mandatory detention of all those apprehended or arrested by immigration enforcement officials.

The U.S. already spends more on all immigration enforcement — nearly $20 billion a year — than on all other federal law enforcement combined, and currently detains more immigrants each day — more than 42,000 — than ever before. Summary removals and mandatory detention are at an all-time high. And the focus on removals has come at the cost of due process, placing vulnerable populations like asylum seekers at risk. The number of asylum seekers held in detention increased threefold from 2010 to 2014.

Making detention mandatory will only exacerbate these issues.

It will also be expensive. The mandatory detention of all immigrants apprehended or arrested will cost the U.S. an additional $902 million each year, for a total of $9 billion in new federal spending over the next decade.

[…]

And these estimates are by their nature conservative. They don’t take into account potentially lengthened stays in detention under this executive order, nor any costs to DHS for rapidly building or acquiring more detention facilities and bed space to meet new needs.

Let’s put that in perspective. For $9 billion, the U.S. could instead:

Ah, those would be good things though, and the rethuglicans are in charge of the asylum, so we definitely rule that out. No point at all in helping all people, and building a safe and stable society, with some thought to a social safety net. No, in our new fascist order, that sort of thing is bad. Spending all that money to simply no point outside of causing harm, that must be more of those really good business moves we keep hearing about. *eyeroll*

Full story here.

New CIA Director: ‘Jesus Christ Our Savior Is Truly the Only Solution For Our World.’

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Speaking at a church event in Wichita [in 2014], then-Rep. Mike Pompeo (R-Kansas), the newly confirmed Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, said radical Muslims want “to wipe Christians from the face of the Earth,” and that Christians need to pray, fight, and understand that “Jesus Christ our Savior is truly the only solution for our world.”

[…]

“But I can tell you that this threat to America is from people who deeply believe that Islam is the way and the light and the only answer,” said Pompeo.

“So, as we think about what U.S. policy needs to be, how we will begin to combat this, we need to recognize that these folks believe it is religiously driven for them to wipe Christians from the face of the Earth,” he said.

Right. You think your god [placeholder] is the way and the light and the only answer. You believe, as a christian, you are religiously driven to wipe muslims from the face of the earth, and you want to force your religious beliefs on everyone. As usual, such fanatics completely ignore the fact that you aren’t fighting over two gods [placeholder], it’s the same fucking one. Abrahamaic religions: Judaism, Islam, Christianity. Same fucking god. (If you’re confused, ‘god’ is a generic word, a placeholder for a specific god; ‘allah’ is the same thing, means ‘god’. Unless you specify, ‘god’ in any language could be applicable to thousands of imaginary beings.)

You bloodthirsty christian assholes want a jihad, you want to kill, slaughter, and most likely torture first. No room to talk here, a fanatic is a fanatic, and all you idiotic fanatics want to do this over different interpretations. It’s fair enough to say most christians just want to live their lives, like everyone else, and be left in peace. It’s fair enough to say the very same thing about most muslims. I dearly wish we could just lock up all you fucking religious fanatics in a room, lock it, and walk away.

“But these folks are serious and they abhor Christians,” said the future CIA director. “And [they] will continue to press against us until we make sure that we pray and stand and fight and make sure that we know that Jesus Christ our Savior is truly the only solution for our world.”

Yes, some fanatical assholes do abhor christians. Just like some fanatical assholes abhor muslims. Can’t say I’m altogether fond of fanatics of any stripe, but here in the States, where I live, it’s christians who constantly prove to be a threat to all people who don’t measure up to their fucked up immoral standards. Turn that laser focus on yourself, sir, and let that ‘god’ of yours fight its own fucking battles.

Unsurprisingly, Pompeo is willing to go along with Trump and bring torture back, because torture good.

Via CNS.