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.

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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.

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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.

Jesus Toast. Again.

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That’s Jesus. Yep. Showed up on a piece of toast, and soon to be on ebay.

WINDHAM, Maine (NEWS CENTER) — A man in Windham believes a holy depiction has graced his piece of buttered toast.

George Maley’s son, Andrew told NEWS CENTER, “I thought [dad] was lying. I thought it was completely fake, and then he showed me and my mind was blown.”

That’s all it takes to blow your mind? There’s a mighty low bar.

Both Andrew and George, believe you can see the face of Jesus in the toast.

George Maley said he made the toast three weeks ago at his home. He was having a particularly hard day, missing loved ones who have passed away, when he saw the image in the toast.

“It was an answer to a lot of questions I had,” George Maley said. “Even if it was just a brief image, it’s still a sign, and it points in the right direction.”

That’s nice, I hope you’re feeling better now.

George Maley is keeping the toast preserved in the freezer.

He’s hoping to sell it on eBay, and use the profits to help his two sons.

Oh, so that’s the godly direction, is it? Jesus sorta shows up on a piece of toast so you can auction it off and make some money. Yeah, that just screams godliness. What if Jesus wanted you to eat the toast, dude?

Via WCSH.

A Planned, Personal Thank You.

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Pastor Greg Locke.

Tennessee Pastor Greg Locke is well known for his spittle-flecked invectives over most everything, but mostly over…women. Everyone knows everything is the fault of women, right? One woman made a donation to Planned Parenthood in Mr. Locke’s name, and he had a meltdown over it. He really, really doesn’t want anyone to ever do this again, so…

In the video below, he howls about the fact this thank you card was sent to him and wants to make it crystal clear that he doesn’t in anyway support women’s health care at Planned Parenthood. He warned that such donations in his name are a waste of time and he’ll deposit any thank you cards in the trash. So, whatever you do, don’t waste your time donating to the Planned Parenthood clinic closest to Greg Locke’s church—Planned Parenthood of Middle and East Tennessee—and don’t waste your time making sure a thank you card gets mailed to him at:

Greg Locke
c/o Global Vision Bible Church
2060 Old Lebanon Dirt Rd
Mt Juliet, TN 37122

Via Daily Kos.

Abusive Assholes Might Have A Change of Heart.

Mississippi state Rep. Andy Gipson (YouTube).

Mississippi state Rep. Andy Gipson (YouTube).

Domestic violence as grounds for divorce? No, no, those abusive asses might have a change of heart, y’know. Could happen, right? Wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. That said, Rep. Andy Gipson really thinks marriage ought to be a prison for abused spouses.

The Republican chair of the Mississippi House Judiciary B Committee this week killed a bill that would have made domestic violence grounds for divorce.

According to Mississippi Today, Republican Chairman Andy Gipson said that he would not take up Senate Bill 2703 before a Tuesday deadline, effectively allowing the bill to die.

The bill would have amended Mississippi law “to create domestic violence as additional grounds for fault divorce.”

[…]

Gipson, who is a Baptist pastor, has said that laws should encourage people to stay married.

“At a time I think we need to be adopting policies that promote marriage and people sticking together, I have some serious concerns about opening the floodgates any more than they already are,” the lawmaker explained. “I think the floodgates are already open and this just tears the dam down.”

“We need to have policies that strengthen marriage,” Gipson added. “If a person is abusive, they need to have a change in behavior and change of heart.”

Jesus fuckin’ Christ. You know what I think, Mr. Gipson? I think being christian ought to be a legal bar to being a politician. Especially asshole christians like yourself.

Via Raw Story.

Bring me one woman who has been left behind. Bring me one. There’s not one…

A one-month dosage of hormonal birth control pills is displayed Friday, Aug. 26, 2016, in Sacramento, Calif. CREDIT: AP /Rich Pedroncelli.

A one-month dosage of hormonal birth control pills is displayed Friday, Aug. 26, 2016, in Sacramento, Calif. CREDIT: AP /Rich Pedroncelli.

The Trump administration may weaken or eliminate the provision for full coverage of contraception in the Affordable Care Act, experts say, and it may not require any action from Republican allies in Congress.

The provision that allows women to receive full coverage for birth control — including insertion and removal of an IUD — could be eliminated or at least weakened through regulations, guidance, or law. Reproductive rights advocates are also waiting to see whether the Trump administration will continue to defend the mandate in the courts on Tuesday.

Newly minted Secretary of Health and Human Services Tom Price has a record of dismissing women’s need for full coverage of birth control. In an interview with Think Progress in 2012, Price said, “Bring me one woman who has been left behind. Bring me one. There’s not one … The fact of the matter is this is a trampling on religious freedom and religious liberty in this country.”

During his confirmation hearing, Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) asked Price about his 2012 statement on birth control because her constituents say birth control without a co-pay is essential to their health care. Price refused to commit to full coverage of birth control.

“There are avenues in the heath care system that doctors and hospitals take to make sure people can get the health care they need,” Price answered.

Price seems to think contraception is like having a doctor fill up a bag with pharmaceutical samples of something or other, to help out patients who can’t afford prescriptions. That sort of thing is usually done for a one time treatment. Contraception doesn’t work like that. As a former physician, I’m sure Mr. Price is aware of that, but that’s not as important as preventing people from having healthcare, especially those awful women. The way Price and his fellow travelers feel about it, contraception is a lifestyle choice, not a health issue.

Planned Parenthood clinics told NPR that, since the election of President Donald Trump, they have received more calls than usual from women interested in booking appointments for IUDs. An IUD is one of the most effective methods of birth control, since it is more than 99 percent effective. Without coverage provided by the mandate, a woman who works full time at minimum wage may have to pay a month’s salary for the cost of getting an IUD, according to the Guttmacher Institute.

Women who use contraceptives consistently and correctly only account for 5 percent of all unintended pregnancies. But with financial barriers to access — especially access to effective but costly methods such as IUDs — women’s ability to prevent unintended pregnancies is significantly hampered.

41 years ago, I got an IUD through planned parenthood. At that time, I was a paid member, so it didn’t cost me a thing. I don’t remember the membership cost, but it was around 25 or 35 dollars. Way back then, people in general were favorable towards accessible, inexpensive birth control. There was still a very heavy stigma attached to single parenthood, and it was still considered to be shameful to be pregnant out of wedlock. The stigma was starting to fade in 1975, but it was still strong enough that the reasoning was contraception and pregnancy prevention was better than a bunch of single mothers. It was also easy  and hassle free to obtain an abortion back then. How things have changed.

In addition to what is happening in the courts, it is possible that an executive order could greatly expand exemptions for companies with religious or moral objections. A leaked draft of an executive order, first obtained by The Nation and Reveal earlier this month, would significantly weaken the contraception guarantee.

The order would appear to exempt any “closely held for-profit corporations” with moral or religious objections to meeting the requirements of the provision and lets them exclude coverage for contraception. Under the Obama administration’s religious accommodation, insurance companies have to provide separate coverage to women at no additional cost. Kinsey Hasstedt, senior policy manager for the Guttmacher Institute, said the draft is cause for concern, even though an official order has not been released.

“The leaked draft executive order would expand accommodations so it would be simpler for employers to reject some or all birth control options,” Hasstedt said. “It would be a dramatic expansion of exemptions.”

This draft uses broad terms to define religious freedom and requires the Department of Justice to defend “religious freedom.” It does specifically mention objections to abortion, contraception, and premarital sex, however.

The Religious Reich Republicans have been salivating for ages over the chance to kill off accessible, affordable contraception, and it looks like that chance has arrived. Think Progress has the in-depth coverage on this issue.

Irony Explosion of the Day, Oh My.

Compedium maleficarum of Francesco Mario Guazzo, published in 1608.

Compedium maleficarum of Francesco Mario Guazzo, published in 1608.

Lance Wallnau is at it again, more purple in prose than ever, with the assorted demonics, this time with a focus on zombies and witches, oh my! Spoiler: everyone liberal is a zombie, witch, or wombie/zitch.

The media and the left, he said, are working to whip up opposition from among a small percentage of Americans who he said are “wired like zombies” as part of a relentless effort to overturn the will of millions of American voters who supported Trump.

Wallnau said that Christians would not believe “the extent of funding, malice, organization and intentionality behind the protests, the discontent, and the exaggeration and manipulation, mind control and witchcraft that is coming from the media” for the purpose of undermining Trump.

“The left cannot stomach losing an election without having an absolutely visceral meltdown and many of them are so zombified that they’re taken captive by a spirit,” he said. “They have so bought into lies that the lies control them and they have an unreal bubble around their head.”

Liberals “don’t have a filter for their brain,” Wallnau said, and so “they’ve sucked in the toxic poisoning of what they were taught in school, what their friends say to them and what they watch on toxic news channels.”

Holy Projection, Batman! This is such a remarkable case of projection and cognitive dissonance, it should be subject for study. The liberals finally decide to stand up and do something, after one very long hiatus, and the cons just can’t handle this in the least. After more than eight long years of screaming, yelling, the formation of the batshit tea party, attempted legal actions, and so on, over the horror of a black president, but we’re the ones who are evil wombies. Uh huh.

Via RWW.

There’s video at the link, if you can cope.

The Stupid Is A Fiery Inferno of Unending Torment.

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The CPAC Schedule is out, and if you value things like the integrity of your gut, you won’t go reading it. If you do decide to go look at all the things they have scheduled, you have been warned. There is one panel scheduled which is delighting the Twitterati, who are having all manner of fun with it:

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If Heaven Has a Gate, A Wall, and Extreme Vetting, Why Can’t America? Moderator: Rep. Bob Beauprez (CO-10). Rep. Andy Biggs (AZ-5), Rep. Ken Buck (CO-4), Mike Gonzales, The Heritage Foundation, Helen Krieble, Vernon K. Krieble Foundation.

You can read some of the responses here. You’ll have to excuse me, I’m just going to go pound my head into a wall or something. Maybe I should go find a nuke so I’d have some weed to smoke.

Pastor: Traumatized by Trump.

Trump speaks to supporters at a rally in Melbourne, Florida (screen grab).

Trump speaks to supporters at a rally in Melbourne, Florida (screen grab).

A Florida pastor has recounted his experience at the Trump rally in Melbourne, Florida. To say he wasn’t impressed is quite the understatement. His child was traumatized.

Joel Tooley, lead pastor at First Church Of The Nazarene in Melbourne, said that both he and his daughter were traumatized after attending President Donald Trump’s rally in Florida over the weekend.

In a lengthy Facebook post written after Trump’s Saturday rally, Tooley explains that he had not supported the Republican presidential candidate but he felt that attending a presidential speech would be a good civics lesson for his daughter.

[…]

“People were being ushered into a deeply religious experience…and it made me completely uncomfortable,” the pastor recalls. “I felt like people were here to worship an ideology along with the man who was leading it. Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t the song per se – it was this inexplicable movement that was happening in the room. It was a religious zeal.”

Tooley describes First Lady Melania Trump’s reading of the Lord’s Prayer as “theatrical and manipulative.”

“I can’t explain it, but I felt sick,” he notes. “People across the room were reciting it as if it were a pep squad cheer. At the close of the prayer, the room erupted in cheering. It was so uncomfortable.”

After the president began speaking, Tooley says that Trump fans squared off against protesters in the crowd.

“Two ladies in front of them began seething and screaming in their face while shaking their Trump signs at [the protesters],” he writes. “As they continued chanting, the people around them became violently enraged. One angry man grabbed the lady’s arm – that’s when I went into action. I barged through the crowd and yelled at them to back off.”

“My 11-year-old daughter was clinging to my arm, sobbing in fear,” Tooley reveals. “The two angry, screaming ladies looked at me, both of them raised their middle finger at me in my face and repeatedly yelled, ‘F*#% YOU!’ Repeatedly.”

These are the people who think they comprise American greatness. I imagine they would have pressed assault charges on anyone who dared to to flip the bird at their little darlings.

I raised my voice and calmly said, “These ladies have the right to do what they are doing and they are harming no one; this is America and they a right to express themselves in this way. They are harming no one.” A couple of other people around me stepped in and supported me in protecting them as a barrier, as well.

My daughter was shaking in fear as she clung to me. The one man behind the protesters shoved himself forward, grabbed the lady by the arm and screamed with multiple expletives, “I’m going to take you out! This is my president and nobody has the right to disrespect him and nobody has the right to keep me from hearing him!”

Ah, the amazing reasonableness of the Trump fanatic. Funny how they didn’t notice all the people yelling and making noise were the Trump supporters.

Tooley states that he eventually lost track of what Trump was saying because of the ongoing scuffles.

“My kid was shaken – she had just seen some of the worst of humanity,” the pastor laments in his Facebook post. “But, at the end of the day, what I felt from his leadership in this experience was actually horrifying. There was palpable fear in the room. There was thick anger and vengeance. He was counting on it.”

You can read the whole Facebook post here. So, we don’t just have to be concerned with a maniacal, unstable tyrant, the possibility of nuclear war, and fascism, but there’s a cultish thing going, too. Times continue to be interesting. What I wouldn’t give for uninteresting times.

Devil-Worshiping, Luciferian, Demon-Possessed Maniacs!

Belzebuth ou Belzebub ou Beelzebuth, J.A.S. Collin de Plancy. Dictionnaire Infernal. Paris : E. Plon, 1863. Prince of demons, the first in power and crimes after Satan. Cornell University Library.

Belzebuth ou Belzebub ou Beelzebuth, J.A.S. Collin de Plancy. Dictionnaire Infernal. Paris : E. Plon, 1863.
Prince of demons, the first in power and crimes after Satan. Cornell University Library.

Rick Wiles has come completely unglued, not that he had far to go in that regard. He’s now floating in Alex Jones territory, doing all he can to keep the pizza place conspiracy alive, although I don’t know why. I’ve lived through two major Satanic Panics, where nationwide devil worship was posited, a massive conspiracy of murder, rape, and sacrifices, oh my! None of this shit actually happened, but plenty of people were happy to believe it, at the behest of those who found it a good way to make money. Books were written, it was on news shows, the whole thing. I guess I get to live through a third one, if these idiotic christian fanatics get their way. I’ll just go with the assumption that this latest is yet another way for these professional liars to fill their coffers. Mr. Wiles and his cohorts should remember that in their chosen mythology, there’s the demon Mammon.

Mammon

Mammon, J.A.S. Collin de Plancy. Dictionnaire Infernal. Paris : E. Plon, 1863.

Wiles also can’t shut up about Ms. Clinton:

Claiming that a tweet from Clinton mocking the conspiracy theory was itself proof that the conspiracy is real, Wiles declared that Christians have no idea how many of their elected leaders are part of a “demonic system” that kidnaps children “to be raped, molested and then murdered.”

Our elected leaders, you say. Okay, why not have a close look at our elected leaders? We can start with the current administration. Plenty of material there without all the demonic pizza.

“Hillary Clinton is telling up front what this is all about,” he said. “She’s bragging it’s about Pizzagate. She’s telling them, ‘We took you down, you dared talk about our filthy child molestation and we took you down.’ That’s what she’s saying.” (Flynn’s son has avidly promoted the Pizzagate conspiracy theory, causing him to lose his job in the administration’s transition team, and Flynn himself has also embraced many wildconspiracytheories, including one linking Clinton to “sex crimes [with] children.”)

I’m pretty sure what Ms. Clinton said amounted to “Oh, bullshit!”

Wiles asserted that “devil-worshiping, Luciferian, demon-possessed maniacs” have formed a “criminal cabal [that is] running this nation and much of the world” that allows them to engage in “child trafficking, child molestation, child rape, [and] child murder.”

The Catholic Church is rife with people who molest and rape children. Child trafficking, child molestation, child rape, and child murder is most often done by people who believe in a god, often the christian god. The person who started raping me when I was a child characterized themselves as a good christian. Lots of “good christians” tied up in those activities. Christians are major consumers of porn. I think you should look to your own houses, they are taking on the stink of the Augean Stables.

When the truth is finally revealed, Wiles warned, “there will be mass vomiting in the society when the people find out what these demon-possessed rulers have been doing for decades with children.”

Oh, there’s plenty of vomiting already taking place over the way theists deal with children. Religion allows for some of the very worst child abuse, such as refusing to provide your child with medical care. Or deciding they are demon possessed, and using that as an excuse to beat the shit out of them. Or denying them an education. Or finding some way to justify sexually abusing them. Or filling their heads with visions of eternal anguish and torment at the hands of a psychopathic god.

“Many of the key officials, elected and appointed, and in corporate board rooms and in Hollywood and in New York City, they are part of a global child molestation ring,” said Wiles, who insisted that Clinton is now “relishing in the fact that they brought down General Flynn because he knows what they are and what they’re doing.”

So Hollywood and New York City are the latter day Sodom and Gomorrah? Trump’s from New York, perhaps you ought to cool it with the east coast blame, eh? The Tiny Tyrant might not like that. The only thing that brought down General Flynn was General Flynn. Like everyone else in the current administration, he was in over his head, lacked the requisite experience, and embodied the Peter Principle.

Via RWW.

Religious Freedom, A License to Discriminate.

Vice President Mike Pence speaking at the Heritage Foundation’s President’s Club Meeting in December. CREDIT: AP Photo/Cliff Owen.

Vice President Mike Pence speaking at the Heritage Foundation’s President’s Club Meeting in December. CREDIT: AP Photo/Cliff Owen.

It’s no secret that the constant rethug push for “religious freedom” is nothing more than ugly bigotry, and a way of oppressing already marginalized peoples. They are finally coming out and admitting as much.

The Heritage Foundation has been called “a driving force” behind the Trump White House due to its many close ties with the administration. This week, Heritage issued a new report drawing a strict line in opposition to any kind of nondiscrimination protection for LGBT people, citing “religious freedom” as such a vital right that any LGBT law would be a burden, regardless of whether it offered even the broadest of religious exemptions.

Heritage’s new report, “How to Think About Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity (SOGI) Policies and Religious Freedom,” takes the position that laws that protect LGBT people from discrimination in employment, housing, and public accommodations would be “unjustified.” To arrive at this conclusion, author Ryan T. Anderson undermines the legitimacy of LGBT identities and dismisses the reality of discrimination that LGBT people experience, shrugging off the consequences of that discrimination.

Anderson’s approach is to simply redefine terms in a way that suits Heritage’s anti-LGBT agenda. Wedding vendors that have been penalized for not serving same-sex couples, for example, weren’t “discriminating” against people because of their sexual orientation, but they simply refused service “because they judged in conscience that they could not endorse certain morally relevant conduct.” This is an argument that courts have roundly rejected, because only gay and bi people would enter a same-sex marriage, so it’s de facto discrimination based on sexual orientation, but the report simply denies that it’s “discrimination” or even “mistreatment” at all.

The Heritage Report also insists that sexual orientation and gender identity are not comparable to traits like race and sex because they are “subjective identities,” and thus not “verifiable.” They can only be defined, the report claims, based on “actions,” such as same-sex weddings or gender confirmation surgeries — not identities that people experience at every moment of their lives. This is nothing short of erasure of the LGBT human experience, diminishing it only to “actions” that religious conservatives can reject as “immoral.” It is in no way an accurate representation of how LGBT people experience their identities — and certainly runs contrary to everything psychology has learned about sexual orientation and gender identity.

Crucial to the report’s thesis is to downplay the extent that LGBT people even experience discrimination. This contradicts numerous studies that have shown rates of discrimination that cannot be characterized by mere anecdotes. The recent massive U.S. Trans Survey, for example, found that nearly 1 in 5 transgender people have lost a job just for being transgender. And statistics like those do not even count the invisible discrimination that takes place; studies like résumé tests are showing that many LGBT people are discriminated against without even knowing it.

[…]

Heritage has drawn a new line in the sand by saying that its opposition to LGBT protections is uncompromising and that it is not even open to considering exemptions. It’s nothing short of an admission to what LGBT advocates have been arguing all along: that conservatives are simply using “religious freedom” as a pretext for allowing discrimination against LGBT people.

[…]

Republicans are expected to re-introduce the “First Amendment Defense Act” any day now, which will create a special license to discriminate solely for those who oppose LGBT equality. And President Trump has promised to sign it.

Think Progress has the full story.

Oh FFS, now he’s in the bible.

tucker-viemeister-nazi-trump-logo-design-graphics-hero

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.