A Methodist church in California has set up an outdoor nativity scene for Christmas that has the potential to make xenophobic Trump supporters apoplectic.
Mano Singham
Just another Freethought Blogs site
A Methodist church in California has set up an outdoor nativity scene for Christmas that has the potential to make xenophobic Trump supporters apoplectic.
He made the following remarks at a fundraiser last evening.
US President Donald Trump told a pro-Israel conference Saturday night that some American Jews don’t love Israel enough. He also noting that he did not have to worry about getting his audience’s votes, because they would cast ballots with business interests in mind.
Those comments, to the Israeli American Council advocacy group in Florida, drew quick criticism from opponents and were derided as anti-Semitic.
In his 45-minute speech to an audience of over 4,300, the president criticized American Jews who, he said, were not sufficiently supportive of the Jewish state.
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The UK’s Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis has leveled charges against the Labour party that it has a serious problem of anti-Semitism within its ranks and that its leader Jeremy Corbyn and the top leadership have not done enough to combat it. Under the surface is the implication that Corbyn himself is an anti-Semite. Corbyn has responded.
Speaking the following morning, Corbyn said a future Labour government would be “the most anti-racist government you’ve ever seen”. He said: “Because that is what I’ve spent my whole life doing, fighting against racism, and I will die fighting against racism.”
He said he had made it clear that antisemitism is wrong. “Our party did make it clear when I was elected leader, and after that, that antisemitism is unacceptable in any form in our party or our society and did indeed offer its sympathies and apologies to those who had suffered,” he said.
Corbyn, just like Bernie Sanders in the US, has been a lifelong campaigner against racism and for human rights. But both have recognized the injustices suffered by Palestinians at the hands of the Israeli government and called for giving them the rights they deserve and it is this stance that has alarmed the Israel lobby in the UK and the US.
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Some of you may recall the big Chick-fil-A controversy that emerged some years ago. The owners of this fast-food franchise are evangelical Christians who disapprove of homosexuality and opposed the efforts to legalize same-sex marriage. This made them the target of boycotts by the LGBT+ community but also the darling of right-wing evangelical Christians in the US who campaigned to have people eat there to show their support.
So I was surprised to read that the company has just stopped funding the Salvation Army and the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, two organizations that were prominent in also opposing giving equal rights to the LGBT+ community. The company has also contributed to the Southern Poverty Law Center, a civil rights group that strongly supports LGBT+ rights and is a group that right-wingers hate.
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When it comes to placing restrictions on abortion, Ohio has the dubious honor of proposing the wildest ideas to the point of even demanding the impossible. Take the latest bill introduced in the state legislature.
A bill to ban abortion introduced in the Ohio state legislature requires doctors to “reimplant an ectopic pregnancy” into a woman’s uterus – a procedure that does not exist in medical science – or face charges of “abortion murder”.
This is the second time practising obstetricians and gynecologists have tried to tell the Ohio legislators that the idea is currently medically impossible.
…Ohio’s move on ectopic pregnancies – where an embryo implants on the mother’s fallopian tube rather than her uterus rendering the pregnancy unviable – is one of the most extreme bills to date.
“I don’t believe I’m typing this again but, that’s impossible,” wrote Ohio obstetrician and gynecologist Dr David Hackney on Twitter. “We’ll all be going to jail,” he said.
But that is not the only dangerously idiotic idea in the bill.
In addition to ordering doctors to do the impossible or face criminal charges, House Bill 413 bans abortion outright and defines a fertilized egg as an “unborn child”.
It also appears to punish doctors, women and children as young as 13 with “abortion murder” if they “perform or have an abortion”. This crime is punishable by life in prison. Another new crime, “aggravated abortion murder”, is punishable by death, according to the bill.
Ohio: Leading the way in legislative callousness and stupidity.
The multi-talented Miller died yesterday at the age of 85. His obituary describes the wide range of activities that he was involved with in his life, including being a doctor, writer, and theatre and opera director.
I first came across him as one of the four people (along with Peter Cook, Dudley Moore, and Alan Bennett) that made up the sketch comedy team whose performance of Beyond the Fringe broke with traditional British comedy and set the stage for later acts like Monty Python.
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That many televangelists are vampires who suck the blood out of people who are gullible enough to believe the tripe dished out that their god will richly reward those who give money to these grifters is, or should be, obvious to anyone who gives these bloodsuckers even the most cursory look. Of these Paula White is a particularly vicious specimen so it should be no surprise that Donald Trump has recognized a fellow grifter and hired her as the White House faith advisor.
Samantha Bee exposes her.
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Republican congressman from New York Peter King has announced that he is retiring from Congress and the media and Democratic leaders have fallen over themselves praising him as a ‘moderate’ voice. But Mehdi Hasan writes that King is an unrepentant bigot and Islamophobe and this reaction tells us a lot about politics and the media.
Hurrah! One of the leading bigots on Capitol Hill is retiring. Right-wing Republican Peter King announced Monday that he will not be standing for reelection to the House of Representatives in 2020.
Yet media organizations, from the New York Times to the Washington Post to Vice News, lined up to describe the New York congressman as a “moderate” and insisted on framing his departure as a blow to Donald Trump and the Republican Party (King is the 20th Republican in the House to announce he’s standing down).
Even worse, the top Democrat in the Senate, Chuck Schumer, described King as standing “head & shoulders above everyone else” and “principled.” “I will miss him in Congress & value his friendship,” the Senate Minority Leader tweeted.
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The appropriately named John Crist is identified as a ‘Christian’ standup comedian, whatever that might mean. He was due to have a Netflix holiday special but that has been put on hold following allegations by several women that he “used his celebrity status and Christian reputation to sexually harass women.”
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