Auggh No, This Does Not Make Me Want To Stay Alive!

If you’re a courageous soul, then go ahead, play the video. It’s the absolute slaughter of the Bee Gee’s Staying Alive. I cut out when I got to the “I got my food, I’m staying alive” part. It seems pizza is also mentioned, but I didn’t get there.

“This show today is so important,” Bakker warned. “God woke me up and I felt the presence of God like I never felt and He said, ‘Jim, I want you to do more food, build a new type of food.’”

“This is what God is saying to me,” he added. “We’re in the Last Days. The years I spent in prison, God showed me the revelation and I’m telling you, almost all of it [has already happened.] We’re going to see the End of Time and that is where we are right now.”

What happened to the whole rapture business? I thought all the good christians were gonna be whisked away. Anyroad, think before you click play, that’s one unholy horror show.

Via RWW.

“It’s just like God…”

Jehovah’s Golden Boy.

All the religious reich has gotten together and are defending Kushner, why he could not possible have colluded in anything, no sir! Some of the um, reasoning is seriously ridiculous.

I can’t help but admire Jared and Ivanka. The two of them have put their lives entirely on hold in order to pursue the good of their nation, and I have found them to be particularly interested in our concerns as evangelical Christians. It’s just like God to use a young Jewish couple to help Christians in the United States defend their rights, and secure their religious freedom for now, and for subsequent generations. – David Jeremiah.

Oh, so that’s just like Jehovah, is it? Yet another idiot who doesn’t seemed to have read the bible much. There’s more dangerous idiocy to behold over at Right Wing Watch, and if you feel like being scared silly by what’s happening in wingnut land, aka America, take a look at their front page.

“The velvet tyranny of political correctness.”

Richard Spencer and William H. Regnery II.

Lance Williams at Reveal has an absorbing article up about the person and money behind neo-nazi Richard Spencer. For many years, Regnery’s notions about race got him kicked out of one organization or another, but the rise of the Tiny Tyrant has made many of  his dreams come true.

Long before Donald Trump’s election ushered in an era of resurgent white nationalism, a disaffected Republican named William H. Regnery II was brooding about the demographic plight of white people and plotting their rescue.

Like Trump more than 20 years later, Regnery, the wealthy scion of a famous GOP family, had an increasingly dark view of a changing America: As he wrote, the U.S. had become a crime-ridden society with bad schools, high taxes, an intrusive government and a penchant for political correctness that was “morphing into an intellectual tyranny.”

Worse, “a flood of immigrants were changing the look of America from a palette of prime colors to a third-world monochrome,” he wrote in a rant that would be at home on the bookshelf of Trump’s chief strategist, Steve Bannon. “Instead of a lingua franca, the country clanged with many foreign tongues.”

By 1999, he had come to believe that the only future for white people in North America was a reconfigured continent with a white-only homeland carved out of the former United States.

[…]

Through his family’s famed conservative publishing house, Regnery had been on a first-name basis with the cream of the Republican establishment. But by 2006, his public views on race left him ostracized from the GOP.   

Now, he’s back. Working behind the scenes, the retired Chicago business executive has played an important role in making his ultra-right views a part of America’s political conversation in the era of Trump.

In what he has described as his crowning political achievement, Regnery discovered Richard Spencer, the mediagenic agitator who invented the term “alt-right.” In 2011, Regnery made him the frontman for his white nationalist think tank, the National Policy Institute, providing Spencer the platform to launch the alt-right movement.

The full article is here, recommended.

Hex, Vex, Spell, Jynx, Satanic Curse, Blood Curse and Demons!

Execration Figurines.

Lance Wallnau is still at it, declaring a veritable storm of witchcraft is swirling about his darling, Trump. He seems to think that all those faithful chanting their incantations, er, prayers are missing the mark though – they forgot about Trump’s family! Oops.

“People are praying for the president, but they’re not necessarily praying for his family,” Wallnau said. “So right now, all those witchcraft curses that did not land on Donald Trump are trying to take out his kids, trying to take out his offspring, trying to attack anything near him.”

Wouldn’t kids and offspring be the same thing?

As evidence of this theory, Wallnau cited an incident in which a friend was once “casting a demon out of somebody” and the demon transferred itself into the family dog, which then jumped out of the car while it was driving down the highway and was killed.

You really need to think your little anecdotes through, Lance. Was this exorcism taking place while people were driving somewhere? Don’t do that shit, it’s endangering others. Let’s pretend your friend got busy with an exorcism, at which he also had his dog with him. The demon gets driven out of whoever, then decides to dive into the dog. Why? Why in the fuckety fuck would a demon bloody bother with that, then wait until they were in a car, so it could commit dogicide? Seems to me this is a bunch of bullshit cooked up to explain to the family why their irresponsibility got their dog killed. Tsk. It’s not nice to lie, Lance.

As such, Wallnau declared that “we take authority over every hex, vex, spell, jinx, satanic curse, blood curse, every demon assigned to destroy the health of the president, to destroy the health of his family, to harass him, to vex him, to cause him to lose sleep.”

“In Jesus name, we veto every curse that has been brought against Donald Trump and his family and his administration,” Wallnau proclaimed, as he repeatedly spoke in tongues.

Oooh, Voces mysticae! I wonder if you know the roots of that, Lance. I think you’re talking to demons, dude.

Wallnau later declared that the prayer that Rodney Howard-Browne led over Trump when several Religious Right pastors visited the White House recently was designed to prevent Trump from having a stroke.

“The devil is trying to get him and his family,” he said. “And I heard Rodney Howard-Browne say when he laid hands on the president, he was worried there was a stroke coming; well, we veto that stroke in Jesus’ name! That is nothing but stress and we’re breaking it off of him right now.”

Um, what if a stroke is Jehovah’s will, Lance? Isn’t there some kind of non-interference with “god’s will” rule?

Via Right Wing Watch.

The Trump Prophecies.

Mark Taylor really wants in on that sweet prophet profit. I guess the whole “Trump cracking down on satanic pedophiles” went over well.

It all started as the retired firefighter watched Trump give an otherwise innocuous interview to Fox News. In his book, Taylor describes how God spoke to him as the interview went on: “The Spirit of God says, ‘I have chosen this man, Donald Trump, for such a time as this. For as Benjamin Netanyahu is to Israel, so shall this man be to the United States.’”

From that moment on, Taylor explains, he felt his political and religious role shift dramatically—realizing that he “was no longer simply Mark Taylor” but also “Shakina Kami,” a name that supposedly translates from a combination of “African” and “Indian” languages into “Beautiful One Whose Desires Are Fulfilled, and in Whose Life the Lord Dwells with the Divine Wind of Providence.” The rest of the book is devoted to revealing Taylor’s visions about how Trump is the “chosen one” who will unite the “Army of God.”

In case you’re wondering, Mr. Taylor is quite white in appearance. I wonder if he bothered to think over that name business, it’s hardly the sort of name to win Trump’s affection. And why supposedly African/Indian names? All the pasty white names gone?

For example, Taylor argues that “we simply must stop saying that the Church and/or God doesn’t belong in politics” and, as such, he believes that God will use Trump to unite Church and state by evicting “the evil that currently resides” in the government, in some cases “possibly” arresting politicians who oppose the administration. Among those that will be replaced are five Supreme Court justices, who will be overthrown in a dramatic fashion: with one retired, one dead, and three forced to resign amidst scandal. In addition to purging the government, Taylor explains, the Spirit of God often tells Taylor that President Trump will finally defeat all threatening non-state actors as well, such as the “illuminati and ISIS.”

Goodness. That’s an awful lot to put on an incompetent moron’s plate.

However, according to Taylor, this process will not be without difficulty. Taylor frequently supplements his prophecies with stories of personal obstacles: Namely, Taylor describes how he is targeted by evil spirits for “speaking out against the powers of evil that have strongholds in high places,” especially in the Supreme Court. In some instances, Taylor uses self-aggrandizing superhero tropes to depict his battle with “demonic” and “powerful” spirits, who try to undermine his mission to expose them. Taylor boasts about how he has called upon “the physical self-defense strategies” that he “had learned to rely on as a fireman” in order to “reach out and attack” the “powerful” and “demonic” spirits that torment him at night.

Right. So you do battle with your blankets at night. I’m sure I’m all impressed over here. How about a squid spirit, had one of those yet? I’d like to know what awesome super fireman physical defense strategies you use for that one.

Taylor describes how the Christian Army should oust political opposition:

The Spirit of God says, ‘America, get ready, for I AM choosing from the top of the cream, for I AM putting together America’s dream team, from the president and his administration, to judges and congress to ease America’s frustrations!’ The Spirit of God says, ‘Rise up, My Army, and get in the fight… Rise up! stomp the enemy’s head with bliss; send the enemy back to Hell and into the abyss.’

I certainly hope you aren’t planning on writing a bible, Mr. Taylor. That’s worse than the crappy prose in the bible, and it’s not easy being worse than that. So, you skimmed Exodus and Psalms, and that’s what you came up with. Yikes. I do imagine you and the Tiny Tyrant would have a grand time talking to one another, a perfect storm of idiotic incoherence.

Oh, there is much more at RWW, along with a photo of Mr. Taylor.

Holy Laughter and Privy Secret Information.

Who are all these people? I can’t keep track of them.

Last week, President Trump met with a variety to right-wing pastors in the Oval Office, where the group laid hands upon him and were led in prayer by pastor Rodney Howard-Browne.

Howard-Browne, a pioneer of the Holy Laughter movement, posted a video late last week in which he explained that he had been moved to pray over Trump because he is privy to secret information about a “planned attack on our president.”

Uh huh.

“There is a planned attack on our president,” he said, “and that’s all I can tell you about right now; I know what I’m talking about, I’ve spoken to high-ranking people in the government and this is being planned by people that hate God, hate America, hate our president and we have to stop this, in Jesus name.”

Yes, yes. It’s a terribly privy, and of course, no one actually knows a damn thing except you. I imagine if “high-ranking” people in government knew anything about an actual plot of any kind, they would simply deal with it. Of course, given what ‘government’ has been reduced to these days, I suppose there would be much flapping of arms and denials, while no one did anything.

People that hate “god.” No. Again, let’s be god specific, please. The planet is littered with gods. So, people that hate Jehovah. Bad news, Rodney – the only people who might hate Jehovah are those who believe in it. People like myself, atheists, we know your psychopathic figment is simply that, a work of imagination. You don’t hate that which is not real. (And no, please do not make asinine comments about ‘hating’ fictional characters. That’s not genuine hate, it’s more of a sport.) People that hate America. Well, I can’t say I’m fond of your version of it, which is a fucking nightmare for all decent peoples. Hate our president. What president? We don’t have one at the moment. We have an engorged, malignant narcissist of an idiot sitting in the white house, weaving a web of fascism and nonsense, manufacturing hate by the truckload. I would love to go back to not caring one whit about Donny Trump, and being only marginally aware of him, if at all.

Howard-Browne stated that he is going to have the photo of the group praying over Trump posted in the prayer room at his church where, 24 hours a day, there will be a prayer warrior stationed “just for the purpose of praying over our president, that God would protect him, that the plan of the wicked would be cut off … that if the enemy digs a ditch [for the president], that he will fall into himself.”

Pray all you want. Indulge in hysterical laughter. Who the fuck cares? It won’t do a damn thing. Jehovah doing something about wicked people, right. Seems to me you’re flourishing just fine.

“Some of you might not understand that, you might think we’re crazy, but I tell you, if you knew what I knew, then you’d understand the urgency of the hour,” he said.

Right. There’s always some “urgency of the hour” with you people. You’ve been waiting on your big one for a couple thousand years now. Pardon my yawn. I don’t know what you supposedly have under your hat, but I don’t need to know, either. It’s all emptiness, whipping people up into a nonsense froth of fear, so you can shake their pockets out, and they’ll be grateful for it. Unfortunately, I don’t think you have the defense of insanity, all you assholes are greedy, cold, and calculating to the last penny. Fear is an easy business, easy as sex. They both sell.

“There is a fight on for the soul of the republic and God had raised President Donald Trump to be the trumpet that is going to sound in this hour …

The republic doesn’t have a soul. Neither does anything else. Trump as a Trumpet? :laughs: Out here in reality, all we’re getting is a stream of broken tweeting.

There are many traps being set all the time and already the Lord has averted many things just in the short time that he’s been in office. Let’s pray for him like never before. Maybe you didn’t vote for him, I don’t care; if you want to live a peaceful life, then pray.”

If I thought it would help, I’d pray to all the gods to have Donny drop dead in a timely manner, and we might possibly work our way back to that peace business. If any gods read this, and want to strike a deal, you know where I live.

Full article and video at Right Wing Watch.

Sunday Facepalm.

Healthcare? Who needs it, anyway? Jim Garlow thinks he has a most cunning plan – tax people, hand the money to churches, and they will do the healthcare! See, all taken care of, no problems.

According to Garlow, any government healthcare program is “doomed to fail” because the Constitution lists the “enumerated powers of what the government is allowed to do and can do, and one of them is not healthcare.” Instead, Garlow argued, the government ought to defer to the church on this issue because God “has already designed a format” for properly providing healthcare to a nation.

The “format” for healthcare that Garlow proposed has three tiers: the “government of personal responsibility, government of the family, and government of the church,” notably excluding “the civil government,” which he said has no role in providing healthcare.

Personal responsibility: not a government. Family: not a government. Church: not a government. The health of citizens is something every right thinking government tackles, because only idiots think that having citizens in poor health is a dandy idea.

“First of all,” Garlow argued, healthcare is “my own personal responsibility: I have to make decisions for my health. If I am not exercising properly, this is a terrible confession to make, if I am not properly exercising right now like I should, then I have to get that corrected it or I will pay a high price for it.”

Sure, we all have to try and do sensible things, but whether or not we do those sensible things, we should still have the right of healthcare. As much as idiots like yourself love to think that every little thing can be handled by exercise and diet, that’s not so. You can be the most conscientious person on the planet and still be slammed with any number of diseases. Then there are accidents. All the diets in the world won’t fix a broken back, or any other broken bits. Exercise and diet don’t confer immunity, and they don’t make you unbreakable. A lot of people will still have to deal with health issues in spite of doing all the healthy things – dropping all salt from your diet will certainly help on the high blood pressure front, but it won’t magically make it go away. Some people never exercise a day in their life and still live half of forever, and healthily and happily so. Other people can exercise every single day of their lives and still get nailed by one health problem after another. Some people can only take exercise if it’s a certain kind, and well regulated for their health concerns, such as people with asthma. And so on. It’s not a matter of “easy peasy, do this, and you’ll be fine.”

The next safety net should be the “family unit,” Garlow reasoned, because “I can take care of my children much better than Donald Trump can. He’s a good man, but he can’t take care of my kids.”

Fuck you and your “family unit”. You don’t think I’m a “family unit” because I don’t have children. You don’t think of queer people as a “family unit” whether they have children or not. And so on. Trump is not a good person, in any sense. This isn’t about someone waltzing in and doing a spot of babysitting, you dimwitted arsepimple. Lots of people, in spite of working their asses off, are stuck in a poverty loop, which requires correction from the ground up. That doesn’t get better because assholes like you want to sermonize about how they aren’t working hard enough. People should not have to deal with high rates of crime. People should not have to worry about every idiot in the country walking about waving guns. People should not have to deal with food deserts. People should be able to access and afford healthy foods. People should have the time to cook it. People should have the right to a good education for all. People should have a right to comprehensive healthcare.

The final resource for those in need of healthcare, Garlow suggested, ought to be the church because Christians are already commanded to care for the poor and the widows and the orphans: “If the church were freed up from the encroachment and the severe over-regulation in our culture and the severe over-taxation of our culture, the church could resume what it did very successfully” throughout history.

Really. Gosh, I don’t see armies of christians out in the streets, ministering to widows, orphans, or anyone else. Funny thing about healthcare, that comes with requirements. Being an asshole christian does not enable you to provide healthcare of any kind. “Encroachment and severe over regulation”? Of what fucking kind? Severe over taxation? :Snort: Churches are already tax exempt. That’s not even taxation, you dipshit, and you’re the one proposing taxing the populace at large so you can fill your fucking coffers even more. I note you don’t specify which churches. That one ought to lead to internecine fighting for the next several decades.

Garlow insisted that “the best medical care and welfare benefits can be done by the church” and should be funded through a “once every three years, ten-percent taxation on people” that would allocate money to “the faith communities.” According to Garlow, allowing the church to provide healthcare would “get rid of the freeloaders that abuse welfare.”

Ah. So you admit this isn’t about healthcare at all. You just don’t want any social safety nets for anyone, unless such things are in the hands of parsimonious christians with judgments trembling on their pursed lips.

In the anticipation that some might object to his unconstitutional conflation of church and state, Garlow insisted that his plan actually puts the church and state “in their proper lanes.”

The “church” can stay in it’s pitted backroad, where it can continue to be an obstacle to all progress, while it’s left behind by everything in the “proper lanes”.

Via RWW.

A Downward Nerd-Driven Death Spiral, Alassie!

Lassie (CBS) 1954 – 1974 Shown: Jon Provost (as Timmy Martin, 1958-1964), Lassie the Dog.

In a fit of nerdiness, I must point out that in the photo, that is not Lassie the Dog, that’s Pal playing Lassie. All the ‘Lassies’ were played by male dogs, all of them Pal’s descendants. Over at that stew of conservative, christian nuttery, Barbwire, one Dr. Michael Brown opines over the state of television. It’s quite clear that Mr. Brown watches entirely too much television. It never seems to dawn on these glorifiers of a non-existent past that watching television is a choice, you don’t have to watch.

He lists one television show after another, mourning how great they were. No one ever thought Leave It To Beaver was corny back in the day, oh no! Because of course, we all know that yes, all housewives did indeed clean and cook in a dress, heels, perfectly done make-up, and pearls. No one ever joked about that, no. The Andy Griffith show was a perfect reflection of Southern cops. Good thing Mayberry didn’t have any black people. Lucy and Ricky slept in separate beds, which was right and proper! And on and on it goes. In the end, the whine is simply a shill for his book. He does mention a different article though, which centers around The Game of Thrones. We’ll get to that in a bit. What did make me snort tea laughing was this particular comment:

Where are the CENSORS of the 1950’s and 1960’s who would not have permitted such filth and violence to be aired on TV, especially during PRIME TIME???? Even the famous LAW AND ORDER programs have become progressively vulgar and violent over the course of their tenure, and they are not the only TV programs to undergo such anti-societal changes!!!! Again, WHERE ARE THOSE CENSORS THAT WE NEED TO CLEAN UP THE FILTH AND VIOLENCE ON TV, RADIO, THE MUSIC INDUSTRY, AND VIDEO GAMES??????????

Goodness, there’s enough melodrama there for Game of Thrones! This is no longer the age of Comstock, thankfully, and nasty personifications of sourness no longer get to rule over all. Societies change over time. That’s called progress. There isn’t anything new, there just isn’t one tabu after another in regard to talking about something. Or singing about it. Or acting it. There’s a great deal of naughtiness in the works of Shakespeare, all different kinds. Of course, it helps to have a functioning brain to get all that naughtiness. There’s always been naughtiness. Pursing your lips and pretending it doesn’t exist doesn’t get you anywhere, you know.

Moving on to Game of Thrones, the naughtiest of them all! After watching a full six seasons of the show, one Matthew Walther came to the conclusion that Game of Thrones is bad. Very bad. That it took six years for him to figure this out says quite a bit about Mr. Walther. I can’t make any judgments about it; I heard early on about the high amounts of rape in the books, and decided this wasn’t for me. It’s very difficult for me to read such scenes, and I certainly can’t do that on a repeat loop. Nor can I watch it, so I have not read the books or seen the show. In his fervor of complaint, Mr. Walther swallowed a couple of thesauruses doused in deep purple ink.

I used to watch Game of Thrones. Then I realized it was endangering my immortal soul.

You don’t have an immortal soul, dude. Even if you did, I’d expect you’ll have to work off that six years you spent reveling in the show. After all, Jehovah really isn’t the forgiving sort, in spite of all the PR attempts.

Game of Thrones is unquestionably the most acclaimed and beloved show on television. But HBO’s hit fantasy series, which returns for a seventh season this Sunday, is not a drama for adults. It’s not even a soap opera. It is ultra-violent wizard porn — and boring ultra-violent wizard porn at that. Two decades ago, watching it would have gotten you shoved into a locker.

Ooooh, boring ultra-violent wizard porn. Quick question, Matt: if it was so damn boring, why did you watch it for six years? 20 years ago would have been 1997, and no, I don’t think anyone would have been shoved in a locker over watching Game of Thrones. I expect it would have been right popular then, too, just like Tolkien has been popular, Dungeons & Dragons has been popular, and Warhammer has been popular.

Popular culture in the English-speaking world is in the grips of a downward nerd-driven death spiral. Outside of the art-house theaters of our major cities it is almost impossible to find more than one semi-decent film a month that is not an adaptation of some decades-old picture book franchise about men in rubber costumes punching each other.

A “picture book franchise.” Hee. Oh, you can’t manage to say comic book. Or graphic novel. Oh, and they aren’t rubber suits, dude. That would be something quite different. It’s lycra, and lots of people wear the stuff. Besides, it allows us to check out all those finely honed bodies. What’s the point of a world-class arse if it can’t be seen? The punching does get tiring, though. So, it’s impossible to find more than one semi-decent film a month? Hmmm. Glancing over Netflix, I have to disagree. Lots and lots of good stuff that isn’t comic-book based. As for what comprises ‘decent’, well, we’d need to define that word first. There’s always plenty of crappy christian flicks being churned out of one mill or another. Watch those.

The average video game player is more than 30 years old. The only book that most Americans between the ages of 23 and 40 seem to have read whose title does not begin with some variation of “Harry Potter and the” is a fable about talking animals that they were assigned in middle school. Things are bad.

Apparently you can’t bring yourself to type Animal Farm by George Orwell. It’s much more than a fable, you flaming idiot. Obviously, your schooling didn’t do much good. Oh, the utter horror of 30 year olds playing games. I have news for you, Matt, people of all ages love games, video and otherwise. Humans need to play, we are all much better people for having play time. It’s not just for kids. I’ve read the Potter books. I’ve read much more than that. Here’s a tiny slice of the 2,000something books in my house:

How many books do you own, Matt? And how many of them have you read? What’s your library checkout rate? You don’t seem to be nearly as interested in books as you are in movies and television. From where I sit, you don’t get to moan about the reading habits of others without disclosing your own.

There is a deeper sense in which the old problems that were the hallmark of realist fiction and drama — the old stand-bys of morals, manners, marriage, and money — are simply not interesting to people who are not emotionally mature enough to engage with them.

The old stand-bys are still very much with us, you fuckwitted pontificator. I expect there’s plenty of all that stuff in Game of Thrones. Old movies are still popular, y’know. And escapism was every bit as prevalent then as now. People need that, too. Most people have the sense to know that life is not as neat as any movie or television show. We learn early on that stuff isn’t real. Most of us learn that anyway.

We really are, emotionally speaking, a nation of teenagers — albeit horny ones with generous allowances.

Hahahahahaha. Oh my. Speak for yourself, cupcake. My teen years are long behind me, and good riddance to them.

But the real problem with Game of Thrones is not that it is, like most American popular culture these days, fundamentally adolescent. It is that it is obscene. It is not just bad art; it is art that is bad and bad for you.

I had this realization sometime last year. My wife had gone to bed, and I was sitting up having just finished the penultimate episode of the show’s sixth season on my laptop. Then it occurred to me.

Ah yes, the meat of it all – the great revelation, after six years! If you’re a representative example of what Jehovah has to work with, no wonder it never gets anything done. Everyone ready? Here it is:

My goodness. I’ve just spent an hour watching to see if a guy who raped a teenage girl at bow-and-arrow point is going to be eaten alive by the animals he has spent the last few seasons subjecting to forms of cruelty that make Michael Vick look like a PETA ambassador or beaten to death in the freezing cold by his victim’s half-brother. Thank goodness the guy who set his terminally ill daughter on fire in a pyromantic oblation to a heathen god at the behest of a witch who never seems to wear any clothes is not around to prevent justice from being carried out here — the woman whose size makes her the frequent butt of bestiality-related jokes killed him just in time! Lucky that she has a wealthy and well-connected benefactor in a one-armed knight whose hobbies from childhood on have included killing people and sleeping with his queen sister — including in a church right next to the corpse of one of their unacknowledged sons — to whom we were first introduced when he pushed the little brother of the above-mentioned rape victim out of a window to conceal his incest from her drunken prostitute-addicted domestic-abuser husband! Almighty God has made me in His own image and endowed me with faculties of reason and sense perception and given me free will so that I can tune in next week to see whether the unidextrous dueling champ’s royal sister sets her daughter-in-law and the rest of her extended family on fire or just a bunch of priests. Hallelujah!

You certainly are dim, Matt. So, let’s see: rape, cruelty to animals, sacrifices to a god, nakedness, filthy rich people, incest, drunks, other assorted addicts, prostitutes, and abusive husbands. Got it. Which ones of those are not present and rife in current societies, Matt? Those are all part and parcel of what might be termed the human condition. And no, you don’t have to watch it, or read it, if you don’t want to do so. Glad you finally got that one figured the fuck out. Took long enough. Bet it won’t be long before you’re being tormented by your desire to find out what the heck happens in the 7th season.

What does it say about our culture and the state of the souls of millions who participate in it that anyone could find any of this even mildly diverting, much less praise it as a triumph of man’s creative energies and subject it to endless hours of analysis and speculation?

You found it entertaining for SIX YEARS. You are spending many words on it now. Perhaps you should turn your attention inward.

Half a century ago, when our absurdly generous obscenity laws were still occasionally enforced, a program like this could not have been conceived, much less produced at great expense and broadcast.

That would have been 1967, and you are so full of shit, Matt. Yes, it could have been conceived and produced, and likely would have been, and people would have been deliciously scandalised, like they are now, and enjoyed it thoroughly. Just because you couldn’t be quite so explicit in years past, you could certainly imply whatever you liked, and there was a hell of a lot of implication going on. In a famous film, M, starring Peter Lorre, the murders of the children aren’t dwelt upon, but the movie is horrifying nonetheless. There are distinct parallels between the criminal underworld and the cops, too. There’s a tremendous amount of nasty in that film, and strikes all too true to actual life. That was in 1931. The 1960s saw some of the most lurid films ever in the horror genre. You also seem to know absolutely nothing about the actual history of royalty, and their habit of inbreeding. Are you sure you had any schooling?

One of the most persistent liberal myths is that art has no moral content, that reading or watching or listening to something can never be in itself evil.

Oh for fuck’s sake. That’s a myth you made up, Matt. There’s no such thing. I’m an artist. Everything we do is dependent on the subjective perceptions and gaze of others. A great deal of art speaks to morality or issues, and has done throughout the ages. That doesn’t mean all of it does. Sometimes, it’s just something pretty or interesting.

You can only watch so many decapitations and eye-gouges and rapes and brother-on-sister grope fests before you either give up on the wretched proceedings in disgust or decide to pretend that “Lol, nothing matters” and it’s not worth having feelings anyway. Not exactly, in the latter, case a resounding victory for the human spirit.

Well, it did take you six fucking years. Doesn’t say much for your intellect or your spirit.

Game of Thrones reminds us that boredom and despair are, theologically speaking, synonyms.

No, you flaming dipshit, no. Boredom and despair are not synonyms, and have very different meanings, theologically speaking or not.

Both the messes: Alassie! and Matt Walther Is An Idiot.

The Pinnacle of the Human Experience.

Dave Daubenmire has a recent column up, where he tries for “hey, look, I’m a reasonable guy” instead of his usual rant at the top of his voice idiocy. There’s still plenty of idiocy, interspersed in between attempts to establish his credibility as a feminist, but only a proper one, y’know. I’m going to skip all that, and the bit where he finds it necessary to try and illustrate empathy by how he treats his aging dog. This is important, because while Dave has never been a dog, he can feel for one. Just like Dave has never been a woman (something he takes great pains to emphasise), he can certainly feel for them. By golly, Dave is even married to a woman! And it is pointed out, more than once, that his wife is a genuine, born that way woman. Now, with all that out of the way…

[Read more…]

America On Its Baby Hobby Horse.

Lance Wallnau is at it again. Does the man ever shut up? This time, he has the explanation for all that Russia stuff, and America is being too whiny, and sucking its thumb too much.

“Do you know why Russia made it a point to interfere with our election?” Wallnau asked. “Because Putin was incensed that Hillary Clinton, during the Obama administration, had utilized organizations in the West to plant operations in Moscow for the pro-democracy movement because—get this—the Democrats want the LGBT social agenda to be embraced and Russia won’t get on board with it.”

“Putin is virulently anti-homosexual, same-sex marriage,” he continued. “The Democrat progressives targeted Putin for regime change, so we put money and organizations into Russia for pro-democracy and Putin did a massive crackdown on it, kicked them all out … and then went on the offensive and decided to let Hillary experience what it’s like to have your political system meddled with by a foreign power.”

This business of assigning all these amazing actions to one woman is getting past tiring. I suppose it’s just beyond all reason to think that gay people in Russia might have some passing interest in having full human rights, and other little things, like not being murdered. Yes, Putin is about as homophobic as one can get, but he’s one person. He is not all of Russia, and he certainly does not speak for every person in Russia. Naturally, this has jack shit to do with anything. Trump is convenient puppet, a moron who is easily influenced. Anyone who was looking for an idiot puppet would have chosen him, he has no capacity when it comes to thinking for himself. The man is a dictator’s wet dream, as far as puppets go.

“America has to get off its little baby hobby horse here, sucking its thumb, being all offended,” Wallnau said, “because we did it to [Putin] and that’s why he did it to us. So America is guilty of this stuff too.”

Oooh, well that’s telling America. You wouldn’t be calling your listeners snowflakes, would you?

Via Right Wing Watch, there’s video.

So That’s Why Prayer Doesn’t Work.

Once again, noise is being made about prayer. The right kind of prayer, prayed by the right kind of christians.

Ralph Drollinger, the minister who leads regular prayer and Bible study meetings with members of President Trump’s cabinet and members of Congress, says in his written Bible study guide for this month, “Do not be deceived by syncretistic, ‘prayer breakfasts:’ God only hears the prayers of leaders and citizens who are upright, who live righteously through faith in Jesus Christ.”

Drollinger’s claim is reminiscent of a notorious 1980 declaration by the then-head of the Southern Baptist Convention Bailey Smith, who told a Religious Right political gathering that it was “interesting” to him that political gatherings would “have a Protestant to pray and a Catholic to pray and then you have a Jew to pray.” Added Smith, “With all due respect to those dear people, my friend, God almighty does not hear the prayer of a Jew. For how in the world can God hear the prayer of a man who says that Jesus Christ is not the true Messiah?”

I remember that nonsense from 1980, because as the statement spread, Reagan was expected to make an impromptu ruling on it, by issuing his opinion on whether or not prayers by Jews were heard by Jehovah. Ronnie went with yes, they were heard.

Getting back to Drollinger’s current statement:

Scripture is clear; those who are at enmity with Him—who passively or actively reject the Son of God—their prayers are worthless and go unheard. And the State suffers for want of His blessing. The righteous leader is a man of potent prayer.

Obviously, there aren’t many christians who are righteous enough, because there’s zero evidence of any kind that prayer works. Of course, I’m sure it would help if the entity you directed your prayers to existed.

CBN reported in April that Drollinger started working during the transition to set up White House Bible studies, noting that “sponsors include Vice President Pence; Secretaries Betsy DeVos, Ben Carson, Sonny Perdue, Rick Perry, Tom Price and Jeff Sessions; EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt and CIA Director Mike Pompeo.” Drollinger’s most recent Bible study guide lists more than 50 members of Congress as sponsors, along with Oklahoma Governor Mary Fallin and Arkansas Lieutenant Governor Tim Griffin.

I suppose it’s good to know who the seriously venomous ones are, but this is hardly news. It does show just how deep the infection runs, and how far we are on the road to utter ruin.

Drollinger’s comments about prayer were part of a discussion of separation of church and state. He says that while the Bible supports institutional separation—no state Church—it does not support “influential” separation. This month’s Bible study is all about the church’s obligation to develop righteous governmental leaders. He is dismissive of Christian groups that focus on lobbying for specific policies, rather than winning politicians’ souls or replacing them with people who are “strong in Christ Public Servants.”

And, he writes, public officials have a special obligation to make sure the nation has “God-fearing righteous judges,” not ones who support abortion or “make up rights for the unrighteous”:

It is only through righteous lawmakers and law enforcers that a society can have any semblance of justice.  Justice stems from righteous, God-fearing individuals who are grown into such by the discipleship priorities of the Church in a composite nation of co-abiding Institutions of Church and State.

There we have it. We must not have judges who abide by the law, no. We must have asshole christians who assume they have the right to rule over everyone else. What if someone’s god is Odin? How about Isis? Or Hekate? Or Tiamat? Or, or, or. All much older gods than Jehovah, and going by the stories, considerably more powerful. Do we get to have an all gods cage match?

Once a righteous person is in power, he says, they have the obligation to hire only righteous employees, and not to “compromise biblical absolutes in his policies or interactions with others.”

And to place all others into convenient slavery, I’d bet.

This past April, Brendan O’Connor at Fusion published an in-depth look at Drollinger and his Capitol Ministries. O’Connor reported that Drollinger had proclaimed Catholicism to be “the world’s largest false religion” and “that female legislators who continue working after having children are sinners, and that homosexuality is an ‘abomination.’” A bit more:

He has also written that social welfare programs are un-Christian. “It is safe to say that God is a Capitalist,” Drollinger once wrote, “not a Communist.” In a January radio interview, Drollinger praised then-senator Jeff Sessions, who “hungers and thirsts for the Scripture,” for his performance during his confirmation hearing, when he provided a Biblical justification for his draconian views on immigration. “I’ve had the distinct honor of teaching him on this subject, and many others,” Drollinger said. “There’s nothing more exciting, when you’re a Bible teacher, to see one of the guys you’re working with—to see him or her articulate something you’ve taught them when they’re under the gun.” …

Drollinger also argues that climate change is impossible because God promised after The Flood never to do anything like that again. Drollinger preaches against “radical environmentalism” and that to believe that human activity could have devastating impact on the environment is not just mistaken, but the result of godless pride: “To think that man can alter the earth’s ecosystem—when God remains omniscient, omnipresent and omnipotent in the current affairs of mankind—is to more than subtly espouse an ultra-hubristic, secular worldview relative to the supremacy and importance of man,” Drollinger wrote recently. “It follows that we can all rest assured and wholly rely on God’s aforementioned promises pertaining to His ability and willingness to sustain our world’s ecosystem.”

No, that’s not what Jehovah promised. He promised to not have a temper tantrum and kill off most the world’s population by flood. Naturally, that didn’t stop him drowning mass amounts of people, you just need to flip right into Exodus for that one. That “promise” didn’t have jack shit to do with climate in any way, shape, or form, and also ignores that Jehovah’s “promises” aren’t worth spit in a storm. What happened to that bit about “being good stewards of the earth”? As for altering the various ecosystems on the earth, yes, we’ve been busy doing that since we showed up and started doing all the smart ape stuff. Right now, my state is suffering a severe drought. You’d have to be damn stupid to not notice such things, and how radical and rapid such changes have been. Now, it likely won’t be all that long before Drollinger drops dead, so he won’t be here to see the very worst effects of climate change. What we are seeing now is already very bad, but it’s nothing compared to what it will be in a comparatively short time span. So, there’s zero thought towards future generations, in spite of all that supposed hatred of abortion. Once again, that points to the truth of that matter: it is never about future generations, it is never about children, real or potential. It’s about stomping all over women. Christians just can’t stand the idea of women not being firmly under a thumb.

Make no mistake here: it is righteousness that exalts a nation! Therefore the priority of evangelism is the key to a great nation more so than anything else! You need to get this through your head my friends: Evangelism is the germination of righteousness! We need today to convert Public Servants who are lost without Christ!

Oh, I’m making no mistake. I recognize assholes with a vast need for power so they can hurt others. It’s a pity and a shame there are so many of them in what passes for government.

The complete article is at Right Wing Watch, and it’s damn depressing as well as infuriating.

“Trump’s crackdown on satanic pedophile and child sacrifice cults…”

Sacrifice of Isaac, Caravaggio.

Mark Taylor is a former firefighter who styles himself a prophet. I had not heard of him before today, but that’s not surprising as self-styled prophets are popping out of the woodwork everywhere these days. I get the feeling that Mr. Taylor is attempting to rival Alex Jones.

“Divine justice is being poured out right now,” Taylor said. “3,000 elite pedophiles have been arrested since the inauguration, but that’s not a whole lot of common knowledge, people don’t understand that because they’ve had a 100 percent media blackout on it.”

Oh yes, a media blackout, but you know all about it! That’s how these things work when you just dream them up. I’m getting pretty damn tired of all this “divine justice” which is conveniently invisible, with no discernible effect on our particular plane of reality. If that all mighty Jehovah is real and hanging about someplace, let him show hisself already.

Taylor said that thousands of well-known, high-ranking figures have been arrested in recent months as part of Trump’s crackdown on satanic pedophile and child sacrifice cults, but we are not hearing anything about it because Trump is keeping it all under wraps.

Ah. I’d think that if well-known, high-ranking people went suddenly missing in large numbers, someone would notice. There would, at the very least, be rampant speculation.

“The Clintons are going to go down, Obama is going to go down, they’re all going to go down,” Taylor said. “Time is up for those who are corrupt … God is very serious when He says He is going to clean house. Everybody keeps asking, ‘When is it going to start, when is it going to start?’

This body is not asking that at all. Corruption. That happens to be a frequently used category on Affinity, always used whenever there’s a post about the Tiny Tyrant and/or his hench ants, the rethuglicans and the other filthy rich. Y’know, those financially elite people. It’s of interest to me how on the conservative side, elite has been twisted about to mean knowledgeable/educated for the most part. The decades long move towards obscurantism has gathered great speed, and conservatives of all stripes are doing whatever they can to make education not only a very bad thing, but to strip most peoples’ ability to obtain any. Trump is held up by idiots everywhere as non-elite, using their very own definition. And, in the sense of dumber than dirt, they are correct. In the actual sense, of course, they are wrong. Mr. Taylor seems to be yet another who is using elite incorrectly, and obviously derides anyone who has an education, and uses it, oh, to speak in full sentences which are coherent. Awful stuff like that.

It’s already started, it’s just they’re not saying anything. And the other thing you have to understand, with Trump being ten places ahead of everybody else, he’s not going to tip his hat as to what he’s doing.”

:Tries to not choke on tea: Goodness. The Tiny Tyrant is ten paces ahead of everyone else? Okay, I’m just going to be gobsmacked here. It seems to me that Trump has a very difficult time keeping pace with anyone else.

“You’re just going to wake up one morning and Hillary Clinton is going to be in jail,” he said, “[and] it will be a sign to the United States that that spirit called Jezebel has been locked up and the key thrown away.”

Oh for fuck’s sake. Can this tiring business not be dropped already? There’s no such spirit as Jezebel, and I’m getting pretty sick and fucking tired of women being blamed for every damn thing ever. Ms. Clinton won’t be jailed, she’s not hosting any spirits, and she’s not the most evil thing since Eve, either. What an idiot.

Via Right Wing Watch, where there’s video, if you’re feeling like you need to be mean to yourself.

The Puritan Dress Code.

Anne Hutchinson. Puritan dissident.

In 1676, Hannah Lyman was in trouble. She was among three dozen or so young women who had been summoned to court: They had flouted the laws of the colony of Connecticut by wearing silken hoods. Among these “overdressed” women, Lyman was, apparently, the most rebellious and strong-willed. She appeared in court wearing the very silk hood that she had been indicted for donning.

The judge was, predictably, not very happy. He accused her of “wearing silk in a flaunting manner, in an offensive way, not only before but when she stood presented” at court. She and the other young women were fined for their offensive sartorial choices.

It’s quite interesting, visualizing just how one would wear a silk hood in an offensive manner. This is obviously projection writ large, but many of the puritan sentiments are still with us, to a very deep degree. Consider how many people refer to something like silk sheets as terribly decadent, something only people of a very weak nature would indulge in, and so forth. We won’t even get into silk underwear. (Pardon, pardon, couldn’t help it.) To the puritans, silk spoke of degeneracy, a terrible flaw in one’s moral framework. All these centuries later, I can feel for Ms. Lyman, who probably just wanted to enjoy her silken hood.

The Massachusetts Bay Colony passed its first law limiting the excesses of dress in 1634, when it prohibited citizens from wearing “new fashions, or long hair, or anything of the like nature.” That meant no silver or gold hatbands, girdles, or belts, and no cloth woven with gold thread or lace. It was also forbidden to create clothes with more than two slashes in the sleeves (a style meant to reveal one’s rich and fancy undergarments). Anyone who wore such items would have to forfeit them if caught.

I can’t help but wonder just who got those “forfeited” clothes. Not that some higher up puritan would be able to wear them outside their own house, but I can imagine some scenes going on behind closed doors. Puritans were very serious about ornamentation of all kinds though, and that extended to things like christmas:

You’ll note in the above: “dressing in Fine Clothing”, with the stress of capital letters.

For decades the colony continued to refine these laws. In 1639, the colony instituted a stricter law against lace and forbade clothes with short sleeves. In the 1650s, the law became more class-conscious. Only those who had more than 200 pounds to their estates were allowed to wear gold and silver buttons and knee points, or great boots, silk hoods, or silk scarves. Exempt from the rule were magistrates and public officers, their wives and children, as well as militia officers or soldiers, and anyone else whose with advanced education or employment, or “whose estate have been considerable, though now decayed.” In 1679, the colony also started worrying about hair, since “there is manifest pride openly appearing among us by some women wearing borders of hair, and their cutting, curling, and immodest laying out of their hair.”

Oh my, how things never, ever change. The rich are different, because money allows them to be. It’s interesting to see the nod to decayed estates, there’s a bit of classism at its very finest. Naturally, those wealthy puritans had to have some way to distinguish themselves, one might say a way to flaunt their wealth. No point in having position and money if you can’t separate yourself from the puritan rabble. The hypocrisy of those who always make a claim to the highest of moral grounds is breathtakingly blatant.

Massachusetts and Connecticut were not the only colonies to pass such laws. In New Jersey, by 1670, it was illegal for a woman to “betray into matrimony any of His Majesty’s male subjects, by scents, paints, cosmetics, washes, artificial teeth, false hair, Spanish wool, iron stays, hoops, high-heeled shoes, or bolstered hips.” And if they did? The marriage would be “null and void.” Oh, and they would be punished exactly as if they had been convicted of witchcraft or sorcery.

Oh my, my, my. Betray into marriage. That’s pretty strong language, and it would be very nice if that sentiment was one that was long lost to the mists of time. Unfortunately, it isn’t at all lost, and it’s a frequent cry of complaint among MRAs. When it comes to personal ornamentation, women can never win. If we have the nerve to wander about sans cosmetics, there are complaints. If we use cosmetics, there are complaints. And there are never ending complaints about dress, of course. “Too sexy!” “Too distracting!” “Slutty!” “Drab.” “Uninteresting.” “Slovenly.” And so on and on and on it goes. Anyroad, looking at the above list, all I can say is I’m beyond grateful I didn’t live in an age where iron stays were obligatory.

Atlas Obscura has the full run down on puritanical clothing codes.