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…]

Crushed By A Giant Bag of Drugs! Bad!

The Tiny Tyrant is talking again. Sad! Bad, too.

President Donald Trump said in an interview on Air Force One during the flight to France that his border wall with Mexico won’t just be solar powered, it’ll be transparent so that people don’t get crushed when drug dealers throw “large sacks of drugs” over the wall.

[…]

“One of the things you need with the wall is transparency,” said Trump. “You have to be able to see through it in other words, if you can’t see through that wall — so it could be a steel wall with openings, but you have to have openings because you have to see what’s on the other side.”

Why does the president believe you need to be able to see through the border wall? To avoid getting crushed by giant sacks of drugs being thrown in from Mexico, of course.

“As horrible as it sounds, when they throw the large sacks of drugs over, and if you have people on the other side of the wall, you don’t see them — they hit you on the head with 60 pounds of stuff? It’s over. As crazy as that sounds, you need transparency through that wall. But we have some incredible designs.”

I thought “the wall” was supposed to stop all those bad hombres with the evil weed, yeah? Doesn’t seem to be much point, if you can just walk up and heave big bags of drugs capable of crushing someone over the side. Will there be lines of trebuchets, perhaps? What’s to stop people being heaved over the great transparency?

Apparently, some of the details are that the wall will be 55 feet tall. You have to have one hell of an arm to be pitching gigantic bags of drugs over the side. Right.

You can see some choice responses here.

Kellyanne’s Flash Cards.

More like flash paper, really.

Senior White House adviser Kellyanne Conway on Wednesday deployed two small flash cards to make the case that there has been no collusion between the Trump administration and Russia … “yet”.

Speaking to Fox News host Sean Hannity, Conway said she was using the cards “to help all the people at home” understand the significance of revelations that Donald Trump Jr agreed to meet a Russian lawyer, after being told the lawyer would provide damaging information about Hillary Clinton because the Russian government was supporting his father’s presidential campaign.

At the end of her interview with Hannity, Conway held up her first placard, which read: “conclusion, collusion”.

Conway crossed out the word collusion and explained: “What’s the conclusion? Collusion? No. We don’t have that yet.”

She then held up a second card, which read “Illusion, delusion”, and said: “I just thought we’d have some fun with words.”

I have fun with words all the time, words are wonderful. That said, I’m something of a stickler for using them correctly. Unfortunately, Ms. Conway doesn’t allow herself to be bothered by that overly much.

Defending the Trump administration, Conway told Hannity the media talks “more about Russia than America”.

The cards, she said, were like Sesame Street’s “Word of the Day”, a reference to the children’s TV show which features a segment in which Elmo and occasionally other muppets, such as the hapless Grover, explain the meaning of words such as vote, stumble and canteen.

I have Word Wednesday every week. What I do, and what Sesame Street does, is to provide nifty things like definitions of those words. That’s not at all what Ms. Conway was doing. She was attempting to switch one word for another in blatant propaganda style.

Conway later tweeted a link to an article about her segment and said: “Apologies to the humorless.”

I’m not humorless, Ms. Conway. I find often find you quite funny, but not in any way you meant.

But by Thursday morning, inevitably, her appearance had become a meme:

Scott Kerr: Kellyanne Conway did the worst version Bob Dylan’s “Subterranean Homesick Blues”

You can see additional responses at The Guardian.

“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.

No Worries, “God” Will Heal All Diseases.

Jehovah Drowns People For No Good Reason. Gustave Doré.

Gordon Klingenschmitt is having another rant, this time about Planned Parenthood, what else. If Planned Parenthood is killed off, well then Jehovah will be all happy, and heal all diseases. He uses a passage from Exodus for this reasoning:

15:26 And said, If thou wilt diligently hearken to the voice of the LORD thy God, and wilt do that which is right in his sight, and wilt give ear to his commandments, and keep all his statutes, I will put none of these diseases upon thee, which I have brought upon the Egyptians: for I am the LORD that healeth thee.

I’ve always had a particular loathing for the story of the Egyptians in Exodus, it’s a stark illustration of the psychopathic nature of Jehovah. When I was a child, I never could get past the “hardening of the heart” business. It was clear to me, even at a young age that this was a particularly nasty, sleazy cheat. As Steve Wells points out*:

So Moses rounded up all three million or so Israelites, their flocks, herds, cattle, unleavened bread, and all the silver, gold, and clothes that they could steal from the Egyptians and left town.  [See Exodus 12.34-38] And everything would have ended happily ever after, too, if God could have resisted the temptation to harden the Pharaoh’s heart a few more times. You see, the Pharaoh’s heart was just too damned soft to suit God. So he set about hardening it a bit more. (He had to harden it 8 times to pull off his last killing.) (14.4, 14.8, 14.17-18.)

Now, there is a bit more about medical care in the bible, which Gordon has conveniently neglected:

16:12 And Asa in the thirty and ninth year of his reign was diseased in his feet, until his disease was exceeding great: yet in his disease he sought not to the LORD, but to the physicians.

16:13 And Asa slept with his fathers, and died in the one and fortieth year of his reign.

See? Don’t go to doctors, ever! Doctors are awful, and you’ll die. You just need to pray, have faith, or touch the right religious leader’s hankie. There’s nothing at all about Planned Parenthood, or idiots who think terminating a pregnancy is the same as infanticide.

Part of Gordon’s little rant here:

“You know what the solution to America’s healthcare crisis is?” Klingenschmitt asked. “Obey the Ten Commandments, stop funding abortion, stop funding child killing and God will heal your diseases, America. The supernatural blessing of healing is available if we stop working with the demonic spirit of murder.”

Klingenschmitt proclaimed that if America were to repent for the sin of abortion, then “we would receive [God’s] healing and wouldn’t need to rely on socialist healthcare.”

The problem there, Gordon, is that I don’t believe in your psychopathic god, and I don’t care one whit about that evil creature, who is the obvious villain in every story. So, even if we were to pretend Jehovah existed, that would make me one of the Egyptians in his eyes, so I wouldn’t come in for that wondrous healing of all diseases. It would be lovely if you fucking idiots could figure out that not everyone in this mess of a country are christian, and that many of us have zero interest in becoming one.

*I receive no monies from Amazon.

Via Right Wing Watch.

Bodies! Naked Bodies! Quelle Horreur!

ESPN has been producing a body issue since 2009. I don’t care for sports, but it’s always nice looking at happy naked people, and the photography is spectacular, and all kinds of body types grace the issues. On the cover of this years issue is a woman who happens to be an amputee. There are no naughty bits on view, as that would be too much for the prudery of Americans. Apparently, some conservatives have just now figured this out, and are most outraged.

ESPN’s latest controversy has nothing to do with politics or sports performance. The sports network is now resorting to nudity for magazine sales and internet clicks to lead the world in entertainment. ESPN magazine’s “The Body Issue” presents 23 male and female athletes not only out of uniform but completely out of clothing. If your business is flagging, as ESPN’s is, just resort to the lowest common denominator.

Now resorting? They’ve been doing this 8 years. Where was your outrage eight years ago? Obviously, ESPN is not doing this to shore up flagging business.

Putting the anti-Trump and LGBT agendas aside for the time being, ESPN’s website is promoting the athletes-turned-exhibitionists in shocking athletic poses. Each is portrayed taking athletic stances or actions corresponding to their respective sport. Rear ends are completely exposed in several photos. Men and women hide their fronts, and women cover their breasts with their hands or arms. Very little is left to the imagination.

Oh my oh my. There is nothing in the least bit shocking about their poses. They are fantastic, and I give them all the credit in the world for pulling off what has to be a difficult shoot, often outdoors, in mid-athletics while having to keep the naughty bits hidden. All kudos to the photographers, too, for an incredible job. Goodness, butts! Whatever will we do, having been exposed to some rather magnificent arses? Me, I’ll enjoy them. Actually, a fair amount is left to the imagination, and I expect that’s more of a problem for you fuckwits.

ESPN.com posted a photo and cutline about the nudity. ESPNW is displaying stories and videos on some of the participating nudists.

Oh the drama! They aren’t nudists, you idiot. Are you a nudist because you take off your clothing to bathe, assuming you do so? Are you a nudist if you remove your clothing to make love to your partner, assuming you do? No. Taking your clothes off for a photo shoot doesn’t make anyone a nudist. I’m more of a nudist than any of the people featured over the last eight years, I often don’t bother dressing, especially if I’m going to be painting. It’s easier washing paint off skin than clothing. Even that doesn’t make me a nudist, though.

This isn’t ESPN magazine’s first body issue; it’s the ninth. It seems this crass outfit is intent on shocking people and distracting sports’ fans attention away actual sports. Now when families attend a sporting event, their children may remark about the athlete that actually has his clothes on.

Oh, how nice of you to notice. Now, now, don’t be projecting your shock all over the place, it isn’t polite. It doesn’t shock me in the slightest. I can appreciate bodies just fine. I hardly see how this directs peoples’ attention away from sports. It’s not as though most athletic uniforms are made for modesty. The children! Of course. Could it get more boring or stupid? So, a child might make a remark about an athlete with their clothing on. And?

I encourage all parents with children in the home to adjust their computer filters by adding ESPN.com and espn.com/espnw/ to their blocked lists to protect them from this.

ESPN postures itself as culturally enlightening, but the truth is this morally bankrupt media organization is contaminating our culture and taking it downward.

Hahahahahaha. Do fuck off. Not that I don’t have suspicions about copies of ESPN’s body issues being secreted someplace in your abode sir, most likely the lavatory. After all, you can’t get all properly outraged without a lengthy and minute examination of all those delicious bodies, right?

Link.

What Consequence?

UN Ambassador Nikki Haley on Face the Nation.

“I think that is what it is,” Ambassador Haley said. “President Trump still knows that they meddled, President Putin knows that they meddled, but he is never going to admit to it and that’s all that happened.”

Dickerson tried to pin down the Trump appointee on what consequences Russia will face.

“Not just Russia, any country needs to know that there are consequences when they get involved in our elections,” Haley claimed, without citing interference by any other country or listing consequences.

Right. So everyone knows Trump is a liar. Everyone knows Putin is a liar. “There are consequences!” Really? What consequences? We have an illegal idiot with delusions of grandeur sitting in the white house, who apparently, cannot be ousted, even though there are near countless legal reasons to do so. What has happened to Russia, outside of Trump wanting to hand Putin whatever the fuck he wants? Some consequence.

Full story and video here.

Sunday Facepalm.

In the coming days, 100 US Senators will be delivered an important package. But this delivery won’t be a simple note from one of their constituents. Within days, every single US Senator will be delivered Baby Hope, a twelve-week old baby, with a personal message from her to defund Planned Parenthood and redirect tax payer dollars to community health centers.

[…]

Here is the letter to every US Senator from Baby Hope:

Dear Senator,
My name is Baby Hope. I’m only 12 weeks old, but I want to live. Sadly, there is a high likelihood I will be killed by Planned Parenthood before I ever get a chance to be born. Even worse, Planned Parenthood, America’s largest abortion provider that kills 900 preborn babies like me each day, would get paid by American taxpayers to kill me.

However, you can stop Planned Parenthood from killing me and many others. Here’s how: Vote for a health care bill that will not subsidize abortion and will redirect abortion giant Planned Parenthood’s taxpayer funding to community health centers.

For my sake and hundreds like me, I beg you to refuse to fund abortion and Planned Parenthood in the health care bill.

Please protect me.

Sincerely,

Baby Hope

Dear anti-autonomy asshole christians,

It would be ever so nice if you all would get one tiny fact into your malnourished, underused brains: no federal or taxpayer monies go towards terminations. Please repeat that to yourselves as many times as necessary for it to penetrate those pea brains. Federal monies go to womens’ health, as in breast exams and other cancer prevention, among other things.

As for Baby Hope, please shove her where the sun don’t shine. What women do in regard to their own bodies is none of your business, and trying to remove one of the only sources of healthcare for women is not helping them. Nor are your “community health centers” or your “women’s clinics”. Your personal hatred of women is your business, of course, however, your thirst to see it translated into an increasing amount of women dead, along with a higher number of children born into dire circumstance needs to stop. Learn to mind your own damn business, and try something different, like looking after children who are bereft of care. There are plenty of them. There are also many children in this country who go without adequate food every day. That situation could use more attention. Women do not need you fucking assholes constantly attempting to control every aspect of their lives. You could always turn to advocating for comprehensive sexual education, accessible, affordable birth control, and more education for girls. Those are all proven methods in reducing abortions.

As always, since you find women being allowed full human rights and control over their own bodies so terribly distressing, I give you my constant suggestion: leave it up to that piece of shit god of yours. You’re the ones who think he’s so great and mighty and all that. Seems to me you must be pretty damn sure there’s no such god at all, else you’d be happy to put it all in his hands, no?

Via ChristianNewsWire.

DO NOT TOUCH.

SCREENGRAB.

Most of us learn early in life the delicious temptation of “Do Not Touch” and manage to get over not having license to touch every thing on the planet. Apparently, Mike Pence never got that particular lesson. He might have made an effort at a less obvious, furtive slide of the fingertips anywhere except under the note with “DO NOT TOUCH” on it. And here Pence thinks he’s the perfect model of morality in the christoverse. Tsk. For shame, Mikey.

The Guardian has the story, along with many of the reactions across Twitter.

God has raised up…a breaker anointing.

If anything is to be said for the nonsense to follow, it’s that it’s at least somewhat accurate. Not the “god” business, of course, but the extremely limited skill of the Tiny Tyrant.

“So, you know, North Korea, you’d better be on your toes because you’re up against a breaker anointing of God,” he said. “This isn’t about politics, this isn’t government as usual, this isn’t even militaristic, God has raised up…a breaker anointing. Anything that God opposes him against, he breaks up. He broke up the Republican Party…he broke up the Democratic Party, he broke up the news media. Everything that comes against him, he has a hammer against. So, I’m telling you, North Korea, you’d better stand down because you’re up against the breaker anointing of God.”

Does it really need to be pointed out, even to fundamentalist, conservative christians, that having only one tool that allows you smash, and nothing more, is not a good thing? Regardless of any “hammer”, it won’t stand up to nuclear weapons; nor will it stand against other nations coming to the conclusion that America no longer has any significant role to play on the world stage. Isolation is not the glory the Tiny Tyrant attempts to sell.

Bakker and Amedia then discussed the president’s volatile Twitter presence, which Bakker said was all part of the “gift of wisdom” that God had told him he gave Trump.

No matter how you slice it, Jehovah keeps winning the worst god ever dreamed up contest. The idiocy which keeps drooling out of Trump could not pass as wisdom under any definition. More than half the time, it barely reaches coherency.

Amedia offered that Trump tweets because he gets bored with nonconsequential things, part of his God-given gift of “discernment.”

Well, that’s, um, special. Pretty much all the Tiny Tyrant does tweet about is non-consequential crap, so I wouldn’t call that discernment, of any kind. For one thing, in order to be discerning, it certainly helps if you have knowledge of things first. We can definitely rule that one out.

“I believe he receives downloads that now he’s beginning to understand come from God,” Amedia said.

:Snort: Ah, it’s downloads now, is it? There’s always this terrible desperation on the part of fundamentalists to sound modern and relevant, and they never, ever get it right. That sort of thing will happen when you insist on believing in a god that would be too psychopathic and regressive for the stone age. If Donny’s receiving downloads, they’re coming in on a floppy disk in a worn out drive.

Right Wing Watch has the story, and video.

A Request For Horror Stories Leads To Love Stories.

Screenshot.

The Indiana Republican Party had the bright idea to set up their FB to ask constituents for their ACA horror stories, but it backfired most spectacularly. There was plenty of horror, but it was splattered all over those rethuglicans who though they were being so clever.

The Indiana Republican Party has requested that the state’s constituents share their “horror stories” with ObamaCare, the Indianapolis Star reported Tuesday.

“What’s your Obamacare horror story? Let us know,” the GOP party wrote in a Facebook post as it sought to collect negative stories about the Affordable Care Act, such as higher premiums or insurance companies leaving the market.

Many of the people respondents, however, flooded them with stories about how the healthcare law has positively affected their lives.

“My sister finally has access to affordable quality care and treatment for her diabetes,” one person wrote, according to the news outlet.

“My father’s small business was able to insure its employees for the first time ever. #thanksObama,” another said.

Another person claimed that “the only horror in the story is that Republicans might take it away.”

Rethugs should seriously give up on the trying to be clever business, it never works out. The Hill has the story.

In yet an even more embarrassing move by the GOP geniuses, they decided to tweet out what they thought were cutting remarks and questions to assorted democrats, asking them where their healthcare plan was. In this effort, they included the Clintons, neither of whom hold office at the moment. I would have thought that much hadn’t escaped them. Naturally, the Twitterati have been merciless, if more than a bit exasperated. Raw Story has the full story and assorted tweets.