What A Load of Shit.

Dozens of protesters have gathered outside a London cinema to protest against the cancellation of a screening of a film advocating therapy to "cure" people from being gay.

Dozens of protesters have gathered outside a London cinema to protest against the cancellation of a screening of a film advocating therapy to “cure” people from being gay.

This is a larger River of Shit than what’s been pouring from me the last two weeks.

The British anti-LGBTQ group Christian Concern is getting some press this week after a London theater cancelled a screening it helped organize for a new movie focusing on people “who are emerging out of homosexual lifestyles.” The movie, “Voices of the Silenced,” was promoted in an email this week by the Alliance for Therapeutic Choice, the parent group of the “reparative therapy” organization NARTH.

A 2016 trailer for the movie, produced by the UK group Core Issues Trust, compares those who advocate “ex-gay” therapy and their allies in other fields to enslaved Jewish people in the first century:

‘Voices of the Silenced’ remembers the Jews ripped from Jerusalem in AD 70 and brought to Rome to quarry stone and build the Colosseum. They were now the property of their masters. Filmed in seven countries and over 50 locations, our exploration compares the cultural captivity of the Jewish slaves in towns destroyed by the Vesuvius eruption in AD 79 with that faced by those silenced in the 21st century, people under an imposed state orthodoxy which reaffirms the ancient idea of pansexuality.

Oh, go fuck yourselves. Or someone else, then perhaps you could mind your own damn business. If someone wants to play at being hetero, there’s nothing stopping them, it’s not against the law, y’know. That does not cover up your blatant attempts at trying to squash all queer folk down so far you don’t have to think about them.

You can read the full story at RWW.

Anti-Clericalism in Medieval Persian Poetry.

Standford Lecture Handouts.

The above reads:

Better be a beggar than king, better practice vice

And perfidy than be a bigoted, pious puritan;

Better make love with many mistresses in the street

Than make piety and abstinence in public show.

– Amīr Khusraw Dihlavī (d. 725/1325)

I couldn’t agree more.

The dominant attitude of the anti-clerical rhetoric in Persian poetry is permeated by criticism of judges, lawyers, aesthetics, spiritual advisors, and authority figures of that nature. This is one of the reasons that makes this poetry still relevant. A lot of people today can’t read Milton, because anti-clericalism is no longer part of the normal vocabulary. In the West, we live mostly in a secular society, so the conflict between clerics and anti-clerics does not exist. But that is not the case in the Middle East at all, which makes this conflict very relevant.

Dr. Leonard Lewisohn is Senior Lecturer in Persian and Iran Heritage Foundation Fellow at the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies of the University of Exeter where he teaches Islamic Studies, Sufism, history of Iran, as well as courses on Persian texts and Persian poetry in translation. He specializes in translation of Persian Sufi poetic and prose texts.

This is fascinating, and I learned a great deal. The lecture is below, and the Stanford Lecture Handouts for Anti-Clericalism in Medieval Persian Poetry are here.

Via Medievalists.

Couriers of the Incremental Apostasy.

The Couriers of the Incremental Apostasy.

The Couriers of the Incremental Apostasy.

David Lane, anti-LGBTQ Christian-nation activist, and pro-Trumpist, was extremely upset over CNN’s new year’s coverage. I think there were people having a good time or something. He wrote a rather long email to supporters, most of detailing the horrible effects of that there reefer madness, which can be read here. At the bottom, there’s this bit:

America was seduced in the last half century, not by the Communists, but by Secularism. Unelected and unaccountable judges have nullified a once Biblically-based public education and culture. CNN is a co-conspirator to the mortal sin affecting America. As a result of secularists replacing a Biblically-based culture with Secularism, George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Robert E. Lee, et al., are no longer advanced as patriots, but decried as backward racists. Their stature is disparaged by fanatical anarchists, such as Black Lives Matter, who deal in the currency of brutality and dissension. Perversion and cultural deterioration are now abetted by spiritually antagonistic network executives and media elites.

Hmm. Everything I can find on Lane has him listed as an evangelical christian, so what’s mortal sin doing in there? That’s a distinctly catholic concept, I know, I heard it about it often enough growing up. At 60 years old now, I have racked up quite the list of mortal sins.

Oh, these people with their biblically-based bullshit. (Marcus has an interesting post up today about the replacement of theology with social Darwinism). Why do you never hear them talk about Jefferson’s happy desecration of the bible into something he felt was palatable? There was never a biblically-based culture here, but there was an attempt at that whole ‘freedom of religion’ business. That’s why there’s never been any official religion in America, unlike other countries which do have an official religion. Secularism was always the culture base here.

Let’s look at that list of people: Washington, Adams, Jefferson, and…Robert E. Lee? Excuse me? How did he get into the presidential lists? I guess you have to get in at least a sideways defense of slavery. Oh yes, that’s right, slavery is biblically justifiable.

The people who make up Black Lives Matter, and their allies, are not anarchists, and they aren’t the ones who are brutal, oppressive authoritarians all dressed up in storm trooper gear, with military hardware, you evil fucker. There’s absolutely nothing at all wrong with dissent. America is nothing but one whole long history of dissent. What about the ‘founding’ revolution? The fact that people were revolting (also known as dissent) seems to get skipped over, time and time again. Your “founding fathers”, those thieves and murderers, started out the colonies due to religious dissent, and those dissenting people almost immediately found themselves the subject of dissent by a slightly different flavour of religious people. And so on. Jesus Fucking Christ, this whole mess called ‘America’ is nothing but one long argument.

Perversion and cultural deterioration is in the eye of the beholder, Mr. Lane. From where I sit, people learning to be accepting of those who have always been with us, rather than carrying on a long tradition of bigotry, hate, and oppression, is a good thing. That’s progress. That’s being socially forward. That’s putting the civil in civilisation. Being inclusive is not the same as “spiritually antagonistic”, it’s recognising that not everyone on the planet believes as you do. But there’s little worse than that to you fanatics, is there? I am so damn tired of seeing the word elites tossed around as if it means something. You never ever stop working, for one second, to bring about your theocracy, where you get to be the ruling body, the ultimate judge, the elite. So it would be nice if you would at least shut the fuck up about that. Oh yes, and as to your “unelected” judges, yeah your pos judges, like Gorsuch weren’t elected either. Might want to have a care there, because if you advocate for elected judges only, things might not go your way. Actually, that might not be a bad idea.

Charisma News’s Steve Strang also jumped on the CNN=evil bandwagon, copying Lane’s nonsense about weed, and adding a bit:

There almost certainly won’t be any further consequences. The reason is that morally debased Time Warner—which owns CNN—and CNN president Jeff Zucker are couriers of incremental apostasy as they pump sensuality, self-indulgence and promiscuity into the nation as it falls into moral anarchy.

Apostasy can’t happen fast enough for me, to hell with this incremental business. So, let’s see if I have this one right: CNN is evil, but grab ’em by the pussy is perfectly moral and good. Got it. Oy. You can read the whole mess at RWW.

Speaking of CNN, Alex Jones is frothing at the mouth over them too, in a more specific way. He’s targeted one Brian Stelter as the face of all evil. Apparently, this CNN correspondent runs everything, and he’s going to ruin everything for everyone. I don’t have television, so I don’t watch CNN and don’t have a clue as to who this person is, or why he’s the sudden target of Jones’s ire. Okay, he’s a 32 year old media correspondent.

While discussing the controversy swirling around Michael Wolff’s new book “Fire and Fury” on his show today, Jones compared Wolff’s smile to Stelter’s and speculated that the two are somehow related. This sparked a bizarre rant against Stelter in which Jones told his viewers that Stelter “wants to control every aspect of your life because he knows he is a cowardly, degenerate sack of anti-human trash.”

Oh, similar smiles! I guess you don’t get better evidence of evil intent than that.

“He runs your kids, he runs the schools, he runs the banks—this guy. This spirit. This smiling, leering devil that thinks you can’t see what he is. He is your enemy, period, all the narcissistic devil-worshiping filth. I see you, enemy. I see you, enemy. Enemy! Enemy! You are my enemy and I swear total resistance to you with everything I’ve got. Disingenuous, fake, false, broke-back, twisted, a defiler, a betrayer, a back-stabber. A devil,” Jones said.

Jones continued, “You will pay. You think I don’t see your face, scum? You think I don’t see you, Stelter? I see you, you understand me? I know what you think of me and my family. I see you right back, you understand that? You understand that, Stelter?”

My, my. That’s a hyperbole overdose and a half. Since this seems to come down to faces, let’s have a look at them:

Screengrab.

Yeah, it’s not hard to decide which face I would gravitate towards, Mr. Jones, and it wouldn’t be yours. You can see the video and read the whole thing at RWW.

Just Say No, Minnesota.

A fine example of christian “logic”.

Michele Bachmann is slithering back into the political scene. Maybe. Just say no, people. Michele was on Jim Bakker’s glurge-fest last week, saying she was considering running for Franken’s vacant seat:

Bachmann said that she has “had people contact me and urge me to run for that Senate seat” and that she is asking God if doing so in His will for her.

Bachmann said that she would be willing to run in order to take godly principles into the Senate but is concerned that she will be unfairly attacked by Washington insiders because “the swamp is so toxic.”

Uh huh. None of this is new, and it’s just amazing how you can sit there and opine on the toxicity of that Washington swamp, given that your hero was supposed to have cleaned that all up. Guess that wasn’t one of the miraculous “accomplishments” of the Tiny Tyrant.

“I trust in a big God,” Bachmann said, asserting that she “was supposed to run for president” in 2012 in order to make the the repeal of Obamacare the central issue of the Republican platform. “I feel like I was wildly successful … I didn’t win, but I moved the debate. So I didn’t shed a tear when I left the contest because I felt like, you know, I fulfilled the calling that God gave me.”

A “big god”. Right. I guess everything has to have a ‘big’ appended to it now. I wish this bit of idiocy would die. All I can think about now is Honeycomb Cereal…

Honeycomb’s big…yeah yeah yeah!
It’s not small…no no no!
Honeycomb’s got…a big big bite!
Big big (taste/crunch) in a big big bite!

That almost works if you use ‘god’ instead of Honeycomb. Oh look, Michele thinks she was single-handedly responsible for  the republican upset over healthcare! My my, some people might think that to be a tad arrogant. You didn’t move a thing, Michele. All anyone wanted was for you to shut the fuck up. Pretty sure people still want that.

“So the question is am I being called to do this now?” she added. “I don’t know.”

You don’t know? How is that possible? Your BIG god doesn’t have a BIG answer for you? Lazy slacker god. Or perhaps you aren’t praying enough, Michele. Go away and pray. Please.

Bakker eventually piped in to express his concern about the nasty nature of politics today, saying that “right now, they want to kill the president of the United States and if they could put a contract [out on Donald Trump]—which they probably already have—they would do so.”

Oh FFS, get off this theme already, Jim. It’s dead. Over. Gone. The stupid is too much to bear. You assign every possible evil to this nefarious ‘they’, ‘they’ get away with everything, but y’know, here in gun central, no one can get a contract going. Uh huh. At some point, you need to make an effort to be somewhat coherent, else you’ll even start losing the seriously gullible.

There’s video at RWW.

2017: Rise of the Religious Reich.

President Trump hosts conservative leaders at the White House on September 25, 2017 (Photo: WhiteHouse.gov)

Right Wing Watch has a comprehensive timeline of the ascension of the religious reich into the current regime, and it’s a very ugly look at the coming Theocalypse, if these people get their way, which so far, they are. We do not need to be all concerned over the rise of AI. We do need to be concerned with the rise of the religious reich, and we need to be concerned with the rise of stupid.

Donald Trump wasn’t exactly the dream candidate of the Religious Right. Throughout the Republican primary contest, many in the social conservative movement urged voters to pick what one group of anti-choice activists called “anyone but Donald Trump.”

But once it became clear that Trump was going to win the GOP nomination, he started aggressively courting the evangelical Right, including holding a massive meeting for Religious Right leaders in New York that many cite as a turning point for their support. On the day of that meeting, Trump announced the formation of an evangelical advisory board that included Religious Right leaders including James Dobson and Michele Bachmann. Trump’s selection of Mike Pence as his running mate sealed the deal for many on the Religious Right. Trump’s “amen corner” of prosperity gospel preachers and domininionists eventually expanded to include the large share of Religious Right leaders, who offered various theological explanations for their embrace of a morally flawed candidate.

Once he was elected—with 80 percent of the white evangelical vote—Trump kept his evangelical advisory board intact and promised to give it unprecedented access to the White House. He stacked his Cabinet with friends of the Religious Right, including Tom Price at Health and Human Services, Betsy DeVos at Education and Ben Carson at Housing and Urban Development. Far-right pastor Ralph Drollingerworked with Trump’s transition team to set up weekly Bible studies for Trump’s Cabinet members. The conservative Heritage Foundation and Federalist Society vetted potential judicial nominees.

The White House continues to hold weekly calls with evangelical advisory board members. Conservative leaders also receive a weekly email from the White House compiling “highlights for—and requests for action from—the conservative world.” And Religious Right leaders report enjoying an open door with the Trump administration. Former Southern Baptist Convention official Richard Land told The New York Times that conservative evangelical leaders have a “regular, ongoing and continuing dialogue” with the administration.

The Family Research Council’s Tony Perkinssaid in August, “I’ve been to the White House I don’t know how many more times in the first six months this year than I was during the entire Bush administration.” The Susan B. Anthony List’s Marjorie Dannenfelser said she visited the White House seven times in Trump’s first 100 days in office. Penny Nance of Concerned Women for America said in September, “I’m told from people before me that even under George W. Bush, we didn’t have this kind of access. It certainly is unprecedented and we’re very grateful.” Land gushed about evangelicals having “unprecedented access” to the White House, adding that there “are more evangelicals in this administration as personnel than any administration in my lifetime.”

The timeline is extensive and heavily link rich, there’s enough reading for a day or two. It’s all recommended, because we are at one terrifying confluence here. The Year The Religious Right Moved Into The White House.

It’s Best to Lie! It’s Biblical!

Screengrab.

Coach Dave is teachin’ and preachin’ – about lying. Like lying for Jesus, lying for Jehovah is right good too.

Religious Right activist Dave Daubenmire said that Roy Moore has no obligation to tell the truth regarding multiple allegations that he pursued sexual relationships with teenage girls when he was in his 30s and that, in fact, it is better for him to lie about it if doing so will help to advance the kingdom of God.

Daubenmire, who has been an ardent Moore supporter for years and even interviewed Moore on his program back in 2013, likened Moore’s efforts to become a U.S. senator from Alabama to using misdirection in a football game, employing subterfuge during a military battle or hiding Jews from the Nazis, saying that deception and dishonesty in such endeavors is acceptable because doing so furthers a greater good.

Lying through your teeth about being a skeevy asshole with a taste for teenagers is not the same as strategy, sportsball or military, and it’s certainly not the same as hiding Jews from Nazis. The finely fucked up morals of a christian, right there. (Yeah, yeah, #notallchristians, but you all still aren’t standing up against these fanatical asses.)

“When I hear people say, ‘Well, Judge Moore is not worthy of the office if he’s lying about what he did,’ I want to grab ’em and I want to slap ’em upside the stinking head,” Daubenmire said. “Judge Moore is trying to infiltrate an ungodly system and the stakes in this campaign are so great for the cause of Christ and Judge Moore is being lambasted by the holier-than-thou Christians who think [the Bible] says we can never lie.”

Golly, such language! Tsk. Infiltrate? He’s running for senate, not trying to pass a super secret seal test or anything. Any idiot can run for the senate. You’d think there’d be requirements or something, but no. (You have to be 30 years old, been a citizen for at least nine years, and live in the state you wish to represent, that’s it. That would be why so many lying idiots.)

“It’s best to lie if it advances the kingdom of God,” Daubenmire stated. “There, I said it.”

Yes, you did, and thanks, Coach Dave, for having the spine to admit that, unlike most christians, who believe firmly in lying, but always deny that.

Via RWW, there’s video.

JerUSAlem.

View and Plan of Jerusalem.--Fac-simile of a woodcut in the "Liber Chronicarum Mundi" large folio, Nuremberg, 1493. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:View_and_Plan_of_Jerusalem_Fac_simile_of_a_Woodout_in_the_Liber_Chronicarum_Mundi_large_folio_Nuremberg_1493.png">Source</a>.

View and Plan of Jerusalem.–Fac-simile of a woodcut in the “Liber Chronicarum Mundi” large folio, Nuremberg, 1493. Source.

RWW has the full rundown on all the christians who have been pushing for the Jerusalem move, and how excited they are over finally having a puppet who gave them what they most desire: the apocalypse. The apocalypse they want so very much won’t happen, but a different sort might, given this unbelievably bone-headed decision. Christians do excel at coming up with batshit nonsense to shore up their position on anything, and this is no exception:

Anti-BDS activist and filmmaker Laurie Cardoza-Moore, reportedly considering a run for Congress from Tennessee, contributed a column to Haaretz welcoming “Trump’s obedience to God’s word on Jerusalem.”  “We as a Judeo-Christian nation have a responsibility to uphold the word of God” she had said earlier this month, urging Trump to act.

Cardoza-Moore told Gordon Klingenschmitt that people often ask her where the United States is in the End Times, and she always tells them, “Look at the English spelling of the word Jerusalem. What are the three letters in the center of that word? U.S.A. … That is our prophetic place to be.”

Oh look, there’s the USA! It’s right there, in another word, must be a god! Only in the English spelling mind, because Amerikan English is the one true language of Jehovah.  I might not mind this bonnaconshit so much if it weren’t for the mind-numbing stupidity. We really don’t need people thinking we are that stupid. It’s so embarrassing.

RWW has the full, depressing story.

ETA: Bannon is also speaking about this:

“Isn’t this really showing the muscle of the evangelical community? Because President Trump, one of the reasons he did this, besides the reason that he knew was the smart thing to do and the right thing to do, was the fact that his base, right, particularly that part that’s evangelical Right, which is a huge part of his base, really has been demanding this for quite a while,” Bannon said.

Full story here.

The Hobnail Boots of The Homosexuals.

Anti-LGBTQ hate group C-Fam sent this meme in a fundraising email about its United Nations work.

Dear Friend of the Friday Fax,

A teacher in Canada shows a video of a free speech hero who stood up against the homosexual fascists.
The Teacher is about to lose her job.

Also called teaching inappropriate material, i.e., bigotry, intolerance and hate. This is not about a freeze peach superhero.

The state of Michigan just took a child from the home of a Christian family because they refused to
allow their daughter to transition into a boy.

Good, that’s doing right by the child. Your ‘good’ christian family would have condemned that child to abuse, agony, and misery.

The state of Colorado wants to shut down the Christian baker because he won’t celebrate a gay wedding.

He doesn’t have to celebrate anything, you fuckstick. He just has to bake a fucking cake, because that’s his business.

Friends, we are living in fascistic times except this time the hobnail boots are worn by homosexuals and
their allies in government and major corporations.

Yes, we are surrounded by fascists and nazis. I’m looking at a fine example of such zealotry right now.

These fascists are out to get Christians who view men and women as God made them and who live their lives
that way. They seek to stamp us out.

:near fatal eyeroll: Oh please, no one is out to get you. We just want you to mind your own damn business. You’re free to have any view you like. A bit of advice though: If you’re going to act like cockroaches, don’t be surprised if people start looking at you like you need to be stamped out.

Want to be shocked? Would you like to know the one place where you are free to stand up to the LGBT fascists?
Want to know where Christians actually win victories against the LGBT fascists?

The UN that’s where. How do I know? Because we do it every single day and we have many goverments behind us.

You have no business peddling your desire for an inquisition anywhere, and it’s a travesty you are able to spread your poison at the UN.

Keep us going!

[Donate Button]

And I will tell you the secret. It is because we are brave. We are fearless. We will not be bullied, we will not
step back, and we will always call homosexual behaviour sinful, offensive, and deeply harmful to the individual
who practices it and to society at large.

And I will tell you the secret. We are brave. We are fearless. We will not be bullied, we will not step back, and we will always declare we are human, deserving full rights, bringing light, love, acceptance and inclusiveness to all within our community and to society at large.

Keep us going!

[Donate Button]

[repeat]

[Donate Button]

You will not find “mainstream” religious conservatives speaking this way. They talk about religious freedom.
Let me tell you another secret. If we are having to defend religious freedome, then we are fighting the enemy
in our own house. We are not on offense. We are on defense. And we are going to lose.

Well, we are on offense. Want to be on offense with us? Tired of being on defense? Then help us now. Join us!

You certainly are offensive. And disgusting. And repellant. Altogether, quite vomit-worthy.

Yours in Christ,

Austin Ruse
President/C-Fam
Publisher/Friday Fax

PS Keep in mind the Universal Declaration of Human Rights uphold free speech, freedom of religion, freedom of assembly,
all the freedoms and rights the fascistic left wants to take away. I promise you we will stop them.

No one is looking to take your rights away. It would be you fucking fanatics who are looking to take basic rights away from others. Also, I hate to break this to you, but all manner of queer folk are religious. Most of them manage to hold onto their beliefs without trying to infringe on the rights of others, and aren’t looking to start an inquisition.

Ruse has also said that all countries should pass laws against homosexual behavior “even if unenforced,” in order to “help society to teach what is good” and “prevent such truly harmful practices as homosexual marriage and adoption.” According to GLAAD, Ruse has claimed that, rather than bullying and social stigma, LGBTQ people and activism are the real cause of LGBTQ teen suicide and alcoholism.

Brennan Suen has the full story, and it’s important reading. These asshole christians are those who applaud imprisoning gay people, executing them, and if nothing else, want to make being queer unlawful. Regressive doesn’t cover them. (Any errors in the transcription are mine.)

Trumpy Bear, The Real Red Pill, & Snowflakes.

These are, sad to say, real products, which you can purchase at over-inflated prices.

At the Values Voter Summit earlier this year, President Trump declared that he will be “stopping cold the attacks on Judeo-Christian values” and that Americans will finally be “saying Merry Christmas again” after avoiding the phrase because “it’s not politically correct.” Now that the shackles of politically correct culture have been unlocked by our president, Right Wing Watch can finally release its 2017 annual gift guide for the holiday Christmas season.

You can see and read more at RWW, with full links to all the conservachristian goodies. You might want to put off any eating until after you peruse the gift guide. Lots of gag worthy stuff to behold.

The Voice of God at the Gates of Hell.

Oh, it’s Lance Wallnau again. Lance has decided to be the voice of god with presidential access, because um, someone has to do it?

Lance Wallnau posted a video on Periscope today in which he declared that if Americans rebel against the will of God and give Democrats control of Congress in the 2018 elections and allow them to impeach President Trump, it’ll mean that “the spirit of Antichrist” has triumphed over the church.

Streaming from inside the Center for National Renewal in Washington, D.C., with whom he apparently has an official connection, Wallnau declared that charismatic Pentecostal Christians such as himself have been called to “have access to presidents as the voice of God” so that they can “release this warrior angel for America.”

The Center for National Renewal expends quite a bit of time and energy to come across as mild and humanitarian, and I suppose for christians, they might slant a bit to that side, but their main drive is the ‘centrality of christ’, which they feel should be front and center in every facet of life, including government. They seem to think they’ll be successful in bringing together all the 30,000something factions of christianity. They are firm believers in National Christianity, which should worry the hell out of everyone.

Of course Lance decides that his particular flavour of christianity will be the voice of god with access to presidents. The plural is interesting. I guess Lance wants a lock on more than just the Tiny Tyrant. Oooh, a warrior angel. That would be something to see. Too bad we never will.

“If America goes down,” he warned, “if we screw up these midterms coming up, if we let the devil put a false impeachment on this president, if the will of man rebels against the will of the majority of the people that put him in through the Electoral College, then the spirit of Antichrist beat the spirit that was in the church of Christ.”

Boring. So boring. The talk about the antichrist has been going on for fucking decades, people have been so sure that this or that president is the antichrist, yadda, yadda, yadda. So now it’s just the spirit of the antichrist, is it? I guess you can’t blame an antichrist of getting tired of waiting and wandering off. Seems to me that people have been rebelling and fighting against the crime called the electoral college ever since the election, which the Tiny Tyrant lost. The electoral college is an unnecessary appendage, which was first dreamed up as yet another protection for slave owners. It has no business in a modern constitution which disavows slavery altogether. Unsurprising you find christians in favour of the spirit of slavery. As for impeachment? I live in hope, and it would not be false. The idiot king has no right to be in office.

“So that is why I am at the gates of influence,” Wallnau added. “Because Washington is where the gates of hell want to take over and it’s not gonna happen.”

Mm hmm. Which is it, gates of influence or gates of hell? I think you’re going to have to pick, Lance. Some would say there’s little difference between the two, given lobbyists and the wealth of corruption bubbling away. Personally, I think you just want to get in on some of that oh so sweet corruption, stuffing those pockets with more cash.

Via RWW, there’s video.

The Heartland Institute.

The Heartland Institute is still busy, somewhat behind the scenes, in their quest to mold the constitution to their desires, none of which are good.

The Heartland Institute, a right-wing think tank that promotes free-market ideology and denounces climate-change “alarmism,” published an interview this week with Neal Schuerer, an advocate for a “convention of states” to propose a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution. The BBA effort is one of several active right-wing campaigns to convene a convention under Article V of the Constitution in order to limit the powers of the federal government. Under Article V, if 34 states submit calls for a convention to propose constitutional amendments on a given topic, Congress must call a convention of states.

[…]

Proponents of a convention to promote a balanced budget amendment have been sparring in recent years with an even more aggressive effort that aims to dramatically limit the jurisdiction and power of the federal government, replacing our current constitutional order with one focused on states’ rights. That effort is backed by Religious Right leaders, including Alliance Defending Freedom’s Mike Farris, Liberty Counsel’s Mat Staver, Christian-nation “historian” David Barton and anti-marriage-equality activist Robert George.

Just like our evangelical government, this too is serious business, and needs to be known about and taken seriously. Now that all the christians slavering over end times have gotten their Idiot King to make the Jerusalem move, they are feeling powerful and unstoppable. And they just might be, given that the Tiny Tyrant cannot say no to them, and most people being blissfully unaware of what they are doing.

Schuerer himself calls the BBA a “first step”:

A balanced budget amendment to the Constitution is the first step in reining in an all-powerful, all-consuming central bureaucratic government that our founding document attempted to guard against.

We as citizens of the United States have the right and duty to bring about responsible reform to our founding document, reflecting the values of the people and the nature of free and independent states. We know what needs to be done. All we need is the courage to just do it.

It’s important to realize that this is not about constitution reform and dragging that moldy document into the current century; this is about making it even more regressive. These are people who want the power and right to oppress and prosecute all those people they have problems with, which amounts to most people.

Schuerer says his group Campaign Constitution is working with the Heartland Institute’s Center for Constitutional Reform to “bring all the competing interests together.” And he talks about how close his group’s effort is to reaching the threshold of 34 states:

The Balanced Budget Amendment Task Force entered the 2017 state legislative year with great expectations, following the Trump election and the number of Republican governors and legislature majorities growing.

Twenty-eight states had active applications, with the goal of adding four to the number—Arizona, Idaho, Wisconsin, and Wyoming—bringing the number of active applications to 32.

Arizona and Wyoming approved the BBA application resolution. Maryland, New Mexico, and Nevada rescinded applications, making a net loss of one and bringing the number of active applications to 27. Recently, Wisconsin approved the BBA application, returning the total to 28.

Moving into 2018, there is very little margin. Idaho, Kentucky, and South Carolina are a must, bringing us to 31 active applications.

Montana will likely join in when it gets that close, to 32.  Minnesota and Virginia are tough calls because of internal political disagreements on the issue of an Article V amendment convention. Washington state and Maine are anyone’s guess.

That brings the Balanced Budget Amendment Task Force and the national Article V movement to 32 states by the end of 2018.

Now would be the time to get very worried, and to try and find ways to counter these evil assholes who are intent on making things much, much worse. Every day, we get closer to the Theocalypse.

Via RWW.

Profiling Pence.

By college, Pence had slimmed down and developed something akin to swagger. The yearbooks from his time at Hanover College, in southern Indiana, depict him as a popular, square-jawed hunk. (Hanover College).

No man can serve two masters, the Bible teaches, but Mike Pence is giving it his all. It’s a sweltering September afternoon in Anderson, Indiana, and the vice president has returned to his home state to deliver the Good News of the Republicans’ recently unveiled tax plan. The visit is a big deal for Anderson, a fading manufacturing hub about 20 miles outside Muncie that hasn’t hosted a sitting president or vice president in 65 years—a fact noted by several warm-up speakers. To mark this historic civic occasion, the cavernous factory where the event is being held has been transformed. Idle machinery has been shoved to the perimeter to make room for risers and cameras and a gargantuan American flag, which—along with bleachers full of constituents carefully selected for their ethnic diversity and ability to stay awake during speeches about tax policy—will serve as the TV-ready backdrop for Pence’s remarks.

When the time comes, Pence takes the stage and greets the crowd with a booming “Hellooooo, Indiana!” He says he has “just hung up the phone” with Donald Trump and that the president asked him to “say hello.”

The Atlantic has an in-depth look at Mike Pence, and what drives him. He seems to have a whole lot of not-so-humble ambition inside all the evangelical coating, which, while thick enough, doesn’t stop Pence from being a primary Trump apologist, or supporting all those who are certainly not in the good ethics/morals camp.  It makes for interesting reading.

War on Christmas: Won!!1!

The Cephalopodmas Tree. © C. Ford.

Oh, the war on xmas, it be won! It’s the Trump effect! People can say merry christmas again! :eyeroll: The dumbfuckery of this is overwhelming. Who gives a fuck if you want to say merry xmas or have a safe and sane saturnalia? All this crap, yet another attempt by idiotic christians to pretend they are long-suffering martyrs who are oh-so-persecuted. Everyone in the world isn’t an exclusive asshole like we are! *sob*.

This morning on “Breitbart News Daily,” host Alex Marlow spoke with Williams about international issues and the White House tree lighting ceremony. Marlow asked Williams if there was “more for the president to be doing” to promote Christmas, to which Williams responded that he hopes the Trump administration continues the work it’s doing because “people were really fed up with the war on Christmas that we’ve seen over the last few years and really during the entire Obama years.”

“Part of the swing toward populism, toward nationalism, is also a swing toward religion and a recovery of some sort of Christian identity, the importance of faith. And I think that we’re seeing more public expressions of that,” Williams continued. “There are the new tallies on Christmas card sales and things, and ‘Merry Christmas’ is blowing away ‘Happy Holidays’—you know, these kind of whitewashed greetings from past years are looking more and more like a thing of the past.”

Your christian identity and the importance of your faith is dependent on a commercial holiday greeting? Puddles have more depth than you sanctimonious hypocrites. I grew up in the 1960s and 1970s, and Happy Holidays and Season’s Greetings were quite popular back then. I don’t remember anyone having shit fits and compleat meltdowns over it. There’s room for a whole host of holiday greetings and sentiments. In our house, we have Ratmas and Cephalopodmas, none of which is taken seriously. It’s a silly holiday, it should be fun. I’m not twisting in the wind because you christians are ignoring Brumalia, and will ignore the upcoming Saturnalia. Also, most christians are well aware that your precious Jesus wasn’t born on the 25th December.

“So what I’m seeing, and I’m very delighted with, is people are more overtly expressive of their own faith and religiosity, and that’s part of the Trump effect,” Williams said.

Marlow said he agreed and thought there has been a “substantial war on Christmas.” He also alluded to a newfound “war on Thanksgiving” taking place in which liberals want to “ruin Thanksgiving for us.” He expanded that he thought it was interesting that liberals want to destroy holidays that feature religious components.

Since when is ‘thanksgiving’ religious? It’s people stuffing their faces and watching sportsball. Granted, those things are near religious in Ustates. I have no love for fucking liberals when it comes to ‘thanksgiving’ either, because if they wanted to do something, they’d give up their day of overeating in favour of the National Day of Mourning, seriously boosting the voices of indigenous peoples. They could also stop patting themselves on the back for having their “giving Tuesday” the week after their food and shopping overindulgence. You should be fucking ashamed of yourselves.

Williams said the wars on Christmas and Thanksgiving are “a real globalist push from certain Americans on the left.”

Excuse me? The ‘thanksgiving’ disease is Amerikkan, and like most diseases, has infected other countries, but certainly not all. There’s no war. Much like your god, your holiday wars are all in your head.

Via RWW.