The Vatican vs Christian Conservatives.

The Vatican has fired shots across the bow, aiming at the heart of christian conservatives, and their current rule over politics in general, and Trump in the specific.

An article being described as “explosive,” written by two allies of Pope Francis in a Vatican-reviewed publication, is taking on the “spurious alliance between politics and religious fundamentalism” in the United States.

Antonio Spadaro and Marcelo Figueroa call out the dominionist groups “composed mainly of whites from the deep American South” for their rejection of the “global ecological crisis” and their Armageddon-infused rhetoric, pointedly drawing parallels to Islamic fundamentalism.

They accuse these evangelical fundamentalists of seeking “influence in the political and parliamentary sphere and in the juridical and educational areas so that public norms can be subjected to religious morals.”

[…]

Thomas Williams, the former priest who has been called Breitbart’s man in Rome, called the article “rambling” and “bigoted.” He charged that it “caricatured white southern evangelicals as well as conservative American Catholics as ignorant, theocratic, Manichean, war-mongering fanatics anxiously awaiting the apocalypse.”

Yes, well, conservative American christians of any flavour are ignorant, theocratic, Manichean, war-mongering, and fanatics who happen to want to bring the apocalypse about.

You can read all about this at: The Guardian, Religion Dispatches, and Raw Story.

And in the “No shit, Sherlock” files, evangelical christians are the most intolerant of all!

The Hounds of Heaven.

Lance Wallnau is getting worse, in every respect. He’s now into becoming a parody of himself territory. Or perhaps he now considers himself a comedian for Jehovah or something, I don’t know.

Citing a prophecy from the book of 2 Kings that Jezebel would be devoured by dogs, Wallnau railed against “the Jezebel spirit” that is “working through the media to bring depravity and perversion” to America and prayed that “the hounds of heaven” would be let loose to destroy the “coup” being led against Trump by Robert Mueller.

With “Who Let The Dogs Out?” playing, Wallnau prophesied against the late night television hosts Bill Maher, John Oliver and Stephen Colbert, though he did not seem to actually know their names.

“We’re going to see a season of dismantling of Jezebel in media,” he proclaimed. “Bill Maher, coming down! Steve Oliver, coming down! Carvell, coming down! God is going to release his comedic armies against you and you are going to be absolutely confused because you are thin-skinned and incapable of taking it the way you dish it out.”

So, Jehovah has comedic armies now? If you’re the lead, Lance, you all leave a great deal to be desired. I wonder, does this answer for Jehovah’s notoriously bad aim when it comes to those big punishments?  There seems to have been a big backfire here, because it seems it is you, Lance, who is absolutely confused, and you lot are among the most thin-skinned of all. You can’t take it, and you can’t dish it out.

“The dogs are being loosed, heaven’s canines are coming out,” Wallnau declared, as he began to pray in tongues for Trump and his family. “We loose the dogs on Jezebel’s lies, on all the media lies; chase ’em down. May the favor of this president go up.”

Perhaps you should have gone with Shakespeare: “Cry ‘Havoc!’, and let slip the dogs of war”. (Julius Caesar). Would have added a slight touch of class to your clown show.

Via RWW, where there’s video, if you can cope with seeing Lance with his tongue hanging out.

In the “oh fuck” terrifying department, we have Robert Jeffress, who has the Tiny Tyrant’s ear, approving of nuclear war:

Robert Jeffress, a Texas megachurch pastor and a top evangelical ally to President Trump, responded to Trump’s threat to rain down “fire and fury” on North Korea yesterday by issuing a statement declaring that “God has given Trump authority to take out Kim Jong Un.”

These fucking idiots talk as though a nuclear missile would launch, land conveniently on their target, all nice and clean, no fallout. It’s been more than obvious, from the campaign days (those seem so long ago) that Donny has been itching to use nuclear weapons, and now he has “reason”. I grew up under the threat of nuclear war, and I hated it. That is a horrible sword to be hanging over heads, especially those of children. Tends to fuck up your viewpoint a lot. Now, in old age, I get to live with that clear and present threat once again. I really don’t want to die just yet. I really don’t want millions upon millions of other people to die just yet. Fuck, I hate this. If “god” wants to “take out” Kim Jong Un, fine, let him do it without the nukes.

RWW watch has the full story, and the rundown on Jeffress and his hold on the Tiny Tyrant.

Unnecessary Swearing.

Jim Bakker, the disgraced former televangelist who reinvented himself as an End Times prepper pitchman following his time in prison, was among the dozens of evangelical leaders who were brought to the White House recently to meet with members of President Trump’s administration.

Bakker revealed on his program today that he and his wife Lori were in the White House on the day that Anthony Scaramucci was fired from his short stint as White House communications director, noting that it was not a coincidence that Scaramucci was let go at the moment when George O. Wood, who heads the General Council of the Assemblies of God, spoke out against “unnecessary swearing” during a meeting with White House staff.

Not a coincidence. Right. In any other facet of life, magical thinking is a symptom which notes that your mental health may be in decline. But not in religion, oh no. That gets a free pass. I’m damn tired of it, too. There isn’t one small thing these assholes won’t manage to hook up to their mythical psychopath.

According to the Bakkers, Trump is eager to hear from right-wing Christian leaders and hopes to use them to spread his message to their audiences.

“The president has asked for the pastors, the leaders of Christianity, to come and advise them,” Baker said, as Lori explained that “the reason for the meeting was so that he can get the group of Christian leaders that have a platform to share the truth of what’s really going on that you don’t get to hear in the media.”

Media doesn’t need to report this fucking nonsense, you all never shut the fuck up.

Lori noted that the members of the meeting they attended were able to write a letter to Trump that was hand delivered to him by his primary spiritual adviser, Paula White, and they were told by White House staff how much receiving letters means to the president.

“People think that their letters aren’t going to get to the president,” she said. “Well, guess what? They get to this president … so leaders need to say thank you.”

Actually, the letters got to Minister Money Grubber. I have no doubt they did make it to Donny, though, where he could pore over the praise and use it as a balm for that massive ego.

Bakker said that pastors and Christian leaders must send letters of support to Trump, who “will read every word of it because he’s looking for the pulse of what God is doing in our country.”

Well, no, that’s not what the Tiny Tyrant is looking for, Jim. He’s looking for food for that endless black hole of an ego. Food which you relentless assholes never tire of shoveling into the maw.

Via RWW.

Sunday Facepalm.

Oh, Michele Bachmann. She’s working very hard to get back into a spotlight again, any spotlight. As usual, she’ll say pretty much anything in her bid to garner attention and foment fear. In her compleat lack of wisdom, she has decided that hate crime hotlines are the very devil du jour.

Last month, Minneapolis announced that a hotline had been established to allow residents to report hate crimes, which include “any crime against a person or property motivated by prejudice against someone’s race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, ethnicity, gender or gender identity. This includes prejudice-motivated property damage (including graffiti), stalking and assault.”

Oh my goodness, the horror! Why, that’s just awful, giving citizens recourse to prompt action in light of frightening crimes. Now, if they’d just work on getting all the murderers and would-be murderers out of the cop shops, we might have something good going here. Ms. Bachmann’s take is a bit, um, off:

“What we’re seeing is that hotlines are being set up by units of government for the purpose of encouraging people to call in and rat on their fellow man to report a hate crime,” she warned. “What they’re trying to do is implement anti-blasphemy laws. They’re trying to implement Islamic Sharia law locally in order to quiet churches and quiet anybody who would talk about what the truth is about Islam.”

No. No and No again. I realize it’s more difficult to get a rational thought into a conservative christian’s brain than it is a rock, nonetheless, I wish to fuck they’d get it into their skulls that speaking out, critical or not, is not a crime. Not even in the same ballpark. So now it’s “ratting on their fellow man”? My, my, do I hear goosestepping? Since when is reporting a crime squealing on someone? I have no doubt Ms. Bachmann would trip over herself getting to a phone if she saw anyone less than pasty white near her property. Oh, but those aren’t “fellow men”, are they?

I note that no one has managed to shut you up, Ms. Bachmann, so you give lie to your own words every single time you open that mouth of yours. I don’t like what you have to say, and I dearly wish you would shut the fuck up, but that’s a far cry from showing up on your doorstep with a nice gag.

“What they want is civilization jihad,” Bachmann continued. “They want jihad through the court system to silence speech because when you take away someone’s speech rights to speak out—like we’re doing right now, to tell the truth about something—then it’s game over … There should be a lawsuit filed against the city of Minneapolis for doing this. They have violated the so-called separation of church and state that the left is so in love with because they’re preferring Islam over any other religion and, number two, they’re fascists. That’s what they are, they’re fascists; they want to shut down your right to free speech.”

Nice of you to confirm that you’re still a fucking idiot, Ms. Bachmann. “Race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, ethnicity, gender or gender identity.” I don’t see “Islam, Islam, Islam” in there anywhere. There’s the ever generic religion, which also applies to you, and other christians. Here in uStates, crimes against white christians are rare, so you don’t have much to worry about. It’s just everyone else who is in danger, primarily from … white christians. Interesting how idiots like yourself never, ever manage to shut the fuck up about your frozen peaches being taken away, and never once have an irony meter land on your head.

Via RWW.

The Prophetic Order of the United States.

Right Wing Watch has an in-depth breakdown of the Religious Reich which now has a great deal of control over uStates government. It’s in sections:

  1. Introduction
  2. Who Are These People?
  3. Trump and the Prophets: Made For The Era of Social Media?
  4. Overlapping Networks
  5. God’s Own Party?
  6. POTUS Trump and the Prophetic Order of the United States

I’m just going to have a few bits here…

Brody and Lamb’s book, “The Faith of Donald J. Trump: A Spiritual Biography” is scheduled for publication in January 2018, but it won’t be the first. It will face competition from “God and Trump” by Stephen Strang, who heads the Pentecostal media empire Charisma. During the campaign, Strang gave a media megaphone to Trump-boosting prophets like Wallnau. Strang’s book, which promises to explore “what is God doing, now not only in Donald Trump’s life, but also in the life of the nation,” is scheduled for release in November.

Meanwhile, POTUS Shield leaders continue to personally assure Trump that God Himself put Trump in power, something Amedia told attendees at the March POTUS Shield gathering that Trump understands:

I said to the man’s own face, ‘If you didn’t see God got you elected, with all the mistakes you made, and how you should have lost this election 50 times, then you will never see God.’ And he said, ‘I know it was God.’

[…]

For many Religious Right leaders, support for Trump is transactional: Trump promised them the Supreme Court, attacks on legal abortion and Planned Parenthood, and legal changes to make conservative Christians more politically powerful. But POTUS Shield members believe that something even greater than the Supreme Court is at stake: the future of the church and the reign of God on earth. They give Trump assurance that he’s on a divine path, and they give their followers a sense of playing an important role on the world stage, warring with the devil to take political and culture power away from liberals and secularists and establish the kingdom of God in the United States and around the world.

If you’re inclined to laugh, or shrug, don’t. Instead, think. This is terror. This is terrorism. This is a regime of sweeping oppression waiting in the wings, trying to take the main stage. This has been at work for many a year now, and this is the one and only chance they have, and they know it. I see in my own referrers here, how many people search for things like “Trump tackles elite satanic pedophiles” and the “prophecies” of this, that, and the other self-styled prophets. The Religious Reich has the perfect puppet, and Donny does not dare dismiss them, or spurn their desires, they are about the only thing keeping his arse firmly in the white house.

If there should be a face to atheism, to humanism, to the benefits of a secular society, it should be centered here, in direct and open opposition to these people who, in their pettiness and need to subjugate others, are climbing to ultimate power.

You can read the whole thing at Right Wing Watch, recommended.

Sunday Facepalm.

Magnum Chaos represented by Lorenzo Lotto, at the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore in Bergamo.

Rick Joyner is exulting in the chaos of the white house. Personally, I don’t think such dysfunction is anything to celebrate, but Joyner seems to be under the impression that this is exactly how Jesus operated, so it’s okay.

“I’m expecting some chaos in the White House team for the duration of Trump’s administration,” Joyner said, “and I am saying this is because he is such an extraordinary leader. It’s not a lack of leadership; it’s a different kind of leadership.”

“Jesus is the best leader there will ever be,” Joyner said, but even his “cabinet” of apostles was rife with infighting. “Why were they fighting? Because they are stallions! These are serious leaders. They’re the real thing and they’re going to jostle and they’re going to fight, they’re going to position themselves. Trump has chosen those type of people for this cabinet.”

Y’know, I’ve read the bible, more than once. I’d dearly like to know if Mr. Joyner has, and what the fuck he was smoking when he did. Muscular Christianity isn’t new, but it isn’t apostolic in nature. Even the kindest of descriptors couldn’t work what’s going on in the white house as any type of muscular christianity, either. A surplus of strong leaders is not our problem. We don’t have any leaders at all. Those things are a bit different.

Via RWW.

Sam Fulwood III has a much more accurate assessment of what’s going on right now, at Think Progress. We’re dealing with the fallout of a toxic tide of white privilege. Oh, don’t be rolling your eyes. Given the current circumstances, it really can’t be denied. There was a never-ending barrage of bullshit thrown at the Obama administration, for eight bloody years. Every single move was questioned, in spite of the fact that it was one of the calmest, most scandal-free administrations ever. Look at what’s going on now, and imagine if this was happening with Pres. Obama in office instead of the Tiny Tyrant. Do you suppose people would just be shrugging? No.

[…] But the worst part of the racist vitriol directed at Obama and his family was the impact it had on everyday black Americans, who saw putative political attacks on the president and his polices as proxies for how many white Americans view African Americans.

By contrast, no such stigma of bad-boy behavior from the White House is deemed representative of white men or their kinfolk. For anyone who doubts its existence, the stench emanating from the Trump administration is a textbook definition of white privilege. Despite displaying a level of incompetence and moral deviance that is uncommon in rational democracies, the phalanx of white men surrounding the Oval Office bear no burden or shame as white Americans; their despicable behavior rests solely with them as individuals, not representatives of a race.

Click on over and have read, recommended.

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.