I am 38 years old. This year will be the first election of my life that actually matters. And it really matters. Gone are the days of South Park's Giant Douche versus Turd Sandwich - interchangeable, unlikable dipshit candidates who have more in common than differences.
Trump is the bad guy and he's got to go. But I have a very strong feeling that he is not going anywhere anytime soon, if ever. Here's why:
What was once the Republican Party and has now morphed into the Trump Cult Party is more energized than the Dems, by far.
They have one candidate and they are passionate enough about him to build pipe bombs and send them to all his enemies in politics and the media; to run down anti-Neo Nazi protesters with a Dodge Charger in Charlottesville. That is devotion on a scale we have never seen in my lifetime.
Trump has kept his lunatic base engaged since Day One with campaign-style rallies throughout his first term. It's unprecedented - the guy has been running for re-election the whole time. It's ingenious, it's diabolical, and it's working. They wear the official red hats and home-made clothing with Trump's name and face splattered all over it.
They are an army - albeit a dipshit army - and they look like one too. Pointy white hoods come to mind.
They are kicking ass, yet they've been tricked into feeling like perpetual victims so they are perpetually pissed off. Anger is a stronger passion than, say, Obama's hope. These rubes are broke, their dicks don't work anymore, and they are fucking pissed. And Trump makes them feel tough and empowered, and like they could fuck a porn star vicariously despite their limp dicks.
Speaking of limp dicks, let's have a look at the Dems.
Not only are they not all marching in lock-step behind a single galvanizing candidate, they are in the middle of a civil war. Democratic voters are totally split, right down the middle, between two totally different candidates - besides their age and race: Joe Biden, the safe/boring moderate, and Bernie Sanders, the self-described revolutionary democratic socialist.
Now, I'm not playing favorites. I'd vote for a pile of dog shit if it meant getting rid of Trump. I don't give a shit who it is, as long as they can win. That being said, here's what's going to happen:
When the Dem Civil War ends and one of these old creeps gets the nomination, just like in 2016, there is not going to be harmony in the jackass party. There will be no much-needed unity. A good chunk of the side that loses will revolt and vote for Trump, or just stay home on the big day.
And if Biden wins the nomination, the revolt will be even more pronounced because these Bernie Bros are a bunch of fucking babies. NPR reported that 12 percent of Bernie supporters, more than one in 10, voted for Trump in the general election in 2016.
But it won't matter because Trump will slaughter both of these goofballs with very little effort. Bernie is toast because he calls himself a socialist. It doesn't matter that none of Trump's base understands what that word means. They have been told, day after day via Trump media, that socialism is very bad and very scary. Fox News and pals have been pumping this message since Bernie came on the scene, so five years at least. Although I'm sure they caught a whiff of it during the Obamacare era too.
It's crazy but it's also smart and achieves their objectives. Television is a powerful tool. Roger Ailes understood this and so does Trump, who has lived in the media since his tabloid days in New York City when he would pretend to be his own publicist.
Just the other day, Trump gave away his predictable game plan for beating Bernie. On Thurs., March 5, Fox News' Bret Baier asked Trump who he would rather face in the general election - Biden or Bernie.
"I’ll tell you, I was all set for Bernie, because I thought it was going to happen. And you know how we get ready for things, right? So mentally I’m all set for Bernie - communist, I had everything down, he’s a - I was all set," Trump said proudly.
"I think he's a communist," Trump said in an interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity before the Super Bowl. "I mean, you know, look, I think of communism when I think of Bernie."
Not just a socialist, a communist. And it will work. Game, set, match. It's the oldest smear in American politics. Even if most of the Red Hat Army don't know what a communist is, it doesn't matter. They know it is familiar and bad. Maybe even unAmerican, which is ironic given that their guy is a traitor dick who literally has Russia's backing and help, again. Russia, of course, has a wee bit of communism in her history.
So game over, Bernie.
Why is Biden fucked? He, too, has already been smeared. The whole reason Trump wanted Ukraine to announce an investigation of Biden on a major TV news network was to smear him. It doesn't matter if there even was an investigation that followed the announcement, what Trump wanted is the announcement.
That is the platform for the smear, if not the smear itself. It is the shadow of a doubt in the OJ case. It's Mark Fuhrman.
In mid-January, it was reported that Russian military hackers had targeted Burisma - the Ukrainian gas company where Hunter Biden got paid a shit-ton of money to "work" - back in early November. Why would they be doing that? Same as it ever was, to quote David Byrne. 2016 all over again.
Except, this time, instead of hacking the DNC (although I'm sure that is happening too because why not?) and leaking damning internal emails at the most politically damaging time, they will execute the same playbook but with Burisma emails that make Hunter Biden - and therefore, Joe - look like corrupt dickheads. Drain the swamp!
From there, they run wild with the Corrupt Joe & Hunter Biden campaign. It turns out, Trump never needed Ukraine to announce a fake investigation to slime Biden because the impeachment trial was much more effective at churning out that message for weeks - and much more credible coming from the U.S. capital, not random-ass Ukraine. Then again, one thing leads to another.
Further worsening Dems' chances this year, every Democrat elected president since JFK has been a generational change agent: JFK, Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama. Every one of them were young and representative of a change from the old ways. Biden and Bernie - 77 and 78 years old respectively - do not represent a generational shift, obviously.
Trump will win because he will cheat. Again. It cannot hurt to have KGB alums and Russian bots working day and night to get you re-elected.
Americans think we won the Cold War; we didn't. We declared ourselves the winner, packed up and went home. Russia meanwhile, kept fighting bitterly, covertly. They were fighting the long fight for decades while we weren't even engaged. And now they are reaping the rewards. They finally won the damn thing.
They will hack, they will manipulate social media, they will fuck with us and get away with it. Trump has already gotten away with his treasonous cheating twice in a row - first Russia, then Ukraine.
He literally has no reason to stop. Quite the opposite, he has a green light to proceed. This is why he orchestrated the Ukraine plot right after getting off the hook with the Mueller Report. In fact, the "perfect call" took place one day after Mueller's congressional testimony. I call him Teflon Don for a reason.
Trump will win because he has the power of incumbency, which is a major advantage. Every president in re-election has this advantage, but especially if he's doing a decent job. Now I'm not saying he's doing a good job, but the fact is that his poll numbers are excellent - higher than they have ever been. The guy's approval rating is just below 50 percent!
The average dipshit on the street who knows nothing about politics will always give the president the benefit of the doubt because, Hey, he's the president. He must be doing something right to have made it to the pinnacle of power on the planet, I mean geez.
That's really all you need to know. Once you factor in the inevitable cheating, classic GOP voter suppression, and reliable traditional apathy among young liberal voters, the Dems' goose is cooked.
The red hat shitheads love this crooked motherfucker. They can't get enough. And the other side is fractured, old and uninspiring if not unrealistic. Doomed.
But, "like a miracle," there is a potential game-changer in the mix now.
If not for this coronavirus x-factor, I think it would be a totally done deal. The economy suddenly taking a massive dump, along with Trump playing with the lives of Americans, is the only narrow sliver of a shot the Dems have. I'm not rooting for a deadly catastrophe, but I think it's coming for old folks, and it's plainly obvious that Trump will make it about himself as always.
On Friday he was at the CDC in Atlanta wearing a very tacky "KEEP AMERICA GREAT" hat, with an equally goofy jacket and unbuttoned disco shirt - golf gear basically. Because he was on his way to go golfing. And because, despite the unfolding crisis, his main concern - evident by the ridiculous hat - is not the exploding pandemic, but his re-election. The hat's re-election message was the main message he wanted to transmit in front of the cameras. At the CDC. During a pandemic.
He actually said, at the CDC, while dressed like MAGA Elmer Fudd, that he wants the stranded Americans on board a cruise ship off the coast of California to just stay there. Because if they are let off the ship, that would screw up his "numbers." That's all he cares about. I'm not at all surprised, but it is another example of things he can say privately but should at least pretend is not his focus when talking to CNN cameras. I mean, what a Dipshit.
"Do I want to bring all those people off (the Grand Princess cruise ship)?" Trump asked Friday. "People would like me to do that. I don’t like the idea of doing that.”
“I would rather, because I like the numbers being where they are - I don’t need to have the numbers double because of one ship that wasn’t our fault ... I’d rather have them stay on, personally.”
That wasn't our fault.
He doesn't even try to camouflage his game plan! But this is his modus operandi - just like showing his hand on Fox News about how he plans to attack Bernie as a communist. Any politician would have the same attack for Bernie, but you don't go blabbing about it beforehand. You let the Roger Stones and Sean Hannitys take care of that, a little plausible deniability. But this guy revels in it.
Now let's take it one step further. Bill Maher has been arguing every Friday night on his HBO show that if Trump loses, he won't leave the White House. And I agree with that, kind of. I agree, hypothetically. For Maher's premise to make sense, Trump has to lose first.
I agree with Maher about the not leaving part, but I'm more worried about 2024. If Trump is still alive then, he will be at maximum power. America will be unrecognizable, a smoldering crater. Everything is a hoax, witch-hunt, coup. He will follow Vladimir Putin's lead and that of strong men throughout the history of the Middle East.
If you think I'm paranoid looking this far down the road, today news broke that Putin is working to extend his term indefinitely. Like Trump, his current and second term is due to expire in 2024. In January, he proposed altering the constitution that limits the presidency to two terms. Yesterday, corrupt parliamentarians offered to grant his wish - surprise, surprise.
“It’s a possible option in principle, but on one contrition: if the constitutional court decides that such an amendment will not contravene the constitution,” Putin said.
Lol. At least this guy tries to make it appear as if he's respecting tradition. He is a much better showman. Because he has to be. Russians will actually revolt, unlike our dipshit Facebook-addled country. We'll just watch it happen - in between episodes of The Masked Singer, of course.
I predict Trump will use the same trick he used when he was accurately called a racist during such incidents as the Muslim ban or the Charlottesville attack by a Trump terrorist. He flipped it around and said the Dems are the racist party because, indeed, several decades ago they were.
When he refuses to leave office, he'll say, Hey, the Dems did it first with FDR! I'm not setting the precedent or doing anything more radical than the Dems have already done. I am FDR!
As if any of his knuckle-dragging followers know anything about FDR. It will be obscene and it will work just fine.
And even if it fails, Don Jr. will be elected in a sham election in 2024. Even if the election is half-ass legit - but I suspect those days are long gone forever - I think Don Jr. will be the next president. They are already very good at cheating and being absolutely shameless. They will only be better at it four years from now. And accomplice Putin is definitely not going anywhere.
That's how fucked we are. We are fucked forever. My elder friend keeps rolling his eyes and telling me to take off my tinfoil hat. But these are tinfoil hat times! Now more than ever. I don't understand anyone on the right side of history who isn't cynical and paranoid at this point. We are in year four of this unimaginable shitshow and it gets worse every day.
Help us, Coronavirus... You're our only hope.
The R wordd
“I don’t really,” Donald said when asked if he saw white nationalism as a rising threat around the world on Friday March 15, 2019, in the wake of devastating Christian terrorist attacks at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand that left at least 49 people dead.
Tuesday, March 10, 2020
Saturday, August 25, 2018
A Libtard Defends John McCain
This one isn't even hard. John McCain is an American hero. It's not up for debate. To say otherwise only proves what a cheesy coward you are, Mr. President.
I don't come to McCain's defense because I'm a fellow Republican; I'm not. Not only did I not vote for him in 2008, I had t-shirts made that say "John McCain is a Tool."
I don't agree with McCain on all sorts of things, especially how he got his start bombing poor people half a world away who posed no threat to the United States. And I still think it was reckless to thrust Sarah Palin into the would-be VP position. (She was the reason for the shirts.) You could easily argue that she led directly to the toxic situation we have now.
Nevertheless, I respect the hell out of Senator McCain. Here is a man. A real man. I've never served in the military and have no desire to. I've seen how it goes, I know my history and I'm not sacrificing my life for our dumbass government. Especially nowadays — I would never fight for a country that has lost its core identity, where football players are banned from peaceful, symbolic protest against police brutality and systemic racism.
That being said, I respect anyone who has signed up to make the ultimate sacrifice. I would never do that — I'm a coward when it comes to my physical safety. But at least I'm honest about it. The same can't be said for our tough-talking, never-serving President Bone Spurs who casually threatens to "bomb the Hell out of them."
It pisses me off that Trump was able to say "He's not a war hero" to a laughing crowd without anyone in the room having the balls to say, "What the hell do you know about service? You're a spoiled brat; your opinion on the topic is irrelevant. Keep Senator McCain's name out of your mouth, you disgraceful fool!"
It would have taken real courage for someone to do that. McCain-level courage. It's hard to speak up in a tough crowd, but that didn't stop McCain when a frazzled predecessor to today's MAGA creature addressed him at a town hall in 2008, regurgitating Fox News myths about Barack Obama's foreignness that Trump basically created and eventually rode all the way to the White House.
The disheveled old woman expressed concern about McCain's opponent, saying, "I can’t trust Obama. I have read about him, and he’s not, he’s not — He's an Arab." McCain instantly corrected her because he must have known that it's a slippery slope to where we are now. And where Germany went before.
"No ma’am," McCain said firmly. "He’s a decent family man, a citizen that I just happen to have disagreements with on fundamental issues, and that’s what this campaign is all about."
I also respect McCain's anti-torture stance, born as it is out of hellish firsthand experience that I readily admit I would never be able to endure. And just like how he addressed the anxious racist at his rally, he always took a stand on the torture issue. And being anti-torture isn't very popular among Republicans.
Not to mention, going against his entire party to vote against the repeal of Obamacare. But how could a guy with a terminal brain tumor vote to rip health care away from millions of Americans who are suffering just like him? (Well, I know of one Republican congressman who got shot by a homicidal maniac without changing his negative tune on gun control.) McCain's eleventh hour thumbs-down for repeal took courage and humanity.
And for this traitor president to publicly crap on this fine, principled American servant on his way out the door is just so disgraceful. It is wrong.
You can disagree with John McCain, but you can't deny he's a decent man and a true patriot. You can't say that about the president. Not even close. He's a bum.
Thank you for putting up with this shit, Senator McCain. You're tough as nails and America is lucky to have had you. You never lost sight of what America is and that's a trait that is quickly going extinct in the GOP these days. You will be missed. Rest in peace.
I don't come to McCain's defense because I'm a fellow Republican; I'm not. Not only did I not vote for him in 2008, I had t-shirts made that say "John McCain is a Tool."
I don't agree with McCain on all sorts of things, especially how he got his start bombing poor people half a world away who posed no threat to the United States. And I still think it was reckless to thrust Sarah Palin into the would-be VP position. (She was the reason for the shirts.) You could easily argue that she led directly to the toxic situation we have now.
Nevertheless, I respect the hell out of Senator McCain. Here is a man. A real man. I've never served in the military and have no desire to. I've seen how it goes, I know my history and I'm not sacrificing my life for our dumbass government. Especially nowadays — I would never fight for a country that has lost its core identity, where football players are banned from peaceful, symbolic protest against police brutality and systemic racism.
That being said, I respect anyone who has signed up to make the ultimate sacrifice. I would never do that — I'm a coward when it comes to my physical safety. But at least I'm honest about it. The same can't be said for our tough-talking, never-serving President Bone Spurs who casually threatens to "bomb the Hell out of them."
It pisses me off that Trump was able to say "He's not a war hero" to a laughing crowd without anyone in the room having the balls to say, "What the hell do you know about service? You're a spoiled brat; your opinion on the topic is irrelevant. Keep Senator McCain's name out of your mouth, you disgraceful fool!"
It would have taken real courage for someone to do that. McCain-level courage. It's hard to speak up in a tough crowd, but that didn't stop McCain when a frazzled predecessor to today's MAGA creature addressed him at a town hall in 2008, regurgitating Fox News myths about Barack Obama's foreignness that Trump basically created and eventually rode all the way to the White House.
The disheveled old woman expressed concern about McCain's opponent, saying, "I can’t trust Obama. I have read about him, and he’s not, he’s not — He's an Arab." McCain instantly corrected her because he must have known that it's a slippery slope to where we are now. And where Germany went before.
"No ma’am," McCain said firmly. "He’s a decent family man, a citizen that I just happen to have disagreements with on fundamental issues, and that’s what this campaign is all about."
I also respect McCain's anti-torture stance, born as it is out of hellish firsthand experience that I readily admit I would never be able to endure. And just like how he addressed the anxious racist at his rally, he always took a stand on the torture issue. And being anti-torture isn't very popular among Republicans.
Not to mention, going against his entire party to vote against the repeal of Obamacare. But how could a guy with a terminal brain tumor vote to rip health care away from millions of Americans who are suffering just like him? (Well, I know of one Republican congressman who got shot by a homicidal maniac without changing his negative tune on gun control.) McCain's eleventh hour thumbs-down for repeal took courage and humanity.
And for this traitor president to publicly crap on this fine, principled American servant on his way out the door is just so disgraceful. It is wrong.
You can disagree with John McCain, but you can't deny he's a decent man and a true patriot. You can't say that about the president. Not even close. He's a bum.
Thank you for putting up with this shit, Senator McCain. You're tough as nails and America is lucky to have had you. You never lost sight of what America is and that's a trait that is quickly going extinct in the GOP these days. You will be missed. Rest in peace.
Saturday, February 17, 2018
We Are Not Alone: A Space Rant
How is it that a 22-year-old kid with no scientific training has traveled deeper into space than any astronaut in history? Well, let's just say he had some help.
On Nov. 5, 1975, Travis Walton and six other young men came across a saucer-shaped craft hovering in the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest in Arizona as they were headed home from a logging job.
As they came to a stop in a clearing, 100 feet from the craft, they all watched in horror as Walton jumped out of the truck they were riding in and ran up to it, thinking it would take off before he could get close.
But the saucer lingered long enough for all seven men to get a better look than they even wanted.
And although they all agree it was traumatic and beyond scary, they pretty much also all seem to agree that, at the same time, it was an incredible, extraordinary experience.
The craft itself, metallic and hovering 15 feet above the ground, was a very impressive piece of machinery.
"It was prettier than a brand new Corvette," says witness John Goulette, who also maintains rather bluntly that the encounter was "the most horrifying experience of my life."
"It was beautiful," Walton says of his 45-degree-angle view from beneath the ship. "It was like glass."
"It was really terrifying and exciting at the same time," Walton says earnestly.
When the craft zapped Walton with a blue-green light and sent his body flying, the men in the truck, already scared, thought they had just witnessed the young man's death.
So they took off down the road in a panic, thinking they were about to die too.
But soon they stopped, collected themselves and gathered the courage to go back to check on Walton. When they reached the spot, he was nowhere to be found and the UFO was gone.
The youngest of the guys on the logging crew was 17-year-old Steve Pierce, who lied about his age to get the job and probably now wishes he never had.
"It was scary," Pierce says with a half-smile and gleaming eyes reminiscent of Captain Quint during his famous Indianapolis speech in Jaws. "I thought the world was coming to an end."
To make matters worse for the teenage Pierce, he had no family support during the aftermath of his traumatic encounter.
"It was hard to come to terms with," Pierce says, in his cowboy hat. "I got two brothers who don't believe me and my mom don't believe me. That's the hard part – you tell the truth and people think you're lying. I left Arizona and didn't come back."
And that's the thing. We live in a world where people will laugh at you and call you crazy if you believe in extraterrestrial life, more commonly referred to as aliens. But the same people think it's totally not weird to believe in a virgin giving birth, a guy walking on water, parting the Red Sea, goofy miracles, and on and on.
In fact, of the 7.5 billion people living on Earth, it is said that 84 percent of us believe in such hokus pokus. Probably because it makes us feel good and, more importantly, in control, despite the obvious reality that we are insignificant dust at the mercy of cosmic winds.
We are space people and we don't even know it. We are on a giant self-driving cruise ship in the middle of an ocean so vast, it has no end. It's not a very reassuring scenario, so it's no wonder why humans have invented tidy origin stories to help relieve some of that anxiety.
But aliens are much more likely than a Santa Clause-like creator in the sky.
If you think about the profound bigness of space, it's mathematically impossible that our young species is the only intelligent life in the universe (or multiverse). It's not only crazy to not believe in extraterrestrial life, it's also rather arrogant.
We are tucked away in the corner of one tiny galaxy among at least 100 billion galaxies. 100 billion! I mean, I rest my case.
"To declare that Earth must be the only planet in the universe with life would be inexcusably big-headed of us,” says famous astrophysicist and Cosmos host Neil deGrasse Tyson in his book Death By Black Hole.
When your tooth hurts, you go to a dentist; likewise, when you want to know about space, you ask a physicist or an astronomer.
Famous theoretical physicist and cosmologist Stephen Hawking says that in a universe with 100 billion galaxies, each containing hundreds of millions of stars – some potentially habitable – it is unlikely that Earth is the only planet where life has evolved.
What's 100 billion x 500 million? A number so big the human mind can't even begin to grasp it. And that massive number represents all the potential for intelligent life out there.
And I'm not talking about microbes. I'm talking about little guys flying ships the size of cities at incomprehensible speeds.
"To my mathematical brain, the numbers alone make thinking about aliens perfectly rational," Hawking told The Sunday Times in 2010.
The problem is that ordinary people construct their realities about the physical world based on what they see around them every day. Alien life is like a rare geological event; if most people don't experience it, they don't believe it.
Just because Chicago isn't known for its earthquakes doesn't mean they can't happen there.
The New Madrid fault is a major seismic zone located on the border region of Missouri, Arkansas and Tennessee, just below southern Illinois. Most Americans have never even heard of it, let alone know that it has potential to produce destructive earthquakes in the future.
Likewise, in 2011 a magnitude 5.8 quake struck in Mineral, Virg., and shook D.C. hard enough to crack the Washington Monument and cause $20 million in damage. It was bizarre but only because of how we think about these things and what we think we know. Out of sight, out of mind.
In the early 1800's, the New Madrid fault produced four of the largest North American earthquakes in recorded history, with magnitudes estimated at seven or higher.
For a little context, the major Loma Prieta quake that collapsed highway bridges and interrupted Game Three of the 1989 World Series at Candlestick Park was a 6.9.
So a 7.0 in the southern Midwest is unheard of even though it has happened and will happen again. Yet go try to find someone in Arkansas who's aware of the fault beneath their feet.
Likewise, most people outside of Japan and Hawaii had no idea what a tsunami was before the devastating Indian Ocean earthquake-tsunami of 2004 that killed roughly 250,000 people in 14 countries.
All sorts of seemingly crazy things are possible, but since most of us never experience them ourselves firsthand, we jump to the conclusion that they are impossible.
We are used to earthquakes in California because they are more frequent there, but when the big one hits coastal Washington state – and it will – people will be just as shocked as if the mothership has landed.
Since many seismic zones are inactive for so long, we assume they are closed for business. But we have absolutely no concept of time.
The Earth is 5.5 billion years old and the universe is estimated to be almost 14 billion years old. That is a lot of time, especially considering the human memory lasts only about a few generations – less than 100 years.
For example, there are probably great stories from my ancestors from hundreds of years ago but I've never heard them. Time goes on and people re-learn the lessons of the past.
Also, the variety of life on Earth should amaze and inspire us to realize that any life form is possible in other worlds.
Look at a giraffe! Look at all the crazy, alien-like insects we take for granted! Animals with environment-matching camouflage! Behold the wonderful sea creatures, some highly-social, that inhabit 71 percent of our planet – some at depths so dark they have bio-luminescent "lights."
If that doesn't open your mind to the possibilities, I don't know what will. Do they need to play jazz at the Cantina for us to see how unique they all are?
Literally anything is possible in the space that surrounds our little planet, yet all of the religious explanations for the origin of life – with the exception of L. Ron Hubbard's science fiction cult of Scientology – are totally Earth-centric.
They put our world at the center of everything when, in reality, we are just a tiny blip on an outrageously large and ever-expanding radar. A little, tiny dot.
Consider that the nearest major galaxy to ours is the Andromeda galaxy, a spiral galaxy approximately 2.5 million light-years from Earth. 2.5 million light years. And that's close.
Remember, one light-year is how far an object travels while moving at the speed of light – 671 million miles an hour – nonstop, for 365 days. About six trillion miles.
So travelling 671 million miles an hour, nonstop, for two and a half years you reach our neighbor Andromeda. Imagine sitting on an airplane that's shooting through the sky at 671 million fucking miles an hour! For two and a half years! To get to your neighbor's house! The farthest known galaxy is 13.26 billion light years away from us. 13.26 billion. Light years.
There's a thing called the mediocrity principle and it basically states that we are nothing special. Earth does not occupy a unique position in the universe.
And that should be exciting but we have no imagination because we're not raised to be aware of the star children that we are.
There is nothing more awe-inspiring than the stars in our dark skies, yet we pollute the children with Bible stories and blindfold them to the fact that they are just one of many space species.
We force-feed their malleable minds stories of doom, gloom and eternal punishment instead of limitless possibility, optimisim, and wonder.
Imagine how children would respond if we taught them that Star Wars is not fiction, after all. They might grow up to be the next Stephen Hawking.
"I imagine they might exist in massive ships, having used up all the resources from their home planet," Hawking has speculated about intelligent extraterrestrial life. "Such advanced aliens would perhaps become nomads, looking to conquer and colonize whatever planets they can reach."
Just like humans did. Build ships and set sail for new lands to conquer. It's totally natural, but not necessarily non-violent. Look how European settlers treated the natives when they discovered new worlds.
"We only have to look at ourselves to see how intelligent life might develop into something we wouldn't want to meet," Hawking has warned.
Despite the dangers, we've been reaching out to aliens the way Chris Hansen solicits child sex predators online – cast a wide net and be ready to accept all takers.
In 1974 astronomers sent the "Arecibo message," a radio transmission blasted toward a distant star cluster from Puerto Rico's Arecibo radio telescope.
Think of the message as a time capsule; it contained information about the planets in our solar system, a crude cartoon of a human, the structure of our DNA, and other basics about us. Like speed dating in space.
We didn't hear anything back but that doesn't mean nothing heard us.
Nevertheless, we sent a new message last October (2017) from Norway on the anniversary of Arecibo. It was aimed at one of the closest nearby star systems – just 12 light-years away – known to contain a potentially habitable, Earth-like planet.
The message contains rudenmentary information about mathematics, counting, clocks and time-keeping – the sort of stuff an advanced species would no doubt laugh at if laughing is a thing they do.
Regardless of safety, the president of METI (Messaging Extraterrestrial Intelligence) thinks it's a super idea.
Douglas Vakoch told New Scientist he thinks getting a response from the red dwarf star would be an "unlikely" but "welcome outcome."
But the general consensus among the scientific community about reaching out to aliens seems to be that it is something we should not be doing.
Hawking and others warn that the possibility of intelligent life outside our planet is so likely, and so likely to be far older and more technologically advanced than us, that blindly broadcasting messages into space is risky behavior.
The folks over at SETI (the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) who have been listening for a sign of life and have so far struck out, apparently agree.
“Ninety-eight percent of astronomers and SETI researchers, including myself, think that METI is potentially dangerous, and not a good idea,” Dan Werthimer, a SETI researcher at the University of California at Berkeley, told New Scientist.
“It’s like shouting in a forest before you know if there are tigers, lions, and bears or other dangerous animals there.”
Indeed. We are like a blind, newborn critter. Each movement and sound we make increases the chances of becoming a target for hungry predators. Every little broadcast has the potential to lead to instant annihilation.
So where is that rare Ilinois earthquake of UFO/ET evidence that we can point to and say "See?"
I return to Travis Walton and his six co-workers in 1975.
Walton eventually reappeared 15 miles from where he was taken; he thought it was the same night as the abduction, but five days had passed. In other words, his trip was not short.
Meanwhile, the entire town including the sheriff assumed Walton's logging crew had murdered him and ditched his body in the mountains where they worked, and where they reported seeing the saucer.
Seven men witnessed the same thing that night, and to this day – more than four decades later – they have all stuck to their original story, despite being stalked by skeptics and offered thousands of dollars to say it was a hoax.
They have been ridiculed and ostracized by family, friends and strangers alike, despite all having long since passed polygraph tests.
"Travis wasn't hiding (during the five days he was missing)," Goulette says plainly. "We didn't make the story up, he didn't make the story up. It was all for real. Terrifying but it was real."
You can't watch them interviewed and not believe them. (And you can watch five of them interviewed in Paranormal Witness: The Abduction [Season 2, ep 9], which, ironically, airs on the SYFY network, and is where I got all these quotes.)
I have seen a lot of World War II documentaries and these men act just like those who have gone through terrible combat together and narrowly survived. They are all shook up to this day.
It's not just what they say, but how they say it. There is fear in their eyes.
"I was like a little kid – afraid of the dark," says Ken Petersen, the straight-laced Mormon guy who, of everyone, seems the most freaked out by the encounter even all these many years later.
"I was afraid to look out the window," Petersen admits, fighting back tears. "For a guy, 25 years old, being afraid you're going to see a spaceship.. (It's) something that I haven't gotten over. I wish I could."
Eventually, Walton recalled waking up in a ship, fending off horrifying creatures that were trying to examine him, encountering an emotionless human-faced "person" who took him off the small saucer and into a huge hangar or mothership where other small craft were docked.
He then remembers being taken into a room and strapped to another exam table by dead-eyed human-looking beings before waking up on the roadside on the outskirts of town.
His last memory is seeing the craft shoot off into the sky.
"I tested Travis in 1993," says polygraph examiner Cy Gilson. "Travis was not lying. It did happen as he said it did. Exactly as he said it did."
"I'm 100 percent sure of what happened to me," Walton says confidently. "All of us experienced a life-changing trauma."
Scientists say there is probably other intelligent life right here in our Milky Way galaxy, not to mention the rest of the universe.
Nathalie Cabrol is head of the SETI Institute’s Carl Sagan Center for the Study of Life in the Universe. In Jim Al-Khalili’s book Aliens, Cabrol says, "The discovery of an abundance of exoplanets (outside our Solar System) has revolutionized our concept of how many habitable worlds could exist in a very small fraction of our galaxy alone."
“Astronomy and astrophysics are also opening wide the potential for habitable worlds in the 100 billion galaxies now estimated in our universe," Cabrol says in the book. "The idea that we could be alone is simply completely at odds with statistics.”
So the smartest people on the planet are confident that there is intelligent life living in space doing lordy knows what.
And if that's true, every science-fiction movie we've enjoyed over the decades – from Star Wars to Alien to E.T. to Close Encounters of the Third Kind to Avatar – isn't science fiction at all, but rather, non-fiction.
Except cuddly little E.T. is probably coming to examine or vaporize you, not get drunk and hang.
To paraphrase Carl Sagan, we know as much about space – and therefore, big picture reality – as a guy in ankle-deep water thinking he's an ocean expert.
But why are we so afraid to dive in? It's just sitting there and we don't seem to care. We're all wrapped up in ourselves and our own invented origin stories, which we cling to like a child's security blanket.
"Some people just keep telling themselves such things can't happen," Walton says. "Look at the facts. The facts speak for themselves."
Meanwhile, there are creatures flying around in spaceships and living their lives in other worlds.
How cool and/or scary is that??
On Nov. 5, 1975, Travis Walton and six other young men came across a saucer-shaped craft hovering in the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest in Arizona as they were headed home from a logging job.
As they came to a stop in a clearing, 100 feet from the craft, they all watched in horror as Walton jumped out of the truck they were riding in and ran up to it, thinking it would take off before he could get close.
But the saucer lingered long enough for all seven men to get a better look than they even wanted.
And although they all agree it was traumatic and beyond scary, they pretty much also all seem to agree that, at the same time, it was an incredible, extraordinary experience.
The craft itself, metallic and hovering 15 feet above the ground, was a very impressive piece of machinery.
"It was prettier than a brand new Corvette," says witness John Goulette, who also maintains rather bluntly that the encounter was "the most horrifying experience of my life."
"It was beautiful," Walton says of his 45-degree-angle view from beneath the ship. "It was like glass."
"It was really terrifying and exciting at the same time," Walton says earnestly.
When the craft zapped Walton with a blue-green light and sent his body flying, the men in the truck, already scared, thought they had just witnessed the young man's death.
So they took off down the road in a panic, thinking they were about to die too.
But soon they stopped, collected themselves and gathered the courage to go back to check on Walton. When they reached the spot, he was nowhere to be found and the UFO was gone.
The youngest of the guys on the logging crew was 17-year-old Steve Pierce, who lied about his age to get the job and probably now wishes he never had.
"It was scary," Pierce says with a half-smile and gleaming eyes reminiscent of Captain Quint during his famous Indianapolis speech in Jaws. "I thought the world was coming to an end."
To make matters worse for the teenage Pierce, he had no family support during the aftermath of his traumatic encounter.
"It was hard to come to terms with," Pierce says, in his cowboy hat. "I got two brothers who don't believe me and my mom don't believe me. That's the hard part – you tell the truth and people think you're lying. I left Arizona and didn't come back."
And that's the thing. We live in a world where people will laugh at you and call you crazy if you believe in extraterrestrial life, more commonly referred to as aliens. But the same people think it's totally not weird to believe in a virgin giving birth, a guy walking on water, parting the Red Sea, goofy miracles, and on and on.
In fact, of the 7.5 billion people living on Earth, it is said that 84 percent of us believe in such hokus pokus. Probably because it makes us feel good and, more importantly, in control, despite the obvious reality that we are insignificant dust at the mercy of cosmic winds.
We are space people and we don't even know it. We are on a giant self-driving cruise ship in the middle of an ocean so vast, it has no end. It's not a very reassuring scenario, so it's no wonder why humans have invented tidy origin stories to help relieve some of that anxiety.
But aliens are much more likely than a Santa Clause-like creator in the sky.
If you think about the profound bigness of space, it's mathematically impossible that our young species is the only intelligent life in the universe (or multiverse). It's not only crazy to not believe in extraterrestrial life, it's also rather arrogant.
We are tucked away in the corner of one tiny galaxy among at least 100 billion galaxies. 100 billion! I mean, I rest my case.
"To declare that Earth must be the only planet in the universe with life would be inexcusably big-headed of us,” says famous astrophysicist and Cosmos host Neil deGrasse Tyson in his book Death By Black Hole.
When your tooth hurts, you go to a dentist; likewise, when you want to know about space, you ask a physicist or an astronomer.
Famous theoretical physicist and cosmologist Stephen Hawking says that in a universe with 100 billion galaxies, each containing hundreds of millions of stars – some potentially habitable – it is unlikely that Earth is the only planet where life has evolved.
What's 100 billion x 500 million? A number so big the human mind can't even begin to grasp it. And that massive number represents all the potential for intelligent life out there.
And I'm not talking about microbes. I'm talking about little guys flying ships the size of cities at incomprehensible speeds.
"To my mathematical brain, the numbers alone make thinking about aliens perfectly rational," Hawking told The Sunday Times in 2010.
The problem is that ordinary people construct their realities about the physical world based on what they see around them every day. Alien life is like a rare geological event; if most people don't experience it, they don't believe it.
Just because Chicago isn't known for its earthquakes doesn't mean they can't happen there.
The New Madrid fault is a major seismic zone located on the border region of Missouri, Arkansas and Tennessee, just below southern Illinois. Most Americans have never even heard of it, let alone know that it has potential to produce destructive earthquakes in the future.
Likewise, in 2011 a magnitude 5.8 quake struck in Mineral, Virg., and shook D.C. hard enough to crack the Washington Monument and cause $20 million in damage. It was bizarre but only because of how we think about these things and what we think we know. Out of sight, out of mind.
In the early 1800's, the New Madrid fault produced four of the largest North American earthquakes in recorded history, with magnitudes estimated at seven or higher.
For a little context, the major Loma Prieta quake that collapsed highway bridges and interrupted Game Three of the 1989 World Series at Candlestick Park was a 6.9.
So a 7.0 in the southern Midwest is unheard of even though it has happened and will happen again. Yet go try to find someone in Arkansas who's aware of the fault beneath their feet.
Likewise, most people outside of Japan and Hawaii had no idea what a tsunami was before the devastating Indian Ocean earthquake-tsunami of 2004 that killed roughly 250,000 people in 14 countries.
All sorts of seemingly crazy things are possible, but since most of us never experience them ourselves firsthand, we jump to the conclusion that they are impossible.
We are used to earthquakes in California because they are more frequent there, but when the big one hits coastal Washington state – and it will – people will be just as shocked as if the mothership has landed.
Since many seismic zones are inactive for so long, we assume they are closed for business. But we have absolutely no concept of time.
The Earth is 5.5 billion years old and the universe is estimated to be almost 14 billion years old. That is a lot of time, especially considering the human memory lasts only about a few generations – less than 100 years.
For example, there are probably great stories from my ancestors from hundreds of years ago but I've never heard them. Time goes on and people re-learn the lessons of the past.
Also, the variety of life on Earth should amaze and inspire us to realize that any life form is possible in other worlds.
Look at a giraffe! Look at all the crazy, alien-like insects we take for granted! Animals with environment-matching camouflage! Behold the wonderful sea creatures, some highly-social, that inhabit 71 percent of our planet – some at depths so dark they have bio-luminescent "lights."
If that doesn't open your mind to the possibilities, I don't know what will. Do they need to play jazz at the Cantina for us to see how unique they all are?
Literally anything is possible in the space that surrounds our little planet, yet all of the religious explanations for the origin of life – with the exception of L. Ron Hubbard's science fiction cult of Scientology – are totally Earth-centric.
They put our world at the center of everything when, in reality, we are just a tiny blip on an outrageously large and ever-expanding radar. A little, tiny dot.
Consider that the nearest major galaxy to ours is the Andromeda galaxy, a spiral galaxy approximately 2.5 million light-years from Earth. 2.5 million light years. And that's close.
Remember, one light-year is how far an object travels while moving at the speed of light – 671 million miles an hour – nonstop, for 365 days. About six trillion miles.
So travelling 671 million miles an hour, nonstop, for two and a half years you reach our neighbor Andromeda. Imagine sitting on an airplane that's shooting through the sky at 671 million fucking miles an hour! For two and a half years! To get to your neighbor's house! The farthest known galaxy is 13.26 billion light years away from us. 13.26 billion. Light years.
There's a thing called the mediocrity principle and it basically states that we are nothing special. Earth does not occupy a unique position in the universe.
And that should be exciting but we have no imagination because we're not raised to be aware of the star children that we are.
There is nothing more awe-inspiring than the stars in our dark skies, yet we pollute the children with Bible stories and blindfold them to the fact that they are just one of many space species.
We force-feed their malleable minds stories of doom, gloom and eternal punishment instead of limitless possibility, optimisim, and wonder.
Imagine how children would respond if we taught them that Star Wars is not fiction, after all. They might grow up to be the next Stephen Hawking.
"I imagine they might exist in massive ships, having used up all the resources from their home planet," Hawking has speculated about intelligent extraterrestrial life. "Such advanced aliens would perhaps become nomads, looking to conquer and colonize whatever planets they can reach."
Just like humans did. Build ships and set sail for new lands to conquer. It's totally natural, but not necessarily non-violent. Look how European settlers treated the natives when they discovered new worlds.
"We only have to look at ourselves to see how intelligent life might develop into something we wouldn't want to meet," Hawking has warned.
Despite the dangers, we've been reaching out to aliens the way Chris Hansen solicits child sex predators online – cast a wide net and be ready to accept all takers.
In 1974 astronomers sent the "Arecibo message," a radio transmission blasted toward a distant star cluster from Puerto Rico's Arecibo radio telescope.
Think of the message as a time capsule; it contained information about the planets in our solar system, a crude cartoon of a human, the structure of our DNA, and other basics about us. Like speed dating in space.
We didn't hear anything back but that doesn't mean nothing heard us.
Nevertheless, we sent a new message last October (2017) from Norway on the anniversary of Arecibo. It was aimed at one of the closest nearby star systems – just 12 light-years away – known to contain a potentially habitable, Earth-like planet.
The message contains rudenmentary information about mathematics, counting, clocks and time-keeping – the sort of stuff an advanced species would no doubt laugh at if laughing is a thing they do.
Regardless of safety, the president of METI (Messaging Extraterrestrial Intelligence) thinks it's a super idea.
Douglas Vakoch told New Scientist he thinks getting a response from the red dwarf star would be an "unlikely" but "welcome outcome."
But the general consensus among the scientific community about reaching out to aliens seems to be that it is something we should not be doing.
Hawking and others warn that the possibility of intelligent life outside our planet is so likely, and so likely to be far older and more technologically advanced than us, that blindly broadcasting messages into space is risky behavior.
The folks over at SETI (the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) who have been listening for a sign of life and have so far struck out, apparently agree.
“Ninety-eight percent of astronomers and SETI researchers, including myself, think that METI is potentially dangerous, and not a good idea,” Dan Werthimer, a SETI researcher at the University of California at Berkeley, told New Scientist.
“It’s like shouting in a forest before you know if there are tigers, lions, and bears or other dangerous animals there.”
Indeed. We are like a blind, newborn critter. Each movement and sound we make increases the chances of becoming a target for hungry predators. Every little broadcast has the potential to lead to instant annihilation.
So where is that rare Ilinois earthquake of UFO/ET evidence that we can point to and say "See?"
I return to Travis Walton and his six co-workers in 1975.
Walton eventually reappeared 15 miles from where he was taken; he thought it was the same night as the abduction, but five days had passed. In other words, his trip was not short.
Meanwhile, the entire town including the sheriff assumed Walton's logging crew had murdered him and ditched his body in the mountains where they worked, and where they reported seeing the saucer.
Seven men witnessed the same thing that night, and to this day – more than four decades later – they have all stuck to their original story, despite being stalked by skeptics and offered thousands of dollars to say it was a hoax.
They have been ridiculed and ostracized by family, friends and strangers alike, despite all having long since passed polygraph tests.
"Travis wasn't hiding (during the five days he was missing)," Goulette says plainly. "We didn't make the story up, he didn't make the story up. It was all for real. Terrifying but it was real."
You can't watch them interviewed and not believe them. (And you can watch five of them interviewed in Paranormal Witness: The Abduction [Season 2, ep 9], which, ironically, airs on the SYFY network, and is where I got all these quotes.)
I have seen a lot of World War II documentaries and these men act just like those who have gone through terrible combat together and narrowly survived. They are all shook up to this day.
It's not just what they say, but how they say it. There is fear in their eyes.
"I was like a little kid – afraid of the dark," says Ken Petersen, the straight-laced Mormon guy who, of everyone, seems the most freaked out by the encounter even all these many years later.
"I was afraid to look out the window," Petersen admits, fighting back tears. "For a guy, 25 years old, being afraid you're going to see a spaceship.. (It's) something that I haven't gotten over. I wish I could."
Eventually, Walton recalled waking up in a ship, fending off horrifying creatures that were trying to examine him, encountering an emotionless human-faced "person" who took him off the small saucer and into a huge hangar or mothership where other small craft were docked.
He then remembers being taken into a room and strapped to another exam table by dead-eyed human-looking beings before waking up on the roadside on the outskirts of town.
His last memory is seeing the craft shoot off into the sky.
"I tested Travis in 1993," says polygraph examiner Cy Gilson. "Travis was not lying. It did happen as he said it did. Exactly as he said it did."
"I'm 100 percent sure of what happened to me," Walton says confidently. "All of us experienced a life-changing trauma."
Scientists say there is probably other intelligent life right here in our Milky Way galaxy, not to mention the rest of the universe.
Nathalie Cabrol is head of the SETI Institute’s Carl Sagan Center for the Study of Life in the Universe. In Jim Al-Khalili’s book Aliens, Cabrol says, "The discovery of an abundance of exoplanets (outside our Solar System) has revolutionized our concept of how many habitable worlds could exist in a very small fraction of our galaxy alone."
“Astronomy and astrophysics are also opening wide the potential for habitable worlds in the 100 billion galaxies now estimated in our universe," Cabrol says in the book. "The idea that we could be alone is simply completely at odds with statistics.”
So the smartest people on the planet are confident that there is intelligent life living in space doing lordy knows what.
And if that's true, every science-fiction movie we've enjoyed over the decades – from Star Wars to Alien to E.T. to Close Encounters of the Third Kind to Avatar – isn't science fiction at all, but rather, non-fiction.
Except cuddly little E.T. is probably coming to examine or vaporize you, not get drunk and hang.
To paraphrase Carl Sagan, we know as much about space – and therefore, big picture reality – as a guy in ankle-deep water thinking he's an ocean expert.
But why are we so afraid to dive in? It's just sitting there and we don't seem to care. We're all wrapped up in ourselves and our own invented origin stories, which we cling to like a child's security blanket.
"Some people just keep telling themselves such things can't happen," Walton says. "Look at the facts. The facts speak for themselves."
Meanwhile, there are creatures flying around in spaceships and living their lives in other worlds.
How cool and/or scary is that??
Wednesday, December 20, 2017
Tuesday, December 19, 2017
Meet Pastor Kevin Swanson
In Fall 2015, in order to court evangelicals in Iowa, three Republican presidential candidates went so far as to share a stage and even shake hands with a hardcore anti-gays pastor who, just like America’s number-one enemy, ISIS, believes that gay people deserve to be killed.
Bobby Jindal, Ted Cruz and Mike Huckabee all had plenty of time to abandon the National Religious Liberties Conference in Des Moines on Nov. 6 when they heard Pastor Kevin Swanson explicitly condone the execution of freedom-loving Americans for being unafraid to be who they are. Yet, none of the pro-death-penalty-for-gays, Constitution-touting, “family values” candidates fled in embarrassment, essentially putting the GOP stamp of approval on the whole unAmerican, schizophrenic hate fest.
However, unlike ISIS, which controls a tiny swath of land where freedom doesn't exist and brutality is the norm, "pro-life" Swanson thinks murdering our gay brothers and sisters as some sort of religious punishment is something we should be doing here in the United States. What he is proposing is common practice in ISIS-controlled areas; throwing people who are even suspected of being gay off of rooftops is their preferred religious murder method.
Ironic as Swanson has no doubt also warned about the threat of Sharia Law in America, despite obviously agreeing with at least one grisly aspect of it. Also ironic that he was hosting a religious liberties conference that, apart from borrowing from fundamentalist Islam, focuses solely on the proliferation of extremist Christian ideology and all the perceived attacks Christians are subjected to.
For instance, these rubes are convinced the expression "Merry Christmas" has been outlawed in the United States. The conference literally had nothing to do with religious liberties, and certainly not freedom generally.
Swanson whined about “the sin of homosexuality,” using the Bible to bolster his paranoid rantings and to justify his medieval blood lust.
“In Romans, chapter one, Paul affirms that this particular sin is worthy of death,” Swanson said.
In the United States of America. In 2015.
But who are these gay people anyway? For everyone in Des Moines who was confused about that—and I’m sure there were plenty—Swanson filled them in.
"These are the people with the sores!” Swanson shouted. “The gaping sores! The sores that are puss-y and and people are coming in and carving happy faces on the sores! That’s not a nice thing to do! Don’t you carve happy faces on open, puss-y sores—don’t you ever do that! Don’t you ever do that. I tell you don’t do it!” a sweaty Swanson yelled before whispering ominously, “I tell you don’t do it.”
The problem, Swanson explained in apparent agony, is that normal "Christian families, pastors’ families, elders’ families from good, godly churches, whose sons are rebelling, hanging out with homosexuals and getting married, and the parents are invited.”
Gasp! So many things! Rebelling?? I know, I’ll fuck that cute guy from school, that’ll really show my dad—what an asshole! Hahaha.
"What would you do if that was the case?” Swanson continued with his goofy gay wedding invitation rebellion hypothetical.
“Here is what I would do: sackcloth and ashes at the entrance to the church and I’d sit in cow manure, and I’d spread it all over my body."
If you’re as confused as me by that, Pastor Swanson is saying he would go to a gay wedding dressed in cow shit to show his disapproval.
Sackcloth (burlap) and ashes were apparently used in Old Testament times as a symbol of repentance, among other things. To show your repentant heart, you’d wear (uncomfortable) sackcloth, sit in ashes, and put ashes on your head. The ashes, of course, signified desolation and ruin.
Such a symbol made your change of heart visible and demonstrated the sincerity of your repentance. Or so I've learned via Google.
The humility demonstrated with that ridiculous action, of course, “moved God to intervene."
But why the cow manure? I assume manure being even less pleasant to wear than ashes would be Swanson’s best symbol of repentance for what he obviously perceives as the ultimate sin.
Although I don’t understand why he would have to play with poop if his son were gay. Seems like the son would be the one on the hook for a poop party, not dad, but what do I know, I’m very new to all this spreading of shit all over our bodies to entice God’s gay intervention.
"That’s what I would do,” Swanson insisted. “And I’m not kidding, I’m not laughing. I’m grieving! I’m mourning! I’m pointing out the problem! It’s not a gay time!”
You really have to see the video to appreciate this man's deranged desperation. Swanson’s performance is quite something. Like watching a demented legless man trying like hell to put shoes on.
"Sackcloth and ashes. This is what America needs,” Swanson blurts into the microphone. “America needs to hear the message. We are messed up.”
To understand this kind of hateful, paranoid, narrow worldview, consider that Swanson is a major proponent of homeschooling.
Why? Oh, I'm so glad you asked. Because public schools are breeding grounds for “homosexual indoctrination,” of course. From public school it’s a direct route to homosexuality, which, as we all know, leads to pedophilia. And then your dad has to wear a turd hat, it's a whole thing.
To be safe, keep your kids at home and Bible-brainwashed if you don’t want them to be gay transgender pedophiles or encounter any gays, pedophiles or liberal gay school teachers! Or Girl Scouts! They are everywhere; NEVER buy their cookies under ANY circumstances!!
Likewise, don’t let your girls join the Girl Scouts! They promote feminism and turn girls into lesbians who become transgender pedophiles. The few who resist later have abortions provided by—you guessed it—Planned Parenthood! PP then harvests the baby organs for Lucifer.
I'm not making any of this up. This is the condensed version for your convenience.
As for the puss-y sores, I can only assume that’s some kind of reference to AIDS. I’m not sure what to make of the smiley face sore carvings, although they do sound, you know, gross.
Regarding Swanson’s obsession with homosexuality, the lady doth protest too much, me thinks. More to the point, there's no way this guy doesn't suck dicks. That being said, I can agree with him on at least one thing: Some of us are indeed “messed up."
This nutty Swanson guy introduced Cruz by stating that Jesus Christ "is king of the President of the United States, whether he will admit it or not, and that president should submit to His rule and to His law," before asking Cruz to share his opinion on how important it is for "the President of the United States to fear God."
Hey I don't know about you guys, but I, for one, am scared.
Trump went on to win the presidency—with the help of Russia, rubes and Facebook—and gave cabinet positions to God-fearing lunatics. Vice president elect Mike Pence has suggested conversion therapy for gays and signed a 2013 bill trying to jail same-sex couples for seeking marriage licenses in Indiana.
On the contrary, in his book The Name of God is Mercy, Pope Francis cites “the Catechism of the Catholic Church where it says that these people should be treated with delicacy and not be marginalized,” adding "people should not be defined only by their sexual tendencies: let us not forget that God loves all his creatures and we are destined to receive his infinite love.”
As for Huckabee, it was rumored that Trump had picked him to be ambassador to Israel, which I thought sounded about right considering everyone involved and the overall craziness, but he announced on Fri., Nov. 18 on "The O'Reilly Factor" that Trump had offered him a cabinet position that he declined because it wasn't "the right fit."
Presumably, the job wasn't Overweight Scrote Gobbler because that would be a perfect fit.
To conclude, if you call yourself pro-life while supporting the bombing of a heavily populated civilian area and killing scores of innocent children; the death penalty; turning away refugees—especially children; the murders of abortion providers; the killing of unarmed civilians by U.S. police, etc., kindly shove it up your asshole.
ISIS has been called a Death Cult. So are many pro-lifers. So spare us the fake outrage.
Abortion is a complicated subject, but people mainly have sex for pleasure, not procreation. And shit happens. And the alternative is fucking creepy and medieval.
The alternative to legal abortion is a Religious State where pregnant women are registered and monitored and forced to give birth no matter the baby's health, it's threat to mom's health, or even if it's the result of a rape attack.
Like a creepy science fiction story, or Nazi Germany, The State controls your baby and your health, your decisions, your future—not you.
All to serve some goofy God, which everyone in America would be forced to pretend to believe in.
Not what the Founding Fathers envisioned. The exact opposite, in fact. An embarrassment.
It would be like Jonestown or North Korea. Total paranoia; neighbors ratting each other out to the authorities.
From there it's a slippery slope to mandatory prayer services and religious clothing police wandering the streets, harassing and attacking women.
And that kind of society might make these right-wing loony-tune zealots happy, or even give them a Jesus boner, but that ain't Freedom. That's not America.
So even if you hate abortion, you'd have to be insane not to hate the alternative more (and I don't doubt for a second that you are).
Not to mention, abortions would still be performed but by amateurs. There would be infections and even more death because the moms would die too.
And although you may believe they deserve their one-way expedited ticket to Hell, well, that contradicts your whole pro-life thing, doesn't it.
Tell us more about how much you value freedom and how freedom isn't free, and don't tread on me and all that nonsense.
In reality, YOU oppose and indeed threaten hard-fought American freedom. Real freedom. YOU are the problem.
Here'e the video of Pastor Swanson, you really gotta see this guy.
I also recommend the remix. Enjoy!
Monday, October 12, 2015
Huckpocracy Idiocracy: Pick Your ‘Mental Poison’
There are at least two very distinct strains of Christianity in the United States today: Genuine Christians who practice what Jesus allegedly taught and are concerned about the poor, handicapped, homeless and immigrants—in a word, everyone, but especially the disadvantaged. The living. Think Sister Helen Prejean, death penalty critic.
Then there’s the modern American shit-kicking Christian who hates pretty much everybody. Think Ted Nugent.
Remember when people used to wear those goofy WWJD bracelets? More and more nowadays I find myself looking at these self-described Christians on television, listening to their nasty nationalistic message of exclusion (and fake victimhood) and wonder: What would Jesus do?
(You know, assuming he was a real guy and half as big a sweetheart as his fans claim.) Would he be proud of these assholes?
In the summer of 2014—when Israel was busy killing more than 500 babies in Gaza with the weapons, political support and indeed the blessing from our Christian nation—protests erupted along the U.S.-Mexico border as news began to spread about record numbers of incoming immigrants, mostly unaccompanied children, fleeing increased violence in Central American countries like Honduras, Guatemala, and especially El Salvador.
And by violence, I mean ISIS-like stuff: dismembering and beheading an 11-year-old school boy who refused to join a gang, for instance. And David de la O was not the exception.
Busloads of desperate children and families, much like the people fleeing Syria for Europe right now, were met with angry screaming white folks holding signs like “Return to Sender” and “Send Them Back With Birth Control!”
Some of the literate protesters had probably read Ann Coulter’s latest book “Adios, America!,” or, ironically, enjoyed TLC’s “19 Kids & Counting."
Many of the seething crowd, no doubt, would describe themselves as Christians doing God’s work, just as their parents’ generation did when George Wallace battled the Kennedy brothers alongside KKK terrorists to try to keep Alabama school children segregated “forever” in Jesus' name.
Is this the same Jesus who advocated for poor people? We tell the world’s worst off seeking shelter and compassion in our famous melting pot nation of immigrants to fuck off and that’s Christian?
We do understand what the the Statue of Liberty symbolizes, right?
My people had to flee here because we ran out of potatoes, for fuck's sake! They weren't welcomed either and now we're as ingrained as a blood stain. Just good ol' American jerks like everyone else.
That being said, I don’t go to church or subscribe to a religion but I know for sure that hurling insults at desperate, helpless refugees fleeing death is not nice behavior. I mean, what would Jesus do?
Deuteronomy 15:11 says, “For there will never cease to be poor in the land. Therefore I command you, ‘You shall open wide your hand to your brother, to the needy and to the poor, in your land.’”
Which brings us to Christianity’s latest culture war hero, Kentucky bumpkin Kim Davis.
On Tues., Sept. 8, the Rowan county clerk who had been jailed for refusing to grant marriage licenses to same-sex couples was released. It had only been five days, but at her televised victory lap, complete with "Rocky III" theme song, Davis acted like she hadn't seen the sun in ages. And from the looks of her, she hadn't.
Anyway, graceful it was not. But it was timely because former Arkansas governor and Fox News bloviator Mike Huckabee had already organized a rally for that day to capitalize off of Davis, whom it was assumed would still be incarcerated at the time, giving Huckabee the spotlight and opportunity to tell evangelicals and sympathetic morons how afraid to be of a tyrannical government that wants to take your guns and your Bible.
So Davis stole quite a bit of Huckabee’s thunder, which explains why when Donald Trump suckerfish Ted Cruz appeared like a vampire in a cloud of smoke to do his own Al Sharpton-style hijacking of the event, he was physically blocked from approaching the lectern by one of Huckabee’s church goons.
It’s ironic because none of these people have any love for Sharpton or Jesse Jackson, yet here they were using the exact same playbook as the notorious “race hustlers.” I suppose one might call these gentlemen Jesus hustlers inspired by their hero, “Reverend” Sharpton.
Just because the Western world is quickly catching up with modern times like a subduction zone fault line suddenly snapping back and releasing hundreds of years worth of accumulated pressure, some Christians feel, as Fox News likes to put it, “under attack” by inevitable American social progress. (Nevermind that even the Pope said "Who am I to judge?" when asked about gay people in 2013.)
Some of these folks, like Fox News' Bill O’Reilly, are so sensitive to their perceived victimhood that they go apeshit every Christmas when they hear of fellow Americans wishing each other “Happy Holidays!” in order to incorporate New Year’s and Hanukkah, etc. into a generic one-size-fits-all greeting.
Of course, one could simply view that as the most efficient way to cover all the bases and kindly not exclude anyone, but to conservatives, it’s a full-on assault on their most sacred beliefs.
“War on Christmas,” they call it. It’s adorable.
These anti-gay, anti-women, so-called “family values” Christmas crusaders are desperate to be taken seriously, yet their representatives in government are parading around to Survivor’s “Eye of the Tiger” with the likes of Davis and taking thousands of selfies with former reality TV star, Family Research Council lobbyist, child molester and adulterer, Josh Duggar.
All of these people, including Huckabee, are hypocrites of the highest possible order. Duggar, a D.C. “family values” lobbyist has admitted to molesting his own sisters. He was doing some family research, alright..
Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines hypocrisy as “a feigning to be what one is not or to believe what one does not; especially : the false assumption of an appearance of virtue or religion.”
Take Davis. She’s allegedly fighting to protect marriage, although it could be argued she’s really fighting to deprive other Americans of their rights. But if we take her at her word, who is she to defend the sanctity of this most holy of unions that she just so happens to have desecrated four times in a row?
This woman has been married and divorced several times and even had twins from an adulterous relationship with what I can only assume is the scarecrow from "The Wizard of Oz."
Ironically, the Bible says adulterers like Davis should be put to death. Leviticus 20:10, bitches.
But nevermind all that. Davis could have given a 10-minute soliloquy about the wonders of welfare and no one would have batted an eye as long as she gave props to her guy Jesus.
As for Duggar, he found fame on his ever-growing family’s reality TV show, the mission of which was to spread the word of God via the airwaves to millions of unsuspecting sinner-chumps.
The Duggar clan blended socially conservative politics with their message, making news when patriarch Jim Bob took his daughters across state lines to campaign for controversial Missouri congressman and Senate candidate Todd Akin shortly after Akin willingly made comments in front of a news camera about how a woman’s body “has ways to try to shut that whole thing down” in the case of “legitimate rape,” casting doubt on whether he believed rape was even a thing at all.
Which is beyond creepy when you consider what these people believe should happen after a woman is impregnated by her attacker.
And that brings us to Huckabee. This fat turd. Here’s a guy who promotes hypocritical anti-human “family values” like all the rest of them.
Miley Cyrus is leading millions of innocent Hannah Montana Disney children onto the nude wrecking ball of life, smoking bong-loads of salvia on camera, making obscene tongue gestures all the time, clothes falling off, while Justin Bieber gets arrested weekly as he terrorizes his Calabasas neighborhood, vandalizing property and putting everyone’s life at risk by treating his gated community like his own personal Daytona 500, yet Huckabee sees Beyonce—who never gets into any trouble—as public enemy No. 1?
I’d ask why, but we know why.
Some of her lyrics aren’t “wholesome.” She’s married to that crack dealer Jay Z. But most worrisome, Bey & Jay are American Royalty, which outrages people like Huckabee who associate royalty with whiteness. The American social status quo and power structure has been “flipped, turned upside down” as The Fresh Prince might say, and some of these old-school honkies do not like it, to say the least.
Beyonce’s biggest offense, as far as I can tell, is that she shakes her ass and shows a lot of skin, but that is nothing new. I assume Huckabee never saw Cher’s awful butt cheeks on that battleship.
Likewise, Madonna humped a stage in a wedding dress on live TV thirty damn years ago. She simulated sex—in a wedding dress!—before we even knew what AIDS and gay people were because of our refusal to acknowledge reality thanks to our lingering uptight 1950‘s Christian derp culture.
Oh, but I suppose Beyonce’s exposed skin is brown. Suspicious!
I admit rap music and misogynism aren’t exactly strangers, but the same can be said for the latter and Huckabee's GOP. Like it or not, hip-hop has been the driving force behind American pop culture for at least the last twenty five years. Take it up with the white ad executives who use that music and culture to move product. It’s not going anywhere; it’s mainstream business.
You want to try to control music in America, Mike? In the land of free speech? You’d have better luck trying to reroute the mighty Mississippi out to the Pacific.
And what about that Constitution thing conservatives are always stumbling over themselves to pretend to defend? They want the first black first lady to try to control what music Americans listen to? A black woman dictating to all these rednecks from the White House?
What if she called out Ted Nugent’s “Cat Scratch Fever” for being obscene? That might upset some people like Hickabee—excuse me, Huckabee—who claim to be offended by rap music.
Ironically, a few years ago, Huckabee collaborated on that very song with its author, his friend Ted Nugent. Huckabee played bass guitar on his Fox News show and smiled while Nugent, right along side him, sang a tale about reckless, carefree, unprotected teenage sex that results in sexually-transmitted diseases, which is, apparently, all just part of the thrill.
Huckabee seemed to particularly enjoy when ‘The Nuge’ sang the following part like a sex-crazed pervert who hangs with Josh Duggar:
Well, I make the pussy purr with the stroke of my hand
They know they gettin' it from me
They know just where to go when they need their lovin' man
They know I'm doin' it for free
O-M-G!! But what about the children?!?!?!
In his pre-campaign-rollout jerkoff-billboard-book, titled, dumbly enough: "God, Guns, Grits, and Gravy," Huckabee revives his old attack on Beyonce but gets a two-fer by tossing terrible parent Michelle Obama under the bus as well, writing, “With the first lady so concerned about making sure her daughters' bellies don't ingest unhealthy food, how can she let their brains ingest obnoxious and toxic mental poison in the form of song lyrics? If lived out, those lyrics could be far more devastating to someone's health than a cupcake.”
Oh, lordy. An opportunistic bastardized-Christianity pimp warning about "obnoxious and toxic mental poison?" This guy's irony detector must be broken.
Beyonce and the first lady will have more of an impact on the future than Huckabee could ever dream of having, even if he prints out a million moronically-titled pamphlets trying to guilt gullible people into his silly, ancient belief system until the day he croaks.
If the Obamas are bad parents for not overly-policing their teenage daughters’ musical consumption, then so is everyone whose kids ever listened to Elvis. Because if you remember, the old folks thought he was an agent of the devil too, if not Lucifer himself. Ditto for the world-changing Beatles.
Ask yourself this, Mike: What is more responsible for unnecessary death and destruction in this world—pop music song lyrics, or religion? The Bible or Beyonce? Because one is definitely mental poison.
She's so sweet when she yanks on my meat
Down on the street you know she can't be beat
What the hell
For the record, that wholesome morsel is from Nugent's "Wang Dang Sweet Poontang."
The very idea of parents being able to control what music their kids listen to in the era of the Internet, mp3 players, tiny ear buds and, you know, children occasionally leaving the home to mingle with influential heathens at school, work, church, etc. is laughable, let alone trying to sway an entire nation of adderall-snorting teens to abstain from music deemed unwholesome by some supreme leader. It’s ridiculous and wholly unAmerican.
If we’re going to do that, we might as well have mandatory prayers five times a day and outlaw pornography. Where would it end—Sharia Law??
But, of course, it’s not primarily about the music—it’s about the people making the music.
Nugent put it best in a Feb. 2014 YouTube rant, saying, “Those big uneducated greasy black mongrels on (MTV), they call themselves rap artists. Excuse me? During a bad bloody case of diarrhea, I got more soul than those guys do at the peak of their life. That's not music.”
And not just "uneducated" rappers. Nugent has also said Harvard's President Obama is a “subhuman mongrel.”
By now you should be sensing a theme about these "Christians."
Here’s the thing I don’t understand about folks like Huckabee, Duggar and Davis. If they believe that we are all sinners, that includes them, so why are they preaching to the rest of us? Why do they feel it is their job to play God if they have such strong faith in such an infallible deity who’s going to sort everyone out in the end anyway?
They’re wasting their time and stealing work off God’s desk! Flushing gays down the fiery toilet is probably the only fun the ol’ guy gets to have anymore—leave it to him, bozos!
Speaking of family values hypocrites, Duggar allegedly used two Ashley Madison (adultery match-making Website) accounts to violently fuck porn stars in D. C. while away from his dingbat wife who was comforted in the belief that her sweet, devoted husband was just working hard lobbying for Jesus and smearing loving gay people he’d never met at every opportunity.
Yet he was a great guy nonetheless and immediately forgiven by his flock—including, of course, and most notably, Huckabee, who wrote in a lengthy (post-molestation/pre-prostitute news) Facebook defense of Duggar that he was just another victim of “today’s blood-thirsty media.” Blame the messenger—Fox News 101.
“Janet and I want to affirm our support for the Duggar family. Josh’s actions when he was an underage teen are as he described them himself, 'inexcusable,' but that doesn’t mean 'unforgivable,'” Huckabee pleaded online, adding that even “good people” do “disgusting things.”
Which is a sentiment that one might think would also apply to homosexuals (designed the way they are by God, to use Christian lingo) and not just a serial sexual deviant like Duggar, but, oddly and predictably, no.
Hilariously, Huckabee’s “underage teen” defense evaporated just a few weeks later when adult Josh Duggar made news yet again when his Ashley Madison accounts were revealed.
But, presumably, Duggar was “good” to begin with because of his awesome faith in Jesus Christ, and the gays are somehow irredeemable evil spawns of Satan who willingly chose an unrighteous, icky path.
Then, on Dec. 23, Huckabee surprisingly reversed course and threw his old church buddy under the bus, feeding Iowa radio host Simon Conway a little sample of Arkansas horseshit.
"I really didn’t support Josh," Huckabee farted into the microphone. "I supported his parents, if you’ll go back and look at what I said. There’s no support for what he did."
No?
"He did some things that totally defy everything he supposedly stood for."
No shit??
Best of all, while Huckabee was railing against homos and shaming parents (namely, the Obamas) who let their kids listen to Beyonce’s music—not to mention taking enough selfies with Duggar to fill a child rapist’s jail cell—he’s the guy who raised his son David, in God’s bright forgiving glory, to be a dog torturer.
So, in 1998, Huckabee’s then 17-year-old son was kicked out of an Arkansas Boy Scout camp for allegedly killing a dog with another teenager. But it gets worse. According to a news article citing young Huckabee’s accomplice’s father, the dog was at one point “hung over a limb and choking.”
According to anonymous witnesses, after hanging the dog, David and his buddy slit the helpless creature's throat before stoning it to death. Huckabee’s cover story, as he told Larry King in 2007 while running for president, was that his son, the good boy that he was, was just trying to put the poor dog out of its misery.
He didn’t mention the hanging.
"(The dog) was mangy,” Huckabee told King, the bullshit dripping onto his fat chin. “It looked like it was going to attack.”
But, of course, that act of humanity doesn’t jibe with his son being kicked out of Scout camp.
Marcal Young, scout executive of the Caddo Area Council that operated the camp where the dog was killed said David was kicked out because he violated a Scout law: "A Scout is kind," leaving little doubt that this was more of a Jeffrey-Dahmer’s-early-days situation than the merciful act of an animal lover or self defense.
And instead of praying to God to make it all work out, Governor Huckabee subsequently covered it all up, firing the director of Arkansas’ state police for refusing to write a letter denying the local prosecutor’s request for an animal cruelty investigation.
In 2007, Newsweek quoted the former FBI chief in Little Rock, I.C. Smith, as saying, “Without question, (Huckabee) was making a conscious attempt to keep the state police from investigating his son.”
Just like Jim Bob Duggar. And in the same state. Wow, what a small world! No wonder their families are so close; they have so many cute crimes and cover-ups in common!
Just to be clear: Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee wants millions of parents whose teenagers enjoy Beyonce’s music to do some kind of moral inventory, yet he raised a malicious little maniac who spent a beautiful day at Boy Scout camp torturing a poor dog to death. Man's best friend.
And who knows what kinky skeletons the former governor has in his closet. If there’s one thing I’ve learned it’s that these self-imposed morality police for Jesus always turn out to be the sickest of us all. By far.
Here’s the thing. This isn’t Yemen. The reason our founding fathers went to all the trouble of building this paradise in the first place was to create a secular society based on freedom of religion and a separation of church and state. That is the point of the whole premise: Freedom.
Yet we’ve backslid to the point where you can’t even run for president unless you tout your Christian bona fides, no matter how exaggerated or fictional they are. Muslims are unofficially banned from the White House by the same disingenuous twats who are whining about religious freedom as a way to discriminate against gays.
Take Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson.
Here’s a gifted retired neurosurgeon who believes homosexuality is a choice based on the observation that “a lot of people ... go into prison straight” and emerge fabulously gay. He has also repeatedly compared Obama's America to “Nazi Germany,” and is on record saying he thinks "Obamacare is really, I think, the worst thing that has happened in this nation since slavery."
Hey, what can you say about Dr. Carson? The man loves rhetoric.
And a few months after Carson said he "would not advocate that we put a Muslim in charge of this nation," Cruz repeatedly stumped to small crowds all over Iowa, saying, "Any president who doesn't begin every day on his knees isn't fit to be commander-in-chief of this nation."
Insert (get it?) blowjob joke here -->.
American kids have to pledge allegiance “under God” before starting school everyday, Muslim American kids have no hopes of ever being president and we’re supposed to believe Christianity is under attack in this country?
Societies that are rigidly ruled by old-timey religious goons whom their subjects resent are called theocracies. It’s what they have in Iran and Saudi Arabia, that part of the world we claim to despise, yet hardcore Christians more and more aspire to be.
Conservatives always whine about the perceived loss of American exceptionalism, yet the sexy cultural things that make America unique compared to our enemy nations— gays and trans people free to be, women who are free to work, earn money, drive cars, take birth control, wear whatever they want, have promiscuous sex (like men), etc.— are precisely the things conservatives want to get rid of.
They pine for O’Reilly’s idyllic 1950‘s Man’s World America where womens’ role is that of submissive sex slaves and cooks, which is more or less what radical Muslims like ISIS believe, ironically.
I’ve been saying this forever: Christianity and Islam are opposite sides of the same coin. Proponents of each want to return us to a simpler, much more deranged time and both enslave the human mind.
Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton recently pointed out this similarity, and, not surprisingly, conservative Christians were a little peeved about being compared to their mortal enemies—even though they clearly have so much nonsense in common.
“Extreme views about women? We expect that from some of the terrorist groups. We expect that from people who don’t want to live in the modern world,” Clinton told a crowd on Aug. 27, “but it’s a little hard to take coming from Republicans who want to be the president of the United States, yet they espouse out-of-date and out-of-touch policies. They are dead wrong for 21st-century America. We are going forward, we are not going back.”
I don’t even care for Hilldog, but that was dead-on and it took some lady-balls to say it.
Bill Maher made the same point on his HBO show on what happened to be the fourteenth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, noting, “If you say, as Kim Davis and her ilk, and Ted Cruz and all those people say that actually ‘I can ignore the rule of man because the rule book of God said’—then you are Iran. Then you are Saudi Arabia. Then you are Sharia law.”
Boom! Roasted. Thank you, Mr. Maher.
Everyone, especially Christians, are worried about the Islamic caliphate that ISIS is trying to build in the Middle East. But they’re just jealous. They don’t want America to be free. They want a Christian caliphate to lord over us all and Biblically dictate all of our lives, even the non-believers. Especially the non-believers.
I don’t get it, hateful Christians. Aren’t we all God’s children? You may hate the gays, but they are our brothers and sisters. In his Facebook Duggar defense, Huckabee wrote, “It is precisely because we are all sinners that we need His grace and His forgiveness.”
That’s great and all, but it doesn’t make sense to hold gay people who haven’t committed any crimes against children, or anyone, to a higher standard than child-molesting predators.
If you use your religion to protect child molesters while pretending to defend wholesome family values while simultaneously attacking pop music artists for behavior that is frivolous compared to the criminal deeds committed by your own friends and family, or label immigrant groups that share your same religion as subhuman criminals, you might be a Christian American. Sorry to steal your bit, Mr. Foxworthy.
Case in point: At the tail end of a bitter political campaign summer in the U.S. that saw Republican candidates competing to outdo each other in the xenophobia category after Trump set the tone with his verbal assault on Mexicans, Pope Francis blew into town drawing a stark contrast between what Jesus allegedly taught and what fake-Christian politicians preach. He was the anti-GOP.
Just a few days after Carson said he believes a Muslim has no place in the White House, Francis kicked off Mass at a packed St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York by paying tribute to the 700 Muslim pilgrims who were crushed to death during a freaky Hajj stampede.
“I would like to express two sentiments for my Muslim brothers and sisters,” Francis said in what might as well have been Latin as far as most American Christians are concerned. “My sentiments of closeness in the face of tragedy that they suffered in Mecca. In this moment, I give assurance of my prayers. I unite myself with you all.”
And that classy humanity, that unfamiliar grace, is precisely why many American conservatives think that even the Pope is a dope—just like minorities, immigrants, poor people, young people, women and liberals. Because after nearly a decade of constant Defcon Obama Fox News freakout, the only language many conservatives understand is that of fear and rage.
It’s the same reason they’ll never forgive presidential candidate Jeb Bush for having the cajones to say that most illegal immigrants’ journeys to this country are motivated by “love.” Which, of course, is common sense to most people, including the pope.
Trump talks about desperate immigrants as criminals, and of building a massive Israeli-occupation-style wall on the Mexican border, which would primarily serve as a "bigly" expensive “Fuck You!” to our friendly southern neighbors.
Francis, on the other hand, offers them hope. The Pope sounded an actual Christian message of compassion and understanding that could not contrast more with the cynical rage of American Christians, especially conservative pundits and politicians and, of course, amateur politicians.
“Many of you have emigrated to this country at great personal cost, but in the hope of building a new life,” the pope said at Philadelphia’s Independence Mall on Sat., Sept. 26. “Do not be discouraged by whatever challenges and hardships you face.”
Challenges and hardships. He might as well have been talking about Trump, or Republicans in general, specifically. And he probably was, at least partially.
Here's the thing. Conservatives are fetus-obsessed and I’d respect that if they had as much respect for life outside of the womb, but very few are as fired-up about homelessness, poverty, capital punishment, gun violence, war and the resulting human crises like waves of refugees that we spit on and shoo away like flies.
In other words, all the issues and people Jesus would be concerned about.
That’s why this cool new pope turned down a fancy lunch at the White House during his first ever trip to the U.S. to dine with bums in D.C. instead. Because unlike the Huckabees of the world, Pope Francis keeps it real. He is an actual good person, not just pretending to be one.
The Daily Show’s Trevor Noah made this point on the heels of yet another American gun massacre on Oct. 5, saying of the paradoxical “pro-life” anti-gun-control crowd, “They’re more like comic book collectors. Human life only holds value until you take it out of the package, and then it’s worth nothing.”
Even hardass Republican presidential candidate and New Jersey Governor Chris Christie recently echoed that sentiment in front of a town hall crowd in New Hampshire.
“I’m pro-life and I think that if you’re pro-life, you gotta be pro-life for the whole life, not just the nine months they’re in the womb," Christie said firmly. "It’s easy to be pro-life for the nine months they’re in the womb; they haven’t done anything to disappoint us yet. They’re perfect in there. But when they get out, that’s when it gets tough. The 16-year-old teenage girl on the floor of the county lockup, addicted to heroin: I’m pro-life for her too. Her life is just as much a precious gift from God as the one in the womb.”
Wow. Granted, Christie was just pandering to a crowd from New England, which has been ravaged by heroin addiction, but, regardless, that is not the message conservative faux Christians like Huckabee, Carson, Duggar and Davis preach. Speak of the devil, The pope warned us against people like them during his U.S. visit.
“In a world where various forms of modern tyranny seek to ... use religion as a pretext for hatred and brutality,” Francis said in Philadelphia, “it is imperative that the followers of various religions join their voices in calling for peace, tolerance and respect for the dignity and rights of others.”
Amen.
I don’t believe in God, but maybe I do, because I know that love is the most powerful force in the universe. Or multiverse.
Huckabee and friends, on the other hand, probably don’t spend a lot of time thinking about outer space or the possibilities of what exists out there. Because for them there is no mystery. There are no possibilities, no other worlds, other creatures. God created us all, but just us, and he’s gonna kill us all when we piss him off with enough gay activity, abortions and Beyonce performances.
But that’s not to say there are no decent Christians out there. I’m sure there are plenty. We just never see them on TV because there’s no conflict (ad revenue) there.
My buddy Fernando and his family are a great example. Their faith is their life, yet they judge no one. They named their thriving taqueria after Saint Joseph who is basically The Man in the Mexican town they hail from. He’s the saint of the local church there, or however that all works. These people abhor abortion just like the jingoistic hateful Christians do, yet they live like Jesus in that they are sweet to everyone. They even give free coffee to homeless people who come in off the freezing street in winter.
They mind their business, work harder than anyone I know and go to church on Sunday—their one free day. Yet, the Kim Davises and Donald Trumps of this country, these embarrassing self-righteous slobs, want these real Christians from Mexico to take a hike?
Good God!
One day, about a decade ago (during “compassionate conservative” George W. Bush’s utterly pointless and tragically stupid Iraq War experiment) my college roommate and I were admiring the Montana sunset when we invited a small church group on to our porch. And it wasn’t long before they made it clear that my friend and I were lousy bums for, get this, drinking beer.
We hadn’t molested any of our sisters, tortured any animals, or bombed any civilians.
But once they found out we didn't share their beliefs, it didn’t matter how sweet or hospitable we were, they just wanted to judge us and tell us all about our impending trip to Hell. They even sent us a postcard a week later to hammer home the point and get one last jab in—to finish us off, so to speak. (Hey, if Davis can have an epic boxing theme, so can I!)
Best of all, Westboro Baptist Church (a.k.a. the shameless "God hates fags" family, which is notorious for crashing U.S. soldiers' funerals in order to conveniently blame their deaths on God's retribution for America's embrace of homosexuals) picketed fellow gay-hater Kim Davis' workplace for her Biblically hypocritical, adulterous lifestyle on Mon., Oct. 20.
Which means we've come full circle-jerk, America.
"Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, because you travel around on sea and land to make one proselyte; and when he becomes one, you make him twice as much a son of Hell as yourselves.” Matthew 23:15
Then there’s the modern American shit-kicking Christian who hates pretty much everybody. Think Ted Nugent.
Remember when people used to wear those goofy WWJD bracelets? More and more nowadays I find myself looking at these self-described Christians on television, listening to their nasty nationalistic message of exclusion (and fake victimhood) and wonder: What would Jesus do?
(You know, assuming he was a real guy and half as big a sweetheart as his fans claim.) Would he be proud of these assholes?
In the summer of 2014—when Israel was busy killing more than 500 babies in Gaza with the weapons, political support and indeed the blessing from our Christian nation—protests erupted along the U.S.-Mexico border as news began to spread about record numbers of incoming immigrants, mostly unaccompanied children, fleeing increased violence in Central American countries like Honduras, Guatemala, and especially El Salvador.
And by violence, I mean ISIS-like stuff: dismembering and beheading an 11-year-old school boy who refused to join a gang, for instance. And David de la O was not the exception.
Busloads of desperate children and families, much like the people fleeing Syria for Europe right now, were met with angry screaming white folks holding signs like “Return to Sender” and “Send Them Back With Birth Control!”
Some of the literate protesters had probably read Ann Coulter’s latest book “Adios, America!,” or, ironically, enjoyed TLC’s “19 Kids & Counting."
Many of the seething crowd, no doubt, would describe themselves as Christians doing God’s work, just as their parents’ generation did when George Wallace battled the Kennedy brothers alongside KKK terrorists to try to keep Alabama school children segregated “forever” in Jesus' name.
Is this the same Jesus who advocated for poor people? We tell the world’s worst off seeking shelter and compassion in our famous melting pot nation of immigrants to fuck off and that’s Christian?
We do understand what the the Statue of Liberty symbolizes, right?
My people had to flee here because we ran out of potatoes, for fuck's sake! They weren't welcomed either and now we're as ingrained as a blood stain. Just good ol' American jerks like everyone else.
That being said, I don’t go to church or subscribe to a religion but I know for sure that hurling insults at desperate, helpless refugees fleeing death is not nice behavior. I mean, what would Jesus do?
Deuteronomy 15:11 says, “For there will never cease to be poor in the land. Therefore I command you, ‘You shall open wide your hand to your brother, to the needy and to the poor, in your land.’”
Which brings us to Christianity’s latest culture war hero, Kentucky bumpkin Kim Davis.
On Tues., Sept. 8, the Rowan county clerk who had been jailed for refusing to grant marriage licenses to same-sex couples was released. It had only been five days, but at her televised victory lap, complete with "Rocky III" theme song, Davis acted like she hadn't seen the sun in ages. And from the looks of her, she hadn't.
Anyway, graceful it was not. But it was timely because former Arkansas governor and Fox News bloviator Mike Huckabee had already organized a rally for that day to capitalize off of Davis, whom it was assumed would still be incarcerated at the time, giving Huckabee the spotlight and opportunity to tell evangelicals and sympathetic morons how afraid to be of a tyrannical government that wants to take your guns and your Bible.
So Davis stole quite a bit of Huckabee’s thunder, which explains why when Donald Trump suckerfish Ted Cruz appeared like a vampire in a cloud of smoke to do his own Al Sharpton-style hijacking of the event, he was physically blocked from approaching the lectern by one of Huckabee’s church goons.
It’s ironic because none of these people have any love for Sharpton or Jesse Jackson, yet here they were using the exact same playbook as the notorious “race hustlers.” I suppose one might call these gentlemen Jesus hustlers inspired by their hero, “Reverend” Sharpton.
Just because the Western world is quickly catching up with modern times like a subduction zone fault line suddenly snapping back and releasing hundreds of years worth of accumulated pressure, some Christians feel, as Fox News likes to put it, “under attack” by inevitable American social progress. (Nevermind that even the Pope said "Who am I to judge?" when asked about gay people in 2013.)
Some of these folks, like Fox News' Bill O’Reilly, are so sensitive to their perceived victimhood that they go apeshit every Christmas when they hear of fellow Americans wishing each other “Happy Holidays!” in order to incorporate New Year’s and Hanukkah, etc. into a generic one-size-fits-all greeting.
Of course, one could simply view that as the most efficient way to cover all the bases and kindly not exclude anyone, but to conservatives, it’s a full-on assault on their most sacred beliefs.
“War on Christmas,” they call it. It’s adorable.
These anti-gay, anti-women, so-called “family values” Christmas crusaders are desperate to be taken seriously, yet their representatives in government are parading around to Survivor’s “Eye of the Tiger” with the likes of Davis and taking thousands of selfies with former reality TV star, Family Research Council lobbyist, child molester and adulterer, Josh Duggar.
All of these people, including Huckabee, are hypocrites of the highest possible order. Duggar, a D.C. “family values” lobbyist has admitted to molesting his own sisters. He was doing some family research, alright..
Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines hypocrisy as “a feigning to be what one is not or to believe what one does not; especially : the false assumption of an appearance of virtue or religion.”
Take Davis. She’s allegedly fighting to protect marriage, although it could be argued she’s really fighting to deprive other Americans of their rights. But if we take her at her word, who is she to defend the sanctity of this most holy of unions that she just so happens to have desecrated four times in a row?
This woman has been married and divorced several times and even had twins from an adulterous relationship with what I can only assume is the scarecrow from "The Wizard of Oz."
Ironically, the Bible says adulterers like Davis should be put to death. Leviticus 20:10, bitches.
But nevermind all that. Davis could have given a 10-minute soliloquy about the wonders of welfare and no one would have batted an eye as long as she gave props to her guy Jesus.
As for Duggar, he found fame on his ever-growing family’s reality TV show, the mission of which was to spread the word of God via the airwaves to millions of unsuspecting sinner-chumps.
The Duggar clan blended socially conservative politics with their message, making news when patriarch Jim Bob took his daughters across state lines to campaign for controversial Missouri congressman and Senate candidate Todd Akin shortly after Akin willingly made comments in front of a news camera about how a woman’s body “has ways to try to shut that whole thing down” in the case of “legitimate rape,” casting doubt on whether he believed rape was even a thing at all.
Which is beyond creepy when you consider what these people believe should happen after a woman is impregnated by her attacker.
And that brings us to Huckabee. This fat turd. Here’s a guy who promotes hypocritical anti-human “family values” like all the rest of them.
Miley Cyrus is leading millions of innocent Hannah Montana Disney children onto the nude wrecking ball of life, smoking bong-loads of salvia on camera, making obscene tongue gestures all the time, clothes falling off, while Justin Bieber gets arrested weekly as he terrorizes his Calabasas neighborhood, vandalizing property and putting everyone’s life at risk by treating his gated community like his own personal Daytona 500, yet Huckabee sees Beyonce—who never gets into any trouble—as public enemy No. 1?
I’d ask why, but we know why.
Some of her lyrics aren’t “wholesome.” She’s married to that crack dealer Jay Z. But most worrisome, Bey & Jay are American Royalty, which outrages people like Huckabee who associate royalty with whiteness. The American social status quo and power structure has been “flipped, turned upside down” as The Fresh Prince might say, and some of these old-school honkies do not like it, to say the least.
Beyonce’s biggest offense, as far as I can tell, is that she shakes her ass and shows a lot of skin, but that is nothing new. I assume Huckabee never saw Cher’s awful butt cheeks on that battleship.
Likewise, Madonna humped a stage in a wedding dress on live TV thirty damn years ago. She simulated sex—in a wedding dress!—before we even knew what AIDS and gay people were because of our refusal to acknowledge reality thanks to our lingering uptight 1950‘s Christian derp culture.
Oh, but I suppose Beyonce’s exposed skin is brown. Suspicious!
I admit rap music and misogynism aren’t exactly strangers, but the same can be said for the latter and Huckabee's GOP. Like it or not, hip-hop has been the driving force behind American pop culture for at least the last twenty five years. Take it up with the white ad executives who use that music and culture to move product. It’s not going anywhere; it’s mainstream business.
You want to try to control music in America, Mike? In the land of free speech? You’d have better luck trying to reroute the mighty Mississippi out to the Pacific.
And what about that Constitution thing conservatives are always stumbling over themselves to pretend to defend? They want the first black first lady to try to control what music Americans listen to? A black woman dictating to all these rednecks from the White House?
What if she called out Ted Nugent’s “Cat Scratch Fever” for being obscene? That might upset some people like Hickabee—excuse me, Huckabee—who claim to be offended by rap music.
Ironically, a few years ago, Huckabee collaborated on that very song with its author, his friend Ted Nugent. Huckabee played bass guitar on his Fox News show and smiled while Nugent, right along side him, sang a tale about reckless, carefree, unprotected teenage sex that results in sexually-transmitted diseases, which is, apparently, all just part of the thrill.
Huckabee seemed to particularly enjoy when ‘The Nuge’ sang the following part like a sex-crazed pervert who hangs with Josh Duggar:
Well, I make the pussy purr with the stroke of my hand
They know they gettin' it from me
They know just where to go when they need their lovin' man
They know I'm doin' it for free
O-M-G!! But what about the children?!?!?!
In his pre-campaign-rollout jerkoff-billboard-book, titled, dumbly enough: "God, Guns, Grits, and Gravy," Huckabee revives his old attack on Beyonce but gets a two-fer by tossing terrible parent Michelle Obama under the bus as well, writing, “With the first lady so concerned about making sure her daughters' bellies don't ingest unhealthy food, how can she let their brains ingest obnoxious and toxic mental poison in the form of song lyrics? If lived out, those lyrics could be far more devastating to someone's health than a cupcake.”
Oh, lordy. An opportunistic bastardized-Christianity pimp warning about "obnoxious and toxic mental poison?" This guy's irony detector must be broken.
Beyonce and the first lady will have more of an impact on the future than Huckabee could ever dream of having, even if he prints out a million moronically-titled pamphlets trying to guilt gullible people into his silly, ancient belief system until the day he croaks.
If the Obamas are bad parents for not overly-policing their teenage daughters’ musical consumption, then so is everyone whose kids ever listened to Elvis. Because if you remember, the old folks thought he was an agent of the devil too, if not Lucifer himself. Ditto for the world-changing Beatles.
Ask yourself this, Mike: What is more responsible for unnecessary death and destruction in this world—pop music song lyrics, or religion? The Bible or Beyonce? Because one is definitely mental poison.
She's so sweet when she yanks on my meat
Down on the street you know she can't be beat
What the hell
For the record, that wholesome morsel is from Nugent's "Wang Dang Sweet Poontang."
The very idea of parents being able to control what music their kids listen to in the era of the Internet, mp3 players, tiny ear buds and, you know, children occasionally leaving the home to mingle with influential heathens at school, work, church, etc. is laughable, let alone trying to sway an entire nation of adderall-snorting teens to abstain from music deemed unwholesome by some supreme leader. It’s ridiculous and wholly unAmerican.
If we’re going to do that, we might as well have mandatory prayers five times a day and outlaw pornography. Where would it end—Sharia Law??
But, of course, it’s not primarily about the music—it’s about the people making the music.
Nugent put it best in a Feb. 2014 YouTube rant, saying, “Those big uneducated greasy black mongrels on (MTV), they call themselves rap artists. Excuse me? During a bad bloody case of diarrhea, I got more soul than those guys do at the peak of their life. That's not music.”
And not just "uneducated" rappers. Nugent has also said Harvard's President Obama is a “subhuman mongrel.”
By now you should be sensing a theme about these "Christians."
Here’s the thing I don’t understand about folks like Huckabee, Duggar and Davis. If they believe that we are all sinners, that includes them, so why are they preaching to the rest of us? Why do they feel it is their job to play God if they have such strong faith in such an infallible deity who’s going to sort everyone out in the end anyway?
They’re wasting their time and stealing work off God’s desk! Flushing gays down the fiery toilet is probably the only fun the ol’ guy gets to have anymore—leave it to him, bozos!
Speaking of family values hypocrites, Duggar allegedly used two Ashley Madison (adultery match-making Website) accounts to violently fuck porn stars in D. C. while away from his dingbat wife who was comforted in the belief that her sweet, devoted husband was just working hard lobbying for Jesus and smearing loving gay people he’d never met at every opportunity.
Yet he was a great guy nonetheless and immediately forgiven by his flock—including, of course, and most notably, Huckabee, who wrote in a lengthy (post-molestation/pre-prostitute news) Facebook defense of Duggar that he was just another victim of “today’s blood-thirsty media.” Blame the messenger—Fox News 101.
“Janet and I want to affirm our support for the Duggar family. Josh’s actions when he was an underage teen are as he described them himself, 'inexcusable,' but that doesn’t mean 'unforgivable,'” Huckabee pleaded online, adding that even “good people” do “disgusting things.”
Which is a sentiment that one might think would also apply to homosexuals (designed the way they are by God, to use Christian lingo) and not just a serial sexual deviant like Duggar, but, oddly and predictably, no.
Hilariously, Huckabee’s “underage teen” defense evaporated just a few weeks later when adult Josh Duggar made news yet again when his Ashley Madison accounts were revealed.
But, presumably, Duggar was “good” to begin with because of his awesome faith in Jesus Christ, and the gays are somehow irredeemable evil spawns of Satan who willingly chose an unrighteous, icky path.
Then, on Dec. 23, Huckabee surprisingly reversed course and threw his old church buddy under the bus, feeding Iowa radio host Simon Conway a little sample of Arkansas horseshit.
"I really didn’t support Josh," Huckabee farted into the microphone. "I supported his parents, if you’ll go back and look at what I said. There’s no support for what he did."
No?
"He did some things that totally defy everything he supposedly stood for."
No shit??
Best of all, while Huckabee was railing against homos and shaming parents (namely, the Obamas) who let their kids listen to Beyonce’s music—not to mention taking enough selfies with Duggar to fill a child rapist’s jail cell—he’s the guy who raised his son David, in God’s bright forgiving glory, to be a dog torturer.
So, in 1998, Huckabee’s then 17-year-old son was kicked out of an Arkansas Boy Scout camp for allegedly killing a dog with another teenager. But it gets worse. According to a news article citing young Huckabee’s accomplice’s father, the dog was at one point “hung over a limb and choking.”
According to anonymous witnesses, after hanging the dog, David and his buddy slit the helpless creature's throat before stoning it to death. Huckabee’s cover story, as he told Larry King in 2007 while running for president, was that his son, the good boy that he was, was just trying to put the poor dog out of its misery.
He didn’t mention the hanging.
"(The dog) was mangy,” Huckabee told King, the bullshit dripping onto his fat chin. “It looked like it was going to attack.”
But, of course, that act of humanity doesn’t jibe with his son being kicked out of Scout camp.
Marcal Young, scout executive of the Caddo Area Council that operated the camp where the dog was killed said David was kicked out because he violated a Scout law: "A Scout is kind," leaving little doubt that this was more of a Jeffrey-Dahmer’s-early-days situation than the merciful act of an animal lover or self defense.
And instead of praying to God to make it all work out, Governor Huckabee subsequently covered it all up, firing the director of Arkansas’ state police for refusing to write a letter denying the local prosecutor’s request for an animal cruelty investigation.
In 2007, Newsweek quoted the former FBI chief in Little Rock, I.C. Smith, as saying, “Without question, (Huckabee) was making a conscious attempt to keep the state police from investigating his son.”
Just like Jim Bob Duggar. And in the same state. Wow, what a small world! No wonder their families are so close; they have so many cute crimes and cover-ups in common!
Just to be clear: Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee wants millions of parents whose teenagers enjoy Beyonce’s music to do some kind of moral inventory, yet he raised a malicious little maniac who spent a beautiful day at Boy Scout camp torturing a poor dog to death. Man's best friend.
And who knows what kinky skeletons the former governor has in his closet. If there’s one thing I’ve learned it’s that these self-imposed morality police for Jesus always turn out to be the sickest of us all. By far.
Here’s the thing. This isn’t Yemen. The reason our founding fathers went to all the trouble of building this paradise in the first place was to create a secular society based on freedom of religion and a separation of church and state. That is the point of the whole premise: Freedom.
Yet we’ve backslid to the point where you can’t even run for president unless you tout your Christian bona fides, no matter how exaggerated or fictional they are. Muslims are unofficially banned from the White House by the same disingenuous twats who are whining about religious freedom as a way to discriminate against gays.
Take Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson.
Here’s a gifted retired neurosurgeon who believes homosexuality is a choice based on the observation that “a lot of people ... go into prison straight” and emerge fabulously gay. He has also repeatedly compared Obama's America to “Nazi Germany,” and is on record saying he thinks "Obamacare is really, I think, the worst thing that has happened in this nation since slavery."
Hey, what can you say about Dr. Carson? The man loves rhetoric.
And a few months after Carson said he "would not advocate that we put a Muslim in charge of this nation," Cruz repeatedly stumped to small crowds all over Iowa, saying, "Any president who doesn't begin every day on his knees isn't fit to be commander-in-chief of this nation."
Insert (get it?) blowjob joke here -->.
American kids have to pledge allegiance “under God” before starting school everyday, Muslim American kids have no hopes of ever being president and we’re supposed to believe Christianity is under attack in this country?
Societies that are rigidly ruled by old-timey religious goons whom their subjects resent are called theocracies. It’s what they have in Iran and Saudi Arabia, that part of the world we claim to despise, yet hardcore Christians more and more aspire to be.
Conservatives always whine about the perceived loss of American exceptionalism, yet the sexy cultural things that make America unique compared to our enemy nations— gays and trans people free to be, women who are free to work, earn money, drive cars, take birth control, wear whatever they want, have promiscuous sex (like men), etc.— are precisely the things conservatives want to get rid of.
They pine for O’Reilly’s idyllic 1950‘s Man’s World America where womens’ role is that of submissive sex slaves and cooks, which is more or less what radical Muslims like ISIS believe, ironically.
I’ve been saying this forever: Christianity and Islam are opposite sides of the same coin. Proponents of each want to return us to a simpler, much more deranged time and both enslave the human mind.
Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton recently pointed out this similarity, and, not surprisingly, conservative Christians were a little peeved about being compared to their mortal enemies—even though they clearly have so much nonsense in common.
“Extreme views about women? We expect that from some of the terrorist groups. We expect that from people who don’t want to live in the modern world,” Clinton told a crowd on Aug. 27, “but it’s a little hard to take coming from Republicans who want to be the president of the United States, yet they espouse out-of-date and out-of-touch policies. They are dead wrong for 21st-century America. We are going forward, we are not going back.”
I don’t even care for Hilldog, but that was dead-on and it took some lady-balls to say it.
Bill Maher made the same point on his HBO show on what happened to be the fourteenth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, noting, “If you say, as Kim Davis and her ilk, and Ted Cruz and all those people say that actually ‘I can ignore the rule of man because the rule book of God said’—then you are Iran. Then you are Saudi Arabia. Then you are Sharia law.”
Boom! Roasted. Thank you, Mr. Maher.
Everyone, especially Christians, are worried about the Islamic caliphate that ISIS is trying to build in the Middle East. But they’re just jealous. They don’t want America to be free. They want a Christian caliphate to lord over us all and Biblically dictate all of our lives, even the non-believers. Especially the non-believers.
I don’t get it, hateful Christians. Aren’t we all God’s children? You may hate the gays, but they are our brothers and sisters. In his Facebook Duggar defense, Huckabee wrote, “It is precisely because we are all sinners that we need His grace and His forgiveness.”
That’s great and all, but it doesn’t make sense to hold gay people who haven’t committed any crimes against children, or anyone, to a higher standard than child-molesting predators.
If you use your religion to protect child molesters while pretending to defend wholesome family values while simultaneously attacking pop music artists for behavior that is frivolous compared to the criminal deeds committed by your own friends and family, or label immigrant groups that share your same religion as subhuman criminals, you might be a Christian American. Sorry to steal your bit, Mr. Foxworthy.
Case in point: At the tail end of a bitter political campaign summer in the U.S. that saw Republican candidates competing to outdo each other in the xenophobia category after Trump set the tone with his verbal assault on Mexicans, Pope Francis blew into town drawing a stark contrast between what Jesus allegedly taught and what fake-Christian politicians preach. He was the anti-GOP.
Just a few days after Carson said he believes a Muslim has no place in the White House, Francis kicked off Mass at a packed St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York by paying tribute to the 700 Muslim pilgrims who were crushed to death during a freaky Hajj stampede.
“I would like to express two sentiments for my Muslim brothers and sisters,” Francis said in what might as well have been Latin as far as most American Christians are concerned. “My sentiments of closeness in the face of tragedy that they suffered in Mecca. In this moment, I give assurance of my prayers. I unite myself with you all.”
And that classy humanity, that unfamiliar grace, is precisely why many American conservatives think that even the Pope is a dope—just like minorities, immigrants, poor people, young people, women and liberals. Because after nearly a decade of constant Defcon Obama Fox News freakout, the only language many conservatives understand is that of fear and rage.
It’s the same reason they’ll never forgive presidential candidate Jeb Bush for having the cajones to say that most illegal immigrants’ journeys to this country are motivated by “love.” Which, of course, is common sense to most people, including the pope.
Trump talks about desperate immigrants as criminals, and of building a massive Israeli-occupation-style wall on the Mexican border, which would primarily serve as a "bigly" expensive “Fuck You!” to our friendly southern neighbors.
Francis, on the other hand, offers them hope. The Pope sounded an actual Christian message of compassion and understanding that could not contrast more with the cynical rage of American Christians, especially conservative pundits and politicians and, of course, amateur politicians.
“Many of you have emigrated to this country at great personal cost, but in the hope of building a new life,” the pope said at Philadelphia’s Independence Mall on Sat., Sept. 26. “Do not be discouraged by whatever challenges and hardships you face.”
Challenges and hardships. He might as well have been talking about Trump, or Republicans in general, specifically. And he probably was, at least partially.
Here's the thing. Conservatives are fetus-obsessed and I’d respect that if they had as much respect for life outside of the womb, but very few are as fired-up about homelessness, poverty, capital punishment, gun violence, war and the resulting human crises like waves of refugees that we spit on and shoo away like flies.
In other words, all the issues and people Jesus would be concerned about.
That’s why this cool new pope turned down a fancy lunch at the White House during his first ever trip to the U.S. to dine with bums in D.C. instead. Because unlike the Huckabees of the world, Pope Francis keeps it real. He is an actual good person, not just pretending to be one.
The Daily Show’s Trevor Noah made this point on the heels of yet another American gun massacre on Oct. 5, saying of the paradoxical “pro-life” anti-gun-control crowd, “They’re more like comic book collectors. Human life only holds value until you take it out of the package, and then it’s worth nothing.”
Even hardass Republican presidential candidate and New Jersey Governor Chris Christie recently echoed that sentiment in front of a town hall crowd in New Hampshire.
“I’m pro-life and I think that if you’re pro-life, you gotta be pro-life for the whole life, not just the nine months they’re in the womb," Christie said firmly. "It’s easy to be pro-life for the nine months they’re in the womb; they haven’t done anything to disappoint us yet. They’re perfect in there. But when they get out, that’s when it gets tough. The 16-year-old teenage girl on the floor of the county lockup, addicted to heroin: I’m pro-life for her too. Her life is just as much a precious gift from God as the one in the womb.”
Wow. Granted, Christie was just pandering to a crowd from New England, which has been ravaged by heroin addiction, but, regardless, that is not the message conservative faux Christians like Huckabee, Carson, Duggar and Davis preach. Speak of the devil, The pope warned us against people like them during his U.S. visit.
“In a world where various forms of modern tyranny seek to ... use religion as a pretext for hatred and brutality,” Francis said in Philadelphia, “it is imperative that the followers of various religions join their voices in calling for peace, tolerance and respect for the dignity and rights of others.”
Amen.
I don’t believe in God, but maybe I do, because I know that love is the most powerful force in the universe. Or multiverse.
Huckabee and friends, on the other hand, probably don’t spend a lot of time thinking about outer space or the possibilities of what exists out there. Because for them there is no mystery. There are no possibilities, no other worlds, other creatures. God created us all, but just us, and he’s gonna kill us all when we piss him off with enough gay activity, abortions and Beyonce performances.
But that’s not to say there are no decent Christians out there. I’m sure there are plenty. We just never see them on TV because there’s no conflict (ad revenue) there.
My buddy Fernando and his family are a great example. Their faith is their life, yet they judge no one. They named their thriving taqueria after Saint Joseph who is basically The Man in the Mexican town they hail from. He’s the saint of the local church there, or however that all works. These people abhor abortion just like the jingoistic hateful Christians do, yet they live like Jesus in that they are sweet to everyone. They even give free coffee to homeless people who come in off the freezing street in winter.
They mind their business, work harder than anyone I know and go to church on Sunday—their one free day. Yet, the Kim Davises and Donald Trumps of this country, these embarrassing self-righteous slobs, want these real Christians from Mexico to take a hike?
Good God!
One day, about a decade ago (during “compassionate conservative” George W. Bush’s utterly pointless and tragically stupid Iraq War experiment) my college roommate and I were admiring the Montana sunset when we invited a small church group on to our porch. And it wasn’t long before they made it clear that my friend and I were lousy bums for, get this, drinking beer.
We hadn’t molested any of our sisters, tortured any animals, or bombed any civilians.
But once they found out we didn't share their beliefs, it didn’t matter how sweet or hospitable we were, they just wanted to judge us and tell us all about our impending trip to Hell. They even sent us a postcard a week later to hammer home the point and get one last jab in—to finish us off, so to speak. (Hey, if Davis can have an epic boxing theme, so can I!)
Best of all, Westboro Baptist Church (a.k.a. the shameless "God hates fags" family, which is notorious for crashing U.S. soldiers' funerals in order to conveniently blame their deaths on God's retribution for America's embrace of homosexuals) picketed fellow gay-hater Kim Davis' workplace for her Biblically hypocritical, adulterous lifestyle on Mon., Oct. 20.
Which means we've come full circle-jerk, America.
"Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, because you travel around on sea and land to make one proselyte; and when he becomes one, you make him twice as much a son of Hell as yourselves.” Matthew 23:15
Sunday, June 30, 2013
True Colors Shining Through
Oh, Paula.
You are utterly full of shit.
For some reason, that bothers me more than the likely possibility that the celebrity chef and former Food Network star is a racist.
When I first heard about her current troubles, I wasn’t shocked at all. In fact, I’d be more surprised if Deen, a 66-year-old Southerner, didn’t cherish some idiotic outdated prejudices.
But her current stance of half-apology, half-Southern fried pride is not working for me.
When she started bawling and playing the victim during Monday’s Today Show interview, giving the performance of a lifetime while proclaiming, “I am not an actor,” I felt weirdly offended.
Like, with all due respect, Ms. Deen, fuck you.
During the introduction for the Today Show interview, Deen was quoted from her May 17 discrimination lawsuit deposition acknowledging that she’s used the n-word on several occasions.
When asked, “Have you ever used the n-word yourself?” Deen’s reply was, “Yes, of course,” as if to say, that’s a silly question—doesn’t everybody use it every day?
Deen said in her deposition that she used the slur after being robbed by a black guy while working at a bank in 1987, but when asked, she admitted having used the n-word on other occasions, saying “I'm sure I have, but it's been a very long time.”
Deen also admitted to telling the sort of “off-color jokes” involving the n-word that, of course, “we have all told.”
To her credit, she was very candid during the recent deposition, admitting to repeated use of the king mother of racial epithets.
But during her TV interview Monday, Deen lied to Matt Lauer, saying she only used the n-word once in her entire life—twenty six years ago, when she recounted the bank robbery story to her presumably racist husband.
When Lauer asked if she ever used the word at other times, which she admitted in her deposition, Deen shook her head “no” emphatically, like a lying three-year-old who has the evidence of guilt all over her face or written in permanent marker on the walls.
So after being surprisingly truthful in her deposition, she goes on national TV and lies to millions of us while putting on a whole poor-me performance as if she’s the victim?
“There is someone evil out there who stole what I have because they wanted it,” Deen whined to Lauer.
She even complained about the language used by young blacks in her kitchens as a way to deflect or justify her own foul mouth (even though black cooks calling each other “nigga” is a little different from their boss, an old white Southern lady—who, according to her deposition, prefers “really Southern plantation style” weddings with “little niggers” serving food in bow ties—using the same word to talk about her employees).
And Deen is sort of a big deal. Jay-Z once wrote, “I’m not a businessman—I’m a business, man!”
Well, the same applies to Paula Deen.
She’s one of these walking brands like Oprah or Martha Stewart, which means she has people. And when her original Today Show interview was cancelled last Friday, even though Deen was already in her New York hotel room the day before, I’m sure it was because her people pulled the plug for business reasons—trying to weigh whether it was best to apologize or not, and if so, in what format, etc.
But one thing’s for sure, Deen didn’t skip it because she was “exhausted,” as Lauer said Monday had been her excuse, and she definitely didn’t take the extra time to hire some PR wizards to help her strategically design her apology, as evidenced by Monday’s subsequent shitshow.
Actually, what ultimately piqued my interest was when Deen cancelled on the Today Show and pissed off the staff. Lauer was visibly bitter on the air last Friday, having to explain why they suddenly had no guest—his dick waving in the wind.
Then Deen released an awkward videotaped apology on YouTube that was quickly taken down, but not before I’d enjoyed a screening. In it, a seemingly unrehearsed and disheveled Deen rambles briefly in an awkward way that ultimately carried over to her Today Show interview.
My favorite part was when the Southern sweetheart unwittingly sabotaged what should have been a carefully crafted apology toward the end of the interview with Lauer, becoming emotionally unhinged and basically admitting she's a lost generation backwoods bumpkin who cherishes some of the South’s nastier old traditions.
“I is what I is and I’m not changing,” croaked a tearful, defiant, bloated Deen.
Then, just for good measure, she got all Biblical on our asses.
It’s hard to say why (except that it’s the go-to move for any phony-baloney Jesus Freak/cult leader/politician who’s caught sinning whilst declaring everyone else evil), but maybe she knew that the interview was a total disaster and this was her last ditch effort to get anyone’s sympathy—lock up the Christian vote, so to speak.
“If there is anyone out there that has never said something that they wish they could take back, please pick up that stone… and throw it so hard that it kills me.”
She used that one twice in a row while sobbing pathetically. Think of an undeserving rich woman losing a lottery ticket down the drain and you’ll understand the kind of tears that were shed. I’ve never felt less sympathy for a crying grandmother.
Lady, you’re still fabulously wealthy, stop crying like a penniless baby.
As my grandmother used to say, “Cut the crap!”
As of Monday, only the Food Network and Virginia-based pork producer Smithfield Foods had dumped Deen on the heels of her secret folksy racist persona becoming public knowledge, but now, a dozen of her valued “partners” have told the famous chef to take a hike.
But unlike how Deen’s apology tour trainwreck has caused her former business partners to head for the hills, her ignorant fans—who believe in an America where we can call black people niggers while they serve us food—have flocked to support her.
For what it’s worth, I imagine these folks have prized year-old Chik-Fil-A leftovers in their freezers—trophies from an early battle in the great American Culture War, when the fast food company publicly supported “traditional marriage” as a way of sticking it to gay people just to be assholes, and subsequently experienced a Southern sales bonanza last summer.
In fact, so many rabid lunatics from Red America are so passionate about defending the n-word as a thing that people say, an unprecedented second “Paula Deen Cruise” had to be added for 2014.
Yep, that's right: Paula Deen has a cruise. It’s a thing, apparently. Eight days on a boat in the beautiful Caribbean with a bunch of fat bigots.
Praise Jesus.
I love the irony. Conservative “family values” type people mourn the death of traditional America, saying political correctness has ruined everything because slobs like Paula Deen have seemingly lost the freedom to call black folks niggers.
And yet, Deen’s former employee who brought the discrimination lawsuit is the one who’s evil?
What would Jesus do, y’all? Keep it real and own his mistakes, or lie while throwing everyone else under the bus to protect some profits?
One thing’s for sure: this is a clear-cut case of political correctness run amuck because culture warrior Bill O’Reilly declared that racism in America was destroyed by the unifying powers of 9/11—despite logic, Paula Deen, George Zimmerman, Trayvon Martin, and millions of unintelligent Obama-haters.
Some people would like to think racism isn’t a thing anymore. How convenient. I wonder what Paula Deen would like..
“What I would really like is a bunch of little niggers to wear long-sleeve white shirts, black shorts and black bow ties. You know, in the Shirley Temple days, they used to tap dance around. Now, that would be a true Southern wedding, wouldn’t it?”
Deen’s love of the n-word is no bueno but it pales in comparison to the kind of racism being practiced by Donald Trump and millions of like-minded “birthers” who have continuously charged President Obama of being nothing more than a fraudulent Muslim monkey who snuck into Harvard, and therefore the presidency, via affirmative action.
Bill Maher says these people, along with Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia—who played a critical role Tuesday in striking down the part of LBJ’s Voting Rights Act that polices the racist South and prevents them from inventing modern Jim Crow era tricks to disenfranchise black voters—are the real racists.
“Just the fact that (Scalia) talks about black people voting as an entitlement, that is so much more racist than anything Paula Deen ever said," Maher said Friday, keeping it pretty real, as usual, on HBO’s ‘Real Time with Bill Maher’.
Maher thinks all the negative attention Deen’s received is overblown compared to “real racism.”
“We have replaced having a conversation about race with, 'Oh, OK, liberals feel good about themselves if they make the bad person go away,'” Maher said.
“Who’s the bad person? The one we caught saying that one word. Donald Trump is a worse racist, but he gets to keep his show because he never said the word. Sarah Palin is a worse racist—she said Obama was shucking and jiving his way to victory. Newt Gingrich said he was the food stamp president. This is real racism.”
Within minutes of the Voting Rights Act being gutted by the U.S. Supreme Court last week, Southern states began changing their election laws to make it harder for minorities to vote.
You are utterly full of shit.
For some reason, that bothers me more than the likely possibility that the celebrity chef and former Food Network star is a racist.
When I first heard about her current troubles, I wasn’t shocked at all. In fact, I’d be more surprised if Deen, a 66-year-old Southerner, didn’t cherish some idiotic outdated prejudices.
But her current stance of half-apology, half-Southern fried pride is not working for me.
When she started bawling and playing the victim during Monday’s Today Show interview, giving the performance of a lifetime while proclaiming, “I am not an actor,” I felt weirdly offended.
Like, with all due respect, Ms. Deen, fuck you.
During the introduction for the Today Show interview, Deen was quoted from her May 17 discrimination lawsuit deposition acknowledging that she’s used the n-word on several occasions.
When asked, “Have you ever used the n-word yourself?” Deen’s reply was, “Yes, of course,” as if to say, that’s a silly question—doesn’t everybody use it every day?
Deen said in her deposition that she used the slur after being robbed by a black guy while working at a bank in 1987, but when asked, she admitted having used the n-word on other occasions, saying “I'm sure I have, but it's been a very long time.”
Deen also admitted to telling the sort of “off-color jokes” involving the n-word that, of course, “we have all told.”
To her credit, she was very candid during the recent deposition, admitting to repeated use of the king mother of racial epithets.
But during her TV interview Monday, Deen lied to Matt Lauer, saying she only used the n-word once in her entire life—twenty six years ago, when she recounted the bank robbery story to her presumably racist husband.
When Lauer asked if she ever used the word at other times, which she admitted in her deposition, Deen shook her head “no” emphatically, like a lying three-year-old who has the evidence of guilt all over her face or written in permanent marker on the walls.
So after being surprisingly truthful in her deposition, she goes on national TV and lies to millions of us while putting on a whole poor-me performance as if she’s the victim?
“There is someone evil out there who stole what I have because they wanted it,” Deen whined to Lauer.
She even complained about the language used by young blacks in her kitchens as a way to deflect or justify her own foul mouth (even though black cooks calling each other “nigga” is a little different from their boss, an old white Southern lady—who, according to her deposition, prefers “really Southern plantation style” weddings with “little niggers” serving food in bow ties—using the same word to talk about her employees).
And Deen is sort of a big deal. Jay-Z once wrote, “I’m not a businessman—I’m a business, man!”
Well, the same applies to Paula Deen.
She’s one of these walking brands like Oprah or Martha Stewart, which means she has people. And when her original Today Show interview was cancelled last Friday, even though Deen was already in her New York hotel room the day before, I’m sure it was because her people pulled the plug for business reasons—trying to weigh whether it was best to apologize or not, and if so, in what format, etc.
But one thing’s for sure, Deen didn’t skip it because she was “exhausted,” as Lauer said Monday had been her excuse, and she definitely didn’t take the extra time to hire some PR wizards to help her strategically design her apology, as evidenced by Monday’s subsequent shitshow.
Actually, what ultimately piqued my interest was when Deen cancelled on the Today Show and pissed off the staff. Lauer was visibly bitter on the air last Friday, having to explain why they suddenly had no guest—his dick waving in the wind.
Then Deen released an awkward videotaped apology on YouTube that was quickly taken down, but not before I’d enjoyed a screening. In it, a seemingly unrehearsed and disheveled Deen rambles briefly in an awkward way that ultimately carried over to her Today Show interview.
My favorite part was when the Southern sweetheart unwittingly sabotaged what should have been a carefully crafted apology toward the end of the interview with Lauer, becoming emotionally unhinged and basically admitting she's a lost generation backwoods bumpkin who cherishes some of the South’s nastier old traditions.
“I is what I is and I’m not changing,” croaked a tearful, defiant, bloated Deen.
Then, just for good measure, she got all Biblical on our asses.
It’s hard to say why (except that it’s the go-to move for any phony-baloney Jesus Freak/cult leader/politician who’s caught sinning whilst declaring everyone else evil), but maybe she knew that the interview was a total disaster and this was her last ditch effort to get anyone’s sympathy—lock up the Christian vote, so to speak.
“If there is anyone out there that has never said something that they wish they could take back, please pick up that stone… and throw it so hard that it kills me.”
She used that one twice in a row while sobbing pathetically. Think of an undeserving rich woman losing a lottery ticket down the drain and you’ll understand the kind of tears that were shed. I’ve never felt less sympathy for a crying grandmother.
Lady, you’re still fabulously wealthy, stop crying like a penniless baby.
As my grandmother used to say, “Cut the crap!”
As of Monday, only the Food Network and Virginia-based pork producer Smithfield Foods had dumped Deen on the heels of her secret folksy racist persona becoming public knowledge, but now, a dozen of her valued “partners” have told the famous chef to take a hike.
But unlike how Deen’s apology tour trainwreck has caused her former business partners to head for the hills, her ignorant fans—who believe in an America where we can call black people niggers while they serve us food—have flocked to support her.
For what it’s worth, I imagine these folks have prized year-old Chik-Fil-A leftovers in their freezers—trophies from an early battle in the great American Culture War, when the fast food company publicly supported “traditional marriage” as a way of sticking it to gay people just to be assholes, and subsequently experienced a Southern sales bonanza last summer.
In fact, so many rabid lunatics from Red America are so passionate about defending the n-word as a thing that people say, an unprecedented second “Paula Deen Cruise” had to be added for 2014.
Yep, that's right: Paula Deen has a cruise. It’s a thing, apparently. Eight days on a boat in the beautiful Caribbean with a bunch of fat bigots.
Praise Jesus.
I love the irony. Conservative “family values” type people mourn the death of traditional America, saying political correctness has ruined everything because slobs like Paula Deen have seemingly lost the freedom to call black folks niggers.
And yet, Deen’s former employee who brought the discrimination lawsuit is the one who’s evil?
What would Jesus do, y’all? Keep it real and own his mistakes, or lie while throwing everyone else under the bus to protect some profits?
One thing’s for sure: this is a clear-cut case of political correctness run amuck because culture warrior Bill O’Reilly declared that racism in America was destroyed by the unifying powers of 9/11—despite logic, Paula Deen, George Zimmerman, Trayvon Martin, and millions of unintelligent Obama-haters.
Some people would like to think racism isn’t a thing anymore. How convenient. I wonder what Paula Deen would like..
“What I would really like is a bunch of little niggers to wear long-sleeve white shirts, black shorts and black bow ties. You know, in the Shirley Temple days, they used to tap dance around. Now, that would be a true Southern wedding, wouldn’t it?”
Deen’s love of the n-word is no bueno but it pales in comparison to the kind of racism being practiced by Donald Trump and millions of like-minded “birthers” who have continuously charged President Obama of being nothing more than a fraudulent Muslim monkey who snuck into Harvard, and therefore the presidency, via affirmative action.
Bill Maher says these people, along with Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia—who played a critical role Tuesday in striking down the part of LBJ’s Voting Rights Act that polices the racist South and prevents them from inventing modern Jim Crow era tricks to disenfranchise black voters—are the real racists.
“Just the fact that (Scalia) talks about black people voting as an entitlement, that is so much more racist than anything Paula Deen ever said," Maher said Friday, keeping it pretty real, as usual, on HBO’s ‘Real Time with Bill Maher’.
Maher thinks all the negative attention Deen’s received is overblown compared to “real racism.”
“We have replaced having a conversation about race with, 'Oh, OK, liberals feel good about themselves if they make the bad person go away,'” Maher said.
“Who’s the bad person? The one we caught saying that one word. Donald Trump is a worse racist, but he gets to keep his show because he never said the word. Sarah Palin is a worse racist—she said Obama was shucking and jiving his way to victory. Newt Gingrich said he was the food stamp president. This is real racism.”
Within minutes of the Voting Rights Act being gutted by the U.S. Supreme Court last week, Southern states began changing their election laws to make it harder for minorities to vote.
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