This is Juvenile Damage

JD Vance claims that efforts to suppress misinformation and hate speech "are going to destroy Western Civilization. They're gonna destroy Europe, and they would destroy the United States of America if we allowed them to fester. Thank God we have a president now who believes in… pic.twitter.com/EKIIF4rXoD

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) March 4, 2025

March 4, 2025

Sometimes I wonder what JD Vance stands for, but to me, the persistent thing about him is that he tells stories. He creates narratives. He likes a good yarn. Jesuitical Dissembler Vance is insisting that lying is good, actually. I guess if you have a problem with it, you are probably "virtue-signaling." 

See what happened there? Lying is good and being concerned with what is true is fatally dangerous. (I personally despise the term "virtue -signaling" FWIW--people have VALUES and CONFESS THEM and LIVE BY THEM publicly if they are sincere in any fashion. Scoffing at the notion means you are basically an amoral putz.)

Egads, I Hate JD Vance.

 

Of all the trifling twats that ever twatted triflingly, JD Vance feels like he might be both the most trifling and twattiest. The adoption of Trump's victimization fetish that the US has been "taken advantage of" is so uniquely lame and fucked up. Did Lady Liberty get railed by the big old Lumberjack? How sway? 

Trump himself conflated the Canadian trade deficit thing with our actual US debt, which this asshole put 8 trillion American dollars on. As a member of the party that DOES NOT swan about preaching "fiscal responsibility" while racking up losses by granting tax cuts to the rich at every opportunity, um. 

Fuck you. Fuck you from the soles of your shitty unspurred feet to the crown of your molting head. And what I say for Trump goes ditto (megadittoes. even!) for his mini-me. 

JD Vance tells stories. That is to say, more appropriately, he lies, and he knows and accepts that he lies. 

Let's know and accept that. too. And acknowledge how unacceptable that behavior is. 

Show Me Where on this Body of Christ the Gospel Hurt You

I don't know why Bishop Mariann Budde asking Trump to "Be Best" blew so many MAGA's little minds, but I think it has to do with the idea that while Christ might have told people that whatever you do to the least of these, you do to him--but like, what does that have to do with Christianity?  It gets read not as a plea to the better angels of Trump's nature, but a call out, because they understand he has no such better angels--

And that is exactly what they like about him. It doesn't just say something about him--but themselves. And if it made them feel bad or less than what their professed faith actively calls them to be in so many words, they would rather lash out at being made to feel bad, than actually reconsider the morality of brutalizing other people, doing actual harm to them.

Which sounds weak and insecure to me.

Just a thought. 

How Can a Man Seem Less R@pe-y?

 

Four men chosen by President-elect Donald Trump for top positions have been accused of varying degrees of sexual misconduct. https://t.co/9tcKslmkxy

— CBS News (@CBSNews) November 20, 2024

You know this is an old joke--it was used by Rodney Dangerfield in "Back to School": "How do you seem slimmer?  Hang out with fat people!"

Well, how does Trump, of the problematic penis, seem less like an adjudicated rapist who needs to give E. Jean Carroll her money and whose hush money trial sentencing has been set back in light of his election win, seem less like a problematic human? Surround himself with rapey people, I guess. Normalize the shit out of predation. 

The would-be protector is actually an obvious predator. It really does seem like there are more pictures of Trunp with Jeffrey Epstein than there are with his kids, but as an added bonus, there are pics of Trump with Epstein and his kids. 

Two Messages to Think About:

 

Trump Abortion Bans have had devastating consequences for women across America.

Donald Trump is the architect of this health care crisis. If elected, he will go even further to ban abortion nationwide and strip away reproductive freedom in all 50 states. pic.twitter.com/eglE7Smdrr

— Kamala Harris (@KamalaHarris) November 1, 2024

VS.

Sorry we want MALE only voting. The 19th might have to go. 👨🏼#JohnMcEntee #McEntee2028 pic.twitter.com/OJzXadROgo

— McEntee 2028 (@JohnMcEntee28) October 28, 2024

I don't know that it gets any starker than that--do I have a right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, or am I the appendage of male society?

If I was not already a Democrat, this stark comparison would be everything I really needed to know. And it is not a joke--it's a vintage concern in the age of Trump. 

I am not going back.  I don't want any woman to feel like she has to accept she has to go back to when we didn't have choices and we didn't have voices. 

 

Idolatry and the Ten Commandments

 

The theocrats want to put the Ten Commandments in schools for the children's own good. The mere presence is supposed to imbue them with morality. Or would it? I think it isn't about moral instruction of young people so much as a moral win for them. Essentially--it pretty much boils down to letting the children of lesser gods know who is top dog around here. Yahweh. The Storm God of the Near East. You really don't need to venture too far from the first Commandment, or the second, depending on which tradition you follow (because different versions of the Ten commandments exist) to realize that an explicitly "Judeo-Christian" symbol is being put in schools to tell everyone the religious preferences of the dominant culture: "Put no other God before me."

We are told he is a jealous god in the Holy Bible. As a kid, this struck me as weird--who is he jealous of if he's the only game in town? (That, along with "Who the heck is he talking to at creation?" was enough to drop a pretty big silver piece about the traditions that preceded it and the hard work of scrubbing out the "other guys".) But that's not really it, is it?

We are also told humans were made in God's image--it's the other way about. God is jealous because he was made in ours. He throws tantrums--like drowning the world except for one family, or destroying whole cities--not because it is godly, but because the threat of violence is something humans understand: "Someone in power is angry--let's behave for God's sake!" 

Kitchen Karen is Back With a Handmaiden Origin Story

 

Today, I’m proud to introduce the More Opportunities for Moms to Succeed (MOMS) Act along with @SenMarcoRubio, @SenKevinCramer, and a group of @SenateGOP colleagues.

You can learn more here: https://t.co/L1mZmoYoQ5 pic.twitter.com/kAmX2Up7Yr

— Senator Katie Boyd Britt (@SenKatieBritt) May 9, 2024

Do you want the government to track your periods and judge you based on the length of time your uterus can hold a very sacred fetus? Would you like to be referred to a totally not-a-whole-bunch-of-doctors crisis group telling you how to just stay pregnant until you pop....something out, regardless of your whole ability to raise or care for a baby, and also deal with whatever the physical/emotional, and/or-financial state you are in when you do give forth your sprog?

If that is the incredibly weird and uncomfortable level of government/religious oversight of your very personal business you would deeply prefer not to have--please vote Democrat, thank you.

OK, I have more to say about this:

TWGB: Fresh New Contempt

 

🚨This appears to be a gag order violation. Habba’s title is Trump’s “legal spokesperson.” The gag order also restricts Trump from “directing others” to make statements like this about witnesses in addition to Trump making statements. https://t.co/vYvJyhOUVn

— Ben Meiselas (@meiselasb) May 8, 2024

Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer, but in a situation where re-posts count as violations of the gag order, yes, it seems very likely to me that Trump's paid spokesperson trashing one of the witnesses would also count: he is just trying to use other people's mouths to say what his can't.  

It's clear that Stormy Daniels' testimony made Trump very uncomfortable, and looking again at her story, I see why: it isn't really a story about a fully consensual fling. Although there is some playfulness (the rolled magazine part), the invitation to dinner to have...not-dinner and the discussion of a possible Celebrity Apprentice spot that now looks more like there were sexual strings attached, it seems clear she felt obligated or manipulated into sex. I don't think that it makes him look MORE of a creep to me but solidifies the type of creep he is. 

But at the same time, "family values" choir boy Speak Mike Johnson was saying this:

 

I Never Thought of it As a Property Issue

 

The Louisiana Supreme Court ruled that priests have an absolute "property right" not to be sued for sexually abusing children https://t.co/ipSlulmZok

— philip lewis (@Phil_Lewis_) April 12, 2024

I always thought that whoever would hurt one of these, the least of God's children, it were better a millstone were around their neck--so why not a civil payment which is only rendering unto Caesar that which is Caesar's? And also--rendering unto the community the price of violating the community's trust--making meaningful restitution.  After all, for what was done to any of His children, was that not also done unto God? And isn't the payment for that more severe? Is repentance not a part of forgiveness? Should one avoid recognizing a great wrong? 

How is there supposed to be forgiveness without repentance? 

TWGB: We Need the Wood!

 

There's hardly anything wilder to me than Trump fluffing up his crucifixion narrative while being literally the most un-Christlike person you could think of. Turn the other cheek? Love thy enemy?  Forgive others as you would also be forgiven? Oh, that stuff is crazy. He sure does try it though. He's being persecuted for taking what he hast (overleveraged) and using it to get more rich (or at least, pretending he is).  He's being crucified (being prosecuted, not persecuted) for his hush money arrangement--a business fraud, based on an election fraud, based on an illicit sex fling--selling himself as a better man than he actually is. 

So how does this modern-day martyr show his Christ Consciousness? You know, the way Christ did, by letting his disciples know what Pilates' family members look like, so they could...use their imaginations. Who wants to tell me where in the Bible Jesus would have done anything of the sort? 

Trump is no Jesus and Judge Merchan is no Pontius Pilate--what the hell? This is where my blog title comes from--get on down off that cross honey, we need the wood! 

TWGB: Trump The Bible Salesman

 

Donald Trump, who is very broke, is selling Bibles just a minute after whatever this was. This is not someone basking in the luxury of the "pump" phase of his obvious "pump and dump" stock. This is a guy realizing he needs to shore up his most bought-in peeps. The religious Right. So he is out there selling the Lord via his book.

He goes back to this well when it is convenient. Sometimes we all do. But some go back to address their faith, and he goes there to address why he thinks he was chosen, while no one in the real world would believe any such thing. 

TWGB: Not Like King David, Either

 

This morning, while working out his deep feelings over how impecunious he was about to be, Trump shared with us a Psalm that, like 2 Corinthians, he had no context for, and as a matter of course, was funny to people who do know scripture. Trump didn't compare himself to Jesus, he was biting off old busy-shanks David. He was saying, though he didn't even know, the beginning of a harsh imprecatory prayer against one's accusers, that basically says, when God is on your side, they just let you do it, and your accusers will get fucked up in due time. 

You know why I know this one? Because it was deployed on President Obama not as the King, but as the evil overseer. And I knew when I heard it then, it was intended as a word of wrath being dripped in the ear of those listening like poison, asking them to act. And Trump is giving himself to "prayer"  (curses) against his foes. Because he wants others to carry out his wrath. Not God. Just...someone. 

Act against Judge Engoron. Act against the prosecutors.  Act as if God whispered it in your ear. 

He's as subtle as a sock in the face. 

Theocrat Chat with Tommy Taterhead

 

I beg this very stupid man's entirely irrelevant pardon, but how does he think in this day and age that folks in Central American have not heard about Jesus? Just hordes of uncontacted tribes "with languages nobody heard before" I guess. https://t.co/n1LFvvPmJE

— Vixen Strangely (@VixenStrangely) March 1, 2024

There is a lot going wrong here in just a few brief sentences. The first thing I take issue with is that we need "God" in government at all. Individuals might take something from having the presence of a deity in their lives and have comfort and strength in their faith, but government itself--our government, is made of laws. Our country's population is made up of people with many different faiths. I think that the First Amendment to our Constitution is the remedy against the sectarian wars and religious persecutions our forefathers were well aware of in Europe--and Tuberville here completely demonstrates why the Christian nationalist desire to get God in government is folly.

Whose God? Because the various immigrants crossing the border aren't ignorant of the concept of God. It seems to me that Tuberville is concerned that they might be followers of the "wrong" God. All of my ancestors came from countries where Protestants and Catholics clashed. Does Sen. Tuberville think Papists follow the Whore of Babylon? Or has he been misguided into thinking "foreigners" are probably some sort of untutored heathens? Is he unaware that Protestant evangelism has penetrated Central and South America? The same religion, roughly, he himself follows? 

This is a man who should be very careful indeed whom he considers to be untutored. I've met many a non-Christian whose grasp on theology is very likely better than the Senator's grasp on anything. 

TWGB: Who is the Fairest One of All?

 

Donald Trump is very jealous that Taylor Swift is prettier than him and has a football player boyfriend and is the Time Magazine Person of the Year. And she did it all herself.  So he wants to send his flying monkeys to let her know he IS SO more popular than her. He was president once you know, and probably still has papers in his possession that prove it! He's still BIG. It's just the Deep State and the Lying Media's fault he looks SMALL. 

He'll show them! He's ready for his close-up, Mr. DeMille! 

Just, maybe not so close. And with a bit of a filter, And with so much makeup it looks like he's applying shoe polish to his face. 

Deciding he needs to go after a female pop star just after a hefty defamation decision against him sounds like just the sort of beef he would get into. Being appalling to women is one of his hobbies, after all. And consider that it's women who are or would be giving and have given him the most trouble. The nasty Hillary Clinton, who first pegged him as a national security threat and his followers as a basket of deplorables. Nancy Pelosi of the two impeachments. Letitia James. Fani Willis. Nikki Haley. Stormy Daniels, E. Jean Carroll, Roberta Kaplan, Tanya Chutkan... 

Army of God and the Texas Tangle

 

Rubber Duck, hold on to your shorts, because it looks like we might have us a convoy again. 

What? Well, Gov. Abbott of Texas can't defend the border against (reads notes) US Border patrol and continue to hold up supply lines without the help of Trump's little Christian soldiers. I mean, can he? So of course he will need weirdo civilians showing up in job lots to just confuse the fuck out of everything, because that's completely effective border security. He will want a kind of posse, made up of the sternly written opinions of red state governors and maybe they send their National Guards to do nothing but stand about at the border. Bored and listless. Away from home.

This is the Republican approach to a serious issue--stunt-queening. The legislature could just vote on fully funding agencies involved with border security to do a really great job, but instead we get this shit. They want to impeach DHS Mayorkas because he can't do his job because they didn't give him the funds--even if he's still doing as much of his job as he can--within constitutional limits. I'm the kind of nut who thinks people get impeached for high crimes and misdemeanors, not for trying to obey the law. 

It's just as fucked-up as the GOP Hunter Biden investigation--it rests on the idea that the kayfabe of Breitbart and Gateway Pundit are real shit. It distracts from the GOP inability to do policy or govern ever. Let's interfere with the people trying to do the job, to hold up the job getting done. Let's not do an immigration deal--ever! Then bitch about there never being an immigration deal. Blame Democrats for existing. Blame them harder when they want to make a deal. Because how dare they!

Ballots vs. Bullets

 

NEW: Colorado Secretary of State "extremely concerned" about pro-Trump violence

Jena Griswold received 64 death threats and 900+ threats of non-lethal abuse just within the first 3 weeks of filing the case to keep Trump off the state ballot. https://t.co/aEwbadUZtZ

— Jennifer Bendery (@jbendery) December 20, 2023

This follows a pattern that occurs around Trump, mostly because he encourages it. Trump's people do not respect the law because they have decided that supporting Trump is something higher than the law. What people who want to say that Trump has to be rejected at the ballot box don't understand is, Trump's insurrection started with undermining the importance of the ballot box. That pattern of violence and threats--includes poll workers and election officials.  

Trump has already established his people don't respect the ballot--he lost in 2020, and 1/6 was the result of that. There are two things I strongly suggest cause this. The first is the Tea Party and militia-based kayfabe that the 2nd Amendment is a remedy against one's own government in the event that it becomes "tyrannical" (which seems to include Trump receiving due process for indictments received at the determination of a grand jury).

The Republican Future for Women

 

This is the future the GOP wants for women across America.

Make sure everyone sees this. pic.twitter.com/uE869ct5cg

— MeidasTouch (@MeidasTouch) December 18, 2023

This reminds me of the wonderful film icon Debbie Reynolds, Carrie Fisher's mom, who talked on Joan Rivers' show about having to carry her dead baby because it was illegal for the doctors to abort until she was septic. And because she looked pregnant and people knew she had been, they asked her "How's the baby? What are you going to name the baby?" The grief of that seems so unbelievably cruel to inflict on someone--it's like having one's loss rubbed in one's face. 

And the enormity of forcing someone to not only be emotionally rendered by living with that death in life inside, but physically threatened by a potential septic pregnancy is sheer brutality, and I would even call it uncivilized. It seems monstrous to inflict that suffering on another person when it could be prevented--the very opposite of moral. 

People who want to call this pro-life are anti-woman. There is no reason behind it but equating female reproduction with "the sin of Eve" and thinking we should bodily suffer not for something we've even done, but because of a folktale from long ago explaining why labor pains exist.

No one who uses religion to justify punishing people for conceiving and not being able to carry that fetus should be allowed to use that horrific personal religious viewpoint to impose upon others' health and wellbeing. It's a choice a religious person so minded might make for themselves, but they should not insist on it for others. 

Texas Placing Bets on Whether a Woman Will Die

 

The Texas Supreme Court put a lower court's decision on hold regarding whether Karen Cox could receive what might be a life-saving abortion of an almost-certainly doomed fetus, following on AG Ken Paxton's claim that any doctor or hospital that performed that procedure would be prosecuted. This woman is the stake in a fucking card game. It seems to me that the elected zealots involved, like Justice John Devine:

John Devine, an anti-abortion activist and self-styled “Ten Commandments Judge,” will become one of Texas’s nine Supreme Court justices early next year, as the Democrats are not fielding a candidate for the seat in the November election.

....

Devine has long been a staunch anti-abortion activist. At a June rally in Fort Worth, Devine told the crowd he had been arrested 37 times while protesting abortion clinics in the 1980s, Smith reported. Though, in a more recent interview, “he said he had been arrested during peaceful protests several times in the 1980s but did not remember how many,” Smith reported. Despite this history of activism, Devine insisted he “is still able to interpret the law impartially.”

In 2008, Devine and his wife, Nubia, showed everyone just how committed they were to the pro-life position when her seventh pregnancy endangered her life and that of the baby. The Texas Observer‘s Emily DePrang wrote about a video his campaign put out called “Elizabeth’s story.”

Like that bet. 

So-called pro-life people love to say that a woman's life isn't really jeopardized by a pregnancy. They love to act like they did something special by allowing a fetus to be born if it survives even briefly. And they will claim victory of anything short of this young mother of two just dying right now. Trisomy-18 isn't always fatal: kids with Edwards syndrome can live--see former Senator Rick Santorum's youngest child, Bella, for a story of a child with a way better than expected outcome. But keep in mind this is a former senator with a shit-ton more access to the best care for his kid, and whose wife did not have Cox's unique set of pregnancy complications.

The Freedom Mommies are Being Weird Again

 

So, one of the co-founders of Moms for Liberty, Bridget Ziegler and her husband, who happens to be the chair of the Florida GOP, were in a relationship with a third party, a woman who claims she had been sexually assaulted by the husband, Christian Ziegler. If there was a book about this, no one in Florida would be allowed to read it. 

I don't find it hard to believe a GOP official is capable of sexual assault: my word! I'm not the one who will pretend for a minute Republicans are actually moral exemplars--actually, they are kind of fucked up. Just a little bit ago, it was revealed that a spokesperson for the Freedom Mommies in Philadelphia (my home!)  was a registered offender. 

Look, the sexual morality thing is just a grift. Take poolside threesome aficionado Jerry Falwell Jr. as an example. "We're saving kids from being sexually tempted and confused--like we are! So ban books!' 

It's just anti-intellectualism with a spicy homophobic and sex-negative twist, It's not new, and it's dumb. But just so I can sort it out in my mind--is it not queer for the same-sex business to be happening so long 2/3rds of the people are openly Christian and straight-married? Is it less than two mommies queer? Is it more than two daddy penguins raising a baby penguin queer? 

Or is it Anne Frank wants to compare breasts with another adolescent female queer? Because teenagers are curious, but banning Anne Frank's diary has farther reaching concerns. Anti-Semitic ones. Because despite their vehement protestations, The Freedom Mommies are associated with Proud Boys. Though they want to sink that connection. But they stay "Klanned Karenhood" in my mind and so many others.

An Alibi, A Shovel-Buddy and a Surveillance System Walked into a Bar

 

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson admitted that he and his son monitored each other’s porn intake in a resurfaced clip from 2022 https://t.co/THNyCkttcw

— Rolling Stone (@RollingStone) November 5, 2023

I'm just a normal basic human, and I don't care to know anything about my parents' porn habits. I did learn that adult humans had down-there hair because my dad used to hide his skin mags under the bathroom sink when I was like, five, but he corrected that.  And I never really had to think about that again. Much. 

But anyway, this news is freaky to me: that's some serious boundary issues they've got there, in my humble estimation. But why is the father in this situation entrusting his browser history to his son? I can appreciate a parent having some level of curiosity about what their kids are up to online, that they aren't becoming white supremacists or bullying other kids for being gay or joining a cult, but the screwed-up thing for me this is like co-opting your kid to be able to vouch for your own version of No-Nut-November-October. They are an alibi. You can say your kid is not viewing porn. And as far as they know, your kid can say the same about you, for some reason?