A Little TrumpWorld Idolatry for Your Sunday Services

This feels unhealthy to me, but of course, it's parked right there at Trump International Golf Course now, because why not? It's a Trump property, and if he wants to decorate with assorted artworks promoting the man, the myth, the legend, I guess that's his business. It's just that when he does stuff like this,

it's hard not to feel like he's sending a very political message:

The White House moved the official portrait of former President Barack Obama to a new location in the building’s Grand Foyer, replacing it with a painting of President Donald Trump with his fist raised in the air right after last year’s assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania.

The portrait appears to be based on a photo of then-candidate Trump, bloodied and surrounded by Secret Service agents, still onstage after being shot at the campaign event. That image, along with Trump’s words to “fight, fight, fight,” became a hallmark of Trump’s bid for a second term.

"Appears to be"? Of course it is.  Trump didn't just suddenly find himself like a martyr, you know. His cult believes that what didn't kill him made him stronger. 

The Deaths We Could Have Prevented

 

Vice President Harris: We now know that women have died because of Trump Abortion Bans. That includes a healthy 28-year-old woman in Georgia. Her name was Amber Nicole Thurman. She died of sepsis, and experts have determined that her death was preventable pic.twitter.com/loBJDsbY9Z

— Kamala HQ (@KamalaHQ) September 20, 2024

I have seen on social media how angry some "pro-lifers" are at the idea that abortion care saves lives. You can't EVER terminate a pregnancy--it's MURDER!  These stories that humanize and normalize the procedure that can save women's lives appalls them, because they can't accept that the God they profess to love and believe in would make babies ("before you were in the womb I knew you") with gross congenital defects, tumors, or other difficulties "incompatible with life".

Something else other than the lack of abortion care "must have" killed these women. They took abortion drugs. They were sin-minded. This had to be their own fault. 

It wasn't. 

TWGB: It's a Holy Perfect Angel You Guys!

 

This is mind-blowing: An American flag tangled into the shape of an angel before the #Trump rally yesterday. pic.twitter.com/81btUcr8Lp

— America Strong (@itsthereelthing) August 31, 2024

I don't know if you were ready to believe in God yet, but did you see the perfect holy angel Trump was talking about? Because OMG, the guy who was saying he was just being martyred like Jesus when he was starting to sell Trump Bibles has now been rescued by Jesus so he can save the country you guys, Merry Eargrazemas to you!  

Because how the hell can you ever say "Merry Christmas" again without acknowledging who has made it all possible by being made a little bit dead--but then totally saved to unfuck this apparently fucked-up country? You know who--the guy who was more indicted than Jesus, Abraham Lincoln and Al Capone--not to mention Hannibal Lector! You might not have believed in Jesus before you guys, but since he saved Trump. you kind of have to, right? 

I'm an agnostic and this sort of thing offends the heck out of me, so I don't even know how it sits with my actually Christian brethren. He believes in God to the extent he can see God on his side. God exists to magnify Trump--not the other way around. .Donald Trump is to faith what Lara Trump is to music. 

This is the credibly accused serial adulterer and harasser/rapist of women. And he's trying to tell you divine intervention saved him from anything.

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: 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. 

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.

The Haunting of the House on the Hill

 

The thing that alarms me about the new Speaker of the House is he's explicitly against the separation of church and state in a way that a lot of Republicans just aren't that outspoken about. They very well might well be theocrats to some degree: they just aren't that obviously so. Ted Cruz's dad is Seven Mountains dominionist. We don't talk about it that much. Josh Hawley has some Christian nationalist vibes. 

But Mike Johnson is just a flat-out a denier of the separation of church and state, to the extent that he credits supernaturalism (God's providence, or anointing) for the raising up of leaders (including an embrace of the historical revisionism of David Barton regarding the subject). It's a problem: the halls of Congress really should not be haunted by assorted head spooks like the various religious notions of its members. We elect leaders by popular choice: that means that the people vote for them, not that they are picked by someone's idea of the cosmic creator of all the things. I could suggest an empirical experiment of the success of God doing the things by inviting all the Bible-believers to stay home on election day, and I would probably find myself shocked! by their lack of faith that works aren't actually getting electoral things done IRL. 

Johnson is like the Forrest Gump of theocracy: he took down his podcasts so we wouldn't know how fringe he is. His wife, who is all about the LGBT conversion, took down her website, too.  Almost as if people might be horrified at what their actual beliefs are. But he's been associated with crisis pregnancy centers. His "adoption" of his 14 year old son at age 25 while still unmarried via the troubled Young Life Ministries is suspect as hell. 

Sam Alito Should Retire.

 

The lawyer who “wrote” this is also the lawyer blocking our investigation into Leonard Leo’s Supreme Court freebies.

Shows how small and shallow the pool of operatives is around this captured Court — same folks keep popping up wearing new hats. https://t.co/NUaoxpBy8a

— Sheldon Whitehouse (@SenWhitehouse) July 28, 2023

I have an opinion about this particular justice that is not nice. Samuel Alito's wife leased land to an oil and gas firm while Alito sat in judgment over the EPA. Alito is no stranger to conflicts of interest--it's just that he isn't interested in discussing the conflict part of it. I have once and forever stated that the definition of "conflict of interest" for conservatives was that if one always has decided in one's own interest, there is never a conflict. And I'm not sure that flippant construction doesn't accurately describe the conservative court. 

So what is my take on Alito and his beefing on the idea of checks and balances? Because it boils down to whether Alito thinks he has a say over Congress' ability to set tax law without Congress having an ability to determine whether Alito has any ethical standards he ever has to conform to. 

It would seem to me like Alito does not prefer to have any ethical standards pertaining to him by another authority because he understands his situation wouldn't stand up to scrutiny, and if he doesn't like my opinion on that, he can fucking fight me. 

He won't and doesn't need to, because in his world, my opinion is an irrelevancy. (Also, I would cream him on his conflicted ass and the legacy of it point by butchered legal point.)

He needs to retire because he's at this point trolling how much SCOTUS doesn't have to conform to any ethical standards and he wants to pretend Congress has nothing at all to do with the configuration of the court or the ethics they need to adhere to. But the Constitution literally does exactly that.  Congress can determine how many justices, and even if they can be impeached for their skullduggery. 

Weird that he missed that. It feels very intentional.

The Christian Nation We Never Were

 

Disgraced televangelist Jim Bakker, disaster chow pitchman, is concerned that the Pride celebration at the White House means that the US is no longer a Christian Nation.  I would like to be very reassuring while I say this to him: We never were.  The original inhabitants of this nation were not Christians, and despite all the Christians who came to this land seeking refuge from their Old World persecution, you have to understand, actually being a "Christian nation" or the product of any one religion is a weirdly wrong idea to have about our founding. 

We are by no means a Christian nation. John Adams said as much in the Treaty of Tripoli.  There's a lot wrong with assuming that our founders were all of a mind about religion--which is exactly the reason to presume we are not founded on religious principles, but practical ones. There are ample statements from our founders that attest that freedom of religion was the only way to maintain an already-diverse religious population, Thomas Jefferson was proud enough of his religious freedom edict in Virginia that he had it made a part of his final epitaph. 

SCOTUS and the Ghosts

 

The Colorado web designer who wanted to refuse LGBTQ customers and just won her case at the Supreme Court had claimed in court filings that a man inquired about her services for his same-sex wedding. But the man says he didn’t – and he’s straight. https://t.co/idy1Jy1VI7

— CNN (@CNN) July 1, 2023

I wonder about SCOTUS mostly because I'm a non-lawyer, but I do watch the odd law-related television and follow a bunch of lawyers on Twitter, and it really feels to me like one doesn't have standing over imaginary shit?  Like, it's bad enough that student loan forgiveness seems to have been struck down because of political beef because not even the banks were mad about it, and I'm still not sure who affirmative action hurts. (Because AA only gets someone in the door, but they have to do the coursework. Save your money. Do excellent at your B or C school and transfer in if the big ol' name brand of the school means that much to you. Or whatever. I went to the school that was only one bus route away, myself. And I am definitely a white privilege kid. I'm an English major. I lack vision and purpose. Or so I've been told.)

Anyway--this woman's case was picked up by the ADF--that is, the Alliance Defending Freedom, because of course it was. I don't know whose freedom the Alliance is about--it just looks like Christian supremacy to me.  (And homophobia, transphobia, and the denial of reproductive health freedom. They descend from Dobson and Wildmon--that's all I need to know, fam.) Deep down, I don't love the idea of people discriminating against real people because of what they want to believe their imaginary friends have to say. (I have seen gay folks. I have never seen your god. Sorry if this offends.)

But anyway, this woman was just thinking about going into web design when the horrible thought hit her--what if she was FORCED to support a gay wedding? By making a website about a "happy" same sex couple! The idea! The scary idea! Of having compelled speech in her mouth! 

Climate Sunday 2: Stop Electing Ron Johnson!

 

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) says climate change will be good for the U.S. because it will be less cold: "Global warming will actually be beneficial ... Why wouldn't we take comfort in that? ... Y'know, concerned if you're in the hot region of Africa ... but we're in good shape." pic.twitter.com/gJifCUhFnT

— Heartland Signal (@HeartlandSignal) April 26, 2023

I explained my problem with no-nothing babble-on dipshits just a few nights ago, but the rationale still holds: this man has not the least idea what he's talking about, nor the wit or imagination to appreciate the human misery that follows-through from any of the things that climate change portends. On one hand, less people will freeze to death but counterpoint: people will die in heat waves. There will be forest fires. There will be desertification of formerly arable land. There will be water shortages. There is a limit to the benefit of CO2 increase on plant growth. Crops can easily be wiped out by flooding, hail, mudslides. Whole cities can be devastated by increased cyclonic activity. Changes in the jet stream broadly affect planting schedules in a way we can't yet anticipate, and climate changes affect where planting crops is most effective. 

And the result of these changes will be mass human migration and local conflicts over water rights and international conflicts over human rights-- like who gets to eat. Like who can live in the zones that remain livable, when areas formerly safe are no longer capable of supporting life. 

This dumb, dumb man represents too many people who cannot appreciate the knock-on effects of the changes in our atmosphere and the weather it produces already occurring. Johnson is exactly the kind of dumb-dumb we need to stop having because this! My figurative god in a literal existential conundrum--WTF is this kind of happy-ass thinking?  And is he really saying, yeah well, if it's really hot in Africa, the right sort of people will get it? Because that's sort of how I'm hearing it.

He doesn't realize a town in Canada got incinerated because of a heat bubble not two years ago? Climate disasters aren't far away and other folk. It's all of us, and why in the hell aren't African folks also your concern, supposed Christian? 

All of what he says is too dumb and out of touch. I don't understand how someone like this got so recently re-elected, when he is obviously paint chip-eating dumb. 

This is A GOP Candidate in 2022

 

This is one of the scariest videos I’ve seen.

I don’t know what more to say.

Candidate Mark Burns (a Trump ally), running for SC-04, calls for the execution of lgbtq/trans people.

He uses “grooming” to justify.

He lays out exactly how it should be “legally” done.

Genocide. pic.twitter.com/uqJVPMYTMj

— Erin Reed (@ErinInTheMorn) June 14, 2022

They are getting very specific about the moral purges they want. People need to appreciate this at the ballot box--the cause is existential.

UPDATE:  This guy lost his primary, but he got about 24% of the vote--that's about 11k people who listened to his sort of theocratic hate language and said they were good with it. That is pretty disturbing. 

Burns has endorsed pastors like Greg Locke running for office. 

The Muckrakers and the "Penitent"

 

There is a rumor about one of our GOP congresspeople that I want to obliquely address because it is not well-founded and the timeline doesn't necessarily make a lot of sense. The person in question is not someone I am a fan of, in fact, I think she is a clown who cheapens the political discourse and has no real interest in government policy as much as signifying and showing herself. 

I will not ever call out someone for fucking for money, because if you know what it is to need the money, you get it. And I also don't think anyone's abortion is immoral. If you ever did sex work or terminated a pregnancy for reasons--those are your reasons, and I don't come at someone for that. But if you ever have been there, a sex worker, or having had emergency reproductive care, you don't get to judge other people about what they have done for their lives. Good for me and not for thee isn't morality, it's just selfish and judgmental. She has done other things.  

Let Us Prey

Right-wing pastor Rodney Howard-Browne is not about to cancel church or prevent congregants from shaking hands because they are not a bunch of "pansies." pic.twitter.com/C36kBIEWqF

— Right Wing Watch (@RightWingWatch) March 15, 2020

I'm not sure if this bravado is more like snake handling, poison-gargling, or just a bit of fire-walking, but I'm also thinking that the pastor doesn't entirely know what it's more like, himself, he just knows it feels good, so he's doing it.

There's comfort, after all, in believing one's community and faith is bigger than something like germ theory, or the advice that "liberal media" gives:

“One pastor said half of his church is ready to lick the floor, to prove there’s no actual virus,” an Arkansas pastor told me. “In your more politically conservative regions, closing is not interpreted as caring for you. It’s interpreted as liberalism.”

Liberalism, science, being a "pansy"--it's all the same thing.

Sarah Sanders Proudly Lies for Trump

Pressed repeatedly on her comments on FBI agents, Sarah Sanders tells @GStephanopoulos, "It was the heat of the moment, meaning that it wasn't a scripted talking point. I'm sorry that I wasn't a robot like the Democratic Party" was about Mueller probe. https://t.co/mOQZNKl1wy pic.twitter.com/y3xcNwVYHg

— ABC News (@ABC) April 19, 2019

I noted a little bit earlier that Sarah Huckabee Sanders lies for Trump and sounds more like him all of the time. The Mueller report revealed that Sarah Sanders lied and admitted she did when she said that she had received messages from people in the FBI who were happy about the firing of Director Jim Comey. Her answer to being pinned down on that was less than great: it was 100% accurate that she got some messages to that effect, but it couldn't be considered "countless".


Yeah. Because whether the messages were "countless", and not whether they were happening at all, was the issue. I direct to others who were paying attention:

This Relationship is Problematic

Not in a BDS way--it's just that the way the Trump/Israel thing is playing out is a little too close to evangelical apocalypse stuff, you know?  I get that Trump has a strong relationship with Israel, but also a strong relationship with his evangelical supporters, and, well, the thing where they speculate that he is here to fulfill prophecies to me is pretty worrying. But when actual Trump Administration officials like Sec. of State Mike Pompeo say that Trump is here to fulfill prophecies out loud, that's really too much. So, I don't know if they want to see Trump as necessarily a King Cyrus, or as a Queen Esther.  

I just think this is a weird conversation to be having at all. Trump is doing stuff his base wants; it's fan service, not prophecy-fulfillment. His Secretary of State speaks fluent evangelical, and is more than willing to signify to the churched that this is a religion-friendly administration.

Color me deeply skeptical, though. Bush was willing to drop apocalypse-signifying stuff too. I can't say how serious that was either.

But this is where those kinds of religion-signifying things often dwell, right? Said out loud, but daring you to sort out whether they are intended seriously, or not.

This Looks Crooked from Every Angle

The thing that bothers me about Michael Cohen's statement that he is the guy who paid Stormy Daniels for no particular reason whatsoever is that the fact that he paid her at all is really amazingly coincidental with his client, one Donald J. Trump, having been implicated in an affair with this woman, and in the throes of an election where the most recent scuttlebutt alleged that he was a womanizer, when this pay-off happened. He can try to pretend-separate this from the campaign, but there is no more obvious reason for this payoff than that the Trump campaign would prefer to not have another woman talk about his extra-marital sex bidness.

I think this right there is stupid, because we know now, after the election, that Trump's philandering was never a problem for his voters. He was accused of sexual harassment and rape during the election. I'm not sure how Stormy Daniels' story was going to be some kind of "too much". Coming on the heels of the several kinds of harassment and assault allegations happening just then, which Trump had no problem denying, I don't know why her story would have represented a damaging bit of pile-on that needed to be monetarily hushed.

Cohen alleges that his financial facilitation of a payment (through the creation of an LLC to sort of, shall we say, launder that monetary "gift") was done entirely without any coordination with the Trump Campaign or the Trump Foundation.

Yah right--and he isn't also suing Buzzfeed because of the Steele Dossier.  Cohen is a fixer, and he does shit for Trump whether it is really good shit to do or not. I kind of wonder whether he has significantly fuxxored himself by admitting he has paid for Stormy Daniels in lots of ways--he should not be offering his financial assistance to some client who is not indigent to influence any potential case--and Trump should seriously be staking his own bribes, right?  This is basic lack of lawyering ethics.

Also, this is either a bribe or a material boost to the Trump campaign because it pretend-refutes damaging info for the Trump Campaign.  Totally an in-kind donation, you might think?

I don't even know. Cohen strikes me as a bad actor anyway. I definitely don't give credence to his story.

Now That It's Official, I Officially Can't Stand Mike Pence

Although it was undoubtedly true before--what with Mike Pence being historically absolutely terrible for queer rights and for reproductive freedom, I really didn't want to unload on poor old Johnny Quest's dad-looking probably one-term governor from Indiana (?), where being wretched actually doesn't break you (I am looking at you, Mitch Daniels, you pimp-handed skinflint) but might actually make you a household name of some kind. It seems too cruel to walk all over the reputation of a (since when is Indiana a swing state?) favorite son from part of the daggone heartlands? After all, Dan Quayle was a Senator from Indiana and too damn dumb to spell "potato" and he managed to be Vice-President. For one term.  So why the hell shouldn't Mike Pence, a man once described (hey, thanks Bowtiejack!) by an associate as having less brains than a salad, be a credible running mate for the current GOP nominee for president?

Great question! Because he isn't your run of the mill kind of stupid, that's why. Because he just signed on to be the running mate of a guy he did not endorse during the primary, and whose main policy stances he pretty much opposed.  The attack ads, they cut themselves. This is a guy who managed to economically flatten Indiana with a religious freedom bill, only to walk it back and alienate the religious conservatives he was intending to succor.  That's a special kind of stupid. It isn't climate-denying kind of stupid, and it isn't cigarettes don't kill kind of stupid (disclaimer: one of my grannies was a heavy smoker who died of emphysema and congestive heart failure) --it's "This dumb political stance benefits exactly nobody and is just twisted and unconstitutional so--doing I'm totally doing it"  until he wasn't. Heh.

He doesn't believe in evolution and he was kind of big on the Iraq War, continuing to say there were WMDs there long after lots of folks were giving that right the heck up.  His vendetta against Planned Parenthood resulted in an HIV epidemic, but what does this asshole care? He once wanted AIDS funding to go towards gay conversion therapy, which is a monstrous torture cluster that mostly makes queers hate themselves, and doesn't convert anyone to anything but a wreck.

He is a goddamn garbage nightmare candidate, and yet he was probably also Trump's best choice (Gingrich being out where  the buses don't run and Christie being, well, himself), and the best carrier of the current GOP platform's flag.  Pence is all that is wrong with the "modern" GOP--but boring as hell so it somehow doesn't look as tragic. Trump sets all that is boring on fire. There isn't a damn thing I can say in this world that does worse to Pence's career than being on Trump's racist-ass ticket. So I feel free as can be to talk about Pence like he should be. He's a hot mess on new shoes.

Angels in Orlando

The Westboro Baptist asshats were turned away by decent folks in Orlando, who decked themselves out as angels to block the anti-gay protesters from disturbing the peace of mind of the grieving. This was done before, at the funeral of Matthew Shepard.

I wonder, sometimes, what the cognitive dissonance must be like--being a WBC protestor screaming and carrying signs condemning people for who they love, but coming across decent, loving, empathetic communities who are feeling true, compassionate emotion--not seeking to create ugly drama.

Do they ever pause to consider that parasitically harassing people has built up over time a kind of "immune response" to their hate that only reinforces, ironically, the command "Love one another"? Are they trying to be the sand in the oyster that makes a pearl of wisdom?

Or are they just rabid horrorshows? Because in Orlando--we saw angels. And WBC protesters watched, and perceived them not at all. Their total and complete loss. But our reassurance that life and love and memory and the sanctity of our shared humanity go on. We have angels--they just have dumbass signs.

Trump Supporter Susan DeLemus is Amaaaaazing

So the lady above who circa 2009 was entirely savvy about NH political business for the Republican party--turns out to have been the same lady who as a Trump supporter, maintained she never had anything to do with politics until just now. She has believed for some time that Barack Obama is not an American because she thinks birth certificates are wacky novelty items any schmendrick can get from a gumball machine. But you can't discount the running for office stuff she did before she was a birther who supported Trump. And her husband lighting off to support Cliven Bundy is just so much whatever. Looks like a lot of attention-seeking to me, but I'm cynical.

She makes up in "true belief" what she lacks in sincerity, though.