I don’t care if there was an entire army hold up there, there are rules to war that Israel has violated each one. They are willing and wantonly killing civilians. Plus they are trying to sabotage the peace plans. I am very glad Biden is not running because he is allowing Israel to get away with this. Hugs. Scottie
Tag: Religion
In the interest of inclusiveness,
and because it’s very beautiful:
Religious Misogyny
Kamala Harris has MAGA World Freaking Out …
Aug. 4, 2024, 5:00 AM CDT By Anthony L. Fisher, Senior Editor, MSNBC Daily
It’s always the end of the world for the Make America Great Again movement. Ever since Donald Trump’s escalator ride in 2015, there’s been zero nuance to the MAGA message. “Only I can fix it,” the leader roared to thunderous applause upon accepting the 2016 Republican presidential nomination.
But especially since Vice President Kamala Harris became the likely Democratic nominee, MAGA messaging has gone from overwrought and hyperbolic to absolutely hysterical and apocalyptic.
Trumpists wave off any and all criticism as unworthy of discussion, bad-faith accusations from minds afflicted with Trump Derangement Syndrome. And yet, deranged is the only appropriate descriptor of the rhetoric emanating from MAGA land’s loudest megaphones. It’s Trump and some of his closest allies and most prominent boosters who have been speaking of an imminent totalitarian government, end times and literal biblical demons.
These people include podcasters with massive, fiercely dedicated audiences. Titans of industry. Religious extremists with political ambitions and close ties to Trump world. And the richest man in the world.
In just the past week, popular MAGA pundits warned that Harris is “Hitler and Stalin combined but times 200,” and also a “commie” who will choose a running mate who supports “allowing men to beat up women in the Olympics.” They also expressed outrage over the opening ceremony at the Paris Olympics as the end of “Western civilization,” and singled out one woman on a Zoom fundraiser call for Harris’ campaign as another harbinger of end times.
Then there was the billionaire Trump supporter who finally freed himself from the burden of pretending he’s not MAGA, Elon Musk, bringing back one of his favorite apocalyptic buzzwords, “extinctionist,” to describe Harris. (And because he’s a serious adult, he called her “Shamala.”)
Musk once generally reserved that term for environmentalists — or really anyone concerned about climate change. But he’s since expanded the definition to anything that involves the mysterious and horror-movie-sounding “woke mind virus.” In 2023, Musk told Joe Rogan, “It’s essentially the extinctionists. It is that they’re propagating the extinction of humanity and civilization.”
It’s hard to argue what’s “most disturbing” among these deranged comments from very angry people, but a worthy contender came from Lance Wallnau, the influential Christian nationalist who has the ears of both Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson. He likened the first Black and Indian woman to be nominated for president by a major party to Jezebel — a spirit with demonic powers. In case he wasn’t driving the point home with just the name, Wallnau clarified that Harris represents “the spirit of Jezebel … in a way that’ll be even much more ominous than Hillary because she’ll bring a racial component and she’s younger.”
The MAGA right hasn’t cornered the market on ridiculous and irresponsible hyperbole in politics. Left, right and center are all capable of taking liberties with facts, hyping the fear factor and exaggerating the stakes.
But of all American political tribes, there’s only one with politically influential figures using this election season to prophesize about Jezebels and explicitly making it about race and gender. Or literally warning of the imminent end of the world because of a Marxist conspiracy to smuggle totalitarianism on an unsuspecting public through environmentalism.
This was once the content you’d find on the furthest, most ridiculous fringes of the AM radio dial. And they are what remains of the brain trust of the MAGA movement. (snip-More)
https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/kamala-harris-maga-jezebel-apocalypse-rcna164922
We Don’t Gotta Get Ahead.. Hold The Door For Someone Instead
Why We Investigated Matthew Trewhella, the Far-Right Wisconsin Pastor Influencing Republican Politics
Some people said militant anti-abortion activist Matthew Trewhella was a ’90s figure who’s no longer relevant, but our reporting shows he’s influencing policies, bills and movements today.
by Phoebe Petrovic, Wisconsin Watch Aug. 2, 5 a.m. EDT
This article was produced for ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network in partnership with Wisconsin Watch. Sign up for Dispatches to get stories like this one as soon as they are published.
In the fall of 2022, Phoebe Petrovic, an investigative reporter at Wisconsin Watch and a member of ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network, noticed a pastor and his church appearing in local news coverage for their anti-LGBTQ+ protests. Looking closer revealed Pastor Matthew Trewhella’s startling history. And digging even deeper, she noticed an untold story: his broader influence on modern Republican politics. His rise helps illustrate the growing power of the Christian right in the Republican party. Here, Petrovic describes how she reported the story and what she learned.
What were the key takeaways from your reporting?
- A few decades ago, Trewhella was known as a militant anti-abortion activist. Today, he’s got a different reputation: thought leader on the far right, increasingly welcomed by Republicans.
- Trewhella helped to rehabilitate his reputation through his 2013 self-published book, “The Doctrine of the Lesser Magistrates,” which uses a 16th-century Protestant doctrine to argue that government officials have a God-given right and duty to defy laws, policies or court opinions deemed “unjust or immoral” under “the law of God.”
- He’s preached this doctrine to county Republican parties and local groups across the country, even to the National Sheriffs’ Association, a preeminent law enforcement organization.
- His book has influenced Second Amendment sanctuary resolutions. At least 10 measures across the country refer to lesser magistrates. One of the earliest, issued in 2019, was authored by a county commissioner who has described reading Trewhella’s book as a “turning point” for him.
- A prominent booster of debunked election conspiracy claims is using Trewhella’s book to disrupt future elections.
How does Trewhella fit into the election? What does he say about his work?
- In the cast of characters who might influence the upcoming election, Trewhella is not rallying crowds the same way as Steve Bannon, the former Donald Trump strategist, or Charlie Kirk, the founder of the conservative student group Turning Point USA. Trewhella is more behind the scenes, providing a religious justification for some far-right policies and causes.
- Trewhella says that he promotes nonviolence. But after an activist killed an abortion provider in 1993, he signed a document describing the murder of these doctors as “justifiable.”
- In a brief interview, I asked Trewhella about his reputational shift over the decades. He responded: “Most people will always only care about three things in life: me, myself and I. … It’s only because of their mundane, self-absorbed lives that they would think someone like me is an extremist. That’s my answer.”
- Trewhella did not respond to over a dozen attempts to set up a second interview. He did not answer written questions by email and refused a certified letter containing them.
What did experts tell you about Trewhella?
- Frederick Clarkson, a senior research analyst at Political Research Associates, which studies threats to democracy and human rights, has tracked Trewhella for decades. Clarkson said, “All of those county commissioners and mayors and whatnot who are entertaining this stuff, they’re putting people’s lives and the entirety of civil order at risk by playing footsie with Matt Trewhella.”
- Another extremism researcher, Devin Burghart, said, “I think that the public needs to know that he’s a dangerous theocrat, who would fundamentally alter the United States in irreparable ways that would harm many, including women, people of color and the LGBTQ community.” Burghart is president of the Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights, which tracks the far right. (snip-More)
https://www.propublica.org/article/investigating-matthew-trewhella-wisconsin-pastor
Wow, the tRump VP pick is a sick puppy.
Mocking The Last Supper
Right wing Christians are always looking for things and ways to be aggrieved and insulted. They glorify in being the victims of crimes that exist only in their imagination. Not only are they sure only they only have a right to the Christian god, but they think only they control the Christian god and how he should be worshiped. Hugs. Scottie
Monday, July 29, 2024
The Weird Problem
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Looking at photos, I’m not sure why the Lord’s Supper would occur to people. I’ve seen or seen photos of all the Masters’s artworks of the Last Supper, and this doesn’t look like any of those. I don’t know why someone would choose to pick this fight, but there are plenty of people complaining. I wonder how many of them have seen the artworks, and also, even how many of them actually watched the performance, which was not, as I understand what I read, at all about the Lord’s Supper, but was about French art. Hmm. “Weird” is a fine term. Also I know I love Strangely Blogged!
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Some conservatives are pushing back on claims that JD Vance and Donald Trump and maybe a lot of other Republicans are “weird”–but I’m sorry, it is what it is. I get that Republicans have put a lot of stock in saying they represent “Real America (TM)” and the cosmopolitan Big City Lefty Liberal Arugula-Eaters with Their Fancy Brown Mustard and Priuses and pronouns are oddball hippie Comsymps or whatever, But right off the bat, deciding lettuce, Grey Poupon and parts of speech are weird–is weird.
Being really mad at the Olympics because you were told Christianity was being insulted when the opening show had nothing to do with Christianity and demanding others agree with you–is weird.
Smashing coffee makers or shooting cases of Bud Lite because a talk show host told you to be mad is weird.
Pretending to be a party of small government but wanting to track women’s menses, stop them from travelling, or wanting to take inventory of people’s pee parts before they can use a public restroom, is weird.
Wanting women to carry dead fetuses is weird, and ghoulish. (snip-More)
https://vixenstrangelymakesuncommonsense.blogspot.com/2024/07/the-weird-problem.html#more
Nice Time: Jimmy Carter Lives To Defeat The Guinea Worm!
He may have eradicated only the second disease since smallpox!
MARCIE JONES JUL 27, 2024
Good news!
Snippet:
TRIGGER WARNING: Contains disgusting descriptions of the nasty-ass Guinea Worm, though no photos. Do not Google the photos.
…
So this is very nice, former President Jimmy Carter — who is still alive and 99 years young, though in hospice — has succeeded in his decades-long goal to get Guinea Worm Disease cases down to zero before he dies. (Warning, the picture at that link is disgusting.) There have now been zero cases of Guinea Worm disease in the past three months, and there were only 14 last year. Extremely promising signs that maybe they are truly gone forever! If no more Guinea Worms burst through anybody’s flesh within the next nine months, then it’ll officially be the second disease eradicated by humanity after smallpox.
When the Carter Center started trying to take down big Guinea Worm back in 1988, more than 3.5 million people in Africa and India were suffering from it. And BOY WERE THEY SUFFERING, because while the worm won’t directly kill you, it is agonizing and SO RETCHINGLY GROSS. First, nasty-ass fucking worm larva gets into your guts through dirty drinking water. Then it grows in your stomach for a fucking year. And THEN, a fucking THREE-FOOT WORM POPS OUT OF YOUR SKIN which hurts like fucking hell, obviously. And there is no vaccine or cure, the only solution is to pull this FUCKING DISGUSTING WORM out of your fucking skin by winding it around a fucking STICK.
So it is not the glamorous kind of affliction that makes a good poster for a benefit concert or bake sale, or plays well on an ad with Sarah McLachlan playing in the background. But one fixed relatively simply, with clean drinking water. And so that is what sweet peanut-farming Jimmy worked at. His Carter Center partnered with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and has been quietly toiling to eradicate many other un-glamorous diseases that no one in the year of our Lord 2024 should have to suffer from, including: poliomyelitis (a virus that paralyzes mostly children), mumps, rubella, lymphatic filariasis (aka elephantiasis, a roundworm transmitted by mosquitoes), cysticercosis (tapeworm infection), measles, river blindness, and yaws (a nasty spirochete bacteria that causes bursting lesions). (snip-More)
Adidas apologises to Bella Hadid after she appeared in campaign criticised by Israel
Sportswear company issues statement after accusations it was conflating Palestinian identity with terrorism
Ellie Violet Bramley Wed 24 Jul 2024 10.38 EDT
Adidas has apologised to the model Bella Hadid after pulling adverts in which she was promoting a sport shoe first launched to coincide with the 1972 Munich Olympics.
Adidas last week said it was “revising” its campaign after criticism from Israel over Hadid’s involvement in the campaign for the retro SL72 trainers. Hadid is an American whose family has roots in Palestine.
The apology, issued on Instagram, said: “Connections continue to be made to the terrible tragedy that occurred at the Munich Olympics due to our recent SL72 campaign,” referring to the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre when Israeli athletes were taken hostage by the Black September Organization, a Palestinian militant group. Eleven Israelis, a German police officer and five of the attackers died.
The statement continued: “These connections are not meant, and we apologise for any upset or distress caused to communities around the world. We made an unintentional mistake. We also apologise to our partners, Bella Hadid, ASAP Nast, Jules Koundé, and others, for any negative impact on them and we are revising the campaign.”
On Friday, the German-based company had said in a statement it was “revising the remainder of the campaign” after criticism over Hadid’s involvement by Israel on X. “Guess who the face of their campaign is?” read a post on Israel’s official account. “Bella Hadid, a model who has a history of spreading antisemitism and calling for violence against Israelis and Jews.”
Hadid had previously been criticised by Israel for allegedly chanting: “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” on a march in 2021.
Adidas was condemned by some Jewish organisations, with the American Jewish Committee labelling its decision as either a “massive oversight or intentionally inflammatory”. Others came out in support of Hadid. One fellow Adidas ambassador, the Palestinian-American author and activist Amani al-Khatahtbeh, posted an email she sent to Adidas on X, in which she said: “Bella Hadid is a model of Palestinian origin that has been a much-needed outspoken advocate for human right.” She added: “Adidas’s disappointing response conflates our Palestinian identity with terrorism.”
Hadid, 27, whose father is the Palestinian businessman Mohamed Hadid, has been vocal in her support for Palestine. In May she expressed her solidarity by wearing a dress crafted out of red and white keffiyehs during the film festival in Cannes. In 2023 she denounced the far-right Israeli national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir for saying Jewish settlers had more rights than Palestinians in occupied territories.
When she appeared on the cover of Vogue magazine in 2021, she said on Instagram: “A Palestinian girl on the cover of Vogue. The joy it brings me to say that … I won’t stop talking about the systematic oppression, pain and humility that Palestinians face on a regular basis.”
Hadid, who recently launched her own wellness brand, has faced death threats for her outspoken support.
The apology to Hadid and her fellow Adidas partners comes amid reports that she is speaking to lawyers about her options.
A trend-setter across fashion, Hadid is perhaps particularly influential in the trainer space – she was a driver of the widespread popularity of the Adidas It-trainer, the Samba, which has been ubiquitous in recent years. She started wearing the SL72s, which are part of a campaign by Adidas to revive a series of its classic trainer models, earlier this year.
Scottie's Playtime 
