Listen To The Crickets From The Religious Right

Not A Sound Concerning The Killing Of Our Children At Schools!

I recently called into a Christian radio station show (which shall remain unnamed, at least for now) and listened while hosts couldn’t stop gloating over the recent Supreme Court ruling overturning Roe v. Wade by the lying religious zealots on the court. They were simply over the top with enthusiastic praise to the “Lord” for his intervention – finally! Of course, no one mentioned the fact that it took some FIFTY YEARS before the “Lord” saw fit to take up the argument and finally settle the matter but I guess that’s par for the course since it took him FOUR HUNDRED YEARS to finally intervene and help the Israelites escape slavery in Egypt! (Gee. Thanks.) Apparently he’s got a major backload of prayers to answer! (Let’s not bother to mention that abortion is mentioned NOWHERE AT ALL in either Hebrew or Christian scripture, but moving on…..) The phone was answered by someone appointed to screen their calls and when asked the nature of my question I said I wanted to know how the Religious Rights’ overwhelming support of the GOP comports with their absolute resistance to gun control, in light of the extraordinary amount of school shootings and student deaths. I was extremely interested in how they were going to substantiate their position on this seemingly stark dichotomy in the value of life? I wonder if you, Dear Reader, can wager a guess as to how they reacted?

Those of you that guessed that they immediately proceeded to engage me in an on-the-air sensible debate about how they see the issues and their future plans of taking on the gun lobby can return to your seats; I’m afraid they did nothing of the kind. In fact, what they did do was hang up after telling me they were putting me on hold, at which point I called two or three more times and they continued to pick up the phone and hang up without speaking a word! Apparently they wanted absolutely nothing to do with this obvious and blatant hypocrisy on this most urgent, lethal issue.

As a kid growing up on Long Island in New York I can’t remember a single time when we had to practice an Active Shooter drill in my entire school career. In fact, before the “Texas Tower Shooting” in 1966 we had never even heard of such a thing and even afterwards we never engaged in such a drill or even thought about it again. Of course now, after corrupting the original meaning behind the Second Amendment and essentially giving the gun and firearms industry complete carte blanche on the manufacture and distribution of even the most lethal weapons available – including assault weapons that are manufactured for no other use than to kill people – the problem has become unsolvable and all we can get from our Republican “representatives” and their phony-baloney supporters in the Religious Right are “thoughts and prayers” and a lot of lip service about how no law enacted would have prevented the mass murder of our students. Keep in mind that after the Sandy Hook mass-massacre of kindergarten and first and second grade students – babies, really – and six heroic teachers, the entire GOP refused to lift a finger to do anything to prohibit this from happening again. Not a single thing. Again, nothing but their vacuous and useless thoughts and prayers, as if their mythological creator had no ideas about how to circumvent such egregious, pointless violence aimed at the most innocent of our population. Even more reprehensible is the fact that they hide behind “god” in order to facilitate their slavish, obsequious, bootlicking of the gun manufacturing industry.

The fact is we can no longer send our children to school and be 100% certain of their returning home alive. That’s where we are today a direct result of the efforts of our corrupt representatives falling over themselves for the blood-soaked dollars stuffed into their pockets from the gun industry! The GOP provide the thoughts and prayers, the rest of us provide the grief, anguish, and despair. Not a fair trade at all.

Who among us would believe that, had it happened in a school where the children of our elected officials attended, that we wouldn’t see some form of action or immediate response from the very same demented hypocrites in the GOP? Is the money they receive worth the lives of our children? And where exactly is the response from the Religious Right about the blatant murder of our children by individuals that should never have been allowed to even consider owning a firearm? Would the same miscreants selling Jesus everyday to their mindless assemblies have us believe the fiction that we are completely and utterly helpless to protect our children in any way?

The Religious Right MUST be called out on this outrageous hypocrisy. As I’ve often said, the GOP and the Religious Right are adamant that a woman must have a child when impregnated regardless of the circumstances however, once the baby is born, that’s where their concern ends. Women, you are on your own from that point on up to and including the murder of the very same children while attending school. Does multi-zillionaire Joel Osteen, John Hagee, Franklin Graham, Jimmy Swaggart, T.D. Jakes, Jim Bakker, and, my personal favorite, Kenneth “Four Jets” Copeland think that Jesus would approve of their sycophantish subservience to the gun industry?

Where are their voices? Where is the outrage at the complete absence of action to protect the children of this country? It amounts to nothing less than their complicity; they are, for all practical purposes, accomplices after the fact.

? , . .

Question For The Faithful

Q: Why Was Jesus’ Tomb Empty”

A: Because Jesus Was Never In A Tomb

I recently watched a YouTube video by Paulogia, a former Christian now fighting the good fight against the enemies of reason, rationale, and science. In it Paulogia was replying to challenges made by three Christian apologists; Mike Winger, Red Pen Logic, and InspiringPhilosphy to the argument as to whether Jesus’ body ever made it into a tomb. Now I am not a Bible scholar, nor am I a historian per se, but I have been reading and researching Christianity and Christian history for some 30 odd years or so and I do not believe you have to be a Bible scholar to weigh in on such religious claims. This topic in particular lends itself to enough reason as to conclude that Jesus was never in a tomb to begin with not only entirely plausible but highly likely.

Remember that when Jesus entered Jerusalem for the Passover festival the Romans were already on high alert. The Jews of the 1^st century were always hostile to the occupation of the Romans, complete with their standards depicting their Caesars as divinities and, sometimes in an act of pure provocation, even putting them in the Temple. Never were the Romans more ready for riot and disorderliness than during the high festivals such as Passover. And the Galilee, specifically where Jesus came from, was considered nothing less than a hotbed of sedition and rebellion. Pontius Pilate, who under normal circumstances would have resided in Caesarea in the splendor and comfort of his palace, made it a point to be in Jerusalem for the Passover feast in order to quash any potential unruliness or rioting that may have broken out. Keep in mind that when Jesus entered the city it was – supposedly – to an enthralled crowd of thousands of Jews screaming “Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest heaven!” (Mark 21:9) This would have already aroused the suspicion of the Roman troops in the area as the crowds were essentially pleading with Jesus to save them from their plight under Roman rule. “When he entered Jerusalem, the whole city was in turmoil, asking “Who is this?” The crowds were saying “This is the prophet Jesus from Nazareth in Galilee.” (Mark 21:10). This could be seen as bad enough however Jesus immediately enters the Temple and proceeds to turn the tables and cause even more commotion, this time violently.

Now Pontius Pilate was already known as a particularly cruel and brutal governor (or procurator, as his Roman title was) and had already been involved with – or the cause of – a number of particularly brutal episodes with Jewish crowds where hundreds or even thousands of Jews were slaughtered by Roman troops. He is referred to as such by Flavius Josephus and Philo of Alexandria as well as other contemporaneous authors however the Gospels gradually turn Pilate from the sole pronouncer of the death sentence on Jesus (Mark) to a milquetoast forced by the Jews to pass sentence on an innocent man or face the wrath of the Emperor, Tiberius. This is where the Gospels writers turn the tables from the Romans to the Jews as the purveyors of deicide and thus begins a two-thousand-year history of antisemitism and violence against Jews. It is much more conceivable – and likely – that having referred to himself as the King of the Jews, a very specific crime of sedition, Pilate sentenced Jesus to death, had him scourged and crucified, without even a morsal of remorse. He wouldn’t have had lost a moment of sleep over sentencing a rebellious Jew, instigator of turbulence and potential rioting, or had given it another thought. It is also highly likely, given his demeanor as described by the contemporaneous authors previously cited, that he would have allowed Jesus’ body to be removed from the cross.

We do know that there were instances where victims of crucifixion were allowed to be taken down and buried according to Jewish law or custom and this was Paulogia’s original comment on his Twitter blog. However, in most instances, this is not the case. One of the principal reasons and desired effects of the sentence of crucifixion was specifically for the public at large to see the effects of defying the Romans or causing mayhem or disorder. The site of a decaying corpse – being eaten by birds, dogs, literally falling off the cross – was the very best illustration that this could be YOU. Jesus, as a seditionist, rebellious instigator of Roman rule, and by declaring himself to be the “King of the Jews”, as inscribed in three languages on the titulus over his head confirms, it is extremely unlikely – and in my opinion, highly improbable – that his body would have ever been taken down. He simply would have decomposed until his bones were on the ground, then tossed into a common grave for such victims.

Now let’s dispel some of the more highly unlikely occurrences at this point in the passion narrative. First let’s dispense with the myth of Pilate releasing a prisoner as a Roman “tradition” (Mark 15:6). Besides the fact that there is absolutely no historical evidence of such a tradition in either Rome or Israel should close this loop once and for all however for the chosen subject for such clemency to be an acknowledged murderer and seditionist carries the story into the realm of fantasy. “Now a man called Barabbas was in prison with the rebels who had committed murder during the insurrection.” (Mark 15:7) In my hometown of Brooklyn, NY, we have a colloquial saying for such a story: “no f’n way, not in a million years!” I think it serves us well here as the chances of Pilate, in his infinite brutality, releasing a murderer of Roman soldiers or citizens is just beyond what any reasonable mind can absorb. This simply never happened. It is nothing more than a device used to put the blame of Jesus’ death on the Jews and away from the Romans. “I am innocent of this man’s blood; see to it yourselves. Then the people as a whole answered “His blood be on us and on our children!” (Matt 27:24-25)

Mission accomplished.

Next the idea that “Joseph of Arimathea”, literally synthesized out of thin air sashayes onto the scene as a “friend” of Pilates and walks off with Jesus’ body only hours after his death is simply inconceivable. As previously stated, this is out of the question; Pilate lets one seditionist go (Barabbas) and another to be taken down from the cross after only hours after his death. This can only be the need to get Jesus off of the cross and into a tomb from which he can later be resurrected. It isn’t even necessary to debate the fact that Arimathea is a total and completely mythological place, never having appeared on any map, ancient or modern. The place simply never existed and doesn’t to this day.

As far as the “witnesses to the resurrection”, no one ever saw Jesus “resurrecting”; they simply went to an empty tomb. Additionally, none of the four gospels tell the story the same way. “Matthew” tell us Mary Magdalen was there with the “other” Mary. (Mt 27:59-61) “Mark” says it was Mary Magdalen and “Mary the Mother of Joseph”. (Mk 15:46-47) “Luke” says “The women from Galilee followed Joseph and saw the entombment. (Lk 23:53-56) and, finally, “John” ever the embellisher, says it was “Nicodemus and Joseph” that wrapped the body and placed it in a tomb, “at a garden near where Jesus was crucified”. (Jn 19:39-42)

No one ever witnessed the actual reanimation of his body. The tomb was empty simply because Jesus never actually occupied a tomb.

Pastor Greg Locke and the Insanity of Evangelicalism

Pastor Greg Locke, of Mt. Juliet’s Global Vision Bible Church, near Nashville, previously told his congregation that he considered Democrats to be “baby butchers.”

Yes, baby butchers. This all for allowing a woman, perhaps a couple, her/their right to choose how to conduct their pregnancy. Of course this insane accusation conjures up visions of…well, you can imagine. “You cannot be a Christian and vote Democrat in this nation. I don’t care how mad that makes you. You can get as p***ed off as you want to. You cannot be a Christian and vote Democrat in this nation. They are God-denying demons that butcher babies and hate this nation.” he said in one of his many off-the-rails sermons to his congregants. Even in and among the supernatural world religious minions, Greg Locke is a stand-out. Whether it’s witches in his congregation or demons speaking to him, he wants you to believe he’s all-in on Jesus!

Well I have a declaration for you, Mr. Locke: you can not be a Christian and belong to the Repugnantcan Party; sorry, can’t be done. Jesus simply would not have you. Beyond their inherent racism; their contempt for immigrants, African Americans, and, of course, women, is their policy of handing out guns; assault rifles, huge-capacity magazines for carry ridiculous amounts of ammunition, to any shit-kicking a-hole that wants one. They will not lift a finger – even in view of the unspeakable events we’ve watched unfold in Newtown and now in Uvalde, TX – in order to stave off future events of gun violence. They watch while children are murdered seemingly without a clue as to how to stop this insanity or even slow it down. ”We already have enough gun laws” they’ll tell you. ”None of the gun laws would have prevented this” they ”reason”. “We need less doors and more armed personnel in our schools.” And so it goes on and on while we get only the benefits of their ”thoughts and prayers” which, as you can see, have had absolutely no success. Besides, which American politician’s prayers is Jesus listening to anyway? I’m sure that’s a very short list.

The problem is that Christians like Mr Locke are perfectly ok with the unforgivable carnage their policies cause as long as it gets abortion off of the rolls of legal medical procedures and so they vote overwhelmingly for the ”More Guns” crowd. Unfortunately, the ”More Guns” crowd also comes with the ”More Death” crowd to our school children while they are ”safely” tucked away in their classrooms. Only I don’t remember doors being a problem when I went to grammar school or junior high school or high school and we had lots of doors leading into the schools and, yes, some of them were even unlocked or – heaven forbid – open! We even had windows so you can see inside the school! What I DO remember is that we didn’t have 300,000,000 guns in the hands of, in some cases, very scary people, people that should never be candidates for gun ownership.

The Republicans of today would have you believe that there simply isn’t anything we can do to circumvent the murder of our children in schools because there are too many doors and not enough armed guards! And we also know that Evangelicals vote overwhelmingly for Republicans. Meanwhile, back in the imaginary realm where the spirits and demons play, Pastor Greg is whipping his crowd into a frenzy over abortion rights and paying absolutely no mind to our BORN children being murdered in schools. That is one consistent thing about the GOP and the Religious Right; they care passionately about the unborn but they don’t give a hoot about them once they are born. The problem with this of course is ”What would Jesus do?” Do we mean to believe that he would be ok with voting for people that facilitate the arming of our population at the expense of public safety? At the expense of the lives of children?

What do you think? Should we put pressure on the Religious Right to help protect our BORN children by protesting the GOP’s addiction to gun money?

Christians, Religious Right: You must account for your votes to the GOP

You don’t get to ”wash your hands” of the blood of the murdered children killed due to their refusal to improve gun laws!

While the Christian right, fundamentalist Christians, the Bishop of San Francisco and all the rest of the ”Funny Hat Club” Catholics are high-fiving each other over their apparent victory (although, I wouldn’t count my embryos just yet) I’m sure they now have their heads under the covers hoping no one will notice their culpability in the slaughter of our children in schools. And so they should; if my elected politicians that I pulled the lever for enacted such a “wall” around the gun lobby, gun manufacturers, trade-show gun dealers and entities, and background checking, you’d better believe I be heading for Switzerland right now. But do you know what, Ken ”Four Planes” Copeland, or Joel ”Giorgio Armani” Osteen (btw: one of the world’s wealthiest evangelists in the whole world!! Jesus would besoooooo proud!), or Franklin ”Bang Bang” Graham, and the rest of the ”blessed ones” that simply can not wait for Jesus to get here, they’re so certain they’ll be leaving with him? You must answer for your support of the GOP and their steadfast unwillingness to do anything about the absurd amount of gun violence in our country. You “Holy Rollers” don’t get to help put these vile excuses for human beings into office and then walk away scott-free. You have blood on your hands that will not be washed off; will not be ”thoughts & prayer-ed” off, will no longer be forgotten. You have the blood of 1st, 2nd, 3rd, graders – 5 & 6 year-old children – mid-schoolers, high schoolers, and many, many more. Their blood be on you and on your children!

How much money do you pour into the coffers of the GOP in order for you to eventually achieve your long-desired theocracy and have Christianity become the founding basis of the country? How many sermons have been peppered with your lies and misrepresentations about the damage being done to our country by liberals, progressives, Democrats, and atheists? How many lies told by the various Ted Cruzs, Josh Hawleys, Greg Abbotts, and all the rest of the Republican ”Murderer’s Row” have you paved over in your sermons and speeches and radio shows in order to smooth over their culpability in Amerika’s mass shootings?

Remember that almost 10 years ago when the unthinkable happened in Newtown, CT resulting in the deaths of TWENTY schools children – babies, really, babies – the Republicans shot down ANY chance at all to even improve the background checking process so that mentally ill would be disqualified from gun ownership! Even that small step would not be allowed to pass. The smallest, almost gestural in nature, was unanimously shot down by the Republicans.

Now you need to step up and take responsibility for the seemingly unending carnage taking place in Amerika thanks to your votes and endless endorsements of Republican candidates.

I pledge not to let you forget it.

Prepare for more ”Thoughts & Prayers” as Abbott, Cruz & GOP Look to Cover for the Gun Manufacturers, Again!

When Will the American People Finally Wake Up to the Blood on their Hands?

It is beyond time – well beyond time really – for the America people to wake up and take responsibility for the senseless carnage perpetrated against the people and CHILDREN – for goodness sake, CHILDREN – in the United States by gun violence! Specifically I call on the Religious Right, the Fundamentalist Christians of Amerika that financially support, vote for, and are complicit with, the GOP and their immoral policies that ultimately result in the senseless deaths of our people and our children. Amerikans can no longer send their children to school each day and even reasonably expect that they will return home ALIVE!! Our children can’t even attend school and expect that they are protected by us; their parents, teachers, elected officials, and all for the efforts of the Republican party and their selling out of the Amerikan people in order to preserve the cash flowing into their pockets from gun manufacturers, the NRA, Conservative politicians, and the Religious Right. Yes, the Religious “Right.” You phony snake-oil salesmen! You don’t get to support these scum and then exonerate yourselves from the horrors of their policies. You have the blood of these children on YOUR HANDS TOO! Let me hear you say it you phony sycophants: What Would Jesus Do? You fucking hypocrites! You fucking Philistines! I curse you and your families and your houses! Joel Osteen, Ken Ham, Jerry Falwell, Franklyn Graham, and the purveyors of the man-made scripture you preach to the helpless for which they get NOTHING and all the rest of you pernicious hypocrites, you will not – YOU CAN NOT – wash their blood off of your hands! You care so much for the lives of the unborn but not at all for the lives of the born! You purveyors of vacuous, religious nonsense! You false prophets! You have been exposed for the egregious villains you are! Now we can truly see you for who you are! Empty vessels of inequity! Jesus WOULD NOT know you – DOES NOT know you! You are the very Anti-Christs you have forseen!

I can just hear Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley, Chuck Grassley, Majorie Taylor Green, Donald Trump and the miscreants that support and follow them saying ”Unfortunately todays gun laws wouldn’t have done anything to stop this.” Yes, Ted, you lying piece of shit, but you have had the opportunity the CHANGE the GUN LAWS and you willfully decided not to! You have had the power to CHANGE the gun laws for YEARS and you and your immoral party have refused to do so time and time again knowing that it is only a matter of TIME before this happens again and you’ll be sending out your useless and vacuous ”thoughts and prayers” to yet even more grieving, heart-sick, and broken families. I can only hope that someone will send those same reprehensibly phony thoughts to your family some day. And You, John Roberts, Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, Cavanagh, Amy Barrett, et al. You fucking phony ”Judges”! You are not JUDGES!! YOU ARE POLITICAL OPERATIVES in black robes. Nothing more! You are responsible for perpetrating more violence and injustice in this country than any ten of the most debased criminals!

I call on ALL Amerikans to rise up and throw these so-called ”CHRISTIAN” hypocrites out of office and take control of our country and re-establish laws of safety, morality, and compassion which we lived with for so long before our government was overtaken by corporate and phony religious fanaticism!!

WE MUST FINALLY ACT!!!!

Good Morning, America!

Wake Up and Smell the Racism!

In trying to parcel out yet another school shooting where four more American children are murdered in their school, I began to anticipate Congress’ response, i.e., their total lack of a response. Sure the standard ”thoughts and prayers” are a given and, to be sure, that has provided some badly needed relief (in the minds of the gun manufacturers) especially those from Ted Cruz, Jeff Pawley, and the other Christian Republicans. However in considering these publicly-elected miscreants I began to ask myself: If one votes for someone that allows the murder of our children to persist without so much as lifting a finger, do I also have their blood on my hands? Projecting that out to other issues, I began to ask myself more questions. The next natural conundrum seemed to be racism. I thought: if I vote for a Senator or Congress person that enacts legislature that makes it harder for people of color to get to the polls and vote, does that make me a racists as well? Furthermore, should I prioritize my own personal issues according to my needs or according to the more important civil needs of, in these cases, pblic safety or equal rights for all?

And so, I put these questions to you: when you vote for someone that supports or legislates laws or policies that are harmful or detrimental to all or a particular class of Americans, do you share in the culpability of these policies and laws. In other words, do you have blood on your hands? what do you think?

Is Donald Trump Really A Traitor?

*Is Donald J. Trump a Benedict Arnold?* Many question his obsequiousness to Vladimir Putin.

It’s been called treasonous by a U.S. Congressman and veteran of Iraq. A former Navy Seal and now a emergency room doctor lables Trump either a coward or Putin’s puppet in an ad by the Lincoln Project, a political action committee started by prominent Republicans including George Conway, the husband of Trump advisor Kellyanne Conway. Former Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul calls Trump’s anemic response to any of Putin’s emboldened moves against US interests “a sign of worsening things to come.” Former National Security Advisor for President Barack Obama Susan Rice is equally suspicious of and puzzled by Trump’s obsequious behavior towards Vladimir Putin. I’m sure the rest of the world is puzzled as well, especially our Nato allies. Puzzled and concerned.

The question puzzling all these people & entities is: why is it that the Pseudo-President, Donald J. Drumpf (I like to use his real name before his grandfather changed it; it seems so much more fitting somehow) always seems to defer to Vladimir Putin and Russian interests? Drumpf contradicted U.S. intelligence reports of Russian interference in the 2016 election in front of the world in Helsinki when he declared that Putin told him Russia did not interfere in the 2016 U.S. election and so, there it is, no interference. Everyone in the entire world already knew that the Russians did, in fact, interfere in the election and to Drumph’s advantage. In fact, I would go so far as to surmise that the blitzkrieg-style hacking campaign conducted by the GRU out of St. Petersburg was a total and complete success for Putin; he actually succeeded in getting Drumpf elected. Granted, this is speculation however I have no doubts that repeatedly putting 15,000 or so false or misleading messages in front of 150,000,000 Americans on FaceBook more than likely did actually have an effect on people’s voting. Keep in mind that Drumpf won the election on the smallest of margins with Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan going to Drumpf with a total of about 106,000 votes between the three states giving him all 46 Electoral College votes and putting him over the top. In fact, he actually won Michigan with a margin of just around 11,000 votes or 3/10 of one percent! And Drumpf actually lost the popular vote by margin of approximately 2,000,000 votes, not exactly a mandate from the people. Is it really so outlandish to conceive that the Russians could have changed or influenced the votes of just 106,000 people across three states out of a vote tally of 123,724,157 total votes? We’re talking an infinitesimal difference approaching one-millionth of one percentage point in a country where approximately 28% of the people – over a quarter of the population – believe the Bible as literal truth? I think not. In my opinion, Drumpf is in office entirely through the efforts of both Russia and FaceBook. We would do well to remember this as we approach the next election.

Now we learn that the Pseudo-President was told perhaps as long as a year ago that Russia was paying a bounty to Taliban forces to kill American and American Allied soldiers! Or perhaps, and I’m not sure which is worse, he doesn’t bother to read his Presidential Daily Briefing (PDB) so he wouldn’t have known about it! Even worse, his advisors seem completely unwilling or unable to bring it up to him or make sure he is aware of this most egregious violation of international law. What do you call a president that doesn’t even bother to read the PDB, the single most important daily document in the country while he sits in the residence watching cable news and Tweeting to his followers? For me incompetent comes to mind fairly quickly, and dereliction of duty, sure, that passed through the grey matter as well. But why, many are asking, would the so-called President of the United States of America, the most powerful country ever to grace the Earth, fold like a cheap suit to a country that President Barack Obama labled a “regional power” and one that has the total gross domestic product of Texas? When asked these questions the administration chooses to kill the messenger and has started a vitriolic campaign against both the New York Times for reporting it and the unidentified leakers that gave the information to the Times. And what, you ask, was the Pseudo-President’s response? Do you really need to ask? Fake news. A hoax. All started by the “disgraced” NewYork Times, as Drumpf commonly characterizes the paper of record for the last 150 years. My reaction? Anytime Drumpf characterizes anything as a hoax or fake news I immediately know it’s probably true and this time is no exception. My “Spidey-senses” are off the charts on this one; I just know it’s true somehow just like I know in my heart that the Mueller Report didn’t exonerate him and found complicity between his campaign and Russia and that, somewhere, out in the ether, there’s a pee-pee tape. But it gets worse, much worse.

During this same period of time, while either in full understanding that Russia was putting a bounty on the heads of American soldiers or in ignorance of it because he was derelict in his duties and didn’t bother to read the PDB – and his advisors were too incompetent or too afraid to point it out – Drumpf has repeatedly tried to get Russia back into the Group of 7 over the objections of the other members. Putin is desperately trying to get Russia back onto the world stage after losing miserably in Afghanistan and after the complete decaying of the Soviet Union, and Drumpf seems to be doing everything he can to assist him. Furthermore, he has pulled U.S. troops out of Syria against the advice of “his generals” as he refers to them, leaving a void that was, of course, filled by Russia. He has also recently announced his intention to draw down U.S. Troop levels in Germany as well, again much to the chagrin of his military advisors, Germany, much of Eastern Europe, and Nato. And who is simply delighted at this prospect? Survey says: Vladimir Putin!

We have never had a president that defers to Russia the way Drumpf does, never. And the most enigmatic question is: why? As as a former KGB agent, Putin is well aware of and certainly an absolute expert in the use compromat, the use of compromising information against an adversary. Knowing Drumpf’s less-than-stellar career in business (he bankrupted casino(s), for goodness sakes. I’ve coached Cub Scouts that can run a casino profitably), his credit record with the major banks (not too pretty good. Not a single U.S. bank will lend him money), and his record of womanizing and divorce is it really beyond the pale to conceive that Putin has information about him that Drumpf would definitely want to keep from the public that he has so completely and totally bamboozled? If he is the business Svengali that he professes to be why does he so desperately want to keep his financial records from the public? Why is he so averse to releasing his education records to the public? He says he went to Wharton but refuses to allow any disclosure of his records there. Even though he knows “all the good words” and has “a really good brain?” Doesn’t add up. Doesn’t seem to make sense.

One thing I can tell you this: if the Dumocrats think they’re going to bury this after Drumpf is out of office, they’d better think again. One of my greatest complaints about Obama is that he dropped any further investigations about the start of the Iraq war even though anyone with a brain knows that Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld, et al., lied us into the war and it should have been investigated and, more than likely, prosecuted. Unfortunately, Obama had his “let’s look forward to the future and not backward” hands-off approach and so no investigation and there are a lot of progressives that were – and still are – incensed about it. Their frustration was made even worse – maddeningly so – by the way the Dems blew the entire impeachment hearings and the Mueller Report. There is a huge resurgence of progressiveness in the country right now and they are not in the mood for letting a potential political criminal walk, and I am at the top of that list. If the Dumos think we’re going to just move on, they are gravely mistaken. Drumpf must be investigated just as any other American would expect to be. If he is the first president to be incriminated and convicted, then let the chis fall where they may.

The Specious Persecution of Modern Christians

Driving home last night I listened to what I assume was a rebroadcast of WMUR’s show On Point about the supposed present-day persecution of “Christians” or what are really White Anglo-Saxon Protestants. I don’t think I’ve ever heard such dribble in all my life. Unfortunately, I could not call in as I was literally salivating to respond to the nonsense I was hearing from the Christian pastor asserting this inane claim.

Anyone following my blog, RaPaR knows, I been researching the the origins of Judaism & Christianity for many years. I was born Roman Catholic into an Italian-American family in Brooklyn, NY in 1955. I am now an Atheist since delving into the Bible to find alternative answers to Catholic doctrine that I believed to be man made. This lead me to some very unexpected skeins of inquiry, not the least of which is the history of Christianity. And, unsurprisingly, you will find that no one group of people in history have done more persecuting than Christians. Even a cursory review of history bears this out.
While the pastor (forgive, I can not remember his name) was crying about why people are so intolerable of Christians today, let me make just two relevant points:

1) Christians have been persecuting people in America well before it was even a nation. They came to America, slaughtered most the inhabitants, enslaved others, and then encumbered them with Christianity as if this would help them in some way. The persecution of Africans (and African-Americans, as they were forced to become) was almost exclusively perpetrated by White Anglo Saxon Protestants or White Evangelicals. The result was to lull them into the false hope that there was some “Jesus” that would come from the sky and save them. So far it hasn’t happened and they’re still awaiting some kind of social justice to this day and continue to be discriminated against and persecuted by, white Christian society. A society that could lynch a black child on Saturday, sing hymns in the pews of their churches on Sunday.

2) The so-called Christian values and morality that the Pastor asserted can be found in the pages of the New Testament, in today’s society, is a non-starter. For instance, the Bible – Christian & Hebrew, collectively and individually – doesn’t say anything about abortion yet they hold their narrow-minded belief as something to which all of society must adhere. Therefore their belief is going to be crammed down the throats of others against their will. Why? Why can’t the supposed children of god keep their own moralities to themselves? Why must they insist upon changing the laws of our society-at-large even against the wills of a majority of Americans that believe that this should be a woman’s or a couple’s personal choice? Remarkably they would claim that a twelve year old girl, raped by her father, should be forced to bear a child even against her will because this is a creation of their god. I can’t think of anything as cruel as this and yet they would have it encoded into our law whether society agrees or not. This kind of Christian hegemony has gone on since time immemorial and is just one example.
Remember that the Ku Klux Klan was entirely populated by Christians, from Nathan Bedford Forest to David Duke, from beginning to end. They persecuted most “others” – although primarily African Americans but others as well; Jews, Catholics, Italians, etc. not to mention homosexuals – even into the 20th and 21st centuries. Furthermore, they continue to assert their ignorant beliefs which they selectively extract from their Christian dogma in order to alter society against the will of the majority. And now they want to decry some self-perceived persecution perpetrated by the “rest” of the American people.

The Pastor also decried the injustice at the exclusive teaching of Darwinism or Evolution in public schools at the exclusion of “creationism,” as if the two are somehow equivalent. They are not. Creationism is mythology, pure and simple, and a ridiculous one at that. Argued against a massive corpus of scientific data is their myth that god created the entire universe in six days, created light four days before creating the sun and stars, and most puzzlingly, creating man in full, mature form day one. All without an iota of supporting data; in fact in the absence of such empirical data. If they would like to have a flat Earth curriculum, they are welcome to at a Christian or Catholic school. They can help themselves. I just will not have my taxes used to pay for it.

What the Pastor perceives as persecution I consider to be the process of standing up against an oppressive and reprehensible minority. They need to keep their narrow-minded and offensive beliefs to themselves. If they can not then they should expect a vigorous and raucous fight.