The Sickness of Christian Politics & Christian Nationalism

[AnBr]

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[LFC]

Aug 31, 2021 2:33:23 GMT AnBr said:

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Oh, man. I'm going to share the F*** outa' this.

[LFC]

Another god-bothering freak who is grifting away as they kill people. Snake oil and Jeebus, perfect together.

For Sherri Tenpenny, God is on the side of those who spurn Covid-19 vaccines. Making money, critics say, is the Ohio osteopath's higher calling.

From a $240 premium podcast annual membership to $165 webinars on why people "should not take the shot," health supplements and ticketed public speaking, Tenpenny runs a sprawling enterprise based on anti-vaccine activism, disdain for masks and testing, and denials that Covid-19 is real.

An AFP investigation has found that the 63-year-old widow developed a business around coronavirus skepticism at the same time as she owes US tax authorities at least half a million dollars.

Earlier this year, Tenpenny was named one of the worst known spreaders of falsehoods, myths and misleading statements about vaccines -- a group the non-profit Center for Countering Digital Hate dubbed the "Disinformation Dozen."

A separate study put her in the cadre of America's biggest anti-vaccine profiteers.

But in comments to AFP, Tenpenny stood by her claims, maintaining that she is not spreading misinformation and is simply making "a living."

Her business is an alchemy fueled by social media and mistrust of public health officials, two factors blamed for more than 25 percent of eligible American adults declining to be vaccinated.

While US President Joe Biden's administration pleads with the vaccine-hesitant to take the shot, Tenpenny brands Covid-19 a manufactured crisis and a means of government control.

In an address to Ohio lawmakers in June, the osteopath pointed to online images purporting to show people who were "magnetized" after receiving a Covid-19 vaccine.

"They put a key on their forehead, it sticks. They can put spoons and forks all over them, and they can stick," she said in remarks that were soon debunked, but only after gaining a national audience.

YouTube removed that footage of Tenpenny, saying it broke the platform's rules on information likely to cause harm. Many of Tenpenny's other videos have been fact-checked as misleading or false, and several of her social media accounts were suspended or removed.

But much of her prolific output remains accessible -- illustrating the whack-a-mole problem of weeding out dangerous online content, which Big Tech has yet to solve.

There's more. Lots more.

[AnBr]

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[RichTBikkies]

Aug 31, 2021 2:33:23 GMT AnBr said:

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One Thousand Likes.

[LFC]

Lying for Jeebus while simultaneously endangering people (paywalled). It's pure American "Christianity." We really do seem to be leading the corruption of that religion.

Jackson Lahmeyer is a Tulsa-based 29-year-old pastor, small business owner and GOP candidate challenging Sen. James Lankford (R-OK) in 2022. And he’ll get you out of getting the COVID-19 vaccine for religious reasons if you pay the right price.

According to the Washington Post, Lahmeyer, the pastor of Sheridan Church has created his own religious vaccination exemption form that is downloadable from his church and his campaign website. He told the Post that he modeled the form after one created by Oklahoma state officials and claimed that more than 30,000 people have downloaded it thus far. The form reportedly asks for a pastor’s signature, which, he told the Post he would sign no-questions-asked. But there’s a catch.

“I’m willing to sign it no matter what,” he reportedly said. “But I want it to have weight. In order for it to carry any weight, you have to be an online member of our church.”

Lahmeyer explained his hands were tied by his 70-year-old church’s bylaws. In order to become an online member of the church, a person must watch church services through one of the Sheridan Church’s online platforms and donate at least $1 to the congregation, he said. Once those minor logistics are taken care of, no explanation is required for him to sign the exemption.

“What if someone says, ‘God told me not to get a vaccine.’ I don’t know if God told them that. I’m not going to argue with that,” he told the Post.

Laws about religious exemption requirements vary by state, and one religious freedom legal expert told the Post that in most cases a clergy member’s signature isn’t required to opt-out of a vaccine. But the pay-for deal has garnered the Republican candidate some national attention.

Most of Lahmeyer’s political campaign has been centered on the Big Lie and his grievances with Lankford, who did initially say he would vote against certifying President Biden’s electoral college victory, but changed his mind in the hours after the Jan. 6 Capitol attack. That about face inspired Lahmeyer to challenge Lankford in the midterms. The pastor and GOP challenger has also very openly campaigned on his opposition to vaccine mandates, describing the Biden administration executive order on vaccine requirements for federal workers last week as a livelihood-stealing endeavor coated in “wickedness.”

And he’s gained support from at least one Big Lie guy. Former National Security Adviser and convicted QAnon-flirting Trump ally Michael Flynn endorsed the pastor’s campaign earlier this year.

[LFC]

F***ing right-wing Christians have been leading the charge against critical race theory for years in an effort to defend all institutions from their racist behavior including their church, the schools their members run, the police their members run, the local governments their members run, and so on. It's denial at its worst.

The debate over critical race theory has played out in TV studios, school board meetings and state legislatures across the U.S. It has also found its way into churches.

The theory comprises a set of concepts that frame racism as structural, rather than simply expressed through personal discrimination. Scholars point to racial discrepancies in educational achievement, economic and employment opportunities and in the criminal justice system as evidence of how racism is embedded in U.S. institutions.

But as its critics tell it, critical race theory is a divisive ideology that has infiltrated classrooms and needs to be stopped. By and large, such depictions of critical race theory are inaccurate and misconstrued, perhaps at times even intentionally so. But they have nonetheless made critical race theory a “culture war” issue.

Religious voices, particularly among white evangelical Christians, were among the earliest and loudest in calling for critical race theory to be stopped. Conservative evangelical bloggers warned against the supposed dangers of the theory “infiltrating the church” back in 2018.

And in 2019 – before the anti-critical race theory movement gained widespread attention – the Southern Baptist Convention, the largest evangelical group in the U.S., passed a resolution criticizing the theory as a problematic secular ideology that conflicts with the authority of Scripture. A push by conservative Southern Baptists to again reject CRT by name failed at this year’s convention, but a resolution was passed against any theory that frames racism in a way other than its being “a sin” to be resolved by redemption through Christ.

These resolutions reflect a common evangelical ideology. Essentially, evangelical morality sees social problems such as racism as the result of sinful individuals, not larger structures or institutions. In the words of evangelical pastor and theologian Voddie Baucham: “Critical race theory is at odds with Christianity because it takes the problem of racism out of the individual heart and puts it out there somewhere in systems and structures.”

Such views from evangelicals laid the groundwork for the uproar over CRT in recent months.

[goldenvalley]

Sept 16, 2021 15:48:32 GMT LFC said:

F***ing right-wing Christians have been leading the charge against critical race theory for years in an effort to defend all institutions from their racist behavior including their church, the schools their members run, the police their members run, the local governments their members run, and so on. It's denial at its worst.

The debate over critical race theory has played out in TV studios, school board meetings and state legislatures across the U.S. It has also found its way into churches.

The theory comprises a set of concepts that frame racism as structural, rather than simply expressed through personal discrimination. Scholars point to racial discrepancies in educational achievement, economic and employment opportunities and in the criminal justice system as evidence of how racism is embedded in U.S. institutions.

But as its critics tell it, critical race theory is a divisive ideology that has infiltrated classrooms and needs to be stopped. By and large, such depictions of critical race theory are inaccurate and misconstrued, perhaps at times even intentionally so. But they have nonetheless made critical race theory a “culture war” issue.

Religious voices, particularly among white evangelical Christians, were among the earliest and loudest in calling for critical race theory to be stopped. Conservative evangelical bloggers warned against the supposed dangers of the theory “infiltrating the church” back in 2018.

And in 2019 – before the anti-critical race theory movement gained widespread attention – the Southern Baptist Convention, the largest evangelical group in the U.S., passed a resolution criticizing the theory as a problematic secular ideology that conflicts with the authority of Scripture. A push by conservative Southern Baptists to again reject CRT by name failed at this year’s convention, but a resolution was passed against any theory that frames racism in a way other than its being “a sin” to be resolved by redemption through Christ.

These resolutions reflect a common evangelical ideology. Essentially, evangelical morality sees social problems such as racism as the result of sinful individuals, not larger structures or institutions. In the words of evangelical pastor and theologian Voddie Baucham: “Critical race theory is at odds with Christianity because it takes the problem of racism out of the individual heart and puts it out there somewhere in systems and structures.”

Such views from evangelicals laid the groundwork for the uproar over CRT in recent months.

I think for a lot of people, not just Southern Baptists, racism is nothing more than hatred by an individual against a race. If they don't "hate" but merely think that people of a certain group are more inclined to be lawbreakers that is not hatred but merely fact.  Look at who is in prison is the refrain.

The concept that racism is the result of decisions made long ago (and sometimes not so long ago...War on Drugs) that were based on assumptions about people of a particular race is a new one. And it's sort of abstract unless someone walks you through, for example, red lining of housing, how it was reinforced via FHA loans, the real estate industry etc.  People just aren't inclined to think things in this way.   

Education apparently is designed for readin' writin' and 'rithmatic but not for any thinking about why things are the way they are.  The latter might make students and their parents feel uncomfortable.

[LFC]

Sept 16, 2021 16:47:22 GMT goldenvalley said:

Education apparently is designed for readin' writin' and 'rithmatic ...

And God(tm). Don't forget about God(tm).

[LFC]

Mike Hucksterbee continues to distribute child propaganda. Brain wash them with your politics when they are young before they are capable of figuring things out on their own. It's a lesson they learned from their religion.

Want to teach your young children about how secularism is seeping into public schools, the failures of a state-run economy, and the truly positive meaning of MAGA? Former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee has a deal for you.

Under the guise of “education,” Huckabee and Florida investor Bradley Saft have been aggressively pushing conservative propaganda to kids for a decade. But in recent years, their company has become even more contemptuous, continuing to surprise customers with automatic $20.90 monthly charges despite parents’ complaints, launching $5 million of targeted Facebook ads in the past three years, and ratcheting up incendiary messaging that parrots the latest culture war rage-bait.

The Arkansas state government has bought in because of course they did. And as if she wasn't bad enough Deborah Birx is now completely dead to me as being anything other than a partisan hack. She tried to walk a tightrope but her reputation is in shambles.

Last year, the company struck a $260,000 deal with Huckabee’s home state of Arkansas, according to vendor data available on Ark.org. The department of education there used federal coronavirus relief funds to ship copies of The Kids Guide to the Coronavirus to every student in the state, according to an announcement by Arkansas Education Secretary Johnny Key.

Marketing materials quote former White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator Deborah Birx, hailing it as “the gold standard for parents nationwide,” and the guide follows the conservative political stance on masks. “Face masks aren’t recommended as a way of preventing Coronavirus for healthy people,” the guide says.

And it's just gotta' be bit more sleazy because of course it is.

In 2017, EverBright started offering dedicated subscribers “tuition points” that could be redeemed at a certain private colleges across the country—a quarter of which are faith-based institutions. One video that’s still up on Vimeo features Huckabee himself promising 1,000 “tuition points” for signing up, “then as an active Learn Our History customer, we’ll give you another 250 points worth $250 in college tuition savings each month.”

Except these points aren’t actual dollars and the program disappeared when its business partner cut ties years ago over concerns that CollegeSave wasn’t a real business. Parents who want to check on the status of their points can’t, because CollegeSave.org has since been taken down—and earlier this year redirected to a profile page for a webcam porn star known as “Kriss0leoo.”

CollegeSave promised Huckabee’s company it would provide “a personal college savings roadmap” and “a panel of experts on college and financing saving,” according to a person who read The Daily Beast a copy of the contract, which was signed by CollegeSave founder Gary Serota and EverBright Chief Marketing Officer Craig Mirabella on March 21, 2017. That deal no longer exists.

The Daily Beast was able to piece together the backstory. Before CollegeSave vanished it had latched onto a “tuition points” system run by Sage Scholars, a decades-old small business that maintains a database of 400,000 grammar school students—a valuable harvest that’s tantalizing for small colleges in need of undergrads. These universities are willing to offer a discount in tuition as long as students who accumulate “points” are directed their way.

Michael Hall, the CEO of Sage Scholars, told The Daily Beast that he would theoretically honor any “points” that EverBright parents had accumulated while his company still had a deal with CollegeSave. But, he added, “I can guarantee we've never redeemed any tuition points for Learn Our History.”

“I had never even heard of that website,” Hall said, noting that he looked up Huckabee’s company just minutes earlier and had noticed the highly political brochures aimed at kids. “They didn’t make any deals to teach this curriculum to a school district, did they?”

[AnBr]

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[andydp]

If you have kept up, Hobby Lobby has been "repatriating" Bibilical era documents they bought that were stolen.  To add the cherry on top: the "donations" to the Museum are a tax deduction for the Hobby Lobby owners.  (What was that part about the love of money ?)

That Robby Hobby
The Museum of the Bible wants you to believe it’s the victim of swindlers. It’s not.

I’m a professor of art crime. To teach my students about the varieties of cultural heritage crime, like forgery, fraud, and looting, I’ve spent decades researching cases from throughout history and around the world. Which, frankly, was a big waste of time. They could have learned nearly everything about heritage crime by looking at what the Museum of the Bible has been caught doing in the past few years.

...as Candida Moss and Joel Baden showed in the book Bible Nation, they are intimately intertwined. Hobby Lobby, which is entirely owned by the Green family, began purchasing artifacts in 2009 to donate to the planned museum. The legal separation between the entities allowed Hobby Lobby to claim tax deductions for charitable donations, increasing the Greens’ profits. You can indeed, as reporter Matt Pearce joked in 2017, think of the museum as “Hobby Lobby’s robby hobby.”

slate.com/news-and-politics/2021/10/museum-of-the-bible-looted-art-track-record.html

[LFC]

Oct 5, 2021 11:25:27 GMT andydp said:

If you have kept up, Hobby Lobby has been "repatriating" Bibilical era documents they bought that were stolen.  To add the cherry on top: the "donations" to the Museum are a tax deduction for the Hobby Lobby owners.  (What was that part about the love of money ?)

Wow, I just finished the article. Those people are seriously messed up. It's amazing, yet hardly surprising, how a devout belief in religion can so effortlessly go hand in hand with blatant criminal and immoral activity.

[goldenvalley]

Oct 5, 2021 14:38:41 GMT LFC said:

Oct 5, 2021 11:25:27 GMT andydp said:

If you have kept up, Hobby Lobby has been "repatriating" Bibilical era documents they bought that were stolen.  To add the cherry on top: the "donations" to the Museum are a tax deduction for the Hobby Lobby owners.  (What was that part about the love of money ?)

Wow, I just finished the article. Those people are seriously messed up. It's amazing, yet hardly surprising, how a devout belief in religion can so effortlessly go hand in hand with blatant criminal and immoral activity.

Being "religious" doesn't have to mean they aren't "smart" in the Trumpian sense of tax evasion.

[LFC]

At the pulpit and spewing hate for Jeebus(tm). It's the Christian way. I always find it interesting when a minority whose group has been persecuted for centuries (he's black) turns on other groups who have never done them any harm. I guess bullies are gonna' bully and there's no more self-righteous a bully than one abusing people for God(tm). Video can be seen here.

North Carolina Lieutenant Governor Mark Robinson said Saturday that he "will not back down" as politicians call for his resignation over recently resurfaced comments in which he referred to "transgenderism" and homosexuality as "filth."

"Let me tell you plainly right here and right now: I will not back down," he said in a video posted to Facebook on Saturday. "I will not be silenced and I will not be bullied into submission. I will continue to fight for the rights of our children to receive an education that is free from sexual concepts that do not belong in the classroom."

In June, Robinson spoke at Asbury Baptist Church in Seagrove, North Carolina, where he made derisive comments about educating children about LGBTQ+ issues.

"There's no reason anybody anywhere in America should be telling any child about transgenderism, homosexuality, any of that filth," the Republican politician was heard saying in video that was recently posted on social media. "And yes, I called it filth, and if you don't like that I called it filth, come see me and I'll explain it to you."

I need no explanation for you. You've made your hatred and bigotry quite clear. AFAIC you are filth and if you don't like that I called you filth, come see me and I'll explain it to you.

[LFC]

The sickness gets worse and worse. And of course the spineless Greg Abbott folded like a house of cards. The cruelty continues to be the point.

In late August, one of Gov. Greg Abbott’s primary challengers, Don Huffines, accused Texas’ child welfare agency of “promoting transgender sexual policies to Texas youth” under a section of its website titled “Gender Identity and Sexual Orientation.”

“These are not Texas values, these are not Republican Party values, but these are obviously Greg Abbott’s values,” Huffines said in a widely circulated video on Twitter. The webpage published by the Department of Family and Protective Services linked to a suicide prevention hotline and other resources “dedicated to helping empower and celebrate” young LGBTQ people.

Within hours, the webpage was gone.

So was the entire website for the Texas Youth Connection, a division of Family and Protective Services that steers young people to various resources, including education, housing and those on its LGBTQ page as they prepare for life after foster care. It was replaced by a message that states, “The Texas Youth Connection website has been temporarily disabled for a comprehensive review of its content. This is being done to ensure that its information, resources, and referrals are current.”

Abbott, who appoints the department’s commissioner and nine-member council who develop the agency’s rules and policies, did not respond to a request for comment.

Ricardo Martinez, chief executive of the LGBTQ advocacy group Equality Texas, said LGBTQ kids are disproportionately represented in foster care and “face truly staggering discrimination and abuse.”

He also pointed to a survey by the Trevor Project — the nonprofit that operated the suicide prevention line linked to on the now-deleted website — that found LGBTQ youth who reported ever having been in foster care were almost three times more likely to also report they had attempted suicide within the last year, compared those who didn’t spend any time in the foster care system.

Hatin' for Jeebus. How very very Republican.

[LFC]

Another data point that shows conservative politics and their unholy union with religion revolts many wiser young people who actually have their eyes open. Or in Dreher's world they aren't showing up to church because of social media, laziness, and the sexual revolution.

Half of young people report feeling disconnected from their religious backgrounds, according to a new report.

A new survey found that half of people ages 13 to 25 think that religious institutions care little for the issues that matter deeply to them, such as racial justice, gender equity, immigration rights, income inequality and gun control, and that may be driving a decline in membership for several denominations, reported the Wall Street Journal.

"I don't accept the teachings when it comes to discrimination," said Christian Camacho, a 22-year-old who grew up in a conservative Catholic family in Minneapolis. "I know a fair number of young people who don't go to church, not because they will be discriminated against — they just have no reason to go."

The report released Monday by the Springtide Research Institute found that about 71 percent of young people say they care about LGBTQ rights, but feel that 44 percent of religious communities share their concern.

"Younger people are more open," said Zaina Qureshi, a 16-year-old from Massachusetts whose father is Muslim and her mother is Catholic. "I don't associate myself with any institutional church."

The survey found that most young people -- 78 percent -- consider themselves spiritual, although only 47 percent belong to a religious community and only 23 percent religious services on a weekly basis.

"I hear what priests and pastors say at the pulpit and say to myself, 'No, that is not what I believe in my heart,'" said Jesse Brodka, a 22-year-old special education teacher from Buffalo who remains part of the Catholic Church despite his frustration over its social teachings. "The fact that the Christian faith has become a symbol of judgment speaks to that gap between religious organizations and the non-judgment that we value as young people."

[LFC]

Please, Mr. Dreher, explain to us again how younger people rejecting Christian churches is a reflection of liberal culture rather than the teachings, rants, and downright mad raving coming from those churches themselves.

In an interview with Vice's David Gilbert, a Knoxville, Tennessee-based preacher who is one of the leaders of the Patriot Church movement warned that followers of the more militant version of Christianity are losing patience because Donald Trump has not been reinstalled in the Oval Office.

In the interview Pastor Ken Peters said followers don't want to resort to violence, but will if that is what needs to happen to reclaim the White House.

As Gilbert explains, the "Patriot Church" movement is based upon the legend of the "Black-Robed Regiment" -- a group of preachers who "arose and led their congregations into the battle for freedom" during the Revolutionary War.

As the journalist explains, the existence of the group has been disputed with Gilbert writing, "claims made by those who ascribe to the Black-Robed Regiment today have been widely debunked, and even the name itself is a misquotation."

Nonetheless, Peters believes the country needs to turn back to the Bible and should be a Christian country and -- in Donald Trump -- he sees the man who could set in motion the great revival.

[LFC]

Always another scam from these dirtbags. And the flocks of sheeple never learn.

A Texas radio host was sentenced to three life prison sentences Monday for a Ponzi scheme in which he bilked elderly listeners out of millions of dollars.

William Neil “Doc” Gallagher also got a 30-year prison sentence from state District Judge Elizabeth Beach for his August guilty pleas. The sentences are to be served concurrently.

The sentencing came after more than a dozen senior victims testified during a three-hour court hearing about losing anywhere from $50,000 to $600,000 invested in the Gallagher Financial Group. Some said they had to sell their homes, borrow money from their children or take part-time jobs to supplement their Social Security benefits.

“Doc Gallagher is one of the worst offenders I have seen,” said Lori Varnell, chief of the Tarrant County District Attorney’s Elder Financial Fraud team.

Gallagher, 80, and his Gallagher Financial Group advertised on Christian radio with the tagline, “See you in church on Sunday.” He promoted his investment business in books, such as “Jesus Christ, Money Master,” and on Christian radio broadcasts.

Gallagher has been behind bars since his March 2019 arrest on similar charges filed in Dallas County. In 2020, he pleaded guilty to those charges and was sentenced to 25 years in prison. He was indicted in Tarrant County in August 2019.

“He ruthlessly stole from his clients who trusted him for almost a decade. He amassed $32 million in loss to all of his clients and exploited many elder individuals. He worked his way around churches preying on people who believed he was a Christian,” Varnell said in a statement.

[goldenvalley]

Nov 2, 2021 21:00:01 GMT LFC said:

Always another scam from these dirtbags. And the flocks of sheeple never learn.

A Texas radio host was sentenced to three life prison sentences Monday for a Ponzi scheme in which he bilked elderly listeners out of millions of dollars.

William Neil “Doc” Gallagher also got a 30-year prison sentence from state District Judge Elizabeth Beach for his August guilty pleas. The sentences are to be served concurrently.

The sentencing came after more than a dozen senior victims testified during a three-hour court hearing about losing anywhere from $50,000 to $600,000 invested in the Gallagher Financial Group. Some said they had to sell their homes, borrow money from their children or take part-time jobs to supplement their Social Security benefits.

“Doc Gallagher is one of the worst offenders I have seen,” said Lori Varnell, chief of the Tarrant County District Attorney’s Elder Financial Fraud team.

Gallagher, 80, and his Gallagher Financial Group advertised on Christian radio with the tagline, “See you in church on Sunday.” He promoted his investment business in books, such as “Jesus Christ, Money Master,” and on Christian radio broadcasts.

Gallagher has been behind bars since his March 2019 arrest on similar charges filed in Dallas County. In 2020, he pleaded guilty to those charges and was sentenced to 25 years in prison. He was indicted in Tarrant County in August 2019.

“He ruthlessly stole from his clients who trusted him for almost a decade. He amassed $32 million in loss to all of his clients and exploited many elder individuals. He worked his way around churches preying on people who believed he was a Christian,” Varnell said in a statement.

Jesus Christ, Money Master?  That's not the guy I learned about in Sunday School.

[LFC]

Contra what Dreher has tried to argue it's clear that right-wing Christianists like himself really do just hate gay people and want nothing more (at least nothing more that they can get away with) than to try to jam them back in the closet. I'm sure they'd be touching themselves if Texass tried to make gay sex illegal again and SCOTUS upheld it. The statements that Republicans defined themselves by their enemies and that "the cruelty is the point" continue to hold up very, very well.

The head of the Oklahoma Republican Party on Tuesday called on Republican National Committee chairwoman Ronna McDaniel to resign after she expressed the party’s commitment to the LGBTQ+ community at a gala earlier this month.

In an 1,100-word fundraising email headed “RNC Chair MUST Change Course or RESIGN,” OKGOP chair John Bennett said McDaniel “must resign” if “she cannot or will not stand for who we say we are.”

“The OKGOP will not cooperate with this decision and, as your Chairman, I assure the Oklahoma Republican Party that I will continue to stand up for our Republican Party Values and our principles,” Bennett wrote in the email. He added that religious freedom is “flat-out incompatible with the pillars of the LGBT movement.”

“Let’s clear the way of those who are either too incompetent or too selfish to actually defend liberty and our Judeo-Christian founding,” Bennett wrote, then asked for donations to his organization.

McDaniel crossed conservative Christians when she announced the creation of an “RNC Pride Coalition” at the annual Spirit of Lincoln dinner put on by Log Cabin Republicans— a group of conservative LGBTQ party members . The event, held Nov. 9 at Donald Trump’s Mar a Lago club, fêted Melania Trump and Ric Grenell, Trump’s former acting head of national intelligence and the first openly gay cabinet member in U.S. history.

“Conservatives in Log Cabin don’t just share our vision for a free, secure and prosperous America. They enrich it by adding unique perspectives to our party and recruiting even more diverse candidates and supporters to join our cause,” McDaniel said at the gala, according to Fox News.

McDaniel’s announcement of the pride coalition prompted criticism from conservatives, including Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) who objected to McDaniel’s attempt at inclusion.

[goldenvalley]

Well Romney McDaniel is right about Log Cabin Republicans. I had the opportunity to attend the local group's meeting when the gay marriage ban proposition (Prop 8) was on the ballot in 2008.  There were many other propositions on the ballot.  Aside from Prop 8 they lined up exactly with what the California Republican Party said it opposed or supported. When it comes to government and taxes, all Republican are alike.  They oppose both those things.

[LFC]

Hold onto your gag reflex as you read about Mark Meadows and how God (tm) made him do it.

Former Rep. Mark Meadows (R-NC) frequently cites God as the one responsible for the path of his life.

In a 2017 interview with him from Christian Broadcast Network, Meadows said that he never wanted to be in Congress, but that God had other plans for him.

In his new book, Meadows also calls his tenure in former President Donald Trump's administration an act of divine intervention.

"The president of the United States was asking me to serve my country, and the answer was going to have to be yes. As my wife would put it later, God had cornered me."

His wife's brother-in-law had called Meadows "nuts" for going to work for Trump, but his wife maintained their lives weren't under their own control. It was God, which is part of the doctrine of Divine Command Theory, which puts God at the source of any and all actions in one's life.

“We didn’t have any choice,” Meadow's wife said. “God cornered us.”

The belief seems inconsistent as Meadows faced ethics scandals during his time in public service.

The article lists some of his shitbaggery.

[goldenvalley]

Dec 7, 2021 21:58:38 GMT LFC said:

Hold onto your gag reflex as you read about Mark Meadows and how God (tm) made him do it.

Former Rep. Mark Meadows (R-NC) frequently cites God as the one responsible for the path of his life.

In a 2017 interview with him from Christian Broadcast Network, Meadows said that he never wanted to be in Congress, but that God had other plans for him.

In his new book, Meadows also calls his tenure in former President Donald Trump's administration an act of divine intervention.

"The president of the United States was asking me to serve my country, and the answer was going to have to be yes. As my wife would put it later, God had cornered me."

His wife's brother-in-law had called Meadows "nuts" for going to work for Trump, but his wife maintained their lives weren't under their own control. It was God, which is part of the doctrine of Divine Command Theory, which puts God at the source of any and all actions in one's life.

“We didn’t have any choice,” Meadow's wife said. “God cornered us.”

The belief seems inconsistent as Meadows faced ethics scandals during his time in public service.

The article lists some of his shitbaggery.

It's a way of denying responsibility...God made me it do it, good or bad, I was just doing what God directed.  And God has a plan.  Maybe God does have a plan for Mark ...maybe the plan is to make you embarrassed and ashamed and maybe even doing time in jail.

[LFC]

It's ironic, but not surprising, where so many of the nation's snowflakes really come from. Here we have Navy Seals, of all people, whining about being forced to get the COVID vaccine. Apparently mission readiness and their fellow soldiers are less important than their own personal butthurt.

One of the most well-settled principles of US national security law is that courts give tremendous deference to the military’s decisions regarding how to maintain discipline among its own personnel. “The essence of military service,” the Court held in Goldman v. Weinberger (1986), “is the subordination of the desires and interests of the individual to the needs of the service.” Servicemembers voluntarily give up some of their constitutional rights when they choose to join the armed services.

And yet, on Monday, a notoriously partisan federal judge in Texas thumbed his nose at decades of law and Supreme Court precedents, holding that members of the military may refuse an order to take the Covid-19 vaccination if they object to it on religious grounds. In a brief order in US Navy SEALs 1-26 v. Biden, US District Court Judge Reed O’Connor claims that a policy requiring nearly all servicemembers to be vaccinated against Covid-19 violates both the First Amendment and a federal religious liberty statute.

The plaintiffs in the SEALs case are represented by the America First Policy Institute, a young policy shop led by former Trump administration officials and other former consiglieri to the ex-president.

O’Connor, a former Republican Capitol Hill staffer, is probably best known for his failed effort to repeal Obamacare in its entirety. Although O’Connor attempted to strike down the landmark health law in 2018, his decision was widely mocked even by prominent conservative opponents of Obamacare. He was eventually reversed by the Supreme Court in an opinion joined by four of the Court’s Republican appointees.

O’Connor’s SEALs opinion isn’t just wrong under established precedent, it is egregiously wrong. It’s also weakly argued. He spends less than six pages discussing the core issue in the case — whether the military’s vaccination policy must include exemptions for personnel with religious objections — and does not even acknowledge Supreme Court cases that directly refute his analysis, including the Goldman decision mentioned above.

Under ordinary circumstances, O’Connor would be swiftly reversed. But his decision will be appealed to the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, a court dominated by Donald Trump appointees and other hardline conservatives who share many of O’Connor’s sensibilities.

Should this case reach the Supreme Court, its fate is unclear. The Court’s Republican majority is typically quite sympathetic to cases brought by religious conservatives, although the Court has also rejected several requests from health care workers seeking religious exemptions from vaccination requirements.

And it is equally unclear whether the Supreme Court’s 6-3 conservative majority will honor its own precedents urging the judiciary to defer to an elected branch led by President Joe Biden.

It goes on to describe just how bad O'Connor's written opinion is but, of course, we now have a pile of activist Federalist Society judges who want to transform and politicize everything they can get their hands on.