American Babylon (One Of Us... One.)

And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed. (And this taxing was first made when Cyrenius was governor of Syria.) And all went to be taxed, every one into his own city. And Joseph also went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, into Judaea, unto the city of David, which is called Bethlehem; (because he was of the house and lineage of David:) To be taxed with Mary his espoused wife, being great with child. And so it was, that, while they were there, the days were accomplished that she should be delivered.

And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn. And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid. And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.

For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, which is Christ the Lord.
And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger. And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men. ~Luke 2:1-14

...

Nebuchadnezzar spoke and said unto them, Is it true, O Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, do not ye serve my gods, nor worship the golden image which I have set up?
Now if ye be ready that at what time ye hear the sound of the cornet, flute, harp, sackbut, psaltery, and dulcimer, and all kinds of music, ye fall down and worship the image which I have made; well: but if ye worship not, ye shall be cast the same hour into the midst of a burning fiery furnace; and who is that God that shall deliver you out of my hands?
Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, answered and said to the king, O Nebuchadnezzar, we are not careful to answer thee in this matter.
If it be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of thine hand, O king.
But if not, be it known unto thee, O king, that we will not serve thy gods, nor worship the golden image which thou hast set up.
~Daniel 3:14-18

...

And after these things I saw another angel come down from heaven, having great power; and the earth was lightened with his glory.

And he cried mightily with a strong voice, saying, Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen, and is become the habitation of devils, and the hold of every foul spirit, and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird.

For all nations have drunk of the wine of the wrath of her fornication, and the kings of the earth have committed fornication with her, and the merchants of the earth are waxed rich through the abundance of her delicacies.

And I heard another voice from heaven, saying, Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues.

For her sins have reached unto heaven, and God hath remembered her iniquities.

Reward her even as she rewarded you, and double unto her double according to her works: in the cup which she hath filled fill to her double.

How much she hath glorified herself, and lived deliciously, so much torment and sorrow give her: for she said in her heart, I sit a queen, and am no widow, and shall see no sorrow.

Therefore shall her plagues come in one day, death, and mourning, and famine; and she shall be utterly burned with fire: for strong is the Lord God who judges her.

And the kings of the earth, who have committed fornication and lived deliciously with her, shall bewail her, and lament for her, when they shall see the smoke of her burning,

Standing afar off for the fear of her torment, saying, Alas, alas that great city Babylon, that mighty city! for in one hour is thy judgment come. ~Revelation 18:1-10

So I saw this yesterday.

Some diamond-exporting firm gave Trump a ring that literally looks like he's trying to wear Trump Towers on one finger. 

Nobody needs this gaudy horseshit.

What if Jesus was a Poor Man??

Because the Word is rather explicit on the point that He was so.

Calvinism and the "Prosperity Gospel" are heresies and lies. The "Protestant Work Ethic" is not much more than a marketing and control strategy and to provide the example I give you nothing less than the behavior of Evangelical Republican White Men lately.

And the more political or wealthy they are, the worse it gets.

For all their warmongering and wanting to basically go out and fight everybody that isn't a White Evangelical Republican, these guys can't even fight a damn war properly.

Think about that for a second!

We have too many men of science, too few men of God. We have grasped the mystery of the atom and rejected the Sermon On The Mount. The world has achieved brilliance without conscience. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. We know more about war than we know about peace, more about killing than we know about living. ~General Omar Bradley

Then I saw that the Venn Diagram between right-wing "Influencers" and OnlyFans hoes is just a smoothly-polished and waxed circle of stone. I mean, seriously there's at least one of these fucking people that pretty much films all her videos doing softcore porn-model teaser shots. Sorry but I used to be a conservative Republican and none of this is what I was taught. And I grew up when a Playboy calendar at the job site, local auto shop or even in somebody's work office was still not necessarily considered out of line.

Shit like that even made it into movies like Die Hard.

We've got to take the neighborhood back. We've got to go in there. Just forget telling your child to go to the Peace Corps. It's right around the corner. It's standing on the corner. It can't speak English. It doesn't want to speak English. I can't even talk the way these people talk. "Why you ain't where you is go." I don't know who these people are. And I blamed the kid until I heard the mother talk. Then I heard the father talk. This is all in the house. You used to talk a certain way on the corner and you got into the house and switched to English. Everybody knows it's important to speak English except these knuckleheads. You can't land a plane with "why you ain't…". You can't be a doctor with that kind of crap coming out of your mouth. There is no Bible that has that kind of language. Where did these people get the idea that they're moving ahead on this? Well, they know they're not, they're just hanging out in the same place, five or six generations sitting in the projects when you're just supposed to stay there long enough to get a job and move out. ~Bill Cosby, the "Pound Cake" speech.

But nobody that I know ever considered the kind of men who that did stuff like that to be serious Evangelical conservative Republicans, yo. I knew plenty of conservatives and Christians (or both) who were like that but there was a line concerning public behavior and public display.

Even 20 years ago it could generally be assumed if some lady with her boobs hanging out walked up to you or you were watching a video like that, that the next words out of her mouth were not gonna be "Have you found Jesus?"

Same with the Neo-Nazis and the racists, I can remember when even the Southern Baptists could usually be counted on to beat those people up. Even though a large percentage of such people might privately have harbored similar such sentiments themselves, again there was a line between what was publicly permissible and what might be privately held.

And everybody had the sense to know that having that kind of shit in your group made you look bad.

“The moment stretched into eternity as both men brought their weapons to bear. He saw the man's eyes. It was a young face there, immediately below the emergency light, but the eyes . . . the rage there, the hatred, nearly stopped the Colonel's heart. But Bondarenko was a soldier before all things. The Afghan's first shot missed. His did not.

The Archer felt shock, but not pain in his chest as he fell. His brain sent a message to his hands to bring the weapon to the left, but they ignored the command and dropped it. He fell in stages, first to his knees, then on his back, and at last he was staring up at a ceiling. It was finally over. Then the man stood by his side. It was not a cruel face, the Archer thought. It was the enemy, and it was an infidel, but he was a man, too, wasn't he? There was curiosity there. He wants to know who I am, the Archer told him with his last breath.

"Allah Akbar!" God is great.

Yes, I suppose He is, Bondarenko told the corpse. He knew the phrase well enough. Is that why you came? He saw that the man had a radio. It started to make noise, and the Colonel bent down to grab it.

"Are you there?" the radio asked a moment later. The question was in Pashtu, but the answer was delivered in Russian. "It is all finished here,"

~Closing moments of the battle at the Soviet laser installation, from The Cardinal Of The Kremlin, by Tom Clancy.

I ain't saying it was right, and if you read something from even (for example) 20 years ago it's pretty easy to crack the code now...but that's how it was. And even authors you could do that with (Tom Clancy for example) often prominently had Black or female or Muslim characters as both major protagonists and major villains, either being written with a fair degree of humanity.

Now??

All these same fucking people just flipped a massive bitch because Helen Of Troy was played by a Black woman. Naturally, the film was a fucking blockbuster. I have yet to see it but I eventually will.

Sorry, America, but if somebody like Miss Rachel is yelling at you, you done fucked up.

That's about like if Mr. Rogers would have rolled up his sleeves and beat someone's ass back in the day. If things had ever gotten that extreme I don't think anybody would have argued that whoever got beat up deserved it.

But that's not the world we live in anymore and we're all worse off for it.

I'm sick of the ostentatious bigotry, greed, scamming and sexual excesses of These Fucking People even as they try to tell everybody else who we can have sex with or not...while also maintaining the attitude that us older people (at least those of us who ain't rich) should just wander off and die or something. 

Fuck all that.

And JD Vance wants the rest of us to "Sacrifice??"

And Mike Collins runs from reporters?

And "Conservatives" try to Cancel Miss Rachel??

What's next?? 

American families being "Asked" to sacrifice one of their daughters to the Epstein Class??

Because if we keep letting these monsters do this kind of shit, it'll come to exactly that, at least for certain "White" families. And since we're about half a step from open worship of Baal and Dis Pater Mammon, don't think they won't see how far they can push the cult behavior they've already established. It's a short step from tolerating the Epstein files bullshit to actively enabling it to being complicit.

And again, and I'm not sorry to say this, the rot goes pretty goddamn far down.

My partner and I have a daughter, the only answer that kind of shit is ever gonna get is "Fuck You, No" emphasized by racking the action of a 12-Gauge Remington M870 pump shotgun.

You can take a lot of things away from a man. Cigarettes, the gym. You can take his freedom, his legs, but not his feelings. Not his feelings. A man loves a woman. Don't matter what kind of man he is, if he loves her, he wants her. He wants her body. He wants her to want his. So you say to him, "you can never make love again. You will never touch her in that way again. This is the last time. The last time. Forever." If that's not cruel and unusual punishment, I don't know what is. ~Augustus Hill, from the HBO series Oz, S1.E2 "Visits, Conjugal and otherwise."

And it'll probably come to that.

And I can tell you exactly how they're gonna do it too:

Start insinuating that God Is Black and the Demons are White.

Imply that the Virgin Mary may have been Autistic.

Accentuate the known fact that King James, who commissioned the favorite Bible of many Fundamentalists, was at least Bisexual.

Fuck, just point out that the next country to pick up the gauntlet that we threw down and fight for their freedom was Haiti.

Because it's at this point a proven goddamned fact that These Fucking People will ditch everything they ever believed in or claimed to for bigotry and an imagined "right" to be shitty to somebody else in public.

If you haven't noticed, the people being faithful to America and God in this mess might range from least being "Far-right but still believes in Democracy" to Social Democrats but it's nearly all people willing to at least say "Hey, wait a minute!" when the bigoted crap gets bad enough.

Meanwhile the Right is the goddamn Fyre Festival but they're still holding the reigns of Power while fighting it out, and there's no limit to what they'll do for another bigotry, outrage or just rage-induced hit of whatever dopamine-fix this Prosperity Gospel Trump shit provides!

America needs to learn the word "No."

We need to stop allowing bad behavior and bigotry. Racism should be a criminal offense at this point for all the trouble everybody knows it's caused. Right now, the Billionaires and Republicans are literally using this shit to kill us.

We need to tax the fuck out of rich people and place hard limits on their behavior and what they can use that money for.

Watch ye therefore: for ye know not when the master of the house comes, at evening, or at midnight, or at the cock-crowing, or in the morning, ~Mark 13:35

We need to start honoring and living out the promise of equality that's the basis of our entire system.

And We the People need to start backing that shit up with the credible threat of Force.

That's what the Second Amendment was even for. We the People are the last line against Tyranny.

We have to say NO.

Fuck you and the data-center-powered cloud-computed Terminator you rode in on.

Enough is Enough.

Elisabet Sobeck: I remember yelling that I didn’t care. And that’s when my mother took my face in her hands and…spoke.

GAIA: Query: What did she say?

Elisabet Sobeck: She said I had to care. She said, “Elisabet, being smart will count for nothing if you don’t make the world a better place. You have to use your smarts to count for something, to serve life, not death.”

~From the video game Horizon Zero Dawn.

I'm tired of this shit.

Whether it's this Mark Of The Beast type Data Center bullshit or just Trump.

The question is why aren't you??

You either believe in freedom or you don't.

And either you're gonna fight for it or you're not.

If we ain't all free, none of us are.

I can't put it any more simply than that.

This American Babylon is gonna fall, hard, fast, and soon.

What we do after that??

That's on us.

Слава Україна!

The Cylon War is long over, yet we must not forget the reasons why so many sacrificed so much in the cause of freedom. The cost of wearing the uniform can be high ... [after looking at crowd] but sometimes it's too high. You know, when we fought the Cylons, we did it to save ourselves from extinction. But we never answered the question, why? Why are we as a people worth saving? We still commit murder because of greed, spite, jealousy. And we still visit all of our sins upon our children. We refuse to accept the responsibility for anything that we've done. Like we did with the Cylons. We decided to play God, create life. When that life turned against us, we comforted ourselves in the knowledge that it really wasn't our fault, not really. You cannot play God then wash your hands of the things that you've created. Sooner or later, the day comes when you can't hide from the things that you've done anymore. ~William Adama, from the Battlestar Galactica (2003) Miniseries, Part One.

Prequel

Joe: For the last time, I'm pretty sure what's killing the crops is this Brawndo stuff.

Secretary of State: But Brawndo's got what plants crave. It's got electrolytes.

Attorney General: "So wait a minute. What you're saying is that you want us to put water on the crops.

Joe: Yes.

Attorney General: Water. Like out the toilet?

Joe: Well, I mean, it doesn't have to be out of the toilet, but, yeah, that's the idea.

Secretary of State: But Brawndo's got what plants crave.

Attorney General: It's got electrolytes.

Joe: Okay, look. The plants aren't growing, so I'm pretty sure that the Brawndo's not working. Now, I'm no botanist, but I do know that if you put water on plants, they grow.

Secretary of Energy: Well, I've never seen no plants grow out of no toilet.

Secretary of State: Hey, that's good. You sure you ain't the smartest guy in the world?

Joe: Okay, look. You want to solve this problem. I want to get my pardon. So why don't we just try it, okay, and not worry about what plants crave?

Attorney General: Brawndo's got what plants crave.

Secretary of Energy: Yeah, it's got electrolytes.

Joe: What are electrolytes? Do you even know?

Secretary of State: It's what they use to make Brawndo.

~From the film Idiocracy.

If God had a name, what would it be?

And would you call it to His face

If you were faced with Him in all His glory?

What would you ask if you had just one question?

And yeah, yeah, God is great

Yeah, yeah, God is good

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah

What if God was one of us

Just a slob like one of us

Just a stranger on the bus

Tryna make His way home?

~Joan Osborne "What If God Was One Of Us?"

Darkness And Not Light (What If God Was... Prequel.)

Ye who turn judgment to wormwood, and leave off righteousness in the earth,

Seek him that maketh the seven stars and Orion, and turneth the shadow of death into the morning, and maketh the day dark with night: that calleth for the waters of the sea, and poureth them out upon the face of the earth: The Lord is his name:

That strengthens the spoiled against the strong, so that the spoiled shall come against the fortress.

They hate him that rebuketh in the gate, and they abhor him that speaketh uprightly.

Forasmuch therefore as your treading is upon the poor, and ye take from him burdens of wheat: ye have built houses of hewn stone, but ye shall not dwell in them; ye have planted pleasant vineyards, but ye shall not drink wine of them.

For I know your manifold transgressions and your mighty sins: they afflict the just, they take a bribe, and they turn aside the poor in the gate from their right.

Therefore the prudent shall keep silence in that time; for it is an evil time.

Seek good, and not evil, that ye may live: and so the Lord, the God of hosts, shall be with you, as ye have spoken.

Hate the evil, and love the good, and establish judgment in the gate: it may be that the Lord God of hosts will be gracious unto the remnant of Joseph.

Therefore the Lord, the God of hosts, the Lord, saith thus; Wailing shall be in all streets; and they shall say in all the highways, Alas! alas! and they shall call the husbandman to mourning, and such as are skillful of lamentation to wailing.

And in all vineyards shall be wailing: for I will pass through thee, saith the Lord.

Woe unto you that desire the day of the Lord! to what end is it for you? the day of the Lord is darkness, and not light. As if a man did flee from a lion, and a bear met him; or went into the house, and leaned his hand on the wall, and a serpent bit him. 

Shall not the day of the Lord be darkness, and not light? even very dark, and no brightness in it?

I hate, I despise your feast days, and I will not smell in your solemn assemblies.

Though ye offer me burnt offerings and your meat offerings, I will not accept them: neither will I regard the peace offerings of your fat beasts.

Take thou away from me the noise of thy songs; for I will not hear the melody of thy viols.

But let judgment run down as waters, and righteousness as a mighty stream.

Have ye offered unto me sacrifices and offerings in the wilderness forty years, O house of Israel?

But ye have borne the tabernacle of your Moloch and Chiun your images, the star of your god, which ye made to yourselves. ~Amos 5:7-26

...

[Mando visits the Armorer at the Mandalorian enclave on Nevarro, bringing the camtono of Beskar bars he got as bounty from The Client]

Armorer: [looks at Beskar bars as the other Mandalorians witness] This amount can be shaped in many ways.

The Mandalorian AKA Mando: My armor has lost its integrity. I may need to begin again.

Armorer: Indeed. I can form a full cuirass. This would be in order for your station.

Mando: That would be a great honor.

Armorer: I must warn you, it will draw many eyes.

Paz Vizsla: [grabs one Beskar bar and snorts at seeing the Imperial logo] These were cast in an Imperial smelter. These are the spoils of the Great Purge. The reason we live hidden like sandrats. [tosses the bar back on the table]

Armorer: Our secrecy is our survival. Our survival is our strength.

Vizsla: Our strength was once in our numbers. Now we live in the shadows and only come above ground one at a time. Our world was shattered by the Empire with whom this coward shares tables. [reaches for Mando's helmet to remove it but they fight until they come to knifepoint]

Armorer: [stands up to stop the fight] The Empire is no longer, and the Beskar has returned. When one chooses to walk the Way of the Mandalore, you are both hunter and prey. How can one be a coward if one chooses this way of life? Have you ever removed your helmet?

Mando: No.

Armorer: Has it ever been removed by others?

Mando: Never.

Armorer: This is the Way.

Mandalorians: This is the Way. [Vizsla and Mando let off each other]

Vizsla: This is the Way.

Armorer: What caused this damage?

Mando: A Mudhorn.

Armorer: Then you have earned the Mudhorn as your signet. I shall craft it. [The Mandalorian and the Armorer sit back down]

Mando: I can't accept. It... wasn't a noble kill. I was... helped by an enemy.

Armorer: Why would an enemy help you in battle?

Mando: It... did not know it was my enemy.

Armorer: Since you forego a signet I shall use the excess to forge Whistling Birds.

Mando: Whistling Birds will do well. Reserve some for the Foundlings.

Armorer: As it should always be. The Foundlings are the future. This is the Way.

Mandalorians: This is the Way.

Mando: This is the Way.

~From the Star Wars series The Mandalorian, S1.E3 "The Sin."

I saw this last night.

I think it's safe to say that Antivaxxer horseshit has eaten the Republican Party.

And since of course they can't prove any of their bullshit to any kind of legal standard or anything that would hold up in court and they know it, they're trying to subject Dr. Fauci to "Trial by Fox News hit."

Incompetently.

Not that any of this shit will sway anybody who wasn't already going to vote Republican.

But, again...and I've said this before, the rest of us don't really exist to these motherfuckers. They'd rather we died.

The world that Republicans want is Darkness and not Light.

But I guarantee you when all that shit goes sideways (which they know it will) they're already winding up to try and blame everything on Trump.

And they regard the Constitution and everything else about America as she's currently constituted, and everyone who currently lives here who isn't them (i.e. Republican Party members in good standing) as an enemy,  an inconvenience or a potential slave on a good day.

Couple things; 

#1 That includes their own voters, who they fully intend to terrify into abject slavery and then use to fight the rest of us.

#2 These clearly haven't been good days. Everyone hates these people, and rightly so.

These fucking people have missed the entire damn point of America, and they wonder why nobody outside of White Republican Evangelicals (who don't ever seem to get the point of much of anything) is interested in their bullshit.

I don't preach a social Gospel I preach the Gospel, period. The gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ is concerned for the whole person. When people were hungry, Jesus didn't say, "Now is that political or social?" He said, "I feed you." Because the good news to a hungry person is bread. ~Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

You'd think people who continually are attempting to try every goddamn thing in the "Court" of social media would realize they basically just got their asses kicked on social media by *Checks Notes* a lady who sings kids songs on YouTube for a living.

These fucking people seem to think you should have to be a rich White Evangelical Republican (or anything similar, but basically operationally a wealthy fascist) for your kids to grow up having had any kind of life.

I couldn't do that, and I used to be a Republican.

But then going about begrudging other people's right to exist while being a miserable bastard my own damn self never sounded like any fun to me, and yes there have always been some Republicans like that and I have known a few.

Now those fucking people have basically run everybody else out of "Conservatism" and the Republican Party, including pretty much anybody who knows anything.

And, as a result, we're getting "Government by Conspiracy Theory."

Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows. ~George Orwell, 1984.

Now, to add to what I said in my last post:

"What if Jesus was a poor sick kid, who had to be treated the right way, or He would have died before He was supposed to??"

Cuz at some point, yes, Jesus would've got sick.

And medicine requires doing things the right way, or someone can die.

Who would you trust to do right by that kid?

Miss Rachel or some doddering doofus of a Senator who (while being vaccinated his damn self) is trying to tell people that getting vaccinated causes some kind of "Injury" forsooth something something Gazpacho??

Republicans wanna go back to a time when if you were simply Ronaldo the peasant, son of Juan the serf living somewhere in Spain or whatever 600 years ago, if you got sick you probably just died.

Because nobody less than the period equivalent to somebody like Senator Ron Johnson had any kind of access to a doctor or regular health care to even start with.

These fucking people know a lot of their voter base has a raging case of Medieval Peasant Brain and they can't even imagine that anybody else would have anything different.

Let alone that we would protect ourselves.

But isn't protecting yourself...including from the government...a central point of being an American??

Especially *Checks Notes* a conservative (small "C" used there for a reason.)

I've got a family to think about, a partner and a kid, I have to be invested in the future.

My partner is a vet tech. Kid wants to be a a freaking doctor.

My Mom is retired and needs her social security.

None of us can afford to live according to this bullshit.

And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed. (And this taxing was first made when Cyrenius was governor of Syria.) And all went to be taxed, every one into his own city. And Joseph also went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, into Judaea, unto the city of David, which is called Bethlehem; (because he was of the house and lineage of David:) To be taxed with Mary his espoused wife, being great with child. And so it was, that, while they were there, the days were accomplished that she should be delivered.

And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn. And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid. And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.

For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, which is Christ the Lord.
And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger. And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men. ~Luke 2:1-14

Republicans failed to turn COVID-19 into a biological weapon to kill everybody else in the world, now they're trying to both cause and weaponize the next such crisis.

And then they have the balls to wonder why the rest of the world isn't screaming their political and religious talking points back into their faces call-and-response style like Air Force recruits at formation on the second day of BMT??

Fuck these motherfuckers.

Sorry but back in the day when I was a Republican if you did something like snorted cocaine or heroin or anything like that off a toilet seat, you got fired, blackballed from public life, mocked by basically everybody, and very likely investigated and maybe even arrested.

You sure as hell got drug tested.

In 1986, 2006, hell, 2016 we'd have all been calling it ToiletGate.

I mean, sure, there have always been rich fucks on cocaine, heroin, etc. But it used to be you didn't want to get caught doing that shit, get caught with that shit, or ever, ever admit to doing it in public.

And by the way, church background here. In that context you did not ever want to get caught doing drugs back when I was coming up.

And that's in addition to the fact that I was taught a very facts-based view of health and medical stuff.

Now?? 

These fucking people who are all supposedly so Right and so Righteous are all on drugs and high all the time and everything is feelings and vibes and woo woo.

And they wanna call people like Miss Rachel the bad guys?

[As the four newly-revealed Cylons aboard Galactica struggle to deal with the information, the call to action stations sounds]

Lieutenant Felix Gaeta: [over the loudspeaker] ...Inbound Cylon fleet! I repeat: action stations, action stations. Set Condition One throughout the ship. This is not a drill.

Tory Foster: Oh gods... what're we going to do?

Saul Tigh: The ship is under attack. We do our jobs. Report to your stations!

Chief Galen Tyrol: Report to stations?

Saul Tigh: My name is Saul Tigh. I am an officer in the Colonial Fleet. Whatever else I am, whatever else it means, that's the man I want to be. And if I die today, that's the man I'll be. 

~From Battlestar Galactica (2003) S3.E20 "Crossroads, Part 2."

Well let me tell you something;

I live in a small city in northeast Michigan, two hours away from the nearest freeway or large city. There's like two Trump signs in my whole area that I still see up.

And all of the local Democrats in my town have "Abdul for Senate" signs in their yards.

There's one guy I've talked to that says he's gonna vote for Haley Stevens.

And you pretty much gotta go to the rich side of town, along the lake, to even see Republican campaign signs.

And I'm here to tell you, the way it looks like things are going in the war between Russia and Ukraine, when Russia loses and Putin meets whatever god-awful end he's going to at the hands of his own subjects, who's gonna fund Ron Johnson?

And who's gonna be the ones giving all these Antivaxxer shits money??

Funny how those of us who aren't Republicans anymore don't have that problem.

Funny how those of us who don't buy into or spread conspiracy theories haven't ended up beholden to foreign enemies.

And yet These Fucking People keep trying to declare those of us real Americans who are just trying to live and don't wanna put up with all this crazy bullshit to be the Enemy??

Fuck That.

You either believe in freedom or you don't.

Слава Україна!

We welcome change and openness; for we believe that freedom and security go together, that the advance of human liberty can only strengthen the cause of world peace. There is one sign the Soviets can make that would be unmistakable, that would advance dramatically the cause of freedom and peace. General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization, come here to this gate. Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate. Mr. Gorbachev...Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!
~Ronald Reagan

Last Post

When men stop believing in God, it isn't that they then believe in nothing: they believe in everything. ~Umberto Eco

What If God Was... (Repent! Ten.)

[Kuiil and Mando have successfully repaired the Razor Crest with the parts recovered from the Jawas]

The Mandalorian: I can't thank you enough. Please allow me to give you a portion of the reward.

Kuiil: I cannot accept. You are my guest, and I am therefore in your service.

The Mandalorian: I could use a crew member of your ability. And I can pay handsomely.

Kuiil: I am honored. But I have worked a lifetime to finally be free of servitude.

The Mandalorian: I understand. Then... all I can offer is my thanks.

Kuiil: And I offer mine. Thank you for bringing peace to my valley. [leaves the ship and mounts his Blurrg; to Mando] And good luck with the Child. May it survive and bring you a handsome reward. I have spoken.

~From the Star Wars series; The Mandalorian, S1.E2 "The Child."

...

The clocks stopped at one seventeen. There was a long shear of bright light, then a series of low concussions. By day the dead impaled on spikes along the road. I think it's October but I can't be sure. I haven't kept a calendar for five years. Each day is more gray than the one before. It is cold and growing colder as the world slowly dies. No animals have survived and all the crops are long gone. Soon all the trees in the world will fall. The roads are peopled by refugees towing carts and gangs carrying weapons, looking for fuel and food. Within a year there was fire on the ridges and deranged chanting. There has been cannibalism. Cannibalism is the great fear. Mostly I worry about food. Always food. Food and the cold and our shoes. Sometimes I tell the boy old stories of courage and justice - difficult as they are to remember. All I know is the child is my warrant and if he is not the word of God, then God never spoke. ~The Man, from Cormac McCarthy's "The Road" (Film.)

...

I don't preach a social Gospel I preach the Gospel, period. The gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ is concerned for the whole person. When people were hungry, Jesus didn't say, "Now is that political or social?" He said, "I feed you." Because the good news to a hungry person is bread. ~Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

What if Jesus was a Palestinian child??

'Cause ya know, I've read the Lord's Word and it says exactly that in each of the four Gospels.

Jesus was a Palestinian child.

Sit with that.

'Cause they won't.

And I feel like it needs to be said.

That is the entire fucking point.

Jesus wasn't a Prince born in a palace who preached conformity and tried to "save" some ideology or other from a position of power. 

And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed. (And this taxing was first made when Cyrenius was governor of Syria.) And all went to be taxed, every one into his own city. And Joseph also went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, into Judaea, unto the city of David, which is called Bethlehem; (because he was of the house and lineage of David:) To be taxed with Mary his espoused wife, being great with child. And so it was, that, while they were there, the days were accomplished that she should be delivered.

And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn. And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid. And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.

For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, which is Christ the Lord.
And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger. And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men. ~Luke 2:1-14

He was a poor kid born in a stable who grew up to be a carpenter (which in the way of the time meant working as much or more with stone than wood) and itinerant Rabbi who preached a Message that was extremely dangerous to Power at the time, and they killed Him for it.

Jesus was not a White, weak, long-haired hippie-looking man.

He was a brown-skinned, rough, strong-armed Working Man who knew His Torah and preached about anything but a Gospel of quiet conformity to the demands of Empire.

The Empire of His day, Rome...well, Rome was and still is pretty much considered the prototype both in and out of Christian circles for a debased Godless world-conquering Empire that can control others, but not itself, that can govern far-away lands, but cannot get its people to govern themselves and their own behavior. 

And it did not and does not even want to.

It's easy to control people when they are sozzled on drunkenness and sexual excesses and fear the Sword of the State more than the Judgment of the Creator.

Jesus did not preach obedience to that crap and don't you dare forget that.

And I'll note that nobody is trying to nail Mark Driscoll to a stick. I think there's a reason for that.

But ya know, Miss Rachel is getting a lot of crap from "Conservatives" for pointing out things that should be perfectly obvious.

There's a reason for that, too.

We've got to take the neighborhood back. We've got to go in there. Just forget telling your child to go to the Peace Corps. It's right around the corner. It's standing on the corner. It can't speak English. It doesn't want to speak English. I can't even talk the way these people talk. "Why you ain't where you is go." I don't know who these people are. And I blamed the kid until I heard the mother talk. Then I heard the father talk. This is all in the house. You used to talk a certain way on the corner and you got into the house and switched to English. Everybody knows it's important to speak English except these knuckleheads. You can't land a plane with "why you ain't…". You can't be a doctor with that kind of crap coming out of your mouth. There is no Bible that has that kind of language. Where did these people get the idea that they're moving ahead on this? Well, they know they're not, they're just hanging out in the same place, five or six generations sitting in the projects when you're just supposed to stay there long enough to get a job and move out. ~Bill Cosby, the "Pound Cake" speech.

These fucking people been preaching the ideology of "Social" "Conservatism" (Which actually is neither if you really look at it. There's precedent, if you think about it too. Caesar Augustus was a social conservative (small "S" small "C" at that) and I don't think any of the Conservative Christian Republicans I grew up around would have claimed him as either, and my partner had a similar upbringing. But then that's why neither of us is MAGA now.

In their defense, I don't think the vast majority of those folks would claim MAGA or Trump or even want to, either. We had a fair number of idiots around back then that fit the type today, and my people didn't like those assholes.

But then most of those people had both the ability and the desire to read a history book and taught me to do the same. I literally know people who praised Jesus when Communism fell in 1989. Sure, there were people who were in denial about that, but they were considered kooks and losers and religious fanatics and the rest of us celebrated the Fall of the Berlin Wall and the revolutions of 1989 as the amazing events that they were.

When men stop believing in God, it isn't that they then believe in nothing: they believe in everything. ~Umberto Eco

Being a bigoted, fearful idiot didn't used to be a thing that people celebrated or that got you political power. Willful ignorance used to get you looked down upon and forcibly corrected to your face.

When I started my last job in 2003, working at the casino, if you did something stupid and got yelled at by a coworker for it, and you went to the Chef, their first impulse tended to be "Well, what did you do?" Followed by "Well, don't do that again." People both governing their own behavior and policing their own was expected and pretty much normal.

As I've said many times RE: Cops being called on kids and shit, when I was coming up, the cops were not needed because I feared my parents, and pretty much everybody in my neighborhood knew my parents.

The Human Resources-ization of everything, over-reliance on the government, and yes, even to a great extent "Political Correctness" not to mention moral relativism and situational ethics, all things at least once pitched as being well-intended, have really just created a lot more spaces for bad actors and deceivers to hide and manipulate. Yeah, a lot of the shit Liberals did has helped create this mess too, and don't you forget it.

I mean, I remember when "Do the crime, you do the time" was also normal and bipartisan. 

Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows. ~George Orwell, 1984.

Now? Mike Johnson openly fearmongers that if Democrats win in the fall, they're going to investigate everything, use the Power of the State to impose accountability and consequences on people currently doing illegal acts, etc. It's almost like the motherfucker knows Republicans are doing something wrong.

Sorry, bud, but "Right" and "Wrong" are not contingent on Political Power.

And I take These Fucking People's attitudes about that as yet more proof that No, they really do not believe in God.

Except, perhaps, as a rationalization.

And that, my friends, is exactly how you Go To Hell.

[As the four newly-revealed Cylons aboard Galactica struggle to deal with the information, the call to action stations sounds]

Lieutenant Felix Gaeta: [over the loudspeaker] ...Inbound Cylon fleet! I repeat: action stations, action stations. Set Condition One throughout the ship. This is not a drill.

Tory Foster: Oh gods... what're we going to do?

Saul Tigh: The ship is under attack. We do our jobs. Report to your stations!

Chief Galen Tyrol: Report to stations?

Saul Tigh: My name is Saul Tigh. I am an officer in the Colonial Fleet. Whatever else I am, whatever else it means, that's the man I want to be. And if I die today, that's the man I'll be. ~From Battlestar Galactica (2003) S3.E20 "Crossroads, Part 2."

I was not taught that way, and you can like it or lump it.

Which is exactly why I'm making the point of calling out this bullshit in these people's supposed own language.

And you cannot make me believe this fucking garbage.

I'll die with a rifle in my hand fighting before it comes to that.

Some things are just wrong, period, and cloaking Wrong in fake "Conservatism" and a bunch of Fundamentalist talk does not make it Right.

You either believe in freedom or you don't.

Слава Україна!

When the men got up to leave, they looked down toward Sodom, and Abraham walked along with them to see them on their way. Then the Lord said, “Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do? Abraham will surely become a great and powerful nation, and all nations on earth will be blessed through him. For I have chosen him, so that he will direct his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing what is right and just, so that the Lord will bring about for Abraham what he has promised him.”

Then the Lord said, “The outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is so great and their sin so grievous that I will go down and see if what they have done is as bad as the outcry that has reached me. If not, I will know.”

The men turned away and went toward Sodom, but Abraham remained standing before the Lord. Then Abraham approached him and said: “Will you sweep away the righteous with the wicked? What if there are fifty righteous people in the city? Will you really sweep it away and not spare the place for the sake of the fifty righteous people in it? Far be it from you to do such a thing—to kill the righteous with the wicked, treating the righteous and the wicked alike. Far be it from you! Will not the Judge of all the earth do right?”

The Lord said, “If I find fifty righteous people in the city of Sodom, I will spare the whole place for their sake.”

Then Abraham spoke up again: “Now that I have been so bold as to speak to the Lord, though I am nothing but dust and ashes, 28 what if the number of the righteous is five less than fifty? Will you destroy the whole city for lack of five people?”

“If I find forty-five there,” he said, “I will not destroy it.”

Once again he spoke to him, “What if only forty are found there?”

He said, “For the sake of forty, I will not do it.”

Then he said, “May the Lord not be angry, but let me speak. What if only thirty can be found there?”

He answered, “I will not do it if I find thirty there.”

Abraham said, “Now that I have been so bold as to speak to the Lord, what if only twenty can be found there?”

He said, “For the sake of twenty, I will not destroy it.”

Then he said, “May the Lord not be angry, but let me speak just once more. What if only ten can be found there?”

He answered, “For the sake of ten, I will not destroy it.”

When the Lord had finished speaking with Abraham, he left, and Abraham returned home.

~Genesis 18:16-33

Nine

We welcome change and openness; for we believe that freedom and security go together, that the advance of human liberty can only strengthen the cause of world peace. There is one sign the Soviets can make that would be unmistakable, that would advance dramatically the cause of freedom and peace. General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization, come here to this gate. Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate. Mr. Gorbachev...Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!
~Ronald Reagan

Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. ~Matthew 3:2