And I stood upon the sand of the sea, and saw a beast rise up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns, and upon his horns ten crowns, and upon his heads the name of blasphemy.
And the beast which I saw was like unto a leopard, and his feet were as the feet of a bear, and his mouth as the mouth of a lion: and the dragon gave him his power, and his seat, and great authority.
And I saw one of his heads as it were wounded to death; and his deadly wound was healed: and all the world wondered after the beast.
And they worshipped the dragon which gave power unto the beast: and they worshipped the beast, saying, Who is like unto the beast? who is able to make war with him?
And there was given unto him a mouth speaking great things and blasphemies; and power was given unto him to continue forty and two months.
And he opened his mouth in blasphemy against God, to blaspheme his name, and his tabernacle, and them that dwell in heaven.
And it was given unto him to make war with the saints, and to overcome them: and power was given him over all kindreds, and tongues, and nations.
And all that dwell upon the earth shall worship him, whose names are not written in the book of life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.
If any man have an ear, let him hear.
He that leads into captivity shall go into captivity: he that kills with the sword must be killed with the sword. Here is the patience and the faith of the saints.
And I beheld another beast coming up out of the earth; and he had two horns like a lamb, and he speaks as a dragon.And he exercises all the power of the first beast before him, and causes the earth and them which dwell therein to worship the first beast, whose deadly wound was healed.
And he doeth great wonders, so that he makes fire come down from heaven on the earth in the sight of men,
And deceive them that dwell on the earth by the means of those miracles which he had power to do in the sight of the beast; saying to them that dwell on the earth, that they should make an image to the beast, which had the wound by a sword, and did live.
And he had power to give life unto the image of the beast, that the image of the beast should both speak, and cause that as many as would not worship the image of the beast should be killed.
And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.
Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six. ~Revelation 13, King James Bible.
...
Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it on to our children in the bloodstream. The only way they can inherit the freedom we have known is if we fight for it, protect it, defend it, and then hand it to them with the well fought lessons of how they in their lifetime must do the same. And if you and I don't do this, then you and I may well spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it once was like in America when men were free. ~Ronald Reagan
I saw this last night, a Russian data center in St. Petersburg hit by Ukrainian drones, burning and sparking like some kind of mutant love child of Mordor and Skynet.
And then I saw an ad for Indiana congresswoman (and Ukrainian-American pro-Russian stooge) Victoria Spartz, that used her two daughters, and tried to say she hadn't made a bunch of money off of being in Congress, and was meant (presumably made with AI) to look like it was filmed with a 1980's VHS type camcorder or some bullshit.
No, you know what, nobody uses that kind of shit anymore, give it up.
Also, the ad made a point of insinuating that wanting to protect Transgender kids was somehow bad.
The Holy Quran says it, "Pilgrimage to the House [of God built by the prophet Abraham] is a duty men owe to God; those who are able, make the journey." (3:97) Allah said: "And proclaim the pilgrimage among men; they will come to you on foot and upon each lean camel, they will come from every deep ravine" (22:27). Every one of the thousands at the airport, about to leave for Jeddah, was dressed this way. You could be a king or a peasant and no one would know. Some powerful personages, who were discreetly pointed out to me, had on the same thing I had on. Once thus dressed, we all had begun intermittently calling out "Labbayka! (Allahumma) Labbayka!" (Here I come, O Lord!) Packed in the plane were white, black, brown, red, and yellow people, blue eyes and blond hair, and my kinky red hair -- all together, brothers! All honoring the same God, all in turn giving equal honor to each other. . . .That is when I first began to reappraise the "white man." It was when I first began to perceive that "white man," as commonly used, means complexion only secondarily; primarily it described attitudes and actions. In America, "white man" meant specific attitudes and actions toward the black man, and toward all other non-white men. But in the Muslim world, I had seen that men with white complexions were more genuinely brotherly than anyone else had ever been. That morning was the start of a radical alteration in my whole outlook about "white" men. ~Malcolm X.
I know farmers. I have farming people in my family, conservative, middle-of-the-road and liberal. My partner has farm people in her family, they skew more conservative ranging from sensible but Republican (like her parents when she was a kid) to the MAGA welfare people I've written about.
About the only thing those people grow is a subsidy check (and weed, illegally, on the back 40, no trust me they are not all living off grandma's SSI check) by the way. But judging from the wrecked Motor Home in the yard, somebody in that side of the family had money once.
My uncle on my Mom's side of the family that was a GM employee and did some farming to go with that (Conservative-type Union Democrat, Trump '16, Biden '20, grudgingly Harris '24) had a new truck about every year, but that was about it. Most of their farming equipment, he maintains himself, because they can't afford new.
His kids are one conservative-not-MAGA (Marine veteran married to a still-serving Marine) and one liberal (Social worker or some such.) His wife, my aunt, has never been especially political either. The only year I know of that she even bothered to vote was in 1992 (Perot.)
(My uncle was all in for Bill Clinton in 1992 and 1996 plus for Gore in 2000. We had some pretty epic arguments that year.)
My Aunt and Uncle (Super-liberal) on my Dad's side of the family have a small farm on a few dozen acres in the Upper Peninsula and still have the same 1993 Ford F-150 that my uncle bought used and got a deal on while I was staying at their house when I was in the Air Force stationed at KI Sawyer Air Force Base. That's how far back they go. My aunt has a new small SUV (because my-Air Force Veteran-Lawyer cousin bought her one.) My uncle's tractor is newer, but only because my cousins (all of whom have 6-figure jobs and support their parents) bought him one. He's still using most of the same farm implements (that can be towed by a tractor) that he had when I was a kid. The girls hooked him up with all the tools for the new tractor, though, so there's that. Most of their produce gets sold at local farmer's markets during the season, mostly around Marquette.
Down around the Reservation in Mount Pleasant where I used to live and work, there's this one farmer that owns a whole bunch of fields off one corner of the Rez, that guy's fields wrapped around the apartment complex I lived in for 8 years (where my partner was my roommate and where we lived when we were a couple the first time.) That guy has new everything, all type of new gear, every damn year just about. In 2016 and 2020 he also had big Trump signs on any unused patch of land that he owned that was visible from a road.
So think about that.
AI is all these fucking people have for their bullshit dream-world.
When men stop believing in God, it isn't that they then believe in nothing: they believe in everything. ~Umberto Eco
No Kings was also yesterday, and I note that with all the Russian bots gone, META directly made the decision to suspend the organizers' accounts for the day, then claimed it was a "Mistake."
I'm of the opinion that Republicans as they are now should be formally renamed as "Royalists" only they don't seem to give a damn what the "King" actually is, whether it's Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin or some kind of dumb ass AI Machine God or CHUD-Skynet or what the fuck ever. There's nothing at all Republican about any of this BS. A Republic is, by definition, a country that doesn't have a King. Republics are most often democratic, at least to some degree.That's not the world today's "Republicans" want to live in.
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.)
Like, last night I saw this shit, some dumb old bitch trying to say the world was only a couple thousand years old. Listen, you old bag, we have written, dated records that are older than that! None of this stuff is legends or myths, the Greeks and Romans wrote shit down.
Sorry but I'm a former Conservative Christian. It takes a lot to not be able to Creationist properly. And more to the point as a former Baptist and an End Times Prophecy guy, Biblical exegesis and study is what we lived by, how we even justified ourselves. It was 100% the rationale for everything.
30, even 20 years ago, in that world you lived and died by the Word and a slew of interpretations that, yes, might be a bit hokey but for fuck's sake you could go back through it and explain yourself at least.
I ain't saying it was right, but that's how it was.
Study to show thyself approved.
I don't like it, but I can still quote a lot of this shit basically in my sleep.
The scholarship, such as it is/was, used to in fact be the rationalization for everything else. I'm fully aware that a lot of it was horseshit and most of that has simply been thrown by the wayside because they think they don't need it anymore because of Trump.
That's painful for those of us that really believed in any of this stuff to whatever degree.
Thou shalt have no other gods before me.
Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.
Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me; ~Exodus 20:2-5
Apparently MAGA doesn't even bother with any of that anymore. Their "Rationalization" such as it is...apparently is Trump. They think he gives them some kind of protection and superpowers or some such bullshit.
Seems like a hell of a way to run a railroad if you ask me.
These fucking people don't care about Republicans, they don't even think Trump is a "King" or understand Power one damn bit. Oh hell no, it's way worse than that.
They've appointed Trump their God just cuz he makes them "feel good" and no, they don't care if they go to Hell.
If you don't think Republicans' current hostility towards Islam, any Christian denomination they deem insufficiently "Right-Wing" and non-Zionist Judaism won't eventually spread to Evangelicals, Zionists and every other damn thing, you would be wrong.
Even Trump will fall by the wayside, especially after he's dead but very likely before. I'll note that it really seems like in the last year whatever demonic "Aura of Protection" he had is gone.
Eventually they'll just cut out the middleman and worship the Demons directly.
Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy. They were haughty and did detestable things before me. Therefore I did away with them as you have seen. ~Ezekiel 16:49-50 (NIV)
Some kid tried to pull a "Gotcha" on Al-Sayed yesterday, only it turns out he's the son of some Republican staffer, connected to another who's connected to Josh Hawley, and friends with Sean Feucht.
There ain't very many regular people left who are down with all this shit, I guess.
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 I can for damn sure tell you they're enraged by the fact that between 70% and 80% of America is against this shit.
And doubling down infinitely.
It's going to come down to a fight.
And that's a fight Republican are gonna lose. You don't start shit, or keep pushing, when you've got up around 3/4 of the population against you and you're losing your own voter base. They're trying to smash and grab what they can now.
These guys aren't helping Putin because they think he's actually gonna win. Vlad knows Trump is gonna die and he's calling in whatever favors he can now while he can.
Russia is cold and shitty, not bad if you're an Oligarch but they won't be such over there. Still, it's a damn sight better than dead or in jail.
Down to Gorky Park
Listening to the wind of change
An August summer night
Soldiers passing by
The world is closing in
Did you ever think
That we could be so close, like brothers
Can feel it everywhere
Blowing with the wind of change.
And the rest of these motherfucking old ass White Republicans know they ain't all gonna be able to go to Argentina. Hell, a fair number of them probably don't want to go to Argentina because, the country's pretensions aside, it's generally not considered "White."
They are likewise enabling Israel for the same reason, but again, it's a specifically non-Christian country in which outright Christian Nationalism would not only not be welcome, but it gets people arrested.
But they gotta go somewhere, I don't think their plans for a civil war here are gonna go in their favor nor would said war if it happened. They might get Florida...but their numbers are so bad even that's questionable. Still, they are gonna want somebody to protect them from the rest of us.
The game is up, the party's almost over. They know it, we know it. They know we know it.
The Empire isn't "going" to fall...it's falling.
That's usually when somebody does something really stupid.
You either believe in freedom or you don't.
No Kings.
American Reformation Now.
hiding inside the black granite.
I said I wouldn't
dammit: No tears.
I'm stone. I'm flesh.
My clouded reflection eyes me
like a bird of prey, the profile of night slanted against morning.
I turn that way—I'm inside
the Vietnam Veterans Memorial
again, depending on the light
to make a difference.
I go down the 58,022 names,
half-expecting to find
my own in letters like smoke.
Names shimmer on a woman's blouse
but when she walks away
the names stay on the wall.
Brushstrokes flash, a red bird's
wings cutting across my stare.
The sky. A plane in the sky.
A white vet's image floats
closer to me, then his pale eyes
look through mine. I'm a window.
He's lost his right arm
inside the stone. In the black mirror
a woman’s trying to erase names:
No, she's brushing a boy's hair.
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