The Cheesecake Wars (American Reformation II, Eight.)

Tiberias: Guy de Lusignan and Reynauld de Chatillon, with the Templars... have attacked a Saracen caravan.

Crusaders: Liar!

Tiberias: Silence!

Bishop, Patriarch of Jerusalem: It was no caravan. It was an army headed for Bethlehem to desecrate the birthplace of our Lord!

Tiberias: Reynauld, with the Templars, have broken the king's pledge of peace. Saladin will come into this kingdom...

Guy de Lusignan: Tiberias knows more than a Christian should about Saladin's intentions.

Tiberias: [Walks up to him] That I would rather live among men than kill them, is certainly why YOU are still alive.

Guy de Lusignan: [Chuckles] That sort of Christianity has its uses, I suppose...

Tiberias: We must not go to war with Saladin! We do not want it, and we may not win it.

Bishop, Patriarch of Jerusalem: Blasphemy! [All crusaders burst repeating in unison] An army of Jesus Christ, which bears his holy cross, cannot be beaten!

Hospitaller: Does the count of Tiberias suggest that it could be?

Bishop, Patriarch of Jerusalem: There must be war. God wills it! [All crusaders burst repeating in unison and King Baldwin IV raises a hand for silence]

Tiberias: Silence!

King Baldwin IV: Saladin has crossed the Jordan with 200,000 men.

Tiberias: He will make first for Kerak and Reynald de Chatillon. [Walks up to King Baldwin IV] My lord...

King Baldwin IV: We must meet him before he reaches Kerak. I will lead the army.

Tiberias: My lord, if you travel, you'll die.

King Baldwin IV: Send word to Balian to protect the villagers. Assemble the army! [Crusaders excitedly roar]

~From the film Kingdom Of Heaven.

...

[After the Saracen army withdraws from its attack on Kerak]

Imam: Why did you retire? Why? God did not favor it. God alone determines the results of battles.

Saladin: The results of battles are determined by God...but also by preparation, numbers, the absence of disease and the availability of water. One cannot maintain a siege with the enemy behind. How many battles did God win for the Muslims before I came? That is, before God determined I should come.

Imam: Few enough. That's because we were sinful

Saladin: [Scoffs] It is because you were unprepared.

Imam: If you think that way, you shall not be king for long.

Saladin: When I am not king, I quake for Islam.

~From the film Kingdom Of Heaven.

...

And let’s be honest, does anybody really think this guy in the White House right now is spending all that time thinking about these issues? I mean, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but he seems very focused on home renovations. He should be on HGTV. Guy’s building a ballroom that’s bigger than the White House. He’s paved over the Rose Garden. Put a helicopter pad on the South Lawn, and there’s gold everywhere. What’s up with the gold? Everything, more gold. He’s got the White House looking like Saddam Hussein opened a Cheesecake Factory. Just gold everywhere. … So, he’s clearly not focused on lowering prices for you. ~Barack Obama

...

Sure, we were unprepared, our tools, our training, everything I just talked about, all one class-A, gold-standard clusterfuck, but the weapon that really failed wasn’t something that rolled off an assembly line. It’s as old as…I don’t know, I guess as old as war. It’s fear, dude, just fear and you don’t have to be Sun freaking Tzu to know that real fighting isn’t about killing or even hurting the other guy, it’s about scaring him enough to call it a day... “Shock and Awe”? Perfect name, “Shock and Awe”! But what if the enemy can’t be shocked and awed? Not just won’t, but biologically can’t! That’s what happened that day outside New York City, that’s the failure that almost lost us the whole damn war. The fact that we couldn’t shock and awe Zack boomeranged right back in our faces and actually allowed Zack to shock and awe us! They’re not afraid! No matter what we do, no matter how many we kill, they will never, ever be afraid! ~Todd Waino, World War Z (Novel by Max Brooks)

It's still going; The Cheesecake War, I mean.

In a twist that should surprise absolutely no one, Trump has invested in Cheesecake Factory.

Oops. ETTD. (Everything Trump Touches Dies) Have Fun With That.

Needless to say that's not the only pointless culture war crap These Fucking People are throwing at the wall and hoping it sticks.

You have to understand where I live though. I'm in northeast Michigan 2 hours from the nearest freeway in either direction and there's still more Abdul signs than Mike Rogers signs.

(Note: There's 2 or 3 Muslim people in this town that I know of who aren't just passing through-a lot of transients, though-and the ones who live here all work at the hospital. There is a bigger Baha'i community than that here, for what it's worth.)

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.

Nobody who wasn't already going to vote Republican cares about all this Ooga Booga Booga crazy shit Republicans keep saying about Abdul. Hell, the one person this whole season who's said anything to me along the lines of this kind of shit specifically said they liked Haley Stevens and that was who they were voting for in the primary. Saw the same guy the other day (He quit where I work, but still shops there) and he was wearing a "Fuck Trump" T-shirt. No, bigotry is not strictly a Republican thing...but I don't see it getting any Democrats to cross over because of it.

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.

Yes, I think Trump and Republicans have fucked up on affordability and economic issues that damn bad. Sorry, but bigotry is a luxury good for most people. It doesn't matter worth a damn if they're struggling to put food on the table.

And that's before you get to shit like *Checks Notes* The Epstein Files.

I'm not the only one who doesn't even recognize the Republican Party anymore, either.

I'm not the only one who is massively tired of this crap.

And I'm far from the only one who's losing my ass financially, or going to, if this shit persists too much longer.

And I think Republicans overestimated the number of people who were willing to lose their ass supporting rich Demon-worshipers and pedophiles or the number of "Christians" willing to submit themselves to the prophets of Baal, so long as Black People suffered more. I mean, at the end of the day for a lot of folks voting against this garbage is coming down to basic self-defense. 

I mean, I figured out going on 20 years ago that Republicans were like this but even I didn't think it was anywhere near this damn bad. (And I thought it was pretty damn bad.)

Republicans started relying on Political Cultism to get them over the line.

(Without making any serious attempt to get anybody else to join the Political Cult.)

And then they made the ability to be able to afford to be a Political Cultist itself into a luxury good. The only Trump flag I still see around here is on a million dollar lake house over on US 23 along the lake, and it's furled so you have to look to see it's there.

So that's who's still MAGA.

Meanwhile I'm broke, my partner is broke, everybody that I know is broke. We can't afford that shit.

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)

Did they think the rest of us were just gonna die off, or something??

I mean, yeah, pretty much.

Netanyahu came right out and said he only thought extreme Zionists who agreed with him should have been treated as citizens.

I'm tired of these people and their mentality that they should only have to serve those they want to serve.

If you don't want to be a leader of all of your people or serve all of the public in your country, don't become a national leader. Just get in office in some other capacity and stay there. 

I mean, fuck, if Trump had just run for the House or Senate in 2016 he'd certainly have won his race. We'd probably have had 8 successful years of a Hillary Clinton presidency and be 2 years into President Tim Kaine...and Rep. or Senator Trump would probably still have himself a political empire and neither term limits nor much in the way of constraints and he could monetize being a "Lifestyle Brand For Assholes" basically indefinitely without much in the way of a political backlash. 

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

Dude could be Speaker of the House right now, still making trouble for everybody else, and be Newt Gingrich (or Mike Johnson) on fucking steroids and not be looking at a very likely either Impeachment, Revolution or vastly more insidiously slow Political Destruction as Democrats dismantle his political apparatus from the bottom up or the middle out.

Again I'll note for example; Rush Limbaugh never ran for office. So far Tucker Carlson hasn't either.

But that's apparently not good enough for most of these idiots. 

At that level, exercising Power requires a little bit of intelligence.

And it's not the world these motherfuckers want to live in.

Newt Gingrich, for all of his faults, could (at that point at least) still talk to people and make a persuasive case for whatever.

That's too much work for Republicans now.

It didn't exactly hurt Newt that Bill Clinton's whole bit and most of his coalition were limousine liberals who were enthusiastically in bed with the "Tech Bros" of the day and even though pretty much everybody was still making money (Adjusted for things, my best year was basically 1997-1998.) But just like now most people could see that it was a big club and they wasn't in it, and there was a lot of resentment for that.

These conditions have existed for a long time.

Trump has, in fact, been the Moral Relativism and Situational Ethics of the "Liberal" Clinton years on fucking steroids.

Brothers and sisters, please quiet down. Thank you.

We come here time after time and we talk about the same old same old.

Hey, quiet down.
- We talk about Jesus. - That's right.
Jesus said and Jesus wept.
Jesus heard and Jesus walked over.
I don't wanna talk about Jesus.
Cos as the big man teaches us, there's two sides to every story.
Not one but two. A story is not one-sided.
A story has duality. There's two sides to every story.
Which brings to mind the phrase "necessary evil".
I know many of you hear that phrase and say,
"That don't even make no sense to me.
"Can't be no such thing as necessary - how's evil necessary?
"That don't match. That's plaids and stripes, evil and necessary."
You see, because without bad, there is no good.
Without light, there is no dark, you need both these things.
You hear what I'm saying?
If every day is a sunny day, well, then, what's a sunny day?
Well, the bottom line, what I'm trying to tell you tonight,
is that evil...evil... is necessary.
Evil is necessary, thereby, if it's necessary, evil...
- Evil... -must be good.
Evil is good.
That's what I think. Evil must be good, must be good.
- Let me hear y'all say it... - Evil is good.

Evil is good. Take Brother Brown, one of our strongest deacons, pillar of stability.
Brother Brown was on Bushwick Avenue last night with a two-dollar ho.
When you tell your wife, "I'm going to see Mama," then you go get you a two-dollar ho, that's evil.
But Brother Brown had a good time with that two-dollar ho.
You can push a two-dollar ho and she don't have no limits!
Evil and good walk hand in hand. - Evil is as evil does. 

I know many of y'all may be saying, "How can he say ass is good?"
How y'all think y'all got here?
Ass is good! Evil's good and ass is good.
And if you get you a piece of evil ass...Woo!

~Maximilian The Vampire (As Preacher Paulie) from A Vampire In Brooklyn.

And it's good that the Brazilians saw this coming with Bolsonaro Junior, that he'd probably be a total repeat of his dad being in office, and told him to go fuck himself.

Unfortunately, now we're stuck with that asshole.

I mean, it's a pretty safe bet that Republican are gonna destroy themselves before Flava Flav Bolsonaro can be of much use to them, unless they really do intend to try to break off Florida or part of it to be "their" country (and thus they can set their own terms RE: "Citizenship") but here we are.

It's the Cheesecake Wars and that shit is exactly as stupid as it sounds.

It's a good thing Republicans are losing, but we shouldn't have gotten here in the first place.

Republicans have come a long way. A long way DOWN.

You either believe in freedom or you don't.

Слава Україна!

My black face fades,
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 this way—the stone lets me go.
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. 

I touch the name Andrew Johnson; 

I see the booby trap's white flash.
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.

~Facing It, by Yusef Komunyakaa, US Army Veteran

Seven

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