Tag: Religion

Religious nutballs own our Supreme Court

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From the National Women’s Law Center

Tonight, a draft Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade was leaked. The language in that opinion is outrageous, irresponsible, and shocking—and the unsurprising culmination of a decades-long plan to end our right to abortion. It also confirms what we’ve already known: the Supreme Court has been politicized and weaponized by extremist politicians who want to take away our rights.

If the opinion that was leaked tonight is finalized, our fundamental right to reproductive autonomy, agency, and freedom will be eroded beyond recognition, and 50 years of settled law will be obliterated.

Any Justice who signs onto this opinion is fueling the harm and violence that will happen to people who become pregnant in this country.

If you only do one thing tonight, support abortion funds who are fighting to ensure people have access to care no matter what the Supreme Court says. Follow this link for a list of abortion funds to support.

I’ll be honest: the road ahead is scary. But we will never stop fighting for a world where our bodies, lives, and futures aren’t controlled by the court, anti-abortion extremists, or politicians who try to shame us. Until then, we will need all of you, and all of us, today, tomorrow, and beyond.

In solidarity…

By the age of 22, I had twice broken a religion-based, crap law, in my birth state, Connecticut. A state that bragged on itself as the Constitution State, BTW. I’d paid for one illegal abortion. I had a vasectomy. Oh yes, in particular, representatives of the Holy Roman Catholic Church in my state, doing their G_d’s Will, didn’t want any opportunity available for individuals to thwart what they considered heaven-sent law.

And, now, the highest court in this land is preparing to overturn settled law on the basis of their religious and political beliefs. Screw science, screw virtually unanimous studies about women’s rights or a legal system that supports choice over an ideology leftover from the Dark Ages.

A Supreme Court that picks a political side in this manner is no longer free and progressive. They should be judged with the contempt they deserve. They don’t deserve the respect one might show to an ignorant animal.

Edward A. Campbell [eideard]

“They are preparing for war”

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An expert on civil wars discusses where political extremists want to take this country

So we actually know a lot about civil wars — how they start, how long they last, why they’re so hard to resolve, how you end them. And we know a lot because since 1946, there have been over 200 major armed conflicts. And for the last 30 years, people have been collecting a lot of data, analyzing the data, looking at patterns. I’ve been one of those people.

We went from thinking, even as late as the 1980s, that every one of these was unique…Then methods and computers got better, and people like me came and could collect data and analyze it. And what we saw is that there are lots of patterns at the macro level…

In 1994, the U.S. government put together this Political Instability Task Force. They were interested in trying to predict what countries around the world were going to become unstable, potentially fall apart, experience political violence and civil war…

Originally the model included over 30 different factors, like poverty, income inequality, how diverse religiously or ethnically a country was. But only two factors came out again and again as highly predictive. And it wasn’t what people were expecting, even on the task force. We were surprised. The first was this variable called anocracy. There’s this nonprofit based in Virginia called the Center for Systemic Peace. And every year it measures all sorts of things related to the quality of the governments around the world. How autocratic or how democratic a country is. And it has this scale that goes from negative 10 to positive 10. Negative 10 is the most authoritarian, so think about North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain. Positive 10 are the most democratic. This, of course, is where you want to be. This would be Denmark, Switzerland, Canada. The U.S. was a positive 10 for many, many years. It’s no longer a positive 10. And then it has this middle zone between positive 5 and negative 5, which was you had features of both. If you’re a positive 5, you have more democratic features, but definitely have a few authoritarian elements. And, of course, if you’re negative 5, you have more authoritarian features and a few democratic elements. The U.S. was briefly downgraded to a 5 and is now an 8.

And what scholars found was that this anocracy variable was really predictive of a risk for civil war. That full democracies almost never have civil wars. Full autocracies rarely have civil wars. All of the instability and violence is happening in this middle zone…

And then the second factor was whether populations in these partial democracies began to organize politically, not around ideology — so, not based on whether you’re a communist or not a communist, or you’re a liberal or a conservative — but where the parties themselves were based almost exclusively around identity: ethnic, religious or racial identity.

Sounds like home to me. The country I grew up in has changed in so many ways. I reflect on that, sometimes. Not actually better excepting a piece of civil rights.

No fears strong enough enough to label “concrete”. Not many ideas on how to “fix things”. This article seems to be a sound starting point.

America’s gun religion

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This starts partway through the article. The author takes us from childhood target shooting to military life…to this!

How did we get from a little NRA indoor firing range with .22 target rifles to an entire convention hall filled with weapons of war and nostalgia for America’s enemies from the Civil War and World War II? How did we get from guns as tools to guns as lifestyle? How did we get from guns manufactured specifically for target shooting and hunting to guns manufactured for killing people and styled as “military” and “tactical” and “assault”? How did we get from magazines like Field and Stream, featuring stories about hunting, to Guns and Ammo, featuring stories about the Hecker and Koch HK416A5 with its “slimline telescopic butt stock” and “Non-stop NATO Stanag 4694 top rail” and magazine capability holding up to 100 rounds of military-grade 5.56 X 45mm NATO ammunition?

Three letters: NRA. Beginning in the 1970s, the National Rifle Association transformed itself from a shooting sports organization into a political lobbying arm of the Republican Party. It formed a PAC, the Political Victory Fund, in time for the 1976 elections and started endorsing and funding conservative, mostly Republican, candidates. The NRA invited Ronald Reagan to address its 1983 convention, in advance of his campaign for reelection in 1984, when they endorsed him for a second time…

…Guns went from tools to politics to identity. A gun went from something you use for a sporting purpose, like target shooting or hunting rabbits, to a thing that makes a statement about you. Hollywood went right along with them, from a .44 magnum revolver in “Dirty Harry” that said I’m a tough guy, to fully automatic AR-15 assault rifles with grenade launchers in “Scarface” that said I’m a killing machine and I’ll kill everyone I can see.

Truly worthwhile read. I can sympathize. I grew up in Connecticut when the state was still proud to call itself the arsenal of America. My family lived through the transition Lucian Truscott describes. One time or another, everyone in my father’s generation – in his extended family – worked for a gun manufacturer. One of my uncles spent his life’s work as a lead prototype gunsmith for a gun company. Another was a factory manager.

I was fortunate enough to pre-date the NRA conversion. I was rebel enough to have a gut reaction of disgust and revulsion to the “new” NRA and Reagan politics. I watched Truscott’s worst nightmare as it formed.

RTFA. I hope our benighted land is someday capable of turning this particular aspect of fascist ideology around. And goes on to work on the rest, as well.

Nutballs merge their conspiracy theories

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If you are trying to download a cat video on your face mask, you may be waiting for a long time. After all, it’s a face mask, not a smartphone.

Yet, messages circulating on social media now are trying to somehow connect face masks with 5G. That’s 5G, as in the “fifth generation” technology standard for cellular networks, and not 5G as in $5000. As I’ve covered before for Forbes, conspiracy theories have already alleged that the Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic is really the effects of 5G rather than a virus. Now, there are videos…claiming that the metal piece in a surgical mask is a 5G antenna…

American idjits continue to demonstrate that there are no boundaries to their ignorance and gullibility.

“Religious” Trump follows the global authoritarian playbook

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He even got it right side up!

It was a striking moment: Donald Trump, Bible in hand, posing for photos in an apparent moment of political theater made possible by the dispersal of protesters through the use of tear gas.

The president’s visit to St. John’s Episcopal Church, known as “the Church of the Presidents,” came immediately after giving a Rose Garden speech framing himself as “your president of law and order” and threatening to send federal troops to “restore security and safety in America.” The next day, Trump made another high-profile visit to a place of worship, this time Washington’s St. John Paul II National Shrine…

When enough people perceive – or can be convinced – that traditional elements of the social fabric are at risk, religious signaling through the use of symbols and images can help would-be authoritarians cement their power. They present themselves as protectors of the faith and foes of any outsider who threatens tradition.

Useful, educational, thoughtful reflection on what is probably one of the oldest political hustles in the book.

Preacher gets lighter sentence for rape because he’s a “man of god”

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❝ A pastor facing life in prison for raping his 14-year-old daughter was shown mercy by a judge who was impressed by his alleged religious faith.

David Richards, 41, was sentenced to 12 years in jail on Thursday in Knox County Tennessee for raping his adoptive daughter – 60 years less than the maximum term sought by prosecutors. As he handed down the lenient sentence, Judge Steve Sword cited Richard’s work as a pastor and the Bible study he began in jail as mitigating factors…

❝ Richards was found guilty of rape, incest, and sexual battery by an authority figure for abusing his daughter, Amber Richards, for two years beginning when she was 14…

Throw away the key!