Morality is not determined by the church you attend nor the faith you embrace. It is determined by the quality of your character and the positive impact you have on those you meet along your journey
Before a phone call to a foreign leader, American Presidents are normally supplied with talking points prepared by staffers at the National Security Council, which is housed in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, next to the White House. Because conversations between heads of state can range widely, such materials are usually very detailed. But Trump, as a senior Administration official recently put it, is “not a voracious reader.”
The National Security Council has a comparatively lean budget—approximately twelve million dollars—and so its staff consists largely of career professionals on loan from the State Department, the Pentagon, and other agencies. When Trump assumed office, N.S.C. staffers initially generated memos for him that resembled those produced for his predecessors: multi-page explications of policy and strategy. But “an edict came down,” a former staffer told me: “ ‘Thin it out.’ ” The staff dutifully trimmed the memos to a single page. “But then word comes back: ‘This is still too much.’ ” A senior Trump aide explained to the staffers that the President is “a visual person,” and asked them to express points “pictorially.”
“By the time I left, we had these cards,” the former staffer said. They are long and narrow, made of heavy stock, and emblazoned with the words “the white house” at the top. Trump receives a thick briefing book every night, but nobody harbors the illusion that he reads it. Current and former officials told me that filling out a card is the best way to raise an issue with him in writing. Everything that needs to be conveyed to the President must be boiled down, the former staffer said, to “two or three points, with the syntactical complexity of ‘See Jane run.’ ”
This. Guy. Is. Leading. Your. Country.
It is not enough that Trump is an unqualified arrogant racist asshole, who is not so secretly working for the Kremlin.
He is also incredibly stupid on a level that makes George W. Bush look like a Mensa member in good standing.
Every word he speaks reveals his ignorance, while his tweets reveal his immaturity and pettiness.
To call Donald Trump the Toddler-in-Chief is now considered an insult to toddlers.
I know we are supposed to treat Trump voters like they are not the dumbest people on the planet, but that becomes near impossible with every revelation about the guy they chose over perhaps the most qualified person to ever make a run for the White House.
They had the same information that we had, and yet they could not see the obvious.
Perhaps if we had written it down for them on memo cards with the syntactical complexity of "See Jane run" it might have helped them to understand the obvious.
Or not, because let's face it some people are dumb to the bone.
The Muskogee County sheriff said a member of the group guarding an Oktaha gun shop accidentally shot himself Tuesday.
Sheriff Charles Pearson said the man dropped his gun and a bullet hit him in the arm. The sheriff did not identify the man or offer any other details about what happened.
The group of armed citizens and veterans is standing guard outside the Save Yourself Survival and Tactical Gear store after the owners said they received death threats from all over the world for putting up a sign saying Muslims weren't welcome.
"I saw several of those gentlemen out there yesterday," Pearson said. "The way they were holding their weapons, with the fingers on the triggers, you can tell a couple of these gentlemen have no idea about weapons safety. It's like the Clampetts have come to town," Sheriff Pearson told muskogeenow.com.
One of the armed men took offense at the Sheriff's remarks:
One of those volunteers, who claimed to be a combat veteran and would identify himself only as “Eagle One,” disputed the sheriff’s characterization of the volunteers.
“Don’t paint us as ignorant hillbillies,” he said. “We just believe in people’s constitutional rights, and we’re here to make sure they get them.”
Yeah how can we call them hillbillies with an awesome moniker like "Eagle One?" I mean that just screams "Respect my authority."
Okay so Palin's anti-Planned Parenthood rants have apparently garnered enough attention that Fox News decided to have her back on the network after dropping her last month.
This time she was forced to appear opposite Bill O'Reilly who is not exactly her biggest supporter over on Fox.
She quickly reinforces the reason for his disdain.
O'Reilly starts off by simply asking Palin what her central post is with her Facebook post. Seems simple enough right?
Wrong.
“This is kind of symbolic of our political correctness absurdity, and the absurdity of some person's priorities, when they are concerned more about a symbol that had represented the negatives many years ago, compared to today, thousands and thousands of babies, obviously, that we’ve seen in the news over and over with Planned Parenthood being butchered, and having their baby parts sold, that people, in some parts, are paying a whole lot more attention to the flag controversy than they are about what Planned Parenthood — their barbaric practices are.”
At this point O'Reilly asks why she "zeroed in on black babies?"
"Because the Confederate flag, obviously, has been such a focal point for much of society right now, that that was an easy comparison. Again, this outrage over the flag, and then, especially in South Carolina, that was taken care of, they took down the flag. But where is more of the outcry about what is actually going on with innocent human life, and how can civilized society even accept what’s going on?”
Here Billo interrupts Palin and asserts that the story of Cecil the lion is garnering more outrage than than the Right's trumped up lies about Planned Parenthood.
Once gain O'Reilly tries to get Palin to explain where she got her 90,000 black babies killed figure and why she thinks Planned Parenthood is targeting minorities, and asks her if she thinks it might be due to poverty.
Palin does not recognize a lifeline when it is thrown to her however.
“No I do not. Planned Parenthood is in the business of finding targets. So, they may attract those who would be, perhaps disadvantaged in some ways, and be made to believe that abortion is their only option. That is why, Bill, 80% of Planned Parenthood shops are set up in minority neighborhoods. It’s tragic that they would make anybody, a minority even, feel that they’re not capable enough, and they’re not able, and supported enough to go through…"
Here O'Reilly tries to help Palin again with clarification, but she is having none of it.
"I'm going to finish my point....that they can go through 40 weeks of a pregnancy in order to give their child life, that it is not impossible. It’s less than ideal in many circumstances, but it’s not impossible, to carry that baby, give it life, and then you’re still going to school, you’re still working, you’re still raising other children. For them to make the people feel — women feel that they’re not capable of doing that, is absolutely atrocious.”
Again O'reilly attempts to pin Palin down on why she thinks Planned Parenthood is "targeting" minority women. Clearly he is trying to get her back to her Facebook talking points about Margaret Sanger and her assertion that Planned Parenthood is engaged in some sort ethnic cleansing under the guise of providing women's health services.
But sine Palin didn't actually write that she cannot remember what the post says.
“As I said they are in there trying to make these minority women fill that they’re not capable of giving their child life. And then allowing the spirit of adoption or good foster care or more support.”
Again O'Reilly interrupts her and keeps asking her why they would do that?
“They’re doing that because they have too many people deceived. They have leaders in some of these communities, including our president, who would say, 'God bless you, Planned Parenthood. I’m there fighting with you,’ people deceived to make it sound like, oh, my goodness, an innocent human life is disposable.”
Again O'Reilly says he just wants to know if Palin believes that Planned Parenthood has "a motivation to target minority women? (Listen to the exasperation in his voice at this point.)
“Planned Parenthood is a bogus business. They’re in it to make money. They are in it to profit, and they have profit. And that’s why our tax dollars should not go to Planned Parenthood. They’re not needed, and they’re not — it’s certainly not ethical for our tax dollars to go there.”
And that is where the interview ends.
So here let me answer the question that Palin struggled so hard not to answer.
The reason that so many Planned Parenthood clinics are in less affluent neighborhoods is because they offer health care services that poor women cannot typically afford to pay for while wealthier women can and do.
And Planned Parenthood does NOT "target" minority women, they offer information on reproduction, birth control products, testing for STD's, cancer screenings, and even tubal ligations and vasectomies. And they offer those services to ALL ethnicities who walk through their doors.
I think this interview made it clear why Palin no longer has a contract with Fox News as a paid contributor.
Here she was brought on to discuss a Facebook post that she supposedly wrote, and she could not even do that adequately.
(By the way there is now another ghostwritten post on her Facebook page where O'Reilly's question about why Planned Parenthood "targets" minorities is finally answered. And yes it is as incredibly hateful and completely false as you would expect it to be.)
Wonkette provided part of a transcript, but I fleshed it out because apparently I am just that much of a glutton for punishment.
Here it is:
Hey friends! Y’know, back in the 1990s, Bill Clinton said that he wanted abortion to be safe, legal, and rare. Well, things really have changed since then, this is so unfortunate now — it appears as if Democrats, most Democrats, they want abortion to be safe, legal, and…celebrated? Mmmm.
Feminists, lately, who are in favor of abortion, they’re encouraging women to write or speak publicly and glowingly about how great having an abortion is, how great it was for them and their careers. My goodness, I find this really, really sad. It's dark. It's tragic in itself. Mmm, very sad. In the past, even those in favor of abortion knew that it's a tragic event, not something to be celebrated like a rite of passage. Look I know from personal experience how difficult it is when you find yourself in less than idill (sic) circumstances and you are pregnant. (Yep, it's called the Wite-Out solution.) I know the strain it can have on you. On your family, On your career. So I can sympathize with women who find themselves in THAT situation. I know what she's going through.
But I also know that you will never regret choosing life. (You KNOW that? What, do you have crystal balls or something?) In the sunset of your life, when you look back on all your choices that you made, and all of the things that you have accomplished you will never regret giving life to your children. I promise you they'll be your greatest joy. (And boy we all know how much a Sarah Palin promise is worth, don't we kids?) I've never met anyone at their end of their life regrets having their kids. (What, is she hanging out in old folk's homes and critical care units these days?) But I have heard of many people who regret snuffing the life out of their child. (Okay for the record, abortion does not entail choking a baby to death.) You know a final not for these would be feminists. They're not real feminists, They're not pro-women when they're celebrating women snuffing the life out of , say the youngest sisters in our society. (Wait, what?)
Little baby girl in the womb even. No a real feminist is someone who fights for women to have real choices. (She does realize it's called the "pro-choice" movement right?) And that means having the choice to keep your child and pursue a career. Or give life to your child and allow another family to raise that child and then pursue your career. (Actually Planned Parenthood supports all of these choices as well. So her idea of having MORE choices is to do away with one of the choices offered by the pro-choice movement. Yeah okay.) Having children is really a part of so many women's lives obviously. (But not ALL women's lives. Or does she simply not get that?) And in this day and age with the amazing technology we have that transcends the old office structure, right in the corporate world or in the big or small business world, women shouldn't have to sacrifice her career to raise a child. You may take a break, if you will, to spend that valuable time with a child but you don't have to sacrifice your career and never go back in order to give life to a child. Building a culture of life which America needs. A culture of life where we respect the sanctity of innocent life. It means encouraging a world where career women can raise their children. It's something that everyone, from both sides of the political aisle, should get behind.
Mmm, and I hope and pray that America will.
God hearing Palin condemning women for making choices concerning their own bodies is like hearing Mike Huckabee or Chris Christie telling somebody that they should not be taking that second helping of pie.
P.S. For those wondering just what in the hell Palin is blabbering about I think this might help to explain it.
P.P.S. For those who are wondering the post you are waiting for will publish at 6:15 AM Alaska time, or 10:15 EST time depending where you live.
A conservative activist, who has been billed as a homeschooling expert by tea party groups, warned over the weekend that sex-ed courses were a plot to increase the number of Democratic voters by destroying marriages.
In an interview with radio host Jan Markell, Marjorie Holsten argued that the only way that schools could teach sexual education in the Common Core curriculum would be to waive obscenity laws in many states.
“People say to me, why would they teach such awful things to our children?” she remarked. “If you go deep down and you connect those dots, you see that when children are desensitized to sexual things, that affects their ability at a later date to bond with a spouse.”
“And so if you have somebody who can’t bond, they’re not going to have a stable marriage. When you have unstable, broken households, how do they vote? Democrat. So this has a very evil underlying intent.”
Okay I am really confused by this.
How does understanding how procreation works, and how to prevent pregnancy and STD's, change a person's political outlook?
Is this woman admitting that the only way to keep making new Republicans is to have ignorant teenagers popping out kids before they learn any better? After all teen moms don't usually make it to college, and remain undereducated for the rest of their lives.
So THAT'S their plan!
And just how does this woman expect children to learn about sex if they do not have the opportunity to learn about it in school?
Oh, she has an answer for that?
“They should learn it the way I did, by watching animals do it on the street,” Williams joked.
“Actually, that was how I taught my children,” Holsten admitted. “We started with a boy guinea pig…”
“What? You taught your kids sex-ed with guinea pigs?” Williams interrupted.
“Well, we had a boy and a girl guinea pig that clearly liked each other,” Holsten said. “You really couldn’t see anything because they’re big, furry little fuzzball things. I mean, that’s why there isn’t guinea pig porn movies.”
She does understand that there is some difference between how human beings make the beast with two backs, and how guinea pigs do it right? Or maybe she doesn't.
You don't think she does that squealing thing during.....never mind.
By the way I have not yet done the Google search but I would not be so quick to suggest that there is NO guinea pig porn out there.
I know I'M not going to look, but it just might exist.
Today on the 700 Club, a viewer asked host Pat Robertson why miracles such as “people raised from the dead, blind eyes open, lame people walking” seem to “happen with great frequency in Africa, and not here in the USA?” Robertson first responded by joking it is “because those people overseas didn’t go to Ivy League schools.”
But Robertson was actually serious.
“Well, we are so sophisticated, we think we’ve got everything figured out, we know about evolution, we know about Darwin, we know about all these things that says God isn’t real, we know about all this stuff,” Robertson lamented, “in many schools, in the most advanced schools, we have been inundated with skepticism and secularism.”
So if I may paraphrase a little, the reason that we don't see God performing miracles in America is because we are too highly educated to be fooled by things easily explained by science, and the reason that they still occur in other places is due to the ignorance of the populace.
Makes perfect sense to me.
Okay, I REALLY need to stop agreeing with Pat Robertson! Not exactly good for my reputation.
Moss Bluff Elementary School in Louisiana is looking to streamline lunch payments by implementing a palm vein scanner program, but some parents aren't pleased.
A letter to parents this week informed them of the new scanner that will allow the school's nearly 1,000 students to move through the lunch line faster and with fewer payment mistakes -- an issue that had arisen in the past, KPLC-TV reports.
While the letter notes that parents can opt their children out of the program, parent Mamie Sonnier told KPLC-TV that she was angry and disappointed by the program, as the scanner violates her beliefs. She contends that if the scanners actually make it to the school cafeteria, she'll be transferring her kids to another school.
"As a Christian, I've read the Bible, you know go to church and stuff," Sonnier said. "I know where it's going to end up coming to, the mark of the beast. I'm not going to let my kids have that."
"I've read the Bible, you know go to church and stuff."
Lady, are YOU sure? Because I don't think Revelations says what you think it says.
11 Then I saw a second beast, coming out of the earth. It had two horns like a lamb, but it spoke like a dragon. 12 It exercised all the authority of the first beast on its behalf, and made the earth and its inhabitants worship the first beast, whose fatal wound had been healed. 13 And it performed great signs, even causing fire to come down from heaven to the earth in full view of the people. 14 Because of the signs it was given power to perform on behalf of the first beast, it deceived the inhabitants of the earth. It ordered them to set up an image in honor of the beast who was wounded by the sword and yet lived. 15 The second beast was given power to give breath to the image of the first beast, so that the image could speak and cause all who refused to worship the image to be killed. 16 It also forced all people, great and small, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on their right hands or on their foreheads, 17 so that they could not buy or sell unless they had the mark, which is the name of the beast or the number of its name.
Now THAT is crazy enough as it is, but the idea that this lunchroom palm scanner is going to imprint school children with this mark is going, in the words of the great Robert Downey Jr., "full retard."
Now this is usually where I get all preachy about the dangers of exposing ignorant people to superstitious nonsense and religions, but I will restrain myself here and simply open this topic up to discussion.
Next thing you will know these people will claim that they can see the image of the devil in the school's Tator Tots.
I know what you are thinking, "Gryphen, this CAN'T be the first time Palin ever held a rifle, remember she's a life long hunter!"
Well yes of course I know what the Palin mythology says, but this video says oh so much more.
Palin immediately presses the stock against her cheek, which NOBODY with ANY experience holding a rifle would do. If she had pulled the trigger before this was corrected, the weapon would have flown out of her hands, or shattered every bone in her shoulder.
In fact if you look carefully you can see that she initially resists the instructor's attempts to move the assault weapon into the proper placement against her shoulder, which further indicates that she has NO idea what she is doing.
I have to imagine that it was probably sometime after this that Palin asked Levi to show her how to shoot the gun stored under her bed.
If this footage is not convincing enough than I invite you to watch how completely uncomfortable with weapons Palin remained even during the filming of SPA.
I know for many of us this is old news, but somebody sent that video to me today, and after watching it I was once again struck by what a complete fraud, in essentially every way, this woman is.
When people ask you how you can believe that Sarah Palin faked her pregnancy, just tell them that as far as you can tell she seems to have faked EVERYTHING about herself!
Let's be blunt: science has rendered a literal interpretation of any scripture, be it Bible, Koran, whatever, as impossible. For many religious people this means that they have sought out deeper meanings in a spirituality that depends on a more intuitive sense of meaning and purpose than a slavish attempt to follow texts that have been simply disproven.
But for another group - the fundamentalists of all religions - modernity has been "answered" by opting out or attacking facts as lies.
Enter Madrassas of all kinds, literal -- as in Pakistan -- or virtual -- as in the Evangelical home school movement and private school movement. Enter Evangelical TV and radio and publishing industry and mega churches as personality cults. Enter the "conservative" Roman Catholic bishops cut off from their own far more tolerant (and liberal) flocks.
The rise of the religious right within religion is designed intentionally to isolate, indoctrinate and "protect" from challenging ideas. Fundamentalist leaders, be they conservative bishops or evangelical leaders, do this because actual true information is no longer helpful to the fundamentalist religious cause. So that cause becomes about controlling the minds of the faithful by cutting them off from other opinions.
Having circled the wagons and gone inward the American evangelical community and conservative Roman Catholics, now speak their own language have their own culture and they despise and fear the country they dwell in as virtual strangers. This is a self-imposed exile.
But when general elections come along the evangelical community, Roman Catholic bishops' et al, like some hibernating creature, are forced (as it were) from their cave. For a brief moment they must interact with the larger world in the full light of day.
This is very powerful stuff from a guy who may understand the Evangelical community better than just about anybody else in the country.
And he certainly does not sugar coat his message to make it more palatable to certain religious groups, or to avoid ruffling any feathers either.
