Received from a friend:
D: Here is a fabulous summary of the Trump-bible photo-op from Robert Hendrickson, rector, Saint Philip’s in the Hills Episcopal Church, Tucson, describing a photo of Trump holding a Bible while standing in front of St. John’s Church in DC.:
“This is an awful man, waving a book he hasn’t read, in front of a church he doesn’t attend, invoking laws he doesn’t understand, against fellow Americans he sees as enemies, wielding a military he dodged serving, to protect power he gained via accepting foreign interference, exploiting fear and anger he loves to stoke, after failing to address a pandemic he was warned about, and building it all on a bed of constant lies and childish inanity. This is not partisan. It is simply about recognizing the moral vacuum that is now pretending to lead.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Perfect
Yesterday I posted on Facebook a Photoshopped picture of myself, standing in front of Sauron’s tower in Mordor, holding a book called “The Faith of Donald Trump.” I included this caption:
“Thank you, Mr. President. Here is a picture of me, too, standing in front of a place I’ve never been to holding a book I’ve never read.”
Of course, any book called The Faith of Donald Trump is a work of fiction.
Not only a work of fiction but, if it has Trump’s name on it as the author, a lie because all of the books he claims he wrote were written to ghostwriters that Little Needy Brain paid.
Can you imagine a book that he actually wrote. If his limited speaking vocabulary is any indication, it would be written at a very elementary level. Bob, I have to leave that parody to you.
With Trump’s vocabulary, the book could not be that long and most of the words would be no longer than two syllables that focus on how great he is and how horrible everyone else is.
I thought the Faith of Donald Trump was another porn star he paid off to be quiet.
There is a disagreement on whether tear gas or pepper balls were used to rout peaceful protesters that were walking in front of the church. Why were such harsh tools necessary against peaceful protesters? https://www.motherjones.com/anti-racism-police-protest/2020/06/attorney-general-bill-barr-peperball-irritant/
That statement from Father Robert Hendrickson, Rector at Saint Philip’s in the Hills Episcopal Church in Tucson, AZ can be found at the bottom of the following page, and a statement from a rector who was there on the scene in DC can be seen at the start of the page, where she says that it was “tear gas” (and terribly uncomfortable for people): https://theurbannews.com/latest-news/2020/protestors-attacked-outside-of-st-johns-church-in-washington-dc/
Ya gotta love the bull comparing XLV to Churchill … here’s my take on it —
We shall move on them like bitches.
We shall get some tic tacs just in case.
We shall kiss them like a magnet, not even wait, just kiss.
We shall grab them by the pussies.
When you’re a star they let you do it.
— Slime Minister Donald J. Trump
Yep, pretty much the same —
Perfect, Jon!
Concise!
We received our government stimulus check via electronic deposit, so I thought I wouldn’t have to endure the frustration of having to see the Idiot’s “signature” or whatever that scribble is called. In today’s mail I received a letter from Treasury informing me that it was deposit and it had the Idiot’s “signature” on it. And to add to the irony, on the flip side was the same thing…in Spanish! Oh the irony. I’m keeping it and will place it in my copy of the magazine distributed to all Germans to celebrate his 50th birthday, less than 5 months before the invasion of Poland. It highlights the Führer’s many accomplishments. Both are good mementos to remind whatever descendants I will have in future generations of the duplicitous evil against which all generations must vigilant about and fight against.
I got a Visa debit card instead of a paper check or direct deposit. I have no idea why since the IRS has all my contact information and I e-file my income taxes. Recently I also got a form letter from Il Duce informing me of the Visa debit card I had already received with his Rorschach Inkblot Test signature at the bottom. I wonder how much Visa and Money Network Cardholder Services stand to make by managing and delivering these debit cards to millions of Americans?
Why the need for a middle man to deliver the relief funds. This stinks of some kind of scam or payoff.
I nearly threw the letter out since it looked like junk mail or the usual advertising you get from credit card companies. In fact, I read an article stating that many unsuspecting Americans did indeed throw out these letters thinking they were advertising or a scam. The envelope did not have any government imprimatur or seal and it had the Money Network Cardholder Services return address. So who the hell would think it was from the government in the first place. What will happen to all those unclaimed funds from the folks who tossed these letters or shredded them?
VISA debit card? Never heard of that one. Seems like one of the few journalists left out there would investigate that. Another way for banks to cash in. Like they do with holding PPP money for loans as long as they can to get the free interest. No bank left behind!
I got one of those letters, too. I tore it into shreds cursing that misleading, lying, cheating SOB as I did it.
That money did not come out of his pocket, and he gave a lot more to millionaires and billionaires. I’m sure he benefited, too.
I would not be shocked if after he is out of the White House, he ends up richer than Jeff Bezos (and crows about it) since Congress handed $500 billion to Trump to distribute without any oversight.
To make sure Trump could cash to anyone he wanted, he even fired the Inspector General in charge of watching to make sure that money went to the proper sources.
Handing $500 billion to Trump means all that public money vanished down a black hole and there will probably be no way to trace where it went.
You should have sent it to the Idiot’s non-presidential library, ripped up and pasted together. Talk about adding insult to injury, we’ll be spending millions upon millions to take care of his decrepit wazoo and its familial carbuncles.
Everyone that got one of those letters [where Trumpty Dumpty is pandering to voters and faking credit for the pandemic checks] should have done that and mailed all the shredded paper to one address in DC [hopefully someone that has a dump truck would volunteer] to deliver them to the White House after a week or two so they all have time to arrive.
Imagine how much shredded paper that would be. Maybe enough to bury the White House with Trump hiding in the bunker below it. Then all it would take is one match to roast the KFC, McDonald’s stuffed skin bag in that concrete oven.
That would have been a good one, Lloyd!
Reteach 4 America linked full context for this excerpt– thanks.
Something I don’t see publicized enough: peaceful protestors even when wearing masks– & too many lower them to chant, or don’t even wear them– are essential members of society, risking covid infection [due to inability to be spaced at 6-ft intervals] in order to register political protest. This DC police action (as well as some others around the country) seems to have lost sight of the fact that both tear-gas and concussion grenades cause eye-rubbing and compromise lungs, increasing risk for both infection and covid complications.
I do not infer that intention. Just observing that too many police depts have responded to peaceful protests as tho to lawless violent rioting. No nuance; disconnect from public; rigid protocols; proliferation of inappropriate military gear. Glad to see on CSPAN that long-busy police-reform activist groups are getting a boost/ public highlight now. This is their moment.
“Defund/ dismantle police” is an important new message that hopefully goes mainstream. I’ve read that police budgets are proportionally triple what they were in the ’70’s. Part of that is inappropriate offloading of unused “endless-war” military eqpt on state/ local police (who naturally develop protocols for its [inappropriate] use). But more is probably attributable to increase in pathological social consequences of automation/ mfg decline/ job-offshoring/ spiraling inequality/ poverty concurrent w/ libertarian-style decrease in taxing rich/ global corp profits, hence sharp decline in public-goods investment.
Absent any social planning to accompany these economic disruptions– i.e., laissez-faire capitalism– emergencies of every description fall by default to police response. [Teachers can relate.] I’m not confident the movement will get traction, as it’s a bassackwards approach to to a multitude of problems whose source is mostly elsewhere. But it’s a start.
I didn’t mention racism in causes only because it goes w/o saying. Blacks have been at the bottom of our economic totem pole since the beginning, & therefore get hardest hit by economic upheavals/ zero social planning, so comprise the huge majority of those emergencies falling [inappropriately] to police to handle, becoming the victims of inappropriate policing. It’s a sorry state of affairs when a national govt finds it necessary to make police choke-holds & lynching federal crimes– sorrier still that those crimes target a single race– pathetic that we’ve tried unsuccessfully for decades to even pass such laws.
Ben Carsen, Trump’s Secretary for Dismantling Housing and Urban Development, says that IQ45 is planning a big speech to heal the divided nation and sooth over racial divides. Oh, my Lord. The Racist in Chief gives his I Am Not a Racist Speech. Wouldn’t it be interesting to be a fly on the wall to listen to Dog-Whistle Don and Stephen “Goebbels” Miller going over the drafts of that one!!!! It will be quite the challenge to Mr. Goebbels, uh, Miller, to write a speech that simultaneously sounds like the lyrics to “Ebony and Ivory” and contains enough wink, winks to Trump’s White Supremacist base to assure them that in Trump’s mind, the day of the RoHoWa is coming.
I suspect that the last few days have been a huge wake up call to the group of fascists around Trump who thought that they could easily hijack the protests and create an excuse to declare martial law and invoke emergency powers and turn the U.S. military on citizens and postpone the coming election that Trump seems so likely to lose despite election rigging in Republican states throughout the country. Fortunately, our current military leaders had the basic decency not to allow themselves to be used in that way. For now. So now the core Trumpist fascists in the Whiter House are on to Plan B. What will it be? The one in which Trump, of all people, Trump the hero of neo-Nazis everywhere, tells us how supportive he is of POC? And then what?
But I have a bad feeling about all this. Yes, Trump is a complete idiot, and this Beer Hall Putsch has failed. But the ones around Trump aren’t as stupid as Trump is, however blinded they might be by their sick ideology. The next Trump won’t be as clownish. He will wear a prettier, younger face. He will be smarter. He will arise in a time of crisis. He will smile and smile and smile and be a villain.
It has occured to me that the next Republican that wins the White House will be worse than Trump.
1st there was Nixon, his war on Drugs, I am not a crook and Watergate. I’m trying to keep this brief so I am leaving out a lot of dirt for each one of these fascists.
Then there was Reagan, who doubled down on Nixon’s War on Drugs, Iran Contra, et al, and then Trickle Down Economics, the starting gun for the race to bankrupt America that the 1st Bush added increased, and his son G.W. who started two wars instead of one thanks to the lie about WMDs, and he almost doubled the national debt that skipped to make up for Clinton hardly adding anything to it during his eight years. Trump isn’t satisfied with starting a war with another country. He wants to start a Civil War in the U.S.
Then along comes Trumpty Dumpty and the greatest tax cut for the already rich, fumbled the pandemic and murdered thousands, and the list goes on without an end in sight.
Trump is trying to break the combined record set by Nixon, Reagan, and the two Bushes.
Some passages of the draft were leaked:
“Some of my best friends are colored people.”
“The great strength of the U.S. is that it forces those who fear it to imitate it.”
“I believe today that my conduct is in accordance with the will of the Almighty, he tells me so every night.”
“The scream of flash bombs is more penetrating than the hiss from a thousand liberal newspaper vipers. Therefore, let them go on with their hissing.”
“I increasingly use my influence to create conflicts, intensify existing conflicts, and, above all, to keep conflicts from being resolved peacefully.”
“Winning without problems is just victory, but winning with lots of trouble creates History.”
There are passages there that are way, way too honest and so wouldn’t make it into any Miller/Trump speech.
Like “I love the smell of tear gas in the morning”
Trump wouldn’t know what tear gas smells like because he is too big of a coward. Instead, he would be thinking,
“I love hearing the screams of the peaceful people that did not vote for me as my loyalist stormtroopers teargas them and shoot them down.”
Would be more like it.
All the quotes below the first are modified Hitler quotes. I’m guessing that’s what Miller is consulting.
Hilarious, Greg, if it weren’t so true.
cx: RaHoWa
Primaries define the Democratic Party’s values in 2020. Ruben Diaz Sr., a leading candidate for NYC Council is allegedly homophobic. Ballotpedia listed financial support for Diaz’ 2016 campaign, when he successfully ran for NY Senate. Those listed include, National Organization for Marriage (once chaired by Robert P. George), Catholics Count pac and, Sean Fieler, who ReWire alleges is the ATM for the political machine of the fundamentalist Christian and Catholic anti-choice movement. Diaz wrote in 2018 in the Bronx Chronicle about the decision of Catholic Charities to cease its 95 year involvement in foster adoptions over the same-sex marriage rule.
The Catholic Labor Network identifies Catholic organizations as the 3rd largest U.S. employer. The conservative majority’s SCOTUS decision in Kristin Biel v. St. James Catholic school and Morrisey-Beurre v. Our Lady of Guadalupe will have profound effect on American civil rights.
“Primaries define the Democratic Party’s values in 2020.”
I call this allegation BS x 10,000!
The results of Party primaries do not define my values or the Democratic Party’s values. Party primaries have very low turnouts compared to public elections. That means the majority of the few that vote decide who ends up on public ballots.
A Primary Election is a nominating election. Winning the party’s nomination is the first step in the election process. … A General Election is the election in which all voters make the final choice from among the party nominees and the independent candidates for a specific office.
For instance, in 2016, only 6.2% of the registered voters in Alaska voted in the primaries. Alaska had a 520,731 voting-eligible population but only 10,600 Democrats and 21,930 Republicans voted in their Party primaries.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2020/02/09/states-where-the-most-and-fewest-people-vote-in-the-primaries/41122027/
Proof that the registered voters that belong to political parties cannot be defined by their Party’s primaries.
It would have been more correct to say something like: “the winners of Party primaries define each Party’s platforms even though many registered Democrats and Republicans may not agree with the winner’s platform.”
The comment wasn’t intended to be literal- it was intended to portray a. phenomenon – establishment Dems. face a newcomer to the party values’ platform- Justice Democrats, progressivism,…
Ahh, so what else is new? Nothing has changed. Whoever is in power in a political party at any given time tends to want to keep that power. In fact, just look at the political feud between Jefferson and Adams.
“It was the election of 1800 where President John Adams and Vice-President Thomas Jefferson—the two highest elected officials in the land and each a pivotal player in the creation of our nation—squared off in a race for the White House and established a tradition of negative campaigning that would cause our current candidates to blush with embarrassment.”
https://www.forbes.com/sites/rickungar/2012/08/20/the-dirtiest-presidential-campaign-ever-not-even-close/#5323fa5b3d84
Five years ago, Diaz was described as a vocal and longtime charter school supporter.
Recently, one of his Democratic opponents in the primary for NYC Council said Diaz should be running as a Republican.
correction – Diaz Sr. is in a run for a U.S. House seat.
Diaz is also an outspoken homophobe.
I just sent a campaign contribution to his opponent Richie Torres.
Isn’t the problem that Diaz is so bad that there are a number of good candidates running against him in the democratic primary that they are splitting the vote?
Everyone wants Diaz to lose but there is a lot of disagreement about who is the “best” candidate to replace him. Richie Torres sounds like an excellent candidate, but I think some progressives want other candidates and I think AOC has endorsed Samelys López!
It’s tough and I don’t know how the opposition can come together to make sure Diaz doesn’t win.
NYC-
Rhetorically- Is Diaz going to get the religious bloc of voters?
Identify what religious block of voters you are talking about since there are thousands of religions in the U.S. and everyone that is religious does not vote the same way.
Linda,
Diaz will probably get the votes of the most right wing conservatives who register to vote for the primary, and low-interest voters who know his name.
That is highly unlikely to be the majority of primary voters. However, there are quite a few excellent candidates running against him and primary voters may choose one or another for various reasons. Whether a voter prefers Samelys López or Richie Torres says nothing about how progressive they are since they are both progressive.
So it’s possible that Diaz could win the primary even though there are more candidates who don’t prefer him, because he simply got the most votes. I can’t recall whether there are run off elections if a candidate doesn’t get 50%, but I don’t think so.
That’s why there has been some social media posts about getting the progressives to coalesce for one candidate running against Diaz in the primary, which has also made some progressives angry if it doesn’t seem as if it would be the candidate they prefer.
It’s still very possible that one of the more progressive candidates will get more votes than Diaz in the primary, but it’s definitely going to be harder when there are multiple good candidates running.
Thanks NYC parent.
Follow-up question for Lloyd, are the left wing religious going to fund a progressive candidate’s’ campaign at the same level that Sean Fieler, Catholics Count PAC, and the National Organization for Marriage can be expected to fund Diaz’s? If so, the progressive will be able to give away gifts like food to prospective voters e.g the Diaz turkeys.
Will the left wing clergy and state conferences be as strident in getting out votes for one of the progressives or, will they follow the law?
Identify these left-wing religions. To answer, please click the following link and then select from the lists that the Pew Research Center provides.
https://www.pewforum.org/religious-landscape-study/
Or, you can point out where they are from this list that I copied from Pew (same link). If left-wing religions are found under “other”, then there are not many of them.
70.6% of Americans are listed as Christian
25.4% are Evangelical Protestant
14.7% are Mainline Protestant
6.5% are Historically Black Protestant
20.8% are Catholic
1.6% are Mormon
0.5% are Orthodox Christian
0.8% are Jehovah’s Witnesses
0.4% are Other Christian.
What prevents a group of the religious who brag about the U.S. as a Christian nation from taking responsibility for either a worsening of or, no improvement in race relations in 50 years, for growing income disparities and a failing social safety net? If the leaders of the Catholic church and the evangelical compound of churches had avoided politics, one might excuse their failure to impact the practice of humanity in America.
The leaders of the two religious sects representing 46.2% of the population allow Trump and his appointees to have photo ops at their shrines, schools, churches etc.
Yes, I’ll identify the left wing religious. They are the ones who are either apolitical or whose power is unnoticeable. They are the ones who if they want to impact politics lack the funds to do so.
Do you plan to make the point that the circumstances today would be worse without a politicized clergy and state religious conferences aligned with the Koch’s?
Your thinking is fractured and you are not supporting what you think with evidence from primary sources and the links to that evidence. I am starting to suspect you do not know what I am talking about. That you do not know what a primary source is. Do you know what a link is? I doubt that, too.
FIRST, “the leaders of the two religious sects representing 46.2% of the population allow Trump and his appointees to have photo ops at their shrines, schools, churches etc.”
PROVE it. Name them. Provide links that lead to primary sources. A primary source would be written or spoken evidence with witnesses showing that those alleged “leaders” did what you claim.
Who said Donald Trump was the chosen one?
Answer: Secretary of Energy Rick Perry incited controversy recently by saying he believes Donald Trump has been sent by God as “the chosen one” — selected “to rule and judge over us on this planet and our government.” …
“Perry’s statement about a divinely ordained presidency follows a long tradition of evangelical Christians who consider the commander in chief to have been “sent by God.” It was said of presidents as politically diverse as Abraham Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson, Herbert Hoover, Franklin Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower and Ronald Reagan.” …
“Former ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley made similar comments about Trump’s presidency in an interview with the Christian Broadcasting Network last month.” …
“Haley’s and Perry’s comments show emphatically that Trump has raised anew some important theological questions about God’s providential role in the election of U.S. presidents, and the notion of divine “chosenness.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2019/12/04/calling-trump-chosen-one-is-political-act-not-theological-statement/
So, we now have two names that claim Trump is the Chosen One in addition to Trump who has also said he is the Chosen One: Nikki Haley and Rick Perry.
Linda, if you have evidence with links linked to a primary source that names the leader of a religious group saying this, provide that evidence with the links.
SECOND, you are wrong again when he said: “Yes, I’ll identify the left-wing religion. They are the ones who are either apolitical or whose power is unnoticeable.”
You didn’t name the religion. You did not provide links. You did not name the individuals that lead those religious sects.
You are talking in generalities revealing your ignorant biases, or you are reading from a script because you work for Putin. How can I allege such a thing? Over time, I have noticed your writing is stilted and write like someone that learned English as a second language. Your writing does not flow naturally.
Religion in the United States is a complex mess. For instance, even though the Cathlic Church has Pope that is its anointed, chosen leader, all American Catholics do not agree with that Pope.
The next link offers a more complete list of more than 200 distinct Christian bodies (sects). Try again but this time name the sect and provide links to evidence that supports your biased allegations.
If you cannot name the specific Christian sects and name their individual leaders linked to primary source proving your allegations, you do not know what you are talking about.
http://www.mesacc.edu/~thoqh49081/handouts/denominations.html
Now, I am going to go back to your false allegations that “the leaders of the two religious sects representing 46.2% of the population allow Trump and his appointees to have photo ops at their shrines, schools, churches etc.”
“Bishop ‘outraged’ over Trump’s church photo op during George Floyd protests/ The Rev Mariann Budde says the institution aligns itself with those seeking justice for Floyd’s death”
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jun/02/outrageous-christian-leaders-reject-trump-use-of-church-as-prop-during-george-floyd-protests
“Christian RIGHT Leaders Loved Trump’s Bible Photo Op”
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/06/christian-right-leaders-loved-trumps-bible-photo-op.html
Did you notice that adjective between Christian and ‘leaders’ was RIGHT and not LEFT?
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/06/christian-right-leaders-loved-trumps-bible-photo-op.html
“Religious leaders to Trump: Stop using houses of God for your photo-ops”
His appearance drew an unusual condemnation from Archbishop Wilton D. Gregory, the first African American archbishop of the Archdiocese of Washington.
“I find it baffling and reprehensible that any Catholic facility would allow itself to be so egregiously misused and manipulated in a fashion that violates our religious principles, which call us to defend the rights of all people, even those with whom we might disagree,” Gregory said in a statement. The shrine is operated independently by the Knights of Columbus, a Catholic community organization that has lobbied for conservative political causes. …
https://www.newsday.com/long-island/politics/trump-church-photo-bishop-george-floyd-protests-military-cuomo-de-blasio-biden-poll-1.45249963
Jefferson
“in every age, in every country, the priest is hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot…”
Linda, your pull quote from Thomas Jefferson who died on July 4, 1826, was about his understanding of religion in the 18th and 19th centuries and has little to do with religion in the United States.
The following statement leads to a sight called Americans United.
“We are lawyers and lobbyists, students and activists, religious leaders and impassioned Americans. We are people of faith and people who don’t profess any particular faith. We are a community that includes and welcomes people of all genders, races, ethnicities, religions or beliefs, sexual orientations, ages, classes and abilities.”
Click the link and scroll down to discover the religious leaders that do not represent your allegations that they are hostile to liberty.
https://www.au.org/who-we-are
“Surprising support for separating church from state”
“A whopping 67% of the American people agree that the First Amendment ‘requires a clear separation of church and state,’ according to the 2011 State of the First Amendment survey released July 12 by the First Amendment Center.
“This is somewhat surprising given the decades-old culture-war fight over the meaning and scope of separation.
“For decades now, Christian-nation advocates have tried to convince Americans that ‘separation of church and state isn’t in the First Amendment.’ They have peddled a revisionist account of a ‘Christian America’ that should (at best) tolerate other faiths to reside here.
“Apparently, the American people aren’t buying the propaganda.
“It’s true that the actual words ‘separation of church and state’ aren’t in the Constitution. But as the majority of Americans understand, the principle of separation clearly is. …
https://www.freedomforuminstitute.org/2011/07/14/surprising-support-for-separating-church-from-state/
There’s a YouTube video of a staff member at the John Paul shrine opening the door to allow Trump and his wife access to the patio where they posed for the photo op. Bishop Gregory’s statement was NOT that Trump commandeered the shrine. (Trump commandeered the Episcopalian church property for his photo op there.) Gregory’s statement can be inferred as anger at the Catholic hierarchy that permitted the photo op at the shrine. The shrine’s statement afterwards didn’t condemn Trump. (The Episcopalian church leader’s statement did.)
The shrine’s excuse was that the event had been planned before the incident at the Episcopalian church. The shrine photo op happened the day after the Episcopalian church incident.
(1) The Knights of Columbus could have cancelled the event. (2) The USCCB could have written a statement in support of Bishop Gregory’s statement, condemning the K of C for having the event. They didn’t.
Pat Robertson said that Trump brandishing the Bible, “wasn’t cool”.
Lloyd, you and I will have to agree that we are on different wave lengths without commonality about what we visually see, read and hear.
It seems silly tor me to defend the fact that English is my first language and that I’ve never lived out of the U.S.
You’ve implied I need immediate gratification, you’ve compared me to Rush Limbaugh and suggested I’m Putin’s stooge. Really?
My view- defense of religion doesn’t bring out the most rationale thoughts.
Quotation marks do not indicate reputable evidence. Everything you say only supports your anti-religious bias until you provide the links that lead to primary sources.
You do not know that I do not trust religions, but I don’t attack them as you do. You see, I think people have a right to belong to religion if that’s what they want to belive.
I made that decision when I was 12, sixty-two years ago. But when someone claims something like you do, too often, I expect them to prove it.
Where are the reputable links to the sources of your primary evidence? One or two examples without links does not prove anything. Your allegations are baseless without the links, without the evidence.
That’s something else I learned a long time ago. Trust no one until they earn your trust. YOu are earning nothing. Where Are the links so I can determine if what you allege is accurate or based on confirmation bias.
Until then, I will continue to suspect you are an alleged troll working for someone like Putin or Trump.
Linda, I don’t think you are anyone’s stooge. I do think you have become obsessed with trying to prove that Catholics are very, very bad. All religions have god and bad actors. Martin G, the 75-year-old peace activist who was knocked down by cops, is Catholic.
Diane
What I write here is not aimed at blind church loyalists (e.g. those with a false perception about Bishop Gregory’s plea) but, instead at those who were erroneously under the impression that Trump was elected by a single religious group. Before researching, I thought Jerry Falwell and Franklin Graham et al were Trump’s base, that William Barr, Leonard Leo and Paul Weyrich hailed from a religious right made up solely of evangelicals. The SCOTUS conservative majority is indicative of where the power lies. I deduce there is a shared ignorance about the religious political power embodied in a Catholic-evangelical alliance. Loss of civil rights (Biel v. St. James Catholic school), taxpayer funding for religious schools, denial of women’s reproductive rights and discrimination against the LGBTQ community has, IMO, been far more advanced by the Catholic leadership than the evangelical leadership, in part because evangelicals have been singled out for disparagement and media scrutiny. With possible predictability, the bias finds support in the religious who rank themselves superior.
One thing that I believe may be true, is a lack of understanding by those on the east and west coasts about the religious base in the electoral college-rich midsection of the US.
It was brave for you to post the comments of the head of the USCCB praising Trump. It was also essential to understanding an enemy of democracy.
The umbrage taken at my comments appears to reflect an inability to discern between reports about political activities and, an entirely different topic, congregant religious beliefs.
Jefferson wrote critiquing religion as part of government years ago but, in March, from Christianity Today, 3-13-2020, “White Christians: Trump may not be a good person but, he is a good president”.
I don’t pander to any sect, I provide information about political activities and I thank you for allowing me to.
Data has it limits but, the research about GOP voting by religious affiliation provides some insight about influence aggregations.
Additional data to provide insight would be the budgets of religious affiliated groups for the activities of government policy development, influence on enactment of laws and policy, and money spent on lawsuits.
Areas include LGBTQ discrimination, exemptions for religious employers from civil rights employment law, denial of women’s rights to make decisions about their bodies, achievement of diversion of tax money from the public sector to the religious sector, and expansion of tax shelters for religious political campaign spending.
The comparison to the budgets of the religiously affiliated organizations that promote separation of church and state, taxes for common goods, pro LGBT rights, etc. would be interesting.
Without the data’s availability, just speculating about which religious side gets more funding?
Here’s a Timely Tune ♫♪
Well, the Bible tells us about a man
Who ruled Babylon and all its land
Around the city he built a wall
And declared that Babylon would never fall
He had concubines and wives
He called his Babylon “Paradise”
On his throne, he drank and ate
But for Belshazzar it was getting late
🍻👍