For decades, the GOP has claimed to be the party of “family values.” From what we have read recently about Governor Noem of South Dakota, who allegedly was romantically entangled with a Trump aide, and Rep. Lauren Boebert, ousted from a musical performance in Denver because she and her date were groping and vaping, the “family values” bit doesn’t fit.
And here is another broken vow, as reported by Business Insider:
A tale as old as time is playing out yet again: A politician who promotes the importance of family has abandoned them.
This time, it appears to be US Rep. Jeff Duncan, a Republican in South Carolina. Duncan’s wife, Melody Duncan, filed for divorce last week, citing her husband’s multiple affairs.
Melody Duncan, his wife of more than 30 years and mother to his three sons, accused her husband of at least two affairs in the divorce filing, which was first obtained and published by the Index-Journal, a local newspaper in Greenwood.
Duncan has been in office for 13 years and has long advocated for conservative Christian values.
“As a life-long social conservative, I am a strong advocate for life and traditional family values,” Duncan writes on his website. Accompanying the post is a stock image of the Holy Bible, a book famous for its views on infidelity.
He then pledges himself to the anti-abortion cause: “The most basic component of our society is the family.”
The family, plus a few mistresses, it would seem.
The divorce filing described Melody Duncan as a “dutiful wife” who “wholeheartedly supported” Duncan in his career. It cites a political event last month where Duncan echoed his wife’s sentiment.
At a “Faith and Freedom BBQ” on August 28, Duncan described his wife as “supportive and loving” while portraying himself as a “dedicated, dutiful husband,” according to the divorce filing. Duncan then “left the next day and went directly” to the home of his mistress, it says.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Well, you know what ole Jesus always said: “Not all who say “Lord, Lord” will enter the Kingdom of Heaven”
(3) Jesus said, “If those who lead you say to you, ‘See, the kingdom is in the sky,’ then the birds of the sky will precede you. If they say to you, ‘It is in the sea,’ then the fish will precede you. Rather, the kingdom is inside of you, and it is outside of you.
–The Gospel of Thomas
Look around. Here we are. We have but to make it so.
From the Beltane celebration I wrote, drawing on many sources:
“Once in the month, and better it be when the moon is full, then shall you assemble in some secret place and adore the spirits within yourselves and your fellow creatures. There shall you assemble, you who reject all fakeries, fabrications, foretellings, and fantasies of sorcerers, fakirs, inquisitors, prophets, preachers, gurus, and priests and celebrate the root, stem, vine, leaf, bud, and flower of that which is. Know that no ‘eternal’ heaven nor hell, being born in time of the fantasies of men, endures as do the transient bud of spring or cloud before the moon or wave upon the sea, which return and return again, in never-ending rebirth and transformation.”
“. . . celebrate the root, stem, vine, leaf, bud, and flower of that which is.”
Thanks, but I’ll stick with the bud/flower. Or is that Bud? Is Bud considered woke seeing how it’s dad to Bud Light?
lol
The Family Research Council gave Duncan a True Blue Award. And, he received the honor of being a Heritage Action Sentinel. “Jeff Duncan holds hearing on religious freedom.” Evidently freedom extends to adultery but, not to abortion and LGBT rights.
Women who vote Republican are stupid when they fail to understand religious freedom is synonymous with authoritative control of women and “boys will be boys.”
NYT Pitchbot-
“What’s it like to be a woman in a red state who needs an abortion. Ross Douthout drops by to explain.” Btw- Douthout is right wing Catholic.
The following should be a tweet at Pitchbot
“Tax money diverted to Catholic schools, surge in handmaidens “
The NYT has always felt the need to have at least one rightwing columnist. At present, it has two.
If right wing means the views of men like DeSantis, why would a reputable newspaper provide an opportunity to legitimize the indefensible? Obviously, money is the reason.
Pitchbot criticizes the misguided notion very effectively.
At least, Bari Weiss has been set adrift.
Unless representatives from the right wing support Donald Trump, they are pointless as a category reflective of the left’s opposition party. Both the NYT and The View are guilty of positioning Republicans as better than they are.
The landscape is the policies and personnel choices of Trump and Biden.
The NYT and The View shouldn’t make it appear otherwise by playing it safe and giving voice to a segment in the GOP that has a negligible base of support, someone like Anna Navarro and that other one who was formerly a Trump supporter.
The party of family values, but which family. A family of ghouls and economic vampires.
The family the GOP has in mind is the Koch family.
A nest of economic vampires?
Why of course the Addams Family!
Certainly have better family morals than the GOP-Grand Ol Phuckers (modification of Roy’s usage)
This is how fundamentalists live with themselves.
When we speak of fundamentalists, we are talking about people who think the monstrous, primitive, cruel god of the Old Testament worthy of worship. These are not “good” people. They are savages living among us.
Annie Dillard wrote in Pilgrim at Tinker Creek that no god ever created by humans is as kind as is the person who turns over a beetle who is stuck on its back.
OMGGGGG Diane, Menendez is a legit traitor took gold, cars, so cash giving up secrets to Egypt and you asre talking about Boebert vaping and getting caught up with a democrat who is probably using her????
The entire Canadsa parliament just gave a standing ovation to a 98 year old ukraine nazi thinking it would fit this insane narrative, a nazi!!!!!!!!!
So embarrassing and absolutely horrific they did not know that son of a bitch was a nazi!
The camera was directly on her hmmmm, but the white house cannot figure out where the cocaine came from lol.
You were all hilarious seeing and hoping desantis had any shot, ugh you guys are always years behind on the truth. Sad people.
“. . . ugh you guys are always years behind on the truth. Sad people.”
First, How did you get your AI program to sound so human like?
Second, No not sad nor behind in truth. You wouldn’t know truth if your AI program depended upon it.
Since the WH can’t figure out where the cocaine came from, let me help you out. It starts with the coca plant grown in the Andes in South America. . . from there. . . well I think you get the picture.
OMGGGGG Diane, Menendez is a legit traitor took gold, cars, so cash giving up secrets to Egypt and you asre talking about Boebert vaping and getting caught up with a democrat who is probably using her????
The entire Canadsa parliament just gave a standing ovation to a 98 year old ukraine nazi thinking it would fit this insane narrative, a nazi!!!!!!!!!
So embarrassing and absolutely horrific they did not know that son of a bitch was a nazi!
The camera was directly on her hmmmm, but the white house cannot figure out where the cocaine came from lol.
You were all hilarious seeing and hoping desantis had any shot, ugh you guys are always years behind on the truth. Sad people.
Hoping DeSantis had any shot?
At winning the nomination? No one here hoped anything of the kind. Quite the contrary. However, please note that we are many months away from the major primaries. Anything could happen between now and then. Who knows, maybe our legal system could finally get its freaking act together and imprison that career criminal and traitor to his country, Donald Trump.
Reminds me of my Uncle who often earnestly talked of the “blood of Jesus” and ranted about having an “avowed homosexual”. I found out after his death that he had a mistress, who he left most of his money to. There’s a saying in the bible “The spirit is willing, but the flesh is week”.
One of the favorite hymns at the church I attended as a child: “Are You Washed in the Blood of the Lamb?”
And then there was the one with the lyric about “trembling virgins and gaping graves.” LOL.
Thousand Virgins, chaste and clean,
From Love’s pleasing Witchcraft free,
Fairer than the Sons of Men,
Consecrate their Hearts to Thee.
from Hymns and Sacred Poems, John and Charles Wesley
Because having had sex and born children is so dirty, so “unclean.” This is one sick, sick religion. Primitive. Creepy.
But Bob, don’t you know about “The Loophole”? (Garfunkle & Oates) God’s given humanity a way around the problem of sinful urges. I won’t give you the answer because a good teacher poses questions to encourage critical thinking. How can you enter a house if the front door is locked?
Gosh, He thinks of everything, doesn’t He!!!
cx: and bearing children
Just another example of your wide range of knowledge and learning Bob!