Sunday, September 30, 2018

COUNTERPUNCH

Charles Grassley writes Bernie Sanders.


NIX NIX HIX

Tom Nichols REALLY hates having to share a nationality with morons.

Here's a different idea: instead of the 70 percent of Americans who live in urbanized areas driving out to the sticks to meet Real Murica, maybe the other 30 pct could think about how disconnected they are from the 21st century majority of the citizens in their own country.

Here's another different idea.  Maybe allegedly-intelligent guys like Tommy and other urban sophisticates would do well to remember who grows their food and stuff.

DO NOT CLICK ON THIS LINK

Because it would be wrong, especially if you read the comments.

LEAD BALLOON

Claire McCaskill's upcoming pseudo-principled rejection of Brett Kavanaugh isn't going over very well at all here in the Show-Me State.

WARNING SHOT?

If this is what I think it is, the number of new Brett Kavanaugh accusers just dried up.

AND NOW...IDIOTS

In case you ever need an illustration of the term "non-starter."

Can we as a nation begin now to consider expanding the category of “veteran” to include the diplomats and the mediators, those working in conflict resolution, and activists dedicated to preventing wars and to bringing existing wars to diplomatic resolution once they have begun?

Unless your "safe space" regularly takes live fire, I'm going to have to say no.

What about the practitioners of non-violent resistance in the face of tyranny and oppression?

What about them?  Since it's next-to impossible to get blown up by an IED while spending entire days posting anti-Trump tweets, you're comparing apples to Gender Studies majors.

Individuals who stand up and put their lives on the line to defend our country from threats to our national security, as those in our nation’s military do, are true patriots and veterans.

That they are indeed.

But true patriots and veterans are also those who speak out, stand up, and put their lives on the line by actively advocating for justice, freedom, and liberty through peaceful means.

I'm not questioning anyone's patriotism.  I just think that the term "veteran" ought to be reserved for the people who have earned it, people who have lost family members, friends, limbs, the ability to walk, see or hear, mental health, etc., or who were ever in danger of any of that.  I have another term for people who merely want to make their comfortable lives seem far more dangerous than they actually are.

Saturday, September 29, 2018

SHOCKER

This didn't take long.

"Dr. Ford's team is saying 'no' to a one-week deadline, as the president has ordered, and Senator Flake and others have promised to, and they're also saying no limit on scope."

Dear Republican Party,

You're being played.  Again.

Sincerely,

Chris

Friday, September 28, 2018

SETTLED LAW?

You'd be cranky too if you had the same reverential affection and awe for Roe v. Wade that American slaveholders used to have for the Dred Scott decision.

GLASS HALF-FULL

When Brett Kavanaugh is confirmed, Douchebeard will have a REAL tough time of it.

SNOWBALL IN HELL

That ship has sailed, Meggie.

I pause to implore GOP not to confirm Kavanaugh this way. It can only end in something worse to the disgraceful circus we've just endured. And to implore Democrats to offer some sort of olive branch compromise that might let them agree to a reasonably time-limited investigation.

Democrats are single-handedly responsible for "the disgraceful circus we've just endured" and the idea that any Democratic "olive branch" whatsoever can or should be trusted is too stupid an idea for any intellectually or morally serious person to even consider entertaining.

Thursday, September 27, 2018

CHILL OUT, BRETT

All that happened was that Democrats called you a drunken rapist.  What do you possibly have to be so upset about, wonders particularly obsequious former Obama lap dog Ben Rhodes.

Watching Kavanaugh, it is striking how from Trump on down there is a constant sense of being victimized from those who are the most powerful and privileged people in the country.

WILL WONDERS NEVER CEASE?

If the Kavanaugh hearing accomplishes nothing else, it's at least got this going for it.  It's grown a spine for South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham.

An angry Lindsey Graham unloaded on his Senate colleagues during the Christine Blasey Ford-Brett Kavanaugh hearing Thursday, declaring during the questioning phase of Kavanaugh's testimony, "This is the most unethical sham since I've been in politics" and later telling his Republican colleagues that anyone who votes against confirming Kavanaugh as the newest Supreme Court justice is "legitimizing the most despicable thing I have seen in my time in politics." During the rant, he also shot off the question, "Are you a gang rapist?" to which Kavanaugh replied, "No."

AMERICAN "JOURNALISM"

Democracy Dies A Little More Every Single Time The Washington Post Publishes.

Kavanaugh sexual assault hearing turns partisan, as Republican senators lash out at treatment of Supreme Court nominee

MAIN COURSE

Pretty sure Gordon Ramsey did the same thing on Hell's Kitchen once.

Take that! We can only imagine that's what a seal was thinking when he slapped a kayaker in the face with an octopus over the weekend. Kyle Mulinder was kayaking off the coast of New Zealand's South Island with a group of GoPro content creators, Time reports, when the seal emerged from the depths and hurled an octopus into his head.

PRIORITIES

I haven't been watching the Kavanaugh hearing at all (life's too short and besides, a "Walker, Texas Ranger" rerun is on in a few minutes) but it seems to be pissing off the right people.

UH...

No, not so much.












Seriously, AP?  Seriously?

SHALL WE CONTINUE IN SIN THAT GRACE MAY ABOUND?

Oatesie's down with it.

traditional Catholic obsession w/ analyzing & confessing "sins"--especially "sins of impurity"--helps to explain outbursts of sexually abusive behavior & need for alcohol to release it.

Dearest non-Christians,

Whatever you do, do not try this at home.

Just lookin' out,

Chris

Wednesday, September 26, 2018

THINGS FALL APART

Democrat slanders cannot hold.

Julie Swetnick, the woman who accused Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh and a friend of attending house parties where women — including herself — were sexually assaulted, had a restraining order filed against her years later in Miami by her former boyfriend.

According to Vinneccy, Swetnick threatened him after they broke up and even after he got married to his current wife and had a child.

“Right after I broke up with her, she was threatening my family, threatening my wife and threatening to do harm to my baby at that time,” Vinneccy said in a telephone interview with POLITICO. "I know a lot about her.”

"She’s not credible at all,” he said. “Not at all.”

Best-case scenario.  Kavanaugh is confirmed.  Immediately thereafter, the GOP starts filming TV ads reminding voters of this travesty and pissing off the base no end.  The Republicans hold or increase their congressional lead.  Next vacancy, Amy Coney Barrett sails through to the Supreme Court, which is then completely remade for a generation or more.

California decides that there's no point in waiting any longer and secedes from the Union.

UPDATE: Gang aft-agley.

On the eve the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing examining the stories of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh and his accuser, Christine Blasey Ford, a man has reportedly come forward, claiming that he, not Judge Kavanaugh, was the one who had the encounter in question with Ford.
 
Burgess Everett, a reporter for Politico, broke the news on Twitter. "[Senate Judiciary] Committee staff have a second interview with a man who believes he, not Judge Kavanaugh, had the encounter with Dr. Ford in the summer of 1982 that is the basis of her allegation," Everett wrote. "He described his recollection of their interaction in some detail."
 
Thursday should be fun.

THOSE WACKY ANGLICANS

For about a decade, I made whatever Internet reputation I have goofing on them so I thought I'd check back in with the Anglican religious tradition.  What are those krazy kidz up to these days?

You only get one guess.

This recently happened at St. John's Cathedral in Brisbane, Australia.

On September 16, St. John's Cathedral in Brisbane held a service of "Choral Evensong for the Brisbane pride festival." The church's Facebook page posted photos of the church decked in rainbow flags, the sermon referred to the Trinity of God as the church's "queering principle," and according to reports, prayers were said to a "Rainbow Christ" and an "Erotic Christ."

Quick.  What legendary MCJ catchphrase am I going to use right now?

Well, of course they were. 

Moving on, as for whatever the hell, and yeah, I used that word deliberately, a "queering principle" is, that will soon become clear.  Unless you own a Christian Bible, read a Christian Bible and take the words that you read seriously in which case it won't become clear at all.

"The Trinity is our Queering principle, that which invites us to defy binaries and labels," Peter Catt, the cathedral's dean, declared in a sermon entitled "Queering the City of God."

Don't look at me. In case you're wondering what that whole "binaries" thing is, that refers to that whole man/woman business God and God Incarnate were always going on about.

In that sermon, Catt praised LGBT activists in the 1990s who "used the term to point us to the dangers of seeing people through binary lenses. Queer thus came to be used for people who did not fit the approved categories; people who transcended the limiting territory created by labels."

Maybe you enjoy getting it on with the ficus tree a la Harvey Weinstein. Or maybe you self-identify as a ficus tree and let the other house plants regularly have their way with you. Either way, you've "transcended the limiting territory created by labels" and good for you. But this gets even stupider.

"Queer serves to remind us that no matter how many identities we describe or allocate there will always be those who feel excluded from all of them," the dean argued.

If I were inclined to write one, this is where I'd put my NAMBLA crack.  But how about a little "theological" justification for all this.

As could be expected, Catt seized on Galatians 3:28, "There is neither Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus." The dean argued that this passage meant "the Christian is not to understand their-self or others in terms of the great binary classification [sic] that were applied to humanity at the time," but to "transcend these three binaries."

Yup.  Dude went there. FreakingGalatiansFreakingThreeFreakingTwentyFreakingEight means we can go ahead and do away with that restrictive man/woman "binary" that was "applied to humanity at the time." Never mind the fact that NO SERIOUS THEOLOGIAN would EVER dream of offering such an idiotic and dishonest interpretation of that Scriptural passage.

And you have to love the leftist Anglican conceit.  The man/woman "binary" was "applied to humanity at the time" but it just so happens that only now are we advanced enough to "transcend these three binaries," whatever the hell that means.

Funny how that works.  In 2003, the Anglicans suddenly decided that all Biblical restrictions and sanctions on homosexuality needed to be abandoned.  Just so happened that that was the same year Gene Robinson got his pointy hat and his hooked stick. Unless I see a pillar of cloud and/or fire somewhere nearby, I'm not buying it but that's how far the Anglican "tradition" has fallen.

"We talk of God as being a Trinity: Three in One. The Anglican Theologian Sarah Coakley suggests that the fact that God is a Trinity trumps all our binaries," she argued. "No binary is of God.

So unless you want the Anglican deity to, well, not do anything at all, start identifying as a man/woman, a ficus tree and a belt sander.  Or something.

She also points us to the fact that Church fathers such as Gregory of Nyssa held that there is a gender fluidity within the persons of the Trinity."

Not to put too fine a point on it but nuh-uh.

This argument is hogwash. Gregory of Nyssa's "On the Holy Trinity" emphasizes the equality of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and never once suggests that any of the persons of the Godhead are female or feminine, or that their gender is "fluid."

For those of us who have abandoned "official" Anglicanism, our decisions were not quick.  It took me and I suspect most ex-Anglicans a long time to come to the inescapable conclusion that we needed to stop rationalizing our continued membership in this "church" and move on.

What started us out the door?  For me, it was the increasing inability to square what I heard from the pulpit with what I read in the Word of God.  But I never heard anything this radical, this much of an absurd pseudo-intellectual stretch.

You seldom ever do. 

At first.

CIVIL DISCOURSE

Republicans aren't murderers, claims Douchebeard.  Except when they are.

Tuesday, September 25, 2018

WHY TRUMP WON

If NeverTrump obsessives and other "Republican" or "conservative" cognoscenti haven't figured this out by now, they never will.

“The US will always choose independence and cooperation over global governance, control, and domination,” Trump said. “I honor the right of every nation in this room to pursue its own customs, beliefs, and traditions. The United States will not tell you how to live or work or worship. We only ask that you honor our sovereign rights in return.” Also: “We will not be governed by an international body that is unaccountable to our own citizens."

"Few give anything to us. That is why we are taking a hard look at US foreign assistance. ... Moving forward we are only going to give foreign aid to those who respect us and frankly our—our friends. And we expect other countries to pay their fair share for the cost of their defense."

NEO-COMMIES

The Democrat Party politburo rounds into shape.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said on Tuesday that “there’s no presumption of innocence” for Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, because a Senate hearing is not a legal proceeding.

“It’s not a legal proceeding, it’s a fact-finding proceeding…this is standard operating procedure,” Schumer said. “There is no presumption of innocence or guilt when you have a nominee before you.”

Monday, September 24, 2018

IN-KIND CONTRIBUTION

This should be interesting.  Seems that during his upcoming visit to a fraudulent international organization, the fake head of a fictional country will announce his support for the Republicans in the fall election.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas will hold a meeting in New York on Wednesday with senior officials representing 40 countries and international organizations to discuss ways to block or influence the upcoming U.S. Middle East peace plan, Israeli officials and Western diplomats told me.

This is Abbas' most proactive diplomatic step since Trump's Jerusalem embassy announcement, which led him to cut ties with the White House. Since then, Abbas has been campaigning against the Trump administration's policies on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Abbas is trying to rally the international community against Trump and challenge the White House claims that he's undermining a potential peace process.

The Palestinians wrote that preserving the two-state solution is one of the basic principles that should be supported by all those who reject Trump's policies that undermine world order.

The ads write themselves.

AMERICAN KGB

If the Democrat Party ever completely takes over the national government, I have a perfect candidate to head up the secret police.

Member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Senator Mazie Hirono (D-HI) doubled-down today on her refusal to extend, or deem extended, the presumption of innocence to Judge Brett Kavanaugh in the matters of sexual assault with which he has been accused, most prominently by Dr. Christine Blasey Ford.

Hirono refused to say that Kavanaugh deserves the same presumption of innocence as anyone else Sunday on CNN’s State of the Union with Jake Tapper, who pressed hard on the question.

“Look, we’re not in a court of law, we’re actually in a court of credibility at this point,” said Hirono. “Without having the FBI report or some semblance of trying to get corroboration, we are left with the credibility of the two witnesses.”

As guilty as Mazerooski needs him to be.

UPDATE: Mazerooski finds her deputy.

UPDATE: And her secreter...ERRRRR, executive assistant.

AMERICAN "JOURNALISM"

On the bright side, there is finally an occupation for telemarketers to point to, laugh at and make fun of.  So they've got that going for them.

Where did the corroborating witness get the information from? @JDickerson

“He remembers it from–he was in the same dorm .. and he remembers it clearly” @JaneMayerNYer

But did he see it? @JDickerson

“No. As I’ve said, he heard it from someone who was there.” @JaneMayerNYer

Sunday, September 23, 2018

TECH MORONIC

Certain people will have much nicer lives once they figure out how the Internet works.

A Texas superintendent has resigned after drawing widespread ire for comments he made on Facebook about the inferiority of black quarterbacks. Per the Houston Chronicle, Lynn Redden of the Onalaska school district officially stepped down in a letter sent Saturday to the president of the school board. "As an educator, this experience has taught me that I still have a lot to learn," Redden wrote. "My comments were not only uninformed but also hurtful, and I understand now why they were offensive to so many people."

Saturday, September 22, 2018

THE LAST MEAL

Before the execution.

I'M BEGGIN' YA

I'm so old that I can remember when college football teams had ONLY one helmet and ONLY two uniforms.  As of today's game with Jawja, my Missouri University Tigers have THREE of each.

Please stop.

It just bothers me, that's all.

AND NOW...IDIOTS

Daddy?  What does the word "dumbass" mean?




Friday, September 21, 2018

BURN

Shot.

My favorite part of the Kavanaugh controversy is how people who are absolutely convinced they know exactly what happened in Judea 2,000 years ago have gaslit many Americans into believing it is literally impossible to know what happened at an event in 1983.

Chaser.

When you find multiple witnesses who wrote books about what happened at that house party, be sure and let the rest of us know.

Thursday, September 20, 2018

POST-APOCALYPTICYNICISM

I wonder what will eventually emerge when this whole "United States of America" concept comes crashing to the ground.

A former classmate of Christine Blasey Ford tells NPR that she does not know if an alleged sexual assault by Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh took place as she first suggested on social media.

"That it happened or not, I have no idea," Cristina King Miranda told NPR's Nina Totenberg. "I can't say that it did or didn't."

Cristie could say it yesterday.

That's different from what Miranda wrote Wednesday in a now-deleted Facebook post that stated definitively, "The incident DID happen, many of us heard about it in school."

A neat trick insofar as the alleged incident allegedly took place in the summer. Allegedly.  But screw it, public libel is better than sex.

"In my [Facebook] post, I was empowered and I was sure it probably did [happen]," Miranda told NPR.

Or would be if IDIOTS didn't keep demanding stupid male crap like "facts" and "truth" and whether or not something actually happened,

"I had no idea that I would now have to go to the specifics and defend it before 50 cable channels and have my face spread all over MSNBC news and Twitter."

Sucks when people call out lying through your teeth for purely political ends, doesn't it?

DOG BITES MAN AS SUN RISES IN EAST

Claire McCaskill is thumbs down on Brett Kavanaugh.

Moderate Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill will vote against Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court, narrowing the number of potential Democratic votes the nominee can secure.

There are Important PrinciplesTM in play here.

The Missouri senator, who is up for reelection this fall in a conservative state, cited Kavanaugh’s views on “dark, anonymous money that is crushing our democracy.”

Claire hates "dark, anonymous money that is crushing our democracy" so passionately that she's silently allowed it to pay for the lion's share of her anti-GOP campaign ads this year. That aside, that's the only reason Claire's a no on Kavanaugh.  The current travesty of both justice and anything within 20,000 light years of morality did not enter into her thinking.

She said that the “troubling” allegation of sexual assault leveled against Kavanaugh did not influence her decision.

At all.

“He has revealed his bias against limits on campaign donations which places him completely out of the mainstream of this nation.

Because EVERYONE knows that the single most important political issue facing this country, the issue that worries, no, terrifies every single American citizen, from the oldest to the youngest, is how do we legally stop people from giving money to the GOP political campaigns are financed.

He wrote, ‘And I have heard very few people say that limits on contributions to candidates are unconstitutional although I for one tend to think those limits have some constitutional problems,’” McCaskill said. “Judge Kavanaugh will give free rein to anonymous donors

To contribute to Republicans

and foreign governments through their citizens to spend money

On Republicans.

to interfere and influence our elections with so-called ‘issue ads.’”

In other words, issues like abortion, say. But that's not the only thing that's got Claire's American and union-made panties in a bunch.

McCaskill also said she was “uncomfortable” with his views on executive power

But mostly it's the money.

but said that her fear that Kavanaugh’s place on the bench would loosen political spending restrictions was the “determining factor.”

Politico notes that this should not surprise anyone.  Claire's a good Democrat apparatchick who votes the way her party tells her to.  But I guess you'd have to be a Missourian to see the obviously political calculation in all this.

It's important to remember a basic fact about Missouri politics.  For the most part, elections here are won or lost in two places.  Suburban Kansas City and suburban St. Louis. The cities of Kansas City and St. Louis are solidly in the Democrat camp while outstate Missouri is almost completely red and will be for generations.

Missouri suburbs, containing a significant chunk of the state's population, are generally in play.

So the key for any local politician is to excite your own base and get them out to the polls while simultaneously doing everything you possibly can do damp down the enthusiasm of the other party's base.  Which goes far to explain Claire's cynical attempt to put the best possible personal spin that she can on her vote.

Because Claire's statement positively screams something at me.  The current Democratic attempt to defame and smear Judge Kavanaugh may just be resonating here and in a way that is not at all favorable to McCaskill's reelection chances.

Hence Claire's attempt to justify what every Missourian knows that she was going to do anyway as a question of Important PrinciplesTM and most certainly nothing whatsoever to do with the current hysteria and how dare you think otherwise.

Will it work?  I have my doubts but stay tuned.

Wednesday, September 19, 2018

POSTURING

Insofar as the people for whom this is intended won't see this and will probably never even know about it, I guess this is what they mean by virtue-signaling.

Tonight, the @Orioles became the first pro team to wear uniforms with Braille lettering.

DOUCHEBEARD?

Hate to keep bringing this up but...

W

I

S

C

O

N

S

I

N

YOU SAY YOU WANT A REVOLUTION?

Female US presidential candidate who evidently never read The Federalist and who LOST TO DONALD J. TRUMP has some ideas for American electoral reform.

We need to improve and protect our elections, from instituting paper ballot backups to repairing the Voting Rights Act, getting secret money out of politics, and—you won't be surprised to hear my support for this—abolishing the Electoral College.

What do you mean "we," old-timer?  The system isn't broken just because you forgot Wisconsin was an American state resulting in your LOSS TO DONALD J. TRUMP. Contrary to what you may believe in your heart of hearts, no one is entitled to be president of the United States.

To be honest, I'd be all for this if Grandma added just one more small thing to this loopy leftist laundry list of hers. A right to peaceful secession.

I'm completely serious.  After all, what would motivate people in states like Kansas, North Dakota, Missouri or Wyoming to willingly take orders from political cesspools like New England, New York City, Chicago, San Francisco or California? But if states had the right to opt out of such a situation, Grandma's electoral wet dream might have a slight chance of seeing the light of day.

Shove this garbage down the throats of states like Kansas, North Dakota, Missouri or Wyoming and you'll get a secession that will be anything but peaceful.  And the new "Confederate States of America" will extend to the Canadian border.

Tuesday, September 18, 2018

DEAR DEMOCRATS

PLEASE run this doddering old fool in 2020.

UM...NIKKI HALEY'S WINDOW TREATMENTS?

You have to go some to be this clueless.

The New York Times needs your help. We’re looking for false information being spread deliberately to confuse, mislead, or influence voters ahead of the 2018 midterm elections.

RELATED: Let's see.  Our massive institutional failures, top to bottom, got some of our students killed.  You know what we need?  Better spin.

Monday, September 17, 2018

HIGHER ED WATCH

The local Jesuit school, ladies and gentlemen.

A private university in Missouri that fired over 100 staff members amid budget woes in 2017 is now outfitting all of students residential spaces with personal smart speakers, and the school is refusing to say just how much it spent on the gadgets.

Saint Louis University in Missouri is outfitting all of its more than 2,300 student rooms with Amazon Echo Dots. The Echo Dot is “a voice-controlled speaker” that uses the virtual assistant Alexa to “play music, control smart home devices, make calls, answer questions, set timers and alarms, and more,” according to Amazon.

“Every minute we can save our students from having to search for the information they need online is another minute that they can spend focused on what matters most: their education,” Saint Louis University’s Vice President David Hakanson said in an announcement.

AMERICAN "JOURNALISM"

Due process, schmoo process, sniffs ABC's Matt Dowd.

Enough with the “he said, she said” storyline. If this is he said, she said, then let’s believe the she in these scenarios. She has nothing to gain, and everything to lose. For 250 years we have believed the he in these scenarios. Enough is enough.

I'M A JOKER, I'M A SMOKER, I'M A MIDNIGHT COKER

This gives a whole new depth to the old advertising command to, "Have a Coke and a smile."

Coca-Cola is considering a move into the growing market for cannabis-infused drinks.
 
Coke said in a statement Monday that it is "closely watching" the growth of CBD, a non-psychoactive component in marijuana, as an ingredient in what it called functional wellness beverages.

"The space is evolving quickly," Coke (KO) said. "No decisions have been made at this time."
 
CBD, which does not produce a high for the user, has been used for medical purposes, including easing inflammation, pain and nausea.

FINGERNAILS ON A CHALKBOARD

The Episcopalians are still using it, Katherine.

Episcopalians rally around ‘Way of Love’ framework for LIVING INTO Jesus Movement

I spent a little more than a decade watching "official" Anglicanism's long, slow, sad decline into High-Church Unitarian sludge.  And no expression ever used by those people ever drove me up a freaking WALL faster or better than "living into."

What in the name of St. Anselm and the ontological argument does "live into" even mean anyway? Is it different from "live out of" or "live alongside" or "live in back of" or "live above and slightly to the right?" Or is it shorthand for when you desperately want to sound profound only you have nothing even remotely profound to communicate?

Sunday, September 16, 2018

MODERN ANGLICANISM

If you try to become all things to all people, you will eventually become nothing to anybody.

The Church of England is facing a generational catastrophe with only 2% of young adults identifying with it, while seven out of 10 under-24s say they have no religion, research reveals.

C of E affiliation is at a record low among all age groups, and has halved since 2002, according to the British Social Attitudes survey. Far fewer actually attend church services on a regular basis.

Meanwhile, the trend towards a secular society has increased over recent years. The BSA survey found that 52% of people had no religion in 2017 compared with 41% in 2002. However, the proportion last year was slightly down on 2016, when 53% said they had no religious affiliation.

The demographic breakdown in the new data is particularly unwelcome news for the church. Younger people are significantly less likely to identify with the C of E than older age groups, and evidence suggests that people rarely join organised religion in later life. The trend indicates that affiliation with the C of E could become negligible with successive generations.

Beginning in 2003, at some incarnation of this site or other, I made what Internet reputation I have describing and commenting on the Anglican free-fall.  I had been blogging largely unnoticed for two years but the Anglican controversy actually got me read and occasionally quoted.

After the Episcopal Organization gave a pointy hat and a hooked stick to Gene Robinson, Anglican tensions, which had been building for decades, suddenly blasted out into the open. Were Anglicans Christians in any meaningful sense of that term?  Or did they have the same relationship to the Christian church that the Shriners have to Islam?

When Rowan Williams and his Real African WordsTM gamed the 2008 Lambeth Conference so that the Issue dividing Anglicanism was never seriously discussed and no worthwhile proposals were put forward, people without a mindless affection for the Anglican "tradition" knew that the game was up. Aside from freely and enthusiastically providing pseudo-spiritual cover for the Important Secular Cause of the Week, the Church of England and the rest of "official" Anglicanism no longer offer anything worthwhile to anyone at all.

If the C of E truly wants to change its current situation, it knows what it has to do.  That it is absolutely terrified of doing what needs to be done means that Great Britain may end up with some large and really fancy Pentecostal churches very soon.

SUGGESTED READING

Add Juddle Gum to that ludicrously long list of lazy-ass lefty liars who REALLY need to glance at the United States Constitution some time.

REMINDER: Kavanaugh’s chances for confirmation would look much different if hundreds of thousands of people who live in DC weren’t denied representation in the Senate

We are just as American as people who live in North Dakota and deserve a say on who sits on the Supreme Court

Sooner rather than later.

Friday, September 14, 2018

MCJ STYLE SHEET NOTE

Future references in this space to the Weekly World News, the Weekly World News II, the National Making Crap Up and other similar perjoratives will all indicate The New York Times.

THE ENEMY OF MY ENEMY


The Callee secesh reach out.

California secessionists have what may be a tempting proposal for the red states: Help the Golden State secede by voting to kick it out of the union.

Citing a looming court fight over state-splitting, Calexit organizers have postponed their ballot strategy and launched a campaign to convince red-state legislators to vote in favor of telling California to take a hike.

“We are going to rely on the deep hatred for California that exists in red America,” said Louis Marinelli, a founder of Yes California, the Calexit campaign.

The plan is to convince 25 of the 31 Republican-held legislatures to pass “consent to secede” resolutions, then place the question before California voters in the form of a ballot measure, instead of vice versa.
 
 

PATS MENTAL DEFECTIVE ON HEAD

As another leftist bumper sticker officially becomes meaningless sludge.

Dinesh DSouza. Asian white supremacist. @lauraloomer and Ben Shapiro are Jewish white supremacists. Ben Carson, Stacey Dash, Diamond and Silk, Sheriff Clarke, all black white supremacists. Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Hispanic white supremacists.

Wednesday, September 12, 2018

WILL THIS BE ON THE MID-TERM?


WAIT...WHAT?

Regular spontaneity practice is important.

Too often ex tempore prayer lacks variety, order and definiteness. The reason for this lies partly in a neglect of due preparation.

AND NOW...IDIOTS

Why your bagel preference elected Donald Trump.

UPDATE: This is a fun game.

What your favorite baseball team says about American (and your) racism

Why your last power tool purchase means you can't make it with the ladies

If you enjoy Kierkegaard, are you homophobic?

German chocolate cake was Hitler's favorite dessert.  Just sayin'

If you like anchovies on your pizza, how do you sleep at night, bigot?

Feel free to add your own in the comments.

Monday, September 10, 2018

ON DAN RATHER'S GRAVESTONE

Fake but accurate.

Politifact appears to have pretty deceptively edited our attention to think that a technical falsehood Kamala Harris has told about Brett Kavanaugh is more important than the overall truth it represents which is that Kavanaugh will totally overturn Roe v Wade.

JOHN?

You had me at closing the office, big guy.

John Bolton, the hawkish US national security adviser, has threatened the international criminal court (ICC) with sanctions and made an excoriating attack on the institution in a speech in Washington.

Bolton pushed for sanctions over an ICC investigation into alleged American war crimes in Afghanistan. He also announced on Monday the closure of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) office in Washington because of its calls for an ICC inquiry into Israel.

He said the Trump administration would “fight back” and impose sanctions – even seeking to criminally prosecute ICC officials – if the court formally proceeded with opening an investigation into alleged war crimes committed by US military and intelligence staff during the war in Afghanistan or pursued any investigation into Israel or other US allies.


UPDATE: That's not all.

There are a lot of encouraging signs that under the Trump administration that this gravy train is ending. In the past eighteen months, the administration has green-lighted increasing the population density in some Jewish settlements in the West Bank, Jerusalem has been recognized as the capital of Israel, the US has just cut some $300 million from the UNRWA–the UN agency that funds anti-Semitic propaganda and discourages Palestinian “refugees” from assimilating in their host nations–and, last week, our ambassador said he could not imagine a situation under which Israel would relinquish the Golan Heights, clearly implying that US recognition of Israel’s conquest of that area was being considered. Today, however, the hammer came down.

The Pallies, of course, are going bat-crap about all this, which means, for me anyway, that there is, in fact, such a thing as too much schadenfreude.

WELP

It's not like we weren't warned.

China's government is ratcheting up a crackdown on Christian congregations, destroying crosses, burning Bibles, shutting churches, and ordering followers to sign papers renouncing their faith, according to pastors and a group that monitors religion in China. The campaign corresponds with a drive to "Sinicize" religion by demanding loyalty to the atheist Communist Party. Bob Fu of the US-based group China Aid said that the recent closure of churches in Henan province and a prominent house church in Beijing is a "significant escalation" and that the "international community should be alarmed and outraged for this blatant violation of freedom of religion and belief." Under President Xi Jinping, believers are seeing freedoms shrink dramatically even amid a religious revival. Activists say Xi is waging the most severe suppression of Christianity since religious freedom was written into the constitution in 1982.

Warned?  When was that?  Here:

Blessed are you when they revile and persecute you, and say all kinds of evil against you falsely for My sake. Rejoice and be exceedingly glad, for great is your reward in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

Here:

If the world hates you, you know that it hated Me before it hated you.

And here:

For do I now persuade men, or God? Or do I seek to please men? For if I still pleased men, I would not be a bondservant of Christ.

Among many others.

Saturday, September 8, 2018

HMMM

Dave Burge notices a truly disturbing similarity.

AND NOW...IDIOTS

Um...this is a Chick-fil-A, ma'am.  May I take your order?

Kavanaugh will immediately make half the population sub-human baby vessels and then put limitations on both love and clean air but other than that I’m doing great.

Friday, September 7, 2018

DOUCHEBEARD LOSES IT

Ian Millhiser JUST can't deal with the fact that nobody told Hillary Clinton that Wisconsin is an American state.

WHOOPS

Don't you just hate when this happens?

JENNIFER RUBIN EXPLAINS IT ALL FOR YOU

"If you don't understand why voting a straight Democratic ticket in the midterms this fall and thus electing people who are implacably, indeed violently, hostile to every conservative principle extant is the only thing that will save conservatism in this country, then you are too stupid to be allowed to vote or, quite frankly, to be allowed out in public unsupervised and I'm humiliated, embarrassed and ashamed to share a nationality with you.  Stupid pig."

LARDASS

Documentarian gets ripped off by morbidly-obese ex.

Documentarian Kathleen Glynn is cranking up the Fahrenheit on her fellow filmmaker-ex husband Michael Moore, hauling him to court for allegedly stiffing her on profits from their movie projects.

Glynn and the “Fahrenheit 9/11” director split in 2014 after 23 years of marriage, and an even longer business partnership.

The suit claims Moore has walked away from a binding arbitration that was required to “flesh out the terms of an important provision in their property settlement.”

Glynn claims Moore’s trying to obtain all the benefits of their 2014 settlement in which she “signed over essentially all of her interest in the fruits of the parties’ joint efforts as film-makers … in exchange for a promise of future revenue-sharing by” Moore.

He was supposed to pay her 4 percent of total revenue from his creative works — but he gave her just $541 in 2014, the suit says. That means he would have pulled in just $13,525 during a seven-month period, according to court papers.

Cut Fat Boy some slack.  55-gallon drums of baked beans aren't cheap.

DUNNO, BEAR

How hard is it to think that giving billions of dollars to and making nuclear deals with a terrorist state like Iran is a REALLY stupid idea?

UNACCEPTABLE PEOPLE

Between his sexual harassment and his ludicrously childish petulance, Les Moonves appears to be a pretty considerable crapweasel.

Thursday, September 6, 2018

CIVILITY

This just happened.

A Republican Party office in Laramie, Wyoming, caught fire early Thursday morning just days after it opened, The Daily Caller News Foundation learned.

The fire appears to have been set intentionally, Laramie Police Department spokesman Steve Morgan told TheDCNF.

The local police department is cooperating with the federal Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms (BATF) in the ongoing investigation, Morgan said, adding that authorities have not yet identified a suspect or a motive for the fire.

It's a puzzler all right.

The burnt office is shared by the Albany County Republican Party and the Wyoming College Republicans, who began moving in on Tuesday, less than 48 hours before the fire, Albany GOP spokesman Ben McKay said.

HALEY/SANDERS 2024

And the Democratic Party goes the way of the Whigs.

REBEL YELL

Matthew Yglesias urges the United States to adopt Confederate States of America economic policy.

Monday, September 3, 2018

FRANK J. SEZ

I think you're always going to have tension in the Middle East when there's people who want to kill the Jews and Jews who don't want to be killed and neither side is willing to compromise.

BLOGGER FOUND TO BE CHICK MAGNET

A study by blogger Christopher Johnson has determined that blogger Christopher Johnson is incredibly attractive to women.  "Whoa," responded Johnson, "never saw that coming.  I guess I'd better take a shower or something."