No, I don’t hate Republicans or conservatives or Baptists or Muslims or Jews or Palestinians or drag queens. I have strong feelings about people threatening violence against people they hate. We’re US citizens, we all have rights. You want your right to own guns. I want my right to live peacefully without concerns that a neighbor might want to kill me because my political views differ or because I’m okay with vaccines or because I fit some stereotype they hate without making any effort to know me. We’re US citizens. If you want to whip out your guns to threaten me or give the blah-blah-blah about wanting a civil war, that can only lead to me figuring out who lives where and how I can defend me, my neighbors and family, from a person addicted to violence.
I much prefer living my life without imagining all the ways I could kill you. So if you’re on social media, or a podcast or on a news show talking about all the things you’d like to do to jail me, hurt me, overthrow the government, kill a cop or some gay guy, realize that it’s a natural response for the hundreds or thousands listening that most are thinking about how to defend themselves … including taking you out.
It’s not a very nice cycle so please don’t start it. I don’t need enemies and neither do you. Have you ever even heard about the Battle of Antietam? In 24 hours, 23,000 soldiers were dead or wounded, the bloodiest single day of any war we’ve ever fought. And the wounded might lay on the ground for hours in severe pain, some dying and some carried to tents to have limbs sawed off. Often without painkillers.
23,000. That’s what you want because somebody thinks your god doesn’t exist or thinks some celebrity you like is crazy? 23,000 because you saw two guys kiss, or a family moved in next door with a different skin color? Just stop. America will fall apart completely, people you love will die, food will be hard to get and lots of dead people will just lay there because the mortuaries and cemeteries take a lot of time when they’re overwhelmed.
America can never be great if you wish for that and get it. Think. And stop it. You can and should be better than that. And nobody wins a ‘civil’ war.
Tonight I learned more about the new House Speaker. From Jennifer Bendery at HuffPost:
The wife of newly elected House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) runs a counseling business that advocates the belief that homosexuality is comparable to bestiality and incest, according to its operating documents.Johnson and his wife, Kelly, have long intertwined their political and business lives: They became a known entity in the late 1990s when they went on national television as the face of Louisiana’s new marriage covenant law, which makes it harder to get a divorce. Today, they co-host a podcast, “Truth Be Told,” where they talk about political and social issues from a conservative Christian perspective. Their podcast is up to 69 episodes.
“We have been working in ministry side by side and together for our whole marriage,” Johnson said last year when he and his wife launched their podcast, in an interview with The Message, a website that connects members of the Louisiana Southern Baptist community.
The wife of newly elected House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) runs a counseling business that advocates the belief that homosexuality is comparable to bestiality and incest, according to its operating documents.Johnson and his wife, Kelly, have long intertwined their political and business lives: They became a known entity in the late 1990s when they went on national television as the face of Louisiana’s new marriage covenant law, which makes it harder to get a divorce. Today, they co-host a podcast, “Truth Be Told,” where they talk about political and social issues from a conservative Christian perspective. Their podcast is up to 69 episodes.
“We have been working in ministry side by side and together for our whole marriage,” Johnson said last year when he and his wife launched their podcast, in an interview with The Message, a website that connects members of the Louisiana Southern Baptist community.
Kelly Johnson features the couple’s podcast on the website of her company, Onward Christian Counseling Services, which promotes Bible-based pastoral counseling. Her website also includes a link to its 2017 operating agreement, which lays out the corporate bylaws for the company ― and embraces a number of socially conservative beliefs about LGBTQ+ people and women’s reproductive rights.
The agreement states that Onward Christian Counseling Services is grounded in the belief that sex is offensive to God if it is not between a man and a woman married to each other. It puts being gay, bisexual or transgender in the same category as someone who has sex with animals or family members, calling all of these examples of “sexual immorality.”
“We believe and the Bible teaches that any form of sexual immorality, such as adultery, fornication, homosexuality, bisexual conduct, bestiality, incest, pornography or any attempt to change one’s sex, or disagreement with one’s biological sex, is sinful and offensive to God,” says the eight-page business document.
This agreement also refers to “pre-born babies” and says the company is committed to defending and protecting all human life, “from conception through natural death.”
I’ve read the Bible. It doesn’t say all that. It actually provides stories of incest and rape and slavery and other awful stuff. Some of it is described as normal or pleasing to some god.
It also talks of horrible punishments one should get for eating the wrong food. No shellfish, ham, bacon. Clothes can’t be made of linen mixed with wool. Short hair is a no-no. Men have to wear beards. No tattoos or piercings. No jewelry. You can’t come to the lord if you’re blind, lame, disfigured, deformed, or if your eyes or nose are too flat. If you curse your parents, you’ll be put to death. You also get killed if you work on Saturdays.
I’d like to see where the bible bans pornography or ‘disagreement with one’s biological sex.’ I’ve read it cover to cover and haven’t seen that. The Johnson couple is just making shit up. And once you start jumping to new interpretations that suit your own biases, you could just as easily say organ transplants are an abomination, along with facelifts, tummytucks, silicone breasts.
If you want to take the Bible literally, Eve had to screw one of her sons or mankind wouldn’t exist at all today. “Onward Christian Counseling Services is grounded in the belief” that whatever they want to believe and choose to believe is ‘right’ and all other beliefs are ‘wrong.’
That’s bigotry. That’s hate. And if you studied the history of how all the parts of the Bible were assembled, you’d understand that men wrote a lot of it without discussing it with god. More than 200 years ago a small group of men wrote a document that grants US citizens the right to believe anything they want but it didn’t grant us the right to kill or condemn each other if someone decides to eat a BLT.
America became greater because of the rights and laws that we created then and have been added to since. If you start taking rights away from certain groups of people, that’s unAmerican.
Look, nobody likes all the decisions our government makes. There’s a number of ways those decisions can be changed. Just overthrowing a government is no guarantee that life will get better. It could lead to 23,000 dead in a single day. Oopsie.
My point is, this new speaker is likely untrustworthy. He claims the laws about gay marriage, etc are settled and he’ll abide by that. But we heard the same thing from SCOTUS judge confirmation hearings. Then we heard the Dobbs decision would turn that back to states to decide. Ever since, we’ve heard some clamoring for a national ban and prosecuting women for traveling to another state to end a pregnancy.
We’ve read tragic stories of moms forced to carry to term fetuses that won’t survive an hour after birth, who’ll live a brief, torturous life. The zealots just have no ‘off’ button. The Crazy Eight are still wreaking havoc on their own party. And there’s zealots elsewhere handing out awards to people complicit in shady doings because they beat the rap. It sure doesn’t feel like America’s getting greater this way.
And I don’t want a government messing with my gay friends or anyone really, who wants to have their own sex lives with other consenting adults.
This House Speaker also has gotten help from the billionaire Harlan Crow, so he’s already under the influence of the same guys who corrupted Justice Thomas and stacked the SCOTUS with very intrusive judges. Is the House gonna become another puppet stage?
On next month’s Ohio ballot is an abortion question. Should the Ohio state Senators be using public funds to megaphone their positions on the ballot measure? Using false information?
Should life saving care be put on hold because doctors are afraid of vaguely written laws? Our healthcare system already has enough screws loose that make it less comprehensive but more expensive than nearly all first world nations.
How many new courts and prisons do you want to pay for to criminalize everyone? tay tuned, because the crazy continues.
The next 9 days of the Bank Fraud trial should get interesting because of who’ll be testifying:
Nov 1 - Eric Trump
Nov 2 - Junior
Nov 3 - Ivanka
Nov 6 - Donald Senior
I expect final sentences will occur by the first week in December
Recommended Reading
1. A state dept employee that Trump appointed is facing a potential 10 year sentence for assaulting police officers during the insurrection.
2. In the wake of the Dobbs decision, it looks like the backlash from many women is likely to continue into the next election because of stories like these.
I may take a brief sabbatical. Tonight I’m going to see an Army band play because I know a great musician who’s in it. And I need Sunday off as well.
And here’s the son of James Taylor and Carly Simon.
Of course, why get involved in all the goings on? Good question.